"Bowbridge station coming up! All passengers for Bowbridge alight here. Bowbridge station."

The clang of the conductor's bell and the clamour of his booming voice as he walked down the train roused Millie from her reverie with a bit of a bump. She'd been watching the snow as it started to fall lightly on the fields as they trundled along - a rare sight in mid-December, as several fellow passengers had remarked to her and to each other several times.

Millie had just smiled in response. Although in some ways it seemed as though she'd always lived in England, Series XIIA, she still hadn't quite got into the national rhythm of endless conversation about the weather - and besides, it was the first snow she'd ever seen and she wanted to drink in every drop of the sight of the delicate white flakes dancing to the ground. It seemed as though the dusk was rising, rather than the sun setting, and extending a friendly half light over the landscape as they approached the little town. Millie started the lengthy business of putting on coat and hat and gloves - the sheer quantity of layers required for her new life was something that she was also still constantly surprised by - and gathering the belongings she'd packed for the winter holidays. Her housemistress had mostly left her to it, so it was full principally of books and had Millie not been able to use magic, almost without noticing that she was doing it, to lighten it, the bag would have been almost impossible for a 12 year old girl to lift. The magic Millie had used had been the kind that meant the bag was lighter only for her, meaning that the Porter who kindly took the bag from her with a "let me, Miss" as she descended from the train at Bowbridge promptly dropped it on his foot.

Millie, who had quite forgotten the weight of the bag and that she'd bespelled it in the