The air was sticky with a vapour and the sky threatened to rupture at any given moment. King's Cross Station was crowded as usual, but today the throng seemed much too vibrant for a day as dreary as this. Muggles stared curiously at oddly-dressed passersby and tried to listen in on their conversations, but, as a peculiar happenstance, their voices were consistently obscured by the vibrations and whistling of the surrounding trains. One particular muggle child began tugging at her mother's sleeve, gasping that she had seen an older girl vanish into the barrier between platforms 9 and 10. This was, of course, a ridiculous notion that was brushed off at once.
…
"Be quick next time, Desdemona! Wouldn't want to lead a muggle child this way, would we?" Alfred Pearl pretended to scold his daughter. He knew that the chance of that happening was rare.
Desdemona smiled weakly, slipping far into the mass of students who, like her, were ready to board the Hogwarts Express. She was purposefully avoiding her father, who had insisted on accompanying her through the barrier, even though she was a sixth year perfectly capable of seating herself on the train.
"Mona, you've escaped me!" Mr. Pearl laughed a little pathetically. He scratched his forehead and waved in her direction, "I'll write you!"
His daughter was too far away by that time to see or hear him. Mona had already seated herself in an empty compartment and pulled out a book to occupy herself until her arrival at Hogwarts. Alas, she only reached the second page before the compartment door opened and an old friend walked in.
"Oh, my Mona, always the model Ravenclaw with her nose in a book," said a perfectly modulated voice.
Mona looked up and smiled her first genuine smile of the day. "Oh, my Tristan, always the model Slytherin, wearing that badge when you're the most untrustworthy of them all!" she joked, rising to embrace him.
After they released each other, Tristan adjusted his prefect badge and brushed off his robes. He set the highest standards for himself. He had dark, combed hair and stunning green eyes. The only sign of disarray in his being were the light, unorganized freckles that dusted his hollow cheeks.
"Aren't prefects supposed to sit somewhere else?" Mona asked as the Hogwarts Express began to rattle and move forward.
"Well, yes, but I must give you something first," he said, pulling a small box from inside his robes.
Mona noticed a sudden change in the compartment's temperature. Then she realized it was the blood rushing to her cheeks. "I didn't," she stammered, "well, know we were going to be exchanging gifts today."
"Just call it an early birthday gift," he popped the lid off the box, revealing a magnificent brooch embellished with sapphires surrounding the silhouette of a raven. "I found it in a little shop and thought of you."
As he pinned the gift onto her robes, brushing his fingers gently across her thumping chest, Mona was speechless. She had never looked at Tristan, or any other boy for that matter, in any way that suggested something more than friendship. She was building up the courage to thank him when his lips tickled her cheek, light as a feather and smooth as velvet.
"I'll see you later, my Mona," he said, smirking slightly as he left her behind.
She felt a lump in her throat and a throbbing in her head unlike any other. She would soon find herself stuck on the same sentence about translating runes that she was reading when Tristan entered the compartment. Even as other sixth years came to join her and attempted to make conversation, she could not bring herself to speak. She knew for sure this year was going to be different, but she did not yet know how she felt about that.