1982
"Aunt Emmeline!"
Regardless of trolley and luggage and all other passengers, Adelaide Fenwick dived through the crowd at the head of platforms nine and ten, Kings Cross station, to hug a tall, grey-haired woman in a frumpy skirt and mac. "Hello! Hello! Hello!" She executed a caper of mad delight, that drew smiles from one or two of the nearby muggles. Surely nothing could be more exciting than this very first time for Going To Hogwarts...
Aunt Emmeline put out a firm hand to brush Adelaide's flying brown locks into order again. "Hello, Adelaide – hush, dear! What have you done with your mother?"
"She's coming, she's coming!" Adelaide ground to a halt with a final skip, and hastily felt the reassuring weight in her pocket. "She said we weren't going on the platform without company," she added, remembering that – as Mother had said several times this morning – old enough to go to Hogwarts was old enough to behave sensibly. Adelaide looked up and smiled. "I'm glad you've come. Now Mother won't have to go home by herself." Aunt Emmeline was one of the nicest aunts and uncles from the Order – the surviving ones – but why did she look so sad sometimes – at one's simplest comments? It didn't matter, for there was a trolley coming through the crowd, with a basket with somebody Aunt Emmiline just had to meet... Adelaide seized her hand: "Here's Mother! Look, Mother – the Order's sent Aunt Emmeline to help us!"
Mother made an attempt on her hair, too. "If you could show us the way, Mrs Vance, before Adelaide explodes..."
She wasn't that bad... Adelaide clasped her hands behind her back, and stood as still as she could. She was eleven. And she was going to Hogwarts so she could learn to do magic for Mother like Daddy had used to, instead of Mother always having to do things the muggle way. And that was pretty grown up. You had to be entitled to be a little excited. She took hold of the trolley handle to show she could steer her own luggage onto the platform.
Nothing ever excited Aunt Emmeline. A barrier that turned into a gateway, a scarlet steam engine, a train full of hundreds of other boys and girls going to Hogwarts, owls and cats and the positive crackle of magic in the air – Mother at least looked a little startled, but Aunt Emmeline just calmly carried on. She found a compartment, she put a braking charm on the trolley, and she even levitated Adelaide's shiny new trunk on board before she would be introduced to the occupant of the wicker cat basket. "Look, Aunt Emmeline! I'm taking Agamemnon with me!" The large tabby cat hadn't shrunk in six years, but he didn't trail to the floor any more as Adelaide hauled him out. In fact, Platform Nine and three quarters seemed to please him enough to purr.
Aunt Emmeline gave one of her dry chuckles. "I expect he will be glad to see Hogwarts again. He spent most of Benjy's time there on the Gryffindor hearth rug. The flat patch is probably still there."
And Benjy was Daddy, and that was the best thing today of all...
"Look – Mother gave me Daddy's picture!" Adelaide tugged hastily at her blazer pocket to withdraw a much too large book, that she flipped open. Benjy Fenwick's photograph waved up at his smiling daughter.
"It was all she wanted," Mother murmured, as if Adelaide was deaf.
"Mother thinks it's not sensible," said Adelaide, looking up quickly. Really – grown ups. It was perfectly sensible – and simple. "Other people have their Daddies to see them off, and they can write home to them. I'm just taking mine with me." How did that differ from having Daddy's cat? Why did one make Aunt Emmeline chuckle, and the other strike her silent? "It is sensible, isn't it, Aunt Emmeline?"
Of course, grown ups never answer simple, sensible questions. They pause for a minute, then swallow hard, and ask: "Have you got it in a safe place?"
Wasn't that obvious too? Adelaide clapped the book shut. "Transfiguration. It's my favourite – it sounds wonderful – and it does..." she tucked one corner of the book into the impossibly small pocket "fit- if- I- push- it..."
"If you're going to like Transfiguration, remember what you have to call Minerva."
"Professor McGonagall." Adelaide repeated automatically. Mother had gone on a lot about it in the past few days... "I hope I'm in her House," she added. "Daddy and Uncle Frank were Gryffindors, weren't they?" Adelaide patted the book in her pocket yet again, but the other Gryffindor was the one thing that was- wrong - in this exciting day. She looked up with a slight frown. "Uncle Frank said they'd come and see me off – after Daddy died. D'you think they'll be better enough to come next year?"
