"How did you do that to yourself, again?" said Theo.
His eyes were focused on a jagged, discoloured line that protruded from the cuff of Aurora's left sleeve.
"What," said Aurora, somewhat distractedly, pulling herself away from the letters in her hand, "you mean this?"
She gestured down at her wrist.
"Yeah, what happened?" asked Theo.
After a moment's hesitation, Aurora replied, a little hesitantly, "Well it's a long story actually."
"We have plenty of time," remarked Theo, amused by her reluctance to divulge more.
With a sigh, she slipped her shoulders out of her coat, and pulled back her shirt. She turned her forearm towards the ceiling so that it reflected off the dim temperamental light of their otherwise bare cabin.
Breaking through the tan of her skin, like a foreboding mountain ridge, was a scar, maybe ten inches in length. It danced from the back of her wrist to her forearm, blotchy and dense in its complexion. It then weaved its way from one side of her arm to the other, before narrowing a little, and twisting once again until it coalesced with the wrinkled skin of her elbow. The helix pattern was almost similar to that of delicately manicured ivy found around an old church spire, or wisteria on a proud house owner's front porch.
Yet the brutality of the cut was obvious to any semi-competent observer. Aurora would often self-consciously rub her right hand against it, as if remembering the fire and claw that had left its mark on her and wanting to futilely attempt to soothe the skin back into its original place.
"I wish I could say it looks worse than it was," muttered Aurora blackly, as Theo gaped at it with an element of awe, his face widening in surprise.
"I never knew it was so big. What happened?" he said.
He took off his glasses and gave them a wipe before placing them inches from the cut, using them like a magnifying glass.
"Chinese Fireball," explained Aurora.
Theo let out a low whistle. "Dangerous beasts to tease."
"We bit off more than we could chew."
"Clearly," laughed Theo.
"I nearly lost the arm, you know," said Aurora, a little ruefully at her own idiocy.
"I don't remember…"
"Before you arrived, one of the first tombs we excavated."
"Hell. We all knew that Lucy Sharpe was far too arrogant for this line of work…should have stuck to the books rather than jollying up the Yangtze for a spot of curse-breaking?"
"Wasn't her fault. Not that time. Are you sure I have never mentioned all this before?"
"No. I saw it every day for the past ten months, but I never really found the right time to ask."
"It wasn't a big deal."
Though as Aurora said this she was eager to move the conversation on, it was embarrassing to be reminded of her own mistakes - a hangover effect of being born in a country that wonderfully mixed emotional restraint with self-loathing.
"Oh that's good. I was worried it might have been an awkward case of childhood trauma. Or, I don't know, dabbling in black market Floo powder. It felt wrong to ask."
"Well, this time," said Aurora, after a pause and smirking out of exasperation, aware that she would need to give him something to end this grim verbal sojourn, "it was largely my own fault. All I will say is when a wizard emperor's tomb warns you of curses and fire reigning down upon thieves; don't take it as a metaphor."
"It could have been a good addition to my notes, you know."
"Think you have enough for an article?"
"In the Prophet? Maybe. Though I dare say they won't give it the column inches I'd wish for."
"They gave it to you last time."
"They took my monthly reports. You see, it's all well and good for them to pick up my cheery news about wizarding discoveries, to counter the gloom. But an in-depth piece? They care more about what colour the Happy Grindylows lead singer has dyed his hair, or what some suit like Barty Crouch is hoping to reform than giving me the room I need. They need short, obvious, beaming news. The stuff people can glance through in the morning and not feel someone will curse the head off their shoulders when they jaunt off to Flourish & Blotts. They don't care about what you all found out there."
"Nice to know we're appreciated."
She then looked out the window and tried to get a proper glimpse of the weather outside.
Sadly, its presence could only be felt through her magical intuition, as when she had earlier attempted to discern anything outside her window, she was offered only an unflattering reflection of their travel-worn, flustered faces cast by the dingy light of their cabin.
Theo, meanwhile, was still marching on with the conversation.
