Chapter 4: Hurry Up and Wait
The car puttered into the car park and pulled into a space, thirty minutes ahead of schedule. Phedra’s stomach lurched; excitement was forced to share the stage with nerves inside of her. Mark turned the key out of the ignition and prepared to get out. Susan had other plans.
"Phedra, before we get out of the car," she started, twisting in her seat to look at her daughter, her voice slightly louder than usual, "check the instructions in that envelope Mr. Magoon gave you."
Susan had to be prepared for everything, even if it meant going to excessive lengths to make sure nothing was done at the last minute (or last two minutes, or twenty). Phedra was not a spur-of-the-moment girl herself, she preferred to be in control of her own situation, but she didn’t micro-manage as much as her mother did.
"I gave it to you, Mom."
"Oh, right. It’s in here somewhere."
Susan rummaged through her handbag, and pulled out the plain white envelope. Phedra took it and ripped the top open.
"Platform nine and three-quarters," she read from a purple ticket. "They have fractions of a platform? I hate fractions!"
"Something isn’t right here, let me see that," demanded Susan, still anxious. She reached around into the back seat and tried to pull the ticket out of Phedra’s hand.
"Susan!"
Mark put out his hand to stop her reaching arm.
"There’s instructions, too. Phedra, read the directions," Mark said firmly.
Phedra picked up the white sheet of paper that had been nestled in the envelope with the purple ticket. “‘ Carry your belongings with you. Walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don’t stop. Don’t hesitate. Run if you need to.’ That’s all it says."
"What if it only lets you through? Who knows what’s on the other side? I bet it doesn’t let us through. That’s not a very good system. Who thought this up?" Susan agonised.
"I’m sure-" Mark heaved a sigh, "-that it’s fine. Look, it’s probably like the Leaky Cauldron. You can only get in if you know what you’re looking for. We’ll just have to try, won’t we?"
He got out of the car into the sunlight that had been streaming down since the rain stopped. Susan checked her face in the fold-down mirror that hung over the windscreen and followed him, as did Phedra. Maeve, still silent, stayed where she was.
Phedra helped her father unlace the ropes from the back of the car and unload her trunk while Susan fetched a trolley to put it on. They were all set to head out when they realized that Maeve was still inside the car.
"Maeve, get out now! I can’t leave you in there! Its too hot outside, you’d bake!" Susan was tense, and it showed in her voice. Maeve was determined; it showed in her stony expression that they all could see through the window.
"NOW, Maeve!" bellowed Phedra. She was sick of Maeve sulking. This was her day. Eventually Maeve did get out of the car, moving as slowly as she could. Susan grabbed her hand and tugged her along. Phedra struggled to push the trolley. Mark locked the car doors and the family made its way into King’s Cross Station at a brisk pace, weaving between puddles of rainwater on the asphalt, still with over twenty minutes to spare.
Susan led the way through crowds of tourists and swarms of men and women on their lunch breaks, sandwiches in hand. Their pace was so steep that little Maeve accidentally crashed into one a woman with a large set of matched luggage. The woman screeched angrily but the family was already gone, Phedra’s trolley parting the crowd.
Phedra panted as she pushed the cart, doing her best to keep up with Susan and Maeve. People rushed by, pressing in from all sides and then jumping out of the way as she mercilessly ran feet over. She became so caught up in following her mother-on-a-mission that she thought she might have left her nerves behind her, somewhere back where the woman with matched luggage had been.
Abruptly, the whole party came to a grinding halt; Susan had found the barrier. Phedra’s nerves caught back up with her in no time at all, returning to her stomach with another unpleasant lurch.
"This is it, isn’t it? Mark? Check that paper. The barrier between nine and ten?"
"Sure is."
"All right, maybe you should go first, Mark, and wait for Phedra on the other side. Then we’ll see if it will let us through, too. Or maybe Phedra should go first. Ah, I wish I knew how this works!"
The situation had been gradually slipping out of Susan’s hands and she was not pleased. With Phedra’s nerves and Maeve’s sullenness, Mark was the only relaxed person in the group.
Phedra stared around, hoping to spot another family that was headed towards the solid barrier. She spotted no one who seemed to be intentionally nearby, except for a teenage girl in a plain blue skirt and brown loafers who seemed nearly as sulky as Maeve. Blonde hair and a horse-like face framed pale blue eyes that were covertly sneaking glances at the family, until they realised that Phedra was watching them.
"All of you can go through, if you actually want to," the girl said to Susan, rolling her eyes at the barrier. "My parents did, and they’re just normal too. Well, relatively speaking."
"Oh, you’re sure?" Mark spoke up hesitantly.
"Why would I lie?"
"Ah, well, thank you!" Phedra’s father was slightly taken aback by the bite in the teen’s voice, but shook it off. "You can go first, then, Phedra. Go ahead!"
Susan looked like she was about to interfere, but instead bit back any nervous intervention she had been about to put forth and squeezed Maeve’s hand so that her slim fingers turned white.
Impatient, Phedra steered her cart around so it was facing the barrier and prayed that Magoon and the plain girl had not been lying to her. The barrier looked so darn solid. She backed up a few steps and squinted so that the edges of the wall were blurred. A little less solid, much better. She trotted as quickly as possible towards the barrier, hoping that she didn’t look too ridiculous. The barrier approached at a rapid pace and Phedra’s shoulders tensed, but she kept going, squinting even harder. The barrier was two feet away…half a foot…an inch, and then...it wasn’t. The barrier was gone.
