Hesitantly, Emily approached the wall between the two platforms, just as Severus instructed. She set her trolley to the side and stretched her hand toward the barrier, rubbing the tips of her fingers against the wall's surface. She knocked once, twice against it, the light knock almost silent. Brick. Hard. Solid.
There was no way she could get through that. And there was certainly no way that no one would notice her try. Surely it would cause a scene, a girl running trolley-first straight into a brick wall at London's largest train station.
Maybe it was just a lie, a means of abandoning her in a densely populated place with no way home. Run straight at the wall. Yeah, right.
Her fingers were still tapping against the brick, a panicked dance across the hard surface as she glanced nervously about the station.
"'scuse me!"
The voice came from a girl, young with blonde hair cropped above her shoulders, pulled back from her face with a crisp, blue ribbon. She wore a black pleated skirt with a matching black sweater, both of which bore the same quarter-cut logo as Emily's letter. Her trolley, too, contained the same items as Emily's: a trunk, a cauldron filled to the brim with assorted supplies, and an owl in a cage, though hers was much larger and snowy white.
"I'm looking to get through," she repeated, and Emily couldn't tell whether her morning pep was faked or not. "Do you mind?"
Emily pulled her arm back and stepped away, dragging her trolley back as she went. As soon as she was out of the way, the girl began to sprint head-first toward the barrier.
Emily wanted to warn her, it's brick, solid brick, but the girl was long out of earshot. She braced herself for the sound of impact, squeezing her eyes shut against the sure chaotic mess that would result, but there was nothing. Not a sound. Not even a surprised whisper from anyone around. And when she opened her eyes to look up, the girl was gone.
Curiosity dragged Emily back in front of the wall. She touched it again, waiting for her hand to go through it, for it to suck her body in by sheer force. But it didn't. Her fingers rested against the brink once more, her pink painted fingernails tapping again against it.
Well then.
Among the swarms of people streaming through Kings Cross Station, not even one of them was fazed by a girl being sucked straight through a wall. Not one of them hardly noticed at all.
As Emily leaned resignedly against the barrier, a strong hand tapped her shoulder. "Miss." She turned around to see a burly, bearded officer. He continued, his voice gruff, "You lost?"
"No," came her initial reaction, though even she could hear the uncertainty coating the word. "I, uh..."
"Can I see your ticket?"
She clutched the piece of paper tighter in her grip. 9 ¾, it read. That much she knew. But she also knew that 9 ¾ didn't exist, at least it couldn't exist in the barrier between the two platforms. And this man, surely, knew that too.
He clenched his jaw a bit, accentuating the harsh lines of his face before he spoke again, more sternly, "Please display your tick—"
He was interrupted by the sound of metal crashing, and Emily jerked herself around to see two red-haired boys slamming full trolleys against each other in mock battle. The boys erupted into fits of laughter as they caught the eye of the station officer.
"Oi!" he shouted, running to chase after them. Emily snuck away from the wall, moving slightly closer to the entry to Platform 10, as she heard him yell off in the distance, "You quit that!"
She took this opportunity to sneak off to the other side of the station, her eyes still fixated on the wall — 9 ¾. How fast would she have to go to get through the barrier?
"File in, file in; there's so many of us we'll block up the whole way." A plump red-haired woman led a group of similarly red-haired children, three boys and one girl. They formed a half-circle in front of the wall, the oldest two boys pushing full trolleys along. For a moment after they stopped, the woman seemed perplexed and took stock of her children, counting each head. She turned to the oldest of her sons. "Charlie, dear, have you seen your brothers?"
He replied with a shrug, and the woman grew pink in the face, her eyes scanning the station. Then, there was a crash, and the boys from before sprinted away from a crowd of confused onlookers, trolleys in tow.
The woman didn't even look; she just called out, "Fred! George!"
Trying to hold in their laughter, the two redheaded boys from earlier took quick but careful steps toward their mother, as if they could sneak in behind her and come out unscathed.
"For Merlin's sake," she hissed, turning on them so fast Emily thought they might fall over from the wind, "why can't we go anywhere without you two causing trouble?"
The boys mumbled apologies, and just like that, all was forgiven.
"All right now, Charlie," the mother started, turning again to the oldest, "you first."