"I suppose it might get a good bit of space in The Traveller or in one of the Luxembourg magazines. They have a much keener interest in our wider history than we seem to do, though I am hardly looking at a trove of Galleons, just enough to cover these expenses."
"It's a weird world."
"Especially now. As I said people want easy distractions. They want good news but unconditional good news only. Certainly, they don't want their world challenged. If you'd stayed there for another decade, with some of the things you saw over there, Aurora, you could have been famous."
"Hmm…."
Hoping that Theo had now stopped with his inquiries for good, she rubbed her scar once more before concealing it again behind the welcoming warmth of her coat. Then she turned back to the letters, with one eye on to the storm brewing only millimetres away from them, a storm they were separated from by only a worryingly thin sheet of steel.
She attempted to create a lull in conversation long enough to establish a firm silence. She was tired of talking, it distracted her from all the words she had been running over in her mind, the written words that she had been tracking each syllable of in her brain.
After weeks of journeying, she really couldn't stand another one of Dr Theodore Morgan's long, winding conversations.
What could she have expected though?
He was a journalist, whom since he had arrived in the Far East had worn a suit of elaborate tweed. Perhaps done so to match a considerably more elaborate white, twirled moustache.
Theo had become a welcome addition to their team of curse-breakers; his writing was a sort of seal-of-approval on the importance of their work. Armed with a chimaera-fur pen and a pile of beeswax tablets, his off-the-wall manner had been a boon to the entire expedition. His bouncy personality and easy charisma as he examined the findings of the team she worked under was such a marked contrast to the usual inspectors of their hauls. That being the dry, uptight little goblins, delegated on behalf of Gringotts to run a rather caustic, myopic eye over all of their efforts. Interested only in the finances, the miasma of monetary prudence would linger long after they returned home, their bitter, pedantic complaints buffering any of the more viscerally imagined plans for further exploration.
Mostly though, she was flattered at how he had taken a shine to her.
His complimentary comments had rubbed off on Aurora like indulgent treacle. Unthreatening and mostly of the bumbling variety, his connections with the most foreign of wizarding regions, alongside his knack for knowing a good story to write about, made him good company most of the time. As ageing former academics approaching their seventies and the twilight years of his journalism career go, he was the best. Unfortunately, he was more of a nuisance in these bleaker days. Offering out of courtesy and out of a begrudging realisation that he ought to see his daughter once in a while, he had come back with Aurora, all the way from the coasts off the South China Sea.
Frankly, he didn't understand why she was going home with such worry and trepidation. He recognised why she was sad, both at going back to a world she was so happy to leave and in doing so in such morose circumstances, but he did not connect the dots the same way she had done. He thought she may have been tearful and full of sorrow, but her attitude of constant alertness and uptight curiosity had puzzled the ageing scribe.
Then again, he always understood adventures more than he got people; he expected it was just one of those woman things. Countering it all with a cheery demeanour that was becoming abrasive to Aurora, conversations had become more strained.
As irritating as she was now finding the man and his Cheshire cat grin that stretched across his face, flaunting the remaining vestiges of his former good looks of yesteryear, she was above all mad at herself.
She was furious for not recognising the signs before she left. Things had been slowly changing, and until now, she had been too oblivious to their significance.
The scroll, by courier, arrived from the Office of Wizarding Inheritance.
It had notified her of her brother's death and had given her a dryly prescribed set of galleons. She read the two-line piece in a tent in China, whilst partially high on mandrake fumes. At the time, she had assumed it was part of a bad hallucination. When she awoke the next day, however, and re-read it, any suggestion of it being a construct in an artificial nightmare was duly dismissed. The bubbling sense of optimism that had consumed her for the past few months had swept away from her like dry autumn leaves before a storm. She had nearly fainted. The breath had sucked out of her, her heart stopping.
After regaining composure, she felt it must have been a mistake.
But then the owls came.
Her family had sent letters confirming the news, yet they lacked their usual warmth or charm. There was no obvious invitation in any of the letters for her to come home, no sign of their grief, and no explanation about what happened. She was left with only the Ministry explanation: which was that there was none.
