Searching for Desire
By Verically Challenged Poncho
Chapter V: Platform 9 and ¾
DISCLAIMER: I do not own J.K. Rowling, she belongs to Harry Potter...strike that, reverse it.
Author's Notes: Thank you to all who have reviewed. Although the computer says I have new reviews, it's malfunctioning and not letting me view them. But I'm sure I'll be able to read them soon. I am still looking for a beta. Thank you.
Ella awoke at dawn on the first of September. She was too excited to fall back to sleep. Sister Kathy would be driving her to King's Cross Station that day. Ella didn't know which was funnier: the fact that the train ticket she had been given said to meet the train at Platform 9 and ¾ or getting to see a nun drive a car. Nuns weren't supposed to drive strictly speaking, but there was no other way for Ella to get there so Sister Kathy was driving her in a used car she had bought in secret many years ago.
Breakfast wasn't served at the orphanage until seven o'clock, after prayer time. So, Ella decided to open her schoolbooks she had bought at a strange place called Diagon Alley. A giant of a man named Hagrid had arrived at the orphanage a few weeks ago to take Ella shopping for her school things and fill her in about the wizarding world. It had been he too who had given her the ticket. She thought there was a mistake in the printing when she first saw it, but Hagrid –who quickly snatched the ticket back and searched it for a typo and then realized what Ella meant- told her it was a hidden platform so that the muggles wouldn't find out about them. The only trouble was, he had disappeared from sight before Ella could ask him how to get on to the platform.
It shouldn't be too difficult to find, Ella thought. After all there are supposed to be hundreds of students at Hogwarts, and if the witches and wizards at Diagon Alley were any indication, those meeting the train would stick out like a sore thumb.
Leaning back onto the small pillow of her stiff bed, Ella flipped to the back of The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble. She had found her textbooks to be positively fascinating and she had wanted to read them all before she began at Hogwarts so that she wouldn't be behind all of the other kids who had grown up in the wizarding world. She had finished all of the other books and was almost done with her Defense Against the Dark Arts one.
The only curses that cannot be fought of are called the Unforgivable Curses. There are three of them and the use of any three on another human being is punishable by law. The first is the Imperius Curse, which enables the one performing the curse to control the subject. The Cruciatus Curse inflicts agonizing pain upon the subject. A Mr. And Mrs. Longbottom were tortured for an extended amount of time with the Cruciatus Curse and have now permanently lost their minds. The last and the worst is The Killing Curse, in which the subject is killed instantly. Only one known person has ever survived it and the wizard was only one year old at the time. Harry Potter (born in 1980) was attacked by the most feared wizard of our time, You-Know-Who. Apart from surviving the Killing Curse cast upon him, Harry Potter managed to destroy You-Know-Who in an unexplainable phenomenon. Young Harry Potter resides in the old house of Godric Gryffindor with his parents, Lily and James Potter. He is set to go to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and is expected to be the greatest wizard of our time. Harry Potter is recognizable to his many fans by the lightning bolt-shaped scar upon his forehead, which was left as a mark of the Killing Curse.
Ella paused to take in what she had just read. A baby surviving a curse that is marked by the fact no one can survive it? That sounded more than a little absurd. She glanced back over the paragraph. The book said that Harry Potter had been born in 1980, the same year as Ella, and would be attending Hogwarts. That meant that –if all this were true- she would probably be meeting him that very day.
A deep chiming sound met Ella's ears, signaling prayer time and causing rest of the girls at the orphanage to begin to rise. They had been sent back from the foster homes only yesterday and so far none of them knew that Ella would be leaving after breakfast.
Luckily, Ella went the whole morning without doing what her textbooks had called 'accidental magic'. As she exited the dining hall, her stomach churning from nerves (either that or the lumpy oatmeal they had eaten for breakfast), Sister Kathy grabbed her by the arm and ushered her out of the crowd of girls returning to their dormitory. Once they were in Sister Kathy's office, Kathy told her that they would have to be very careful and make sure that nobody was watching because no one was supposed to know about Sister Kathy's car.
Ella nodded.
"What about my trunk?" she asked, "Can I go back and get it?"
"I've already taken it to the car." Sister Kathy said, "Now, let's go."
Ella followed the nun through the stone hallways and down several floors to the basement of sorts, where Sister Kathy hid her car. Ella had known the car was here for ages. She found it one time when she had needed a place to hide from some particularly horrid foster parents. Once Sister Kathy had become her guardian, Ella had thought it would make for good blackmail, but she never did get around to blackmailing Sister Kathy.
They walked to the car without turning on any lights in the basement. Sister Kathy unlocked the doors and Ella slid into the front seat. However, when Sister Kathy tried to sit in the driver's seat, there was already someone there.
"Good morning, Sister Kathy." Said a sharp voice.
"Good morning, Mother." Sister Kathy said in a very abashed voice, refusing to make eye contact with Mother Superior.
"Excuse us Ella." Mother Superior got out of the car and led Sister Kathy to a corner across the basement and they began conversing in very very low tones.
On the one hand, Ella really wanted to listen to what was being said. It wasn't often, after all, that Sister Kathy got in trouble. On the other hand, Ella now had no way to get to King's Cross Station and her worries about that dominated her desire to eavesdrop.