Emily watched the first boy as he adjusted his hands on the handle of his trolley and called over his shoulder, "Bye, Mum!" as he sprinted toward the wall. She feared the worst, but like the girl who had run before him, he was sucked straight through the brick exterior.
"Now Percy," the woman said, kissing the next oldest boy on the cheek as he lined up and ran through the wall as well.
There was a part of Emily that wished her mother were here. She wasn't sure when the next time she'd get to see her mum would be, and she didn't even get a proper goodbye when she left that morning, much less the kind of affection these boys were getting as they headed off. It was hard not to be slightly jealous at the sight...
The youngest boy and his smaller sister began to whinge and sulk, tears running down freckled cheeks. The woman bent down to them and wiped their faces. "Don't fret, you two," she said with a reassuring smile, "it'll be your turn to head to Hogwarts soon enough."
Emily had been sat in the same spot on the edge of the station, watching this family, waiting for them to pass through. At first, she hadn't been sure if they were magic or just peculiar, but the mention of Hogwarts cemented it. All she had to do was follow their lead to make it to the platform.
"You should be grateful to be rid of us, Ron," the slightly taller of the twin boys began.
The second continued, "But you can be sure that come Christmas, we'll be back to cause more trouble."
"Turn your pillow into a pile of spiders…"
"… Disguise some snails as candy…"
"Boys!" the woman looked back at her twin sons, shooting them a glare with daggers in her eyes, and Emily couldn't help but chuckle as she watched them both turn pink in the ears again. The mother huffed in, rubbing her youngest son's mussed hair before looking back at the two. "It's your turn to go, and we'll be right behind you." They both moved to go, but she called them back to her so that she could hug them tight and kiss them both, leaving the marks of a reddish lipstick on their cheeks.
"Mum!" they both groaned, each wiping the kiss from his face.
The mother smiled at the two and moved to usher them toward the wall, but they hesitated. The one saw Emily staring and grinned. "Ladies first," he said, stepping aside to let her go first.
"Come on now, Fred, George." Their mother's voice was stern, as she seemed not to have seen the girl to the side of them. "Don't dawdle. You're already later than you ought to be."
They smugly pointed to Emily, and she caught their mother's eye — a young, pathetic thing, lost in the masses of Kings Cross.
"Oh!" Her surprise shook her whole body with a chuckle, punctuated with a pleasant smile. "Well, hello."
Emily's lips upturned in response, though she didn't say much of anything, instead hiding behind her trolley.
"Feel free to go first, dear," she continued. "My boys will be more than happy to wait."
"Peachy," the twins agreed in unison, and Emily couldn't tell whether or not they were being sarcastic.
She stood with the brick wall several feet ahead of her, hard and flat and seemingly solid. Was there a trick to it that she didn't know? It worked for everyone else, so what was there to lose, really?
Well, this was it.
She took a deep breath, taking the steps slowly at first then moving into a quick jog and then a full-speed sprint. Maybe the faster she ran the faster she'd either go through the wall or slam face-first into it and die… On instinct, her eyes shut as she approached the barrier.
When she finally looked, there was a long, scarlet train in front of her, surrounded with as many people as had been in Kings Cross. At least as many, maybe more. This new station bustled with people, mostly kids her age and older, with the occasional parent or two accompanying them.
"Trolleys over here!" The man calling out was older and a bit plump around the waist, balding and bespectacled. He wore a dark brown vest that also bore the same four-sectioned shield. "This way with your trolleys!"
Emily hurried in his direction, her own full trolley in tow, attempting to focus on her new destination despite the sensory overload she felt amidst the crowds.
Apparently, though, she had not hurried enough.
She heard her owl's panicked screeching and squawking before she felt herself crash into the ground, pushed full-force from behind. Though she made it through the brick barrier without incident, she still managed to wind up face first on the asphalt. Fantastic…
"Blimey!" the other party groaned. Emily struggled to gather her things which had all escaped from her trolley, strewn across the ground. His things were too.
She mumbled a slight, "Sorry," as she set her owl's cage upright and began to sort through what of the mess was hers.
"What, were you waiting for the train to come to you?" His tone seemed much less angry — he even seemed amused — than Emily expected, and she looked up to see one of the red-haired twins from Kings Cross.