Unsure of what to do, she had rocked in her tent for hours, between wretched bouts of tears. Her friends had tried to console her, but she was short with them. Knowing she had to do something, she left in a day, desiring nothing more than to return home.
She left the morning after staying at a nearby brothel, wanting to simply be held by someone who could only be there for her needs, even during a passionless tryst. Hopping onto an oncoming freight train, she left the land that had filled with her such adventure and discovery far behind, sure never to see it again, taking Theo only at his relentless insistence.
Her brother, Rupert Meadows, was two years her junior. Possessing an overpowering sense of purpose, he had left Hogwarts with flying grades to a career in the Magical Law Department. Following the footsteps of their father, and staying home in a country that Aurora normally found insufferable, he had embraced the tedium of wizard life in the late sixties. He had taken the sudden rise in disturbances and deaths of the seventies as a great evil to be overpowered.
Certainly he had made her estranged, rift-ridden family proud. What he had also done, though, was give certain people more reason to hate them.
As pure-bloods who had washed away their old prestige line, the Nelson name, only a few decades ago, she felt that he was playing a stupid risk. Firstly, marrying a muggle, and then fighting against thugs whom had the sympathies of people that despised them.
On her journey back, she had carried every letter she had received from home on her in person. All the messages came back with her: from her bitterly isolated mother, from her continuously upbeat brother, and from her flustered big-wig dad in the upper echelons of the ministry. His prose as lively as always.
It was all her correspondence from the last four years, having severed her other ties with her former life in the British wizarding world. It included the letters bemoaning the Christmases she missed, and the ones displaying beamingly positively feelings towards her minor fame from the reports of their discoveries in the Prophet (which seldom noted her directly). Also party to the pile were notes that expressed their confused attitude to her reckless decision to abandon them to be, in their minds, a make-believe swashbuckling pirate playing in caves.
Scanning each of their letters for more information, convinced they may have left some sort of code in the letters, a few tears ran down her cheek when she laughed at one of her brother's meta-jokes.
He didn't reveal much about his work, but only now, when fully paying attention did she realise that with each letter the development of his career got darker, his feelings towards it more confused. She had not paid attention properly before but now saw through his tone that things had been graver than she had realised for quite some time.
She was guilty: both of not protecting him and of belittling his choices. She had not normally subscribed to his moral assertions over good and bad.
She even paid little or no attention to that Muggle wife, whom passed away only a year before. Was her name Tracey? Or Stacey? She hadn't even gone to the funeral.
When he wrote in his letter of an accident, had she taken it at face value to soon? When she had queried it, he didn't properly respond.
For her, his work was a little too noble, catching criminals. He was in the position of a glorified official, whom enjoyed the office too much to be an Auror. Whenever he recalled memories of their childhood in his letters, however, such as when they fell into a pond after pushing too hard on a swing, none of their differences mattered. She always smiled with such childlike innocence. Knowing he would never recall their childhood to her again filled her with a consuming emptiness that was difficult to shake off. It was only combatted by her determination to make things right.
To her annoyance, Theo began to chunter away once again.
"The one thing I never missed about this place was the weather, you know…."
"Do you think I was wrong to return home?" She wanted to cut through the chaff of Theo's musings.
"No, I understand completely. I have a family too. I am just not sure it's all as suspicious as you think it is."
She remained unconvinced.
Their train, meanwhile, was one of the rickety, unimaginative variety.
It was stalely furnished in brutal upholstery, upholstery that contrasted pointedly with the rather arresting array of Muggle attire, their fashions and types. In Aurora's view, this was the real first instance of Muggle clothing being as bizarre as the robes and hats of the more conventional witch and wizard.
The locomotive was a stopping service, delayed, and operating graveyard slots on a soullessly cold night. It was heading from Dover to her home in the depths of the West Country.
Or indirectly at least, as Aurora had been commuting the last leg of her return from Asia as inconspicuously as she could, trying hard to blend into Muggle society. She had used the Muggle transport networks, and had become increasingly irritated that Theo's eccentric haircut and loud, carrying tones had really made it difficult for her to remain undetected in his company. She planned on heading off the train later that night as it sleepily pulled in to Bristol, hoping to call a cab (a vehicle she had travelled in far more regularly than others of her kind) to take her to the leafy, capricious village of Wavelock. From there, she would walk the last mile or so to the family manor concealed in the hills above.
