Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter and its characters are not mine.

A/N: This is written for the newyearcntdown challenge on LJ. The prompts used in this part are winter's chill and mittens. This piece is a bit rough around the edges.

The Station Master of Winter's Court

Part I: 1990

On the empty platform of a railway station located somewhere in the countryside, Harry shivered in his well-worn jacket and faded jeans. The station in question was little more than a roofless platform that just so happened to be built beside a railway track. Two old-fashioned lampposts stood at either end of the platform, and a wooden bench crouched at the centre of the station like a centre-piece on a dining table for giants. Beyond the station was an uninhabited field stretching on towards the horizon. Beneath the leaden sky, everything was covered in a blanket of snow.

There was no shelter for Harry to get away from the cold. There was no telephone for him to get in touch with his godfather and tell him that he was stranded in the middle of nowhere. There was no one else in this forsaken corner of the world: he was alone. Sitting on the bench with his battered trunk by his side, he heaved a sigh. He should have accepted Sirius' offer of picking him up at the Dursleys, an offer he had declined out of some stupid notion of asserting his self-sufficiency.

In his ten years of life, luck had never been on his side: the passing of his parents, the household where he was an unwanted burden, the feud between Sirius and the Dursleys over custody of him, his bully of a cousin who used to use him as a punching bag. It seemed his bad luck had followed him to this empty husk of a railway station.

He breathed on his chilled, numb fingers. The threadbare woollen gloves—hand-me-downs from his cousin—were not thick enough to keep the cold away. After stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jacket, he got up and paced about on the platform, restless and a little afraid.

Surely a train would arrive at some point, he reasoned as he retraced the tracks he had made in the snow over and over again. Neither the pacing nor his attempt at optimism could ease the knot in his stomach. As a feeling of helplessness washed over him, he bit his lip and kept his mind occupied by counting the steps. One, two, three, four...

Fifty-eight steps took him from one end of the platform to the other. Another fifty-eight steps took him back to the starting point. Not a sound could be heard but that of his trainers crunching the snow. Any sound would be better than the silence enveloping this winter wasteland.

A gust of wind assailed him head-on and blew back his hood. Keeping his head down, he turned around and pulled the hood back into place. When he looked up, a blot of black entered his line of sight. Taken aback, he stopped dead in his tracks and blinked.

The black blot in question was a man dressed in a long black coat, black trousers and black boots. In contrast to his attire, his skin was unusually pale, as though he were made of snow. He had silvery blond hair and a chiselled profile. Hands in his pockets and head tilted ever so slightly upwards, he was gazing at the clouds in their many shades of grey.

Was he waiting for a train as well, Harry wondered. He had not seen the man walk towards the station, let alone hear the man approach. Then again, perhaps he was too busy panicking over his predicament that he failed to take notice of his surroundings. On the one hand, it was a relief to encounter another human being; on the other hand, the man could very well be a serial killer.

Harry walked over to where he had left his trunk, putting just enough distance between him and the man. One could never be too careful around strangers. "Excuse me," he called out, and the man looked at him, slate grey eyes reflecting a cold, dead sky. "Hello. Could you tell me which station this is? I think I've lost my way."

"Where do you think this is?" The man had a low, pleasant baritone voice, but he looked bored, as if he had been asked the same question one too many times.

"In the middle of nowhere?" Harry hazarded a guess.

"Well, there you go," the man replied with a note of finality before returning to his sky gazing.

Awkward silence lengthened in the space between Harry and the man, but Harry was not deterred, not when desperation urged him on. Tightening the scarf around his neck, he spoke up once more. "Are you waiting for a train?"

The man's lips curved into a wry smile, and the frost in his gaze seemed to have thawed. For one precious moment, he did not seem so aloof anymore. "You could say that," he whispered, speaking more to himself than to Harry.

"When will your train arrive?" Harry asked in as casual a tone as he could manage, all the while trying not to look too eager or desperate for an answer.

"A train will arrive when it is time to arrive. There is no need to be impatient about it. Whether you like it or not, it will be here sooner or later. Any more question?"

You like messing with people, don't you? Harry grumbled in his mind.

"It helps pass the time," the man drawled. The sardonic curve upon his lips transformed into a wicked grin. His cheeks burning in embarrassment, Harry realised to his dismay that he must have spoken his thought aloud. "As you can see," the man continued, "this is no King's Cross. We have to amuse ourselves in whatever way we can."