"Um… no, I just —" She could only sputter orphaned syllables, her brain desperately trying to choose between another sheepish apology and a clever retort.
"'s'all right," the boy said as he shot her a sympathetic toothy grin. "But you will want to get out of the way before the other me comes through."
Emily pursed her lips together in an almost-smile and rushed to where the train's conductor was collecting trolleys.
"Pull out your trunks!" he said as he pulled the trolleys nearer the train. "Make sure you've got your robes out and ready."
"But my stuff!" a dark-haired boy complained. His teeth were askew in his mouth as he growled at the conductor, stomping a heavy foot on the ground.
The conductor chuckled with a slight twinkle in his eye, seemingly immune to the boy's tantrum. "Don't worry, now; it'll all get sorted back to you tonight."
Emily grabbed her trunk and her owl's cage and headed toward the train, hoping to get a compartment before they all filled out. On the way, she passed the blond girl from Kings Cross, now hugging an equally blond man and woman whom she assumed to be her parents. The girl had her trunk at her feet and was struggling to pull away from the couple's overbearing grip, protesting that she needed to leave or she'd have no seat on the train.
That was what Emily was afraid of too.
When she finally arrived on the train, it let out its blaring warning whistle, and though she knew she was not the last to make it, Emily travelled by train enough to know that by this point, there would be competition for compartment space. And, boy, was she right. Many of the first several compartments were full already, housing older groups of friends who swapped stories of their summer escapades. What few spaces were left were being saved for somebody, and her insecurity led her to wonder if that "somebody" was actually somebody or just "anybody else." She arrived at the back of the back of the locomotive prepared to stand for the entirety of the ride and sighed. Such is the first day of magic school…
There was one last compartment in the back of the train, its doors open ever-so-slightly. Emily yanked the door's handle, pulling the compartment open enough that she could stick half of herself inside. The two twins from Kings Cross were seated inside diagonally across from each other, each taking up as much room in the compartment as possible.
"Mind if I —?" she began, but the one boy grabbed her arm and pulled her inside, her body and trunk falling haphazardly into the centre of the compartment. The first twin then turned to his brother and instructed him to close the door behind her.
"Sorry 'bout that," came the response of the second boy, apologizing for his brother. He hopped across the compartment to take the space next to his twin, allowing Emily the seat across from them, and set her owl's cage upright on the floor between them.
She couldn't tell which of the two ran into her outside of the train. Even studying them, they looked identical, save for their shirts, each a slightly different shade of the same light blue.
"You see," the same boy continued, "Fred and I, we're sort of amateur pranksters."
"Semi-professional," the other, Fred, corrected.
"Best there is," his brother agreed.
The one boy — Fred — smirked, his thin lips spreading flat with an upturn in either corner. "Planted a dungbomb outside the compartment. Meant to surprise a couple of unsuspecting Slytherins."
"Wouldn't want you to get caught in that rubbish."
"Not yet, anyway." Fred's impish smile spread further across his face.
"What's a dungb—?" she began to ask, but the boys cut her off with matching smug grins.
"Wait for it."
There was a moment of silence with only the background chatter of the other compartments and then an explosion just beyond their doors, its echoing boom shaking the entire train, followed by a fit of shrieks and screams.
The twins grinned at each other, each looking like the cat that got the cream, smiling with smug self-satisfaction as chaos erupted beyond the closed doors. Soon after, through the small space at the bottom of the compartment doors, the smell steeped in, slow but thick, the air coated in a grey-brown fog.
"That's awful!" She was referring more to the smell than the prank as she covered her nose with her hands. The stench was putrid, like rotten eggs left out in the sun and dumped into a public restroom that hadn't ever been cleaned. Her owl flapped his wings as much as he could to push away the smoke cloud as it surrounded them.
"Eh," the one boy said with a shrug. "You get used to it."
"Used to it?" Emily asked, retching from behind her hands. "You mean you don't smell that?"
"Pretty much numb to it at this point."
"Might've burnt all our nose hairs over the summer anyway."