Though her plans were still up in the air as the storm they were pushing through was abnormally turbulent. The rain was merciless, rattling off the walls of their cabin like stones off a tin roof, and the ghostly whistle of the wind indicated a tempest evening of severe thunder and lightning was on its way before their journey's end.
Bored of twiddling his thumbs as their conversation had faded into obscurity once again, Theo swept up an errant series of leaflets off the floor with a flick of his wand and took to reading them instead. He attempted to discern the meaning of the colourful array of Japanese letters.
"Careful with that magic!" Aurora hissed,
She had suddenly sat bolt upright, darting her eyes across the confined space, before turning towards the rattling door of their cabin. She furtively glanced at the corridor beyond, still smothered in the darkness of an unforgiving winter's night, their train carriage rocking ever so slightly in the arms of a virulent storm.
Satisfied that nothing had changed, she went back to her letters. Theo, meanwhile, continued his efforts at blending in with Muggle normalcy in vain. The cabin was empty apart from them, and he, portly in build and sitting unconvincingly in wide-fitting jeans and a zip-up fleece, remained very conspicuous. This was largely due to his penchant for fondling his moustache, which he twirled in elaborate hoops. Their presence remaining even after Aurora's initial insistence that he shave it off.
He hummed a tune as he read through the newly-found collection of junk flyers.
They were all that furnished the cabin. A pile of these flyers had been left on the floor, in a language she recognised, as if a cruel, taunting reminder of what she had left to reach her.
So far, only their cabin was occupied in the carriage, with most people sitting further up, closer to the driver, in the more comfortable seats near the front. Aurora had chosen these seats meanwhile, to ensure they could talk in confidence if Theo insisted on chatter. Which, he duly had.
Aurora dropped her shoulders and tried to relax once more - or at least tried to attempt to relax once more. She had been failing in her efforts to stay calm for the entire length of this sorry, delayed, three hour journey.
"There's no one out there, you know, to hear us," said Theo, grinning, "must be half-empty this train, and besides, we checked, this whole carriage is practically motionless, even the flies are dead."
He noted this whilst gesturing towards what looked like a mass grave of insects on the window sill, party amongst stubbed cigarettes and balls of used chewing gum. Smiling, he blackly pointed out the gormless selection of arthropods that had trapped themselves in the dim powered bulbs of their cabin - perhaps entranced by the seduction of its warmth and glow in the barrenness of a privately-financed cross-country train interior. His deep chuckle did nothing to break Aurora's frosty exterior, the lines of her face wrought with undue tension.
"Doesn't mean we should be complacent," Aurora replied, whom had pointedly ignored any moment of comic relief for the past few days of travelling, even the tasteless sort that she normally loved.
Standing up with a silent groan, and clutching the base of her back she said, "I hate these seats, they're so hard."
"This was all your idea, you even said no to cushioning charms," Theo pointed out.
"I know, I know," said Aurora, dismissively shaking off Theo's laid back smugness with a flick of her hand. "I just wish this door would properly shut."
She clasped her hands around the door handle.
"I just wish this train wasn't so bloody slow," Theo remarked.
"We already went through this," Aurora replied with a deep sigh, "I don't trust your Portkeys and this is not the weather for flying".
"Just because of that faulty one in Croatia?"
"We ended up in the sea!"
"It would beat this still, surely?"
"You didn't have to come."
"What's wrong with the Floo Network or Apparition?"
"Look, I just…just….something feels wrong okay? I don't know what it is, but I don't want to travel like a witch right now."
"Why not? I am sure that in the wizarding community, with the news you have had, the only reaction anyone will have is that of sympathy?"
"I just said. Something doesn't seem right."
"This isn't even the quickest Muggle way home, I hear they have some pretty smooth, and clean, may I add, trains apart from this one," he said, somewhat irritated, but largely still amused. His round belly shuddered a little as he let out a deep chuckle.