Another of Aunt Emmeline's silences. And then slightly shaky hand that made a final attempt on Adelaide's hair. "Let's hope so, dear..."
The train whistle blew. One hug for Aunt Emmeline – one hug for Mother - "I'll be home soon to do magic for both of us" - and Adelaide remembered to go very uprightly up the train steps in that dignified way Aunt Emmeline did. Eleven was nearly grown up...
Another first year boy scrambled on after her. He had a mother and a daddy, and a bigger sister in a Hufflepuff scarf and a little sister - that seemed a lot for one person... Adelaide stared round the rest of the platform with a slight frown – but there were a reassuring number of other children being seen off by only one parent, or by grey-haired grandparents, or aunts or uncles. Adelaide patted her pocket happily again. She wasn't so badly off, even without Uncle Frank this year – Mother, and Daddy to go with her, and Aunt Emmeline to see her off, and Aunt Minerva at the other end – all much more fun than a big sister called Janet who was busy telling Liam he couldn't lean out of the window.
Adelaide pulled the window strap up and leaned recklessly out to wave until the train rounded the bend.
"Fenwick, Adelaide!"
The owner of the name stepped out of the line towards the Sorting Hat. Fenwick. That was the nicest thing about the Boy Who Lived. Quite apart from no more You-Know-Who, as all the aunts and uncles from the Order had called him, and people not being afraid, the very nicest thing was being Fenwick again. Because, for two awful years, from when Daddy had died to when Uncle Frank had come to tell them about James and Lily and Harry Potter after last Halloween, Mother had taken Adelaide back to live in her muggle world. And given their name as Chester. Elizabeth and Adelaide Chester. Adelaide had hated it. All the teachers at that primary school had seemed to have a particular obsession with calling her Miss Chester when asking her why another funny accident had occurred, when she couldn't explain it was just because she was Benjy Fenwick's daughter and thus magic and a witch. Like the time she'd accidentally banished the playground bully over the school fence. Right into somebody's back garden. They'd had to walk round to the next road and ring the doorbell to get him back. He'd said Adelaide Chester had pushed him – which wasn't true on several points...
"Well, thank you for telling me that."
Adelaide jumped. She hadn't registered that she had reached the stool and sat down and Aunt Minerva, looking terribly stern and solemn and Professor McGonagall-ish, had clapped the Sorting Hat on her head. "I'm sorry," she whispered hastily. How did you address a Hat that spoke to you? "Er- O Hat," because that was almost like 'O Cat', and that was what Daddy had used to call Agamemnon, and you had to be polite to cats.
"I haven't," the Hat continued as if she hadn't spoken, "seen such a clear fit for your House for years...What you want-"
"Is to do magic for Mother," Adelaide put in hastily. "'Cause she's a muggle and can't. Please?"
"Exactly..."
Perhaps 'O Hat' hadn't been such a bad address – its tone sounded just like Agamemnon when he used to purr with pleasure lying on Daddy's shoulder-
"I can see your mind wandering again, you know..."
Adelaide flushed – she didn't mean to keep forgetting Mother's instructions to mind her manners but-
"Well, you'll never be perfect, but you'll be perfectly happy in: GRYFFINDOR!"
Gryffindor? Gryffindor? Like Uncle Frank and Aunt Alice and Aunt Emmeline and Uncles-Fabian-and-Gideon-now-dead and James and Lily and Remus and Peter-though-she'd-never-liked-him? And-
She must have stood up. She must have taken off the Hat, and walked across the Hall. To what was – really was- now-
Adelaide sank contentedly down onto the nearest Gryffindor bench. Aun- Professor McGonagall was still too busy reading out names to answer her smile. But- it didn't matter. Adelaide patted her pocket happily.
"Our House now, Daddy, Our House..."
A/N: Thanks to: JKR for inventing this world and letting us play in it; and to Elsha-of-The-Sugar-Quill for inventing Janet and Liam O'Neill, and unknowingly letting me play with them. If anyone reading this knows her, please thank her.