After a few short moments, that felt like forever, Mother Superior returned with a very dopey looking Sister Kathy behind her.
"Come with me, Ella." Mother Superior instructed.
Ella walked quietly behind Mother Superior as they left Sister Kathy in the dark basement.
"Robert will be taking you to the train station." Mother Superior told Ella without turning to look at her.
Ella nodded again. Robert was the handyman at the orphanage. He had almost no hair and smelt of yeast bread and decaying pickles. He hardly ever said anything and when he did, he revealed all of his capped and yellowing teeth. This would be a fun journey, Ella thought sarcastically to herself.
As Ella was climbing into the handyman's beaten up old pick-up truck, she suddenly remembered that her trunk with all her school things was still down in Sister Kathy's car. Ella leapt out of the car and began running back towards the orphanage to retrieve it. She had almost made it to the grand oak front doors, when she hit something very hard and fell back onto the gravel.
Rubbing her hurt forehead, Ella looked up at what she had hit. It was her trunk floating in mid air. Ella squinted. The light must be playing a trick on her. Sure enough, Robert the Handyman was holding her trunk and looking at her in mild confusion as though he had never seen a girl fall down before. Shrugging his shoulders, he stepped right over Ella and went to put the trunk in the back of his pick-up.
Scrambling to her feet, Ella ran to catch up with Robert and get in the truck before he took off. Once they were both in, Robert started the car and left the orphanage without saying a word. After about five minutes of silence, Ella couldn't take it anymore.
"So," she tried to start mild conversation, "Fix anything lately?"
Robert grunted.
"Hmmm." Ella didn't quite know how to respond to that.
"Oh!" Ella said with more vigor than her last attempt, "What about that Sister Kathy, huh? Secretly owning a car?"
Another grunt.
"Right then." Ella said. Robert obviously didn't want to talk, so she wouldn't force him to.
They went the rest of the way without speaking. Ella entertained herself by staring out the window at passing cars, counting the hairs on Robert's head (seventeen), and wondering about what awaited her at Hogwarts.
In the middle of a busy city, Robert stopped the car and got out. Ella was thoroughly confused as to his behavior, but when she saw him lift her trunk out of the back of the pick-up she supposed they must be at the train station.
Ella hopped out of the truck, and ran to catch up with Robert. She had never been to King's Cross before and didn't know where anything was.
Robert got a trolley to put her trunk on, and led her to a section of the station with platforms 1-12. Then he stopped, handed the trolley to Ella, and left without a word.
"Well, I'd better find some wizards or else I'll never get on to the train." Ella said to herself. She pushed her trolley towards platform 9. She figured the hidden platform would probably be somewhere around platforms nine and ten.
Ella looked at her watch. She still had a half hour before the train left. Probably most families wouldn't be getting there for at least twenty minutes. Too tired to stand and wait that whole time, Ella sat down against the brick column separating platforms nine and ten.
As soon as she leaned her back up against the column, she fell through! The upper half of her body entered a whole other train station with lots of wizard children and the their parents all surrounding a huge scarlet steam engine.
"What are you doing?" a man that looked to be something of a ticket taker asked her shrilly.
"I…I fell through." Ella stammered, still laying on the cement floor.
"Well, come in rest of the way! What will the muggles think when they see a pair of legs sticking out of a brick wall?"
Ella didn't quite know how to get the rest of her body in. So she decided to just stand up. She found she was still on the wizarding side of the barrier, but
"My trunk." Ella told the wizard. "My trunk is still on the other side."
"Well, what are you telling me for? Just go and get it."
"Right." Ella mumbled. Taking a deep breath, Ella stood before the wall. Now that she knew what was supposed to happen, she was a bit nervous that something would go wrong. Surely she would run into brick as she tried to get back.
Deciding it would be best done at a run, Ella ran towards the barrier –bracing herself for the collision- but she didn't run into a brick wall. No, Ella ran into a boy with jet black hair and glasses. Each of them fell backwards on the cement and Ella was pleased to see that they were on the other side of the barrier.
"Dad!" the boy shouted, "You said nothing would happen, that I could go through easily!"
"Yeah…" what looked like a grown up version of the boy Ella had run into scratched his head, "Never seen that happen before."
"Why were you coming back?" a woman with bright red hair and a rather frazzled look about her asked her.
"I forgot my trunk." Ella told them.
"Is this it?" the woman pointed to a trunk that had been pushed off to the side of the barrier.
"Yes, thank you." Ella walked over to get it.
"Alright, we're running out of time. Harry try going through again." The man who looked like the black-haired boy said. Harry. Ella thought, why did that name sound significant?
"I'm not going back through!" the boy whose name must be Harry said, "Someone else might run into me."
"Fred you go then." The woman who had shown Ella her trunk instructed a red haired boy to go to the barrier.
"I'm not Fred, I'm George!" the boy said, "Honestly woman, you call yourself our mother."
"I'm sorry George." The mother said.
"Only joking, I am Fred." The boy said with a grin as he ran through the barrier, his twin following right behind him.
"Percy, you next and then we'll let…what's your name?" the woman was looking at Ella.
"Ella."
"You go after Percy then and Ron, Harry, why don't you two go together? We're running out of time."
After another red haired boy went through the barrier, Ella pushed her trunk towards the brick column and hoped beyond hope that she wouldn't hit anything.