"I didn't want to draw attention to myself, going this way around makes it easier to get home unnoticed."
"Oh my," rasped Theo, "this is futile."
"You didn't have to come!"
Theo let out another sigh.
This only irritated Aurora further, as she fiddled with the door mechanism.
"What was it they announced? With the weather outside, they are operating on reduced power."
"I don't know, couldn't get past the Irish accent."
"He was East Anglian!"
"Well, didn't understand it."
"Okay then, let me repeat " that is what he said."
"So, the train is reduced to snail's speed, and we now also must wallow like Flobberworms in semi-darkness. At least they apologised for it, I suppose."
Theo was now reading a flyer about a canned Asian soda drink.
"Oh you don't know Muggles like I do," Aurora said, still wrenching at the unresponsive door, her teeth bared in a grimace of frustration. "One, they are always polite. Two, they never mean it. They are the masters of polite insincerity; they have a business apology manufactured down to a tee".
She wrenched at it again, almost pulling it from the pane of plastic glass it was attached to. The door then momentarily found the catch, and slid into the lock, enclosing the space and seamlessly bringing continuity to the composite décor of middle-fare travel, before the falling back against the frame. Once more, it proceeded to rattling open and shut in tandem with the turbulence ruminating from the tracks below. It opened and shut several more times before Aurora, checking the corridor for suspicious sounds, her wand concealed in her sleeve, turned to sit back down, flustered and despondent.
"I don't know, Aurora," said Theo, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a ballpoint pen, "I have never been ever more fascinated with your kind."
"They're not my kind; I have one aunt who is a Muggle and that's it. Besides, I don't love them, I mean what is it with these ridiculous doors?" asked Aurora.
"Beats me," shrugged Theo.
After that, Aurora went back to flicking through her pages, studying the patterns in the calligraphy, just trying to see if the penmanship was forced. It was definitely their writing, but that was all she could tell.
"I believe a lot of it, you know," said Theo, matter-of-factly. "When I came from India to meet you, my contacts all talked of the disturbances. Of Muggle killings, of reports of discrimination against Muggle-borns, and I even heard rumblings that people wanted to break the Statute of Secrecy. But this wizard, the one they are rallying behind, he must have an angle. A bad angle, but surely he can be dealt with, bargained off at the worst."
"I don't know," she said, surprised to find this conversation had the effect of rousing her more than his more recent anodyne fare. "Whenever I think….you know, of the one they call You-Know-Who...whenever I think of what the few papers have implied beneath their panicked hysteria…..I go numb. He has an army under his employ. Talk of Inferi, giants, Dementors gone rogue, werewolves even…."
"Nonsense. No chance they can all band together. I reckon a lot of this has been over-egged. These fellows they call Death Eaters sound a nasty piece of work, though."
"I don't think they can be reasoned with."
"So that's why you've return home?"
"My brother is dead. That is why I returned home."
"I am sorry, I didn't mean it like that. Just saying, you back to fight the one they call You-Know-Who at the centre of it all. You think it will end in all "out-war. Everyone is after something, aren't they?"
"Look at what they want, though? Last week they apparently flayed a family of Muggles. Six of them! Something the Prophet kept damn quiet. I had to hear it off Ern!"
"I think he was more shocked at you rejecting his services for a Muggle bus."
"I didn't tell him what I was doing. Besides, that's not the point. Through omission, they have built a fear around this You-Know-Who. Even if none of what they say is true, the fact that people are saying it, is enough of a statement in itself."
"You're thinking very forensically."
"I have learnt to."
"Still, I think you are looking too far into it. What happened to your brother is a tragedy, but I am sure that this grim news aside, your family are fine."
"You don't think there is a chance he has infiltrated the Ministry?"
"No, but the Ministry may be playing hush-hush with the Prophet, like I said before. Good news only, etc., etc."
"When I left straight from Hogwarts, I remember reading of an escaped werewolf and a few funny deaths. I didn't expect it to turn how it has, though. I have read all I can on the way here, spoken to wizards too petrified to go into full details, even hundreds of miles off the British Isles, and yet only when coming here do I sense the real fear. It has leaked into the Muggle world, Theo. Unheard of mists, those deaths I mentioned, mad ministers in the cabinet office. I mean I am even pretty suspicious of this ridiculous storm."