Biting back the retort that was on the verge of slipping out, Harry mumbled an apology and fell silent. The man reminded him of the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland: cryptic and infuriating and unhelpful. As the cold air made him sneeze, he could at least be certain that he had not fallen asleep beside a rabbit hole somewhere—and he was no Alice in mad wonderland.

"Are you cold?"

The man's voice jolted Harry out of his musing. When he turned to the man, he found the man scrutinising him with narrowed eyes. Unable to hide his discomfort or his sniffling, Harry shuffled his feet; he could barely feel his toes. "A little." He did not sound convincing to his own ears.

Letting out a white breath, the man flicked his wrist as though counting the beat. Three beats later, a flash of crimson exploded out of the man's gloved hand and cascaded into a train of deep red velvet. When the man held up the train of velvet for inspection, Harry realised it was in fact a cloak with wine red fur trimming—the kind of cloak that would look right at home in period drama, at costume parties and on little children being dressed up by their parents.

"How did you do that?" Harry wondered aloud, not quite certain of what had just happened. The man seemed to be carrying no luggage with him, and he could not have hidden the cloak inside that slim black coat of his either.

"Magic." After placing the cloak on the bench, the man reached for the empty space above him, as though wanting to grab a cloud or two. By the time he lowered his arm, he was clutching a pair of fluffy white mittens. Without ceremony he dropped the mittens on top of the cloak. "You can have these."

His initial amazement dampened by wariness, Harry did not immediately reach for the mittens or the cloak. However well-meaning the man might appear to be, there were times when kindness came with a price tag, a price he might not be able to afford. "Thank you, but I'm fine."

The man must have sensed the edge behind Harry's words and the tension in Harry's bearing, for he heaved a misty sigh in exasperation. "In case you are wondering, no, I don't have any unsavoury designs on you."

"What about not-unsavoury designs?"

There was a hint of a smirk upon the man's lips, though Harry had no idea why the man found his question amusing. "You are too young for that," the man remarked in perfect nonchalance before pulling a cigarette from behind his ear. "I don't care if you take them or leave them be. I don't have any use for them anyway. They aren't my colour or my size."

The rebel in Harry wanted to decline the offer out of sheer stubbornness, but the cold wind blew past him and scattered what remained of his reluctance. Gingerly he picked up the cloak and threw it on. Reaching to his ankles, the cloak fit him well. Bemused, he took off his gloves and pulled on the mittens; they too were a good fit. After drawing the hood over his head, he stole a glance at the man, who was watching a wisp of smoke rising from the tip of the cigarette.

While the man was not looking, Harry buried his nose in the deep red velvet. The cloak smelled faintly of burnt wood, and a touch of warmth lingered as though someone else had just been wearing the cloak a moment ago. The scent stirred in him visions of a fireplace—not an electric imitation, but an actual wood-burning fireplace with a wooden mantelpiece (like the one at Sirius' house).

Whenever Harry stayed at Sirius' house for the winter holidays, he would sit in front of the crackling fire with a cup of hot chocolate that Remus had made for him. Sometimes, the three of them would play board-games, while other times Sirius and Remus would tell him funny anecdotes about his parents and their circle of friends—

Shaking himself out of his reverie of warm fire and hot chocolate, Harry sat down on the bench and pulled the cloak close around him. "So... are you a magician?"

"Something like that." The man sat down as well and crossed those long legs of his; he kept to his end of the bench while Harry kept to the other end. "Do you believe in magic?"

Staring at the burning cigarette between the man's fingers, Harry thought about how the cloak and the mittens had materialised out of thin air, and he thought about how the man had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. "Er, maybe?"

"I suppose you don't care for magic tricks then. Well, to each his own." With that the man took a drag of his cigarette and breathed out white smoke into the air. "Do you remember how you got here?"

Taken aback, Harry nonetheless cast his mind back to the trip itself: being dropped off at the station by a grumpy Uncle Vernon, boarding the train that Remus had sent him a ticket for, finding a seat in one of the empty compartments, dozing off to the rattling of the train, and—

Harry's mind drew a blank, and no matter how deep he dug into the well of his memory, he found only swirling darkness. Confusion ate away at his consciousness, and a lingering doubt began to form. A vague sense of panic ever so slowly constricted his throat: he could not remember ever getting off the train.

