AN: Prompt, Use Hogsmeade Station. 906 words.
Hogsmeade Station had seen many lives and times ever since she had been built by Geraldine Gambol. The Station had seen the rise and fall of so many, yet she never saw for sure what they became after seven years. Maybe she'd see their children, but that was hardly an indicator. Take an example.
Pandora Bones was a witch of many talents. The station would witness her brilliance ever since she first arrived in her first year. She clearly practiced magic as soon as she had bought her wand at the Ollivander shop. She radiated pure magic. Oh, the station had seen her exchange friends and eventually even find one that she would become engaged to by the end of her seven years.
Hogsmeade Station would see her daughter years later. Luna Lovegood, dotty as her father, magical as her mother. Yet she carried a blanket of grief around her shoulders. That was how the station came to witness that Pandora Bones had indeed not made it out alive.
There was one girl that captured the attention of Hogsmeade Station's quasi-sentience more than any other. It was a dark stormy night, in which several first-years almost drowned in the lake. A little red-haired girl entered, her face gazing in wonder at was across the lake, only to look at her cousins exiting before her, and became ashamed. Her luggage read 'Mafalda Prewett.'
The last of the Prewetts with the name, then. A girl with a destiny because of this name. After all, it wasn't every day that a schoolgirl in London had discovered she was the heir to a legacy of some of the brightest witches and wizards of her age- and that she was a witch herself.
When Mafalda returned the next year, she wore her Slytherin robes, not a hair or inch of fabric out of place. Perhaps she could have passed for, in that moment, an aristocratic member of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Then she smiled at the lake. She had her muggle mother's smile- which was fundamentally different because of the pure happiness it radiated.
The Station preferred those from muggle-backgrounds, anyway. The Station could tell that those were the ones that were often happiest and treated the Station with the most respect. Madalda Prewett was no exception to this rule. She often hung around the Station during her free time. She never vandalized intentionally or unintentionally. Instead she spoke, probably just to herself, but nevertheless the Station listened. It listened to the horrifying tales of what went on behind the walls of Hogwarts that year.
The Station recognized the name, too. Delores Umbridge. A woman who she remembered from Slytherin in years past. The girl Umbridge had tried to blend in with the pure-bloods but often found rejection. The Station was startled to learn that the girl that had learned to settle with liking pink fluffy cats had become such a monster.
Still, the Station was there the next year, when the girl was being searched heavily, as was everyone else for that matter, for Dark contraband. The Station witnessed all of her possessions, much to Mafalda's embarrassment. Muggle photographs, not Wizard photographs were spread amongst the bottom of the trunk. Muggle clothes folded up neatly in a row. And books from the muggle world. Lots and lots of books. A reader was clearly being made out of Mafalda.
The Station would see that come into fruition later that year when Mafalda would come and talk as she usually did, or she would come and read, a new activity with thrilling results. Vicariously, the Station witnessed her laugh and cry and come to love all these new books from the muggle world that the Station never would have learned otherwise.
The Station became her refuge in her third year. While Dark forces had taken over Hogwarts, Hogsmeade Station remained a place of access for the students. That, or Mafalda had run away often, which was likely. She might be bleeding, or in lots of pain, but she still always treated the Station with respect. The Station knew it might be able to create a favor for her- if she truly wanted it. It might be able to create a hole in the barrier for little Mafalda to slip through. After all, Gambol didn't give it its limited sentience for nothing. Sure, the trick with the lights was always a pleaser, as was its beacon to Kings Cross, but the Station could do small things like these, surely with all the power she had built up over the years.
Finally, in December, Mafalda came running, crying. Her parents, a Squib and a Muggle, had been murdered. Ruthlessly and senselessly in the safety and privacy of their own homes. That was when the Station made her choice. There was a shimmer, and nosy, intrusive, curious Mafalda came to investigate. Then she realized- she could leave. She did not know where she would go, but it would be better than sticking around. Guided by the tracks, Mafalda began her journey.
The Station was relieved to see her the next year, with a zest for learning, and acceptance instead of grief was on her shoulders. A much easier burden to bear. The fallout of the previous year resulted in Mafalda not having as much free time as she would have liked. But the Station would remember her as a memorable one among countless lives and times.