"Don't be like that, it is approaching winter here after all," he replied, in a fashion meant to be reassuring.
There was another break in the conversation before the train pulled into what was supposed to be the final stop before Bristol. Here, there was a larger crowd of Muggles. Some were dressed in rather unusual depictions of monsters and ghouls, heading off to a premature Halloween party in Bristol, no doubt. They waddled on, boozy and conversational, and thankfully in Aurora's mind, made their way to the front of the train, and away from her, sitting right at the back in Carriage F. Others getting on board seemed of a more eclectic variety, their fashion choices as bizarre in her view as the costume revellers whom were frolicking in the odd Muggle depictions of the magical, supernatural world. Some had flared trousers, big circular belts, and all of the men under thirty had hair almost as long as hers, as bushy as the ears of a poodle.
The train's attendance doubled with their arrival.
Though most stayed away, two arrived in her carriage and, bizarrely, sat either side of her. Flummoxed, but not wanting to be rude, she quickly hid her letters and stayed between them like the filling in a sandwich. Theo sniggered at her look of baffled bemusement. They didn't belong to the broad groups of revellers and oddly dressed wayfarers, and instead were both of a pensioner age, with similar perms and wide girths. After a moment she realised they must have fallen out, and rather than sit separately, they had sat either side of a stranger to somehow emphasise the rift.
Muggle behaviour was very strange sometimes, thought Aurora.
Then a man, carrying a frightened girl whom was scared of the thunder, came in.
He explained she didn't like being alone with weather like that, and that they were only on this train because his divorced wife insisted on having her back for the weekend. The rumbles of thunder made the little girl, blonde haired, and wearing a drenched yellow mac, tremble. Though she clearly took a shine to Aurora. As she sat opposite her, she would open her mouth into a smile as curved as a banana every time their eyes met.
As the train chugged on, Aurora headed off to the bathroom. Located near the front of the train, she walked through the corridors, hearing only murmurings from most cabins of the half-empty vehicle. She then, however, reached the Carriage B, which was largely occupied by the drunken revellers.
Ignoring their leery catcalls and boozed propositions, she marched briskly to the entrance of Carriage A. It was blocked by a guard, wearing a rail uniform a badge that said "Driver".
Carrying an odd-vacant expression, he said, "Sorry ma'am, the bar is closed and first class is off limits".
"Looking for the toilet," she replied.
"Oh, through there," he said, drooling somewhat, pointing at a small door to his right.
The toilet was solitary, the size of a broom cupboard with a small washbasin and mirror. As she closed the door behind her, she paused for a moment. Something was off. Why was a driver guarding a door, and why was the door closed in the first place? The fact they were carrying on through the storm had tickled her suspicions, and his behaviour, alongside the confused look on his face, unsettled her.
Trying to bat these feelings away, she turned her gaze to the mirror, wanting to wipe the sweat and fluster from her face. To most people's minds, she possessed a sort of unusual elfin beauty.
This came through even though her features had become increasingly travel-worn. Bags had formed under her eyes and her skin was warm and puffed from the commute.
Her looks otherwise remained unblemished. People in particular, were drawn to her eyes which, almost opaque in colouring, were of a very deep brown. They gave her a sobriety; an intense seriousness that betrayed her otherwise waifish looks. Her cheek bones were angular and almost delicate in their composition, whilst those serious eyes rested on skin only blemished by the cuts and bruises of her lifestyle. The muddy, inconsistent colour of her tan only managed to partially obscure the natural paleness of her complexion. Her hair, of an autumnal hue was wavy, straggly even towards the tips, in a way normally that was more natural on young children. Aurora's appearance, in her view, gave away her own very prominent insecurities. A rugged career path hiding a delicate being
She was worried that it was all this was to do with fate. This could all be proof that as much as she tried to conceal it, she was naturally weak, a delicate person trying to live a lie.