"Sorry, but I don't really remember," Harry replied, and he winced at the rasp in his voice. "I fell asleep on the train, and..." At a loss for words, he fell silent and stared at the hem of the cloak. Against the backdrop of the unsoiled snow, the velvet resembled a river of blood.

"Which station are you supposed to be heading to?"

"I have the directions here." After removing his mitten, Harry fumbled in his pocket and took out the slightly crumpled note that Remus had sent him with the ticket. He handed the note to the man, who took it without touching his hand.

Unfolding the note, the man scanned through Remus' neat handwriting and made a murmuring sound. "Shouldn't you be travelling with an adult?"

"They have work, and I don't want to bother them. I'm fine on my own." As soon as those words left Harry's mouth, he realised his mistake and felt a little foolish for spouting out such a pompous declaration considering his current predicament. "Or rather, I thought I would be fine travelling alone."

For once the man did not laugh at him; instead, he folded the note and gave it back to Harry. "It's all right to be lost once in a while. Being an adult isn't much of an accomplishment." With that he turned to his left and gazed at something in the distance. "The train is here."

"Huh?"

Stuffing the note in his pocket, Harry leant forward and looked to the left end of the platform. In a cloud of white smoke, a steam train was sailing ever closer towards the station without a sound. If Harry did not know any better, he would be inclined to think the train was gliding several inches above the snow-shrouded railway tracks. Then again, it had been a strange day, and he was sitting beside a man who seemed to defy the very rules of reality.

Before long, the train pulled into the station and came to a stop. A tall black man in a pitch black uniform stepped off the train, his cool dark eyes looking from Harry to Harry's trunk, and from Harry's trunk to the blond man, who gave him a casual salute in greeting. The conductor—or so Harry assumed—held the blond man in his gaze for several heartbeats, and without a word he strode forward and halted in front of Harry. Getting to his feet, Harry looked up out of reflex and met the conductor's gaze.

"I'll carry your trunk to an empty compartment," the conductor said in a dispassionate voice, his visage stoic as a monk of old. "The train will depart in two minutes." With one hand the conductor lifted Harry's trunk as though it weighed nothing, and after tipping his hat at the man, he returned to the train with Harry's trunk.

"There you are." The man uncrossed his legs and stood up in one smooth motion. "Have a safe trip."

The man's words sent a sharp pang to Harry's chest, though he was not sure why. Lifting his head, he tried to read the man's expression. Calm as a frozen lake, this riddle of a man could not be so easily deciphered—certainly not by a gullible ten-year-old boy. "Aren't you coming along?"

A wry smile appeared for a moment upon the man's lips. "This is not my train," he said, and his expression softened ever so slightly. "It will take you to your destination. And you can keep those." The man tilted his chin at the cloak enveloping Harry's body like a cocoon. "You'd better run along now, or the train will leave without you."

Flustered, Harry hurried towards the train and hopped aboard. Turning to the lone figure standing on the platform, he called out, "Thanks for the cloak and the mittens. I hope your train will arrive soon."

And there was that wry smile again, the meaning of which eluded Harry. In three strides the man came up to Harry, and with eyes as old as the world itself he contemplated Harry's face. "You'll be all right," the man whispered.

Transfixed by those eyes that seemed capable of glimpsing into his past, present and future, Harry heard himself say, "How do you know?"

"You are still alive."

Before Harry could reply, the man closed the train door and stepped back. As if heeding to the man's signal, the train began to move forward. His heart pounding in his chest, Harry rushed into the nearest compartment and looked out the window. On the lonely platform, the man—a black blot in a pure white world—waved his hand. Feeling a lump in his throat, Harry waved back with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, hoping the man would be able to see him.

All too soon the station fell away and vanished out of sight; even the speck of black that was the man's coat could not be seen anymore. Harry sat down by the window and looked around him; his trunk was tucked away in the corner of the compartment. Letting out a shaky breath, he settled down in the seat and stared at the mittens in his lap, white on red.

A wave of weariness washed unbidden over him. The inside of the compartment was warm, and the upholstered seat was strangely comfortable to sit in. His eyelids grew heavy, and his head began to droop. Yielding to the lure of sleep, he closed his eyes, sank further into the fold of the cloak, and fell into a dreamless slumber. As warm darkness enveloped him in a gentle embrace, he thought he could hear the man whispering to him, "Until next time."

To be continued...