When Phedra dared to open her eyes, the first thing she spotted was a lovely archway with the words Platform Nine and Three-Quarters wrought into it. All around her were children with trunks, just like hers. Some had owls in cages, something that Magoon had explained to her back at Diagon Alley. Cats slunk around between children’s trainers and their mothers’ high heels. Everyone was chattering loudly, grouped around the most magnificent scarlet steam engine that Phedra had ever laid eyes on, the Hogwarts Express. Her eyes slid over the crowd, taking it all in, and landed on the cluster of people closest to her.
A short, richly-dressed woman with streaks of grey in her hair bent over her son, who looked to be about Phedra’s age. She was struggling to part and flatten his unruly black hair with a comb. The boy fidgeted impatiently and made faces at another black-haired boy, who was standing near his own mother. This woman was barely taller than the first, but appeared to be much more so. Phedra wondered if it was because of how high she held her dainty nose. She also had another little boy with her, most likely her younger son. It was odd, how different this family looked from hers. These people were decked in expensive-looking clothing that flowed just like the school robes that Phedra had bought in Diagon Alley. These people clearly were full of magic.
“Phedra!”
She spun around. There was her father, looking a little unsettled at having just walked through an apparently solid wall. Susan and Maeve were there as well, Maeve working very hard to conceal her interest in the people around her…until a cat rubbed up against her legs. She leaned over and petted its head. The youngest boy from the nearby group turned around to watch Maeve with a rather curious expression until his mother, who had turned around to follow his gaze, tugged him back around. Phedra thought she heard the woman tell him to, “not look at the Muggles.”
Phedra shook her head and checked her watch, one of the many new items her parents had bought for her to use during her time away.
“Maybe I should put my stuff on the train, Mom,” she mused, more to herself than to Susan.
“Put your stuff on the”” Susan looked startled. “Oh, yes, that would be a good idea. Mark, help her, will you? And come back out here so you can say goodbye!”
“I will.”
Randomly choosing a carriage, Phedra led the way for her father, who was dutifully following along with the beloved trunk. Just as they were about to climb aboard, they were stopped by a porter in a funny little red suit.
“No parents are allowed to board, sir,” he said, sticking his arm in front of Mark.
“Oh, sorry, I was just going to help my daughter with her trunk. I won’t be on long,” Mark told the guard politely.
“Rules are rules. You can’t be too careful these days. I’ll take the trunk.”
The porter heaved the trunk out of Mark’s hands with surprising strength and had started off down the train before Phedra or her father could wonder what could possibly be wrong with “these days”. Phedra had hesitated when the man took the trunk, but a small prod from her father sent her scurrying after the suited porter.
“Here we are,” the porter grunted as he shoved her trunk into a luggage rack in an empty compartment (most students were still milling around on the platform). “This is lovely. Have a nice trip.”
He hurried off as quickly as possible, perhaps to snatch a trunk from another other unsuspecting parental figure, and left Phedra entirely alone in the empty compartment. She looked around for a moment at the sunlight shining cheerfully through the rather dirty windows and at the wood panelling on the walls before power-walking back to her parents and checking her watch. It was nearly five to twelve.
“Sweetheart, your hair is coming out!” fussed Susan. “Let me fix that for you!”
She descended on Phedra’s head and snatched out the navy headband like an eagle stealing a fish out of the water. She finger-combed Phedra’s hair until the wispy brown strands were in place, and then snapped the headband back on as quickly as she had removed it.
“There, that’s better,” she muttered, as though it had been a tangible reality check, pulling Maeve closer to her with the hand that wasn’t smoothing her eldest daughter’s hair. “Now then, you’d best get on the train. Give me a hug.”
Phedra did so. Susan felt tense under her jacket.
So Phedra bade goodbye to her parents and her little sister and began to walk away. Maeve burst into tears.
“I want to go with you! Take me with you! I didn’t even get a hug!” she wailed, sobbing noisily. Several people turned around and shot irritated glances at the small commotion. The woman with her nose in the air sniffed disdainfully. Terrified of the spotlight Maeve was throwing onto her, Phedra hurried back and hugged her sister quickly and awkwardly.
“I’ll send you letters and tons of pictures, Maeve. Really, I will. And I have to go now. See you later,” she hissed in Maeve’s ear. A whistle blew. The sisters broke apart and Phedra rushed towards her compartment, glancing back to send a small wave to her sniffling sister. Then she climbed the steps and moved along the narrow corridor, her face flushed from the potential embarrassment, looking down at the carpet as she hurried to her seat and sat down.
Heaving a sigh and leaning back in her chair, Phedra was just about to calm down when she realised something that sent a huge jolt of panic to her already nerve-plagued stomach. There were four rather tall, older students sitting around her. Her head shot up and scanned them; they were all chatting loudly didn’t seem to have noticed her arrival. Maybe she could sneak back to her real seat before they spotted her. But no, there was her trunk. They were in her compartment, not the other way around. Not that it made her feel much better.
Phedra shifted her behind around in the faded but cushy seat to get comfortable, even though her face was still burning, and tried to look on the bright side of things. Perhaps they would befriend her and she would have an entire crowd of older friends to help her around in her first year. She hazarded another glance at the group, who still had not acknowledged her presence. Or perhaps not.
a/n: My dear reader…I was like you once, sad, lonely, reading fanfiction chapters, and turning away without reviewing. I was fearful. I was fearful of sounding boring, or of being rude. But then, one glorious day, I learned the way of the…er… well…I learned that no matter what your review says (unless, my dear reader, it contains obscenities or the likewise), the author still is glad to see it. I also discovered that leaving a review will frequently merit you a reply from the author, especially if the author is notabanana. And that, my friend, is how I came to discover inner-peace…or at least make lots of authors happy. I encourage each and every one of you to do the same in your life... *giggles*.