Returning to a cabin with a face clear from the fatigue of the past few weeks would probably confuse people to the point of suspicion. She also didn't want to risk magic, of any kind, unless she really had to, in such a confined Muggle space. So she stuck to just washing her face in the bowl. Futilely, she tried instead to wipe away those reoccurring insecurities that had troubled her the past few days with the tepid sink water.
As she left, she took another pause in the corridor and studied the driver again.
Deeply troubled to find him still drooling, she went back to her cabin very much on guard, with a hand permanently tucked in her chest pocket, grasping her wand.
Meanwhile, she listened out for the sounds of thunder. Sure enough, even over the sounds of their chatter emanating into the corridor, she could hear it corresponded too soon with the usual flashes of the people around her so oblivious? To her, it seemed unusual for the train to plough in with an obvious threat from the storm.
She tried to convince herself that it must have sounded worse in the carriages than it was. After all, she was still unable to see out the windows without using magic and drawing attention. So Aurora dutifully squeezed herself back between the two wobbly octogenarians and nestled into her seat. Resilient in her efforts not to get out the letters, she chose to wait it out. After all, they would be arriving in Bristol within an hour. Thankfully, her willpower was in no need of testing, as it would have been awkward to take out all the letters they remained stowed away above her head. Theo, next to the father whom was now listening to an audio cassette, had actually drifted off to sleep.
To her surprise, a trolley even went past but when she discovered they were out of tea of all things, she calmly let it walk on by. She sat there in painful silence.
After a while however, it came impossible not to think about her brother again.
She had let him down, she had failed him.
She hadn't been there for him like she needed to have been. Not that he was plagued by problems, but she had let the familial bond slip away. Now though, as he wasn't there to see it, she had a determination to do him justice, if justice needed to be done. It was a hunch, an emotive pull that she hadn't felt bother her for a long time. Everything she had read in the letters, however slight, confirmed those feelings.
Aurora was awoken from her pitiful intelelctual stupor by murmurs of dissent had begun to echo around the carriage. Complaints, she imagined, that were mirrored further along the train. The storm was getting worse and worse, and after an hour, the train showed no sign of stopping, even when the announcer called that they pulling into Bristol.
Unable to make sense of this, this state of uncertainty was interrupted by the arrival of a man at their cabin door.
Dark clothed and sunken eyed, he pressed his face against their cabin, gaunt-cheeked with greasy golden locks, Aurora assumed he may have been a homeless man, searching the train for spare change.
"What's he up to?" murmured the flabby woman to her right.
Then, before they had reached a decision on what to do next, he slid open the door himself, momentarily moving it from its rattling indent. As it swung back into its knocking rut, he took another step into the carriage and bent down. His face loomed feet away from the young girl in a now-dried yellow mac, sucking on a lollipop.
"Hello," he said in a cheery whisper to her, "whom might you be?"
The father had taken off his headphones and looked thoroughly appalled.
Eyes narrowing; he took his daughter under one arm and said, "I don't believe that's any concern of yours."
"Oh but I so wish it to be," he smiled, licking his lips, exposing unusually pronounced canines.
Set on edge, Aurora clutched the wand in her chest pocket, ready to strike out if he moved another inch towards the little girl. The child was still gazing at him with a look of oblivious curiosity.
The women either side of her were shuffling very uncomfortably. Theo meanwhile, she saw, had just woken up, and looked at the scene with a face of bereft understanding and confusion.
"Get out of here!" shouted the man.
Ignoring the father's protestations, he pulled the head of a rose from his pocket. He twirled it in his fingers like a country showman, before dropping it on the girl's lap.
"It's for you," he said, "something to remember me by once the show is over."
Then he stood up, arching his back, as his sharp, undercut nails flashed in a bout of ill-timed lightning.
He threw himself at the little girl, whom leapt away from him with a cry of terror. Pulling out her wand, Aurora was fractions of seconds from aiming a spell.
Theo however, was quicker to the draw, and shouted "Stupefy!"
The spell missed, but the blast of red air was enough to put the man off his stride.
At the arrival of incomprehensible words and flashes of light, she heard doors crash open from doors nearby.