Emily could no longer hide her gagging and rushed over to the window. "Well, I can't breathe in here!" Finally pulling her hands away from her nose, now hit full-force with the stench of dungbomb, she twisted the lock on the window and thrust it open, revelling in the burst of fresh air it offered. Her owl was still mid-fit when she grabbed his cage and set it next to her on the seat, near the open window. "Oh, you poor bird!"
"Does he have a name, then?" the one boy asked.
"Um... not yet," Emily admitted. "No."
She had never named so much as a goldfish before, and the pressure of the decision weighed heavily on her shoulders.
"You should call him Weasley, after us," the other boy said and punctuated the thought with a cheeky smile.
"Wheezy?" she repeated, thoughtfully. She considered the owl in his cage as he finally began to calm down. "I like it."
"That's not what he said," his twin corrected, but it was too late. He regarded the bird as it took another long gasp for breath from the open window, "though I s'pose it fits."
His brother shrugged, and for a moment, Emily thought she spotted some pink in his cheeks. "Probably better than what you'd come up with anyhow."
"I could've come up with something good," Emily argued. She looked over at Wheezy, sitting in his cage, finally calm. She rubbed her finger against the fuzz above his beak. "But you like Wheezy, don't you, fella?"
He let out a contented hoot and nuzzled himself into her hand.
"Yeah, Wheezy, chalk it up," the one boy groaned. He stared longingly at the open window. "The spoils of our efforts — gone!"
Emily rolled her eyes. "Don't be so dramatic..."
The other boy ignored her. "Honestly, George, just who does she think she is?"
"Haven't the foggiest, Fred." He paused for a moment, his face contorting with confusion followed by the dawning of realization. He turned to her. "Actually, who are you?"
"The nerve of this one. Sit yourself down in our compartment and don't even tell us your name."
"I did not —" She cut herself off with a purse of her lips. The argument wasn't worth it. Instead, she took a breath and readjusted herself in her seat to regain her composure. "Emily."
"You come with a last name there, Em?" the one asked, and Emily clenched her jaw, bothered by his presumption that he could call her by a nickname. "Or did the hippogriff just drop you off on the sidewalk looking all sorry like?"
"It's Prince," she replied and crossed her arms against her chest. "Emily Prince."
The boys sniggered. "Her royal highness!"
"Miss Princey, Queen of the Carriage!"
Emily rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest as she slumped herself back in the seat. "Yeah, real rich. Never heard that one before."
They both dramatically bowed, nearly folding themselves over in their chair.
"Forgive us, Your Majesty!"
"We didn't mean to offend!"
Ignoring their gag, Emily looked between the two of them. "And what do people call you two?" She paused, tongue literally in cheek. "Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum?"
They paused for a moment, looking at each other with a mischievous twinkle of the eye passing between them, then each stuck out a hand to Emily and in perfect unison said, "George Weasley."
"Oh, come on now. You can't both be George," she protested. "That's not how these things work."
"Figure it out then."
She had been watching them for a while now, keeping tabs on which one referred to the other by which name, watching for specific tics, listening for patterns of speech… But she still had to admit, it was tough. They were identical. Identical identical. The same brown eyes, the same patchwork freckles on each cheek, spreading across the same nose, matching string bean bodies angled to avoid the entanglement of long limbs. One of them had a little mole on his neck, but she sure as hell didn't know which.
As confidently as she could muster, she picked one of them and pointed. "You're George." His eyes widened a bit, and she turned to his brother, whom she assumed to be Fred, who was looking at her from beneath raised brows. "Which makes you… the other one."
"Lucky guess," he groaned and slumped back into his seat.
There was a knock on the compartment door, and an older boy in black robes poked his head inside. He had curly black hair, his robes adorned with a yellowish gold and a small badge that read 'Prefect.'
"We'll be arriving shortly at Hogsmeade Station, so you lot had better change to your robes; I'd hate to see you lose House points before you've even been sorted," he instructed, altogether pleasant in tone. "There are changing compartments down either side of the train, so feel free to utilize them."
When he walked away, closing the door behind him, Emily grabbed her trunk down to pull out her robes and turned around to Fred and George, both stripping off their trousers.
"Oi!" she shouted, shielding her eyes. "They've got changing cabins, you hear?"
But the boys, both only the slightest shade pinker in the ears, had already begun to pull on their uniforms by the time she left to change.