Funnily, after a few minutes of planning meticulously, Julius thought of something which would make all of their planning useless; his extended briefcase.
While it was not on the level of Newt Scamander's suitcase in Phantastic Beasts, it was still roughly on the level of Hermione's bag in the Deathly Hollows, meaning roughly the size of a container.
Lia should be able to fit inside it quite easily, he just had to make sure she didn't touch anything inside or she might meet an untimely death inside this mixture of a library and a laboratory.
After clearing it with Lia, Julius turned into a snake again and slithered through the slightly opened door, seeing the purebloods, who by now where clearing one compartment after another, already being quite near, so he told Lia and she went inside the briefcase to wait for the all-clear.
Then they waited.
When a rude knocking sound was heard at the door moments before it was opened anyways Rachel turned her head away from the warm sun to hiss a the rude human, she had already learned to appreciate people with manners and wasn't that great a fan of anyone who did not care about them with only few exceptions.
Since Julius had already learned about the pureblood families of magical Britain he immediately recognised the eldest son of his former occlumency teacher; Thomas Rosier.
At first he looked as if he only wanted to get this over with fast and after looking through the compartment for a moment he decided to ask the next best person if they saw a girl with a scarf over her face or something and not exactly polite at that.
But when he saw Julius his demeanour did a full 180.
"Nice to meet you Greengrass, my name is Rosier, Thomas Rosier. I think you already know my father?"
Looking at him calmly, Julius replied:
"Yes I do indeed. I always enjoyed his lessons, but my name is Abraxus now, my littler sister will now be the heir to the house of Greengrass."
This dampened the boy's excitement a bit, probably just enough to not make him stay here and annoy him like he would like to annoy Lia but still not enough to let him become impolite, after all even if Julius was not the heir himself he was still the heir of one of the sacred 28 and probably had quite the strong bond to both, Adorabella and Daphne Greengrass, which would make him an important person in the social world even if he was form a regular or a foreign pureblood house with no seat in the wizengamott.
"I'm sorry to bother you but you didn't just so happen to see a suspicious girl somewhere inside the train? I and a few of my friends are searching for her."
‚Interesting, so he respects me enough to be polite to me but not enough to share important information with me, I have to admit that's almost ideal for my plans. The people I want to speak with mostly already know how important I am and if not I can just tell them after all.'
„Don't worry about that, but as you saw we had the curtains closed till now so we didn't really notice anything. I'm afraid I just can't help you."
Hearing this, Thomas excused himself and left the compartment with Julius locking the door after him and making completely sure the curtains would cover everything going on inside.
Then he finally told Lia to come out, and Habol started moving again; for whatever reason he had sat completely still while Thomas had come inside.
…
Since it was now completely illogical for Lia to leave the compartment they decided they might as well get to know each other more.
After talking for a while the topic of their discussion came to the houses; after all that was what most of the new students in this train were excited about and even this unusual group couldn't evade being at least a bit excited.
It was Habol who lead the conversation in this direction:
"What houses do you think you will go to by the way?
I personally think I might go to Ravenclaw or maybe Hufflepuff; I'm not that proud of my heritage even though I am a pureblood so I would technically qualify, I'm also not the most brave person, quite the contrary actually, I prefer to get out of bad situations by using my brain and I actually really want to be able to learn about foreign culture, that's originally one of the reasons I came to Hogwarts, so maybe that counts as being hungry for knowledge."
After he finished speaking he noticed that Lia and Julius were looking at him in a strange way and after sending a questioning look back Lia decided to tell him what both of them had been thinking for this whole time:
"You know, this sounds more like what a Slytherin would say to be honest, you don't happen to have some great ambition do you?"
This made Habol pensive.
"Actually yes, I do have an ambition, but isn't Slytherin all about heritage and that you're proud of your's?"
"Almost, you know, heritage was important for Salazar Slytherin, yes, but he meant it purely in the way of being a pureblood.
If he got anything to say about it you don't need to be proud of your heritage, despite him preferring it if you are, but you just need to be a pureblood and together with ambition and a fair bit of cunning you fit his requirements perfectly."
Now Julius also entered the conversation:
"Actually I hope we get into the same house and if I'm correct I should also get into either Ravenclaw or Slytherin but I'm happy with any house to be honest as long as it's not Gryffindor.
But if we do get into Slytherin we will probably have a few problems with our social life in the future, after all the ‚everyone hates Slytherin'-mentality has not yet completely been lost, even after it went down when more foreign purebloods without a death eater history sent their kids to Hogwarts and they came to Slytherin.
But while we're at it: Where do you think you will go, Lia?"
************
I took a bit longer for the second chapter this week since I fucked up two important exams but I got through it by the skin of my teeth.
I still don't know how I got through this.
Thank you for reading!