The women either side of Aurora, meanwhile, made a whinnying sound, like a spooked horse, traumatised by the power coming from what looked to them like a drumstick.
Growling in frustration, the man then rummaged through his dank, grey cardigan and pulled out his own wand.
As if more frightened by the emergence of another stick of wood, rather than his grisly advances, the women shrank back into their seats. The father and daughter, meanwhile, embraced in a tight ball on the floor.
"Expelliarmus!" Aurora bellowed, as he began to open his mouth for a spell.
She shot the charm with such venom that it split his wand in two, snapping from the force of her incantation.
Yelling in rage, he then turned to Theo and took a swipe at him.
Theo, with surprising strength, caught his wrist and tried to wrestle him to the floor.
Aurora attempted to help in some tangible way with her wand, but was unable to aim at the brute. His body was hard to decipher, stuck under Theo's great stomach, as their tangle of limbs wrestled for supremacy.
Perhaps hoping to be a saviour out the blue, the father regained some composure and said, "Never my daughter, you foul monster!"
He jumped into the furore, grappling with Theo and the attacker.
Then a second later, she saw Theo tumble out of the fray, wounded by a kick.
His wand fell to the ground. Laughing comically, the sharp-toothed man struck the father across the face, knocking him out in a single punch.
"Daddy," shouted the girl, in the raw throated yell of a child.
Through the commotion, a crowd of people had begun to congregate in in the corridor outside. Nearly all of them stayed back, mouths open in shock at the scenes. Only one, of a burlier formation, attempted to wade into the chaos.
Seeing what happened to the most recent non-magic intervener, she turned with her wand and said, "No!"
She had been a little too strong in her reactions however. Rather than knocking him back a few feet, her spell stunned him.
Catching his fallen body, a friend of his from the crowd screamed, "You bitch!" before dragging him away.
The other bystanders fled back across the corridor. They ran, hands over their heads in some cases, looking for somewhere to hide, perhaps fearing it was a gunman or an attempted robbery.
Aurora then turned to the man with her wand, incandescent with rage. Though taking the time to stop other Muggles entering the chaos, she had given him a split-second advantage.
As she pointed her wand, he shoved Aurora to the ground and then took another swipe at Theo. All the while, the two elderly women stayed where they were, paralysed by fear.
His nails cut Theo across the chin, who grunted in pain. He then aimed a second blow at him as blood dribbled down Theo's jaw. He missed by a few inches.
Not enjoying much luck, the hollow sound of metal reverberated around the cabin like an out of tune xylophone.
Theo, as he had dodged the man, had leapt backwards and collided head first with the steel bar of the overhead storage locker. He crumpled, and lay on the ground in an identical pose to the father, completely motionless.
As the man went once more for the girl, Aurora jumped in between them, pushing the man back. He stumbled backwards, giving her enough room to put her wand to chest height and shout, "Depulso!"
As if a ball of air had emerged between the two of them, he flew out the cabin door and knocked against the corridor wall.
Stopping for breath, Aurora turned to petrified girl. Attempting to reassure the girl by gently squeezing her wrist she gave her a warm smile. After a moment, in a stuttered tone, she murmured, "Thank you," and gave Aurora the rose that the man had given her earlier in an attempted sick joke.
Tucking it away in her pocket, she went out into the corridor and inspected his startled body. The blow should have thrown him through the cabin opposite and out of the train itself, though to her surprise, it had stopped at the flimsy structure of the cabin wall.
She turned over the man's body, and noticed the dark hairs running down his spine. His eyes were of a milky hue, similar to those a creature she had studied at Hogwarts years before.
"Werewolves," she muttered, astonished, under her breath. Semi-formed and attacking a muggle train two weeks before full moon.
Shocked by the revelation, she didn't notice that the other passengers on her carriage had emerged from their cabins, hearing the commotion.
I suspect the Ministry will be here soon, she thought, reassuringly. They will sort out this mess.
Ignoring a couple of gobsmacked Muggles whom had once more gathered again in the corridor, she went back into her cabin and checked Theo's pulse, then the father's. They were both going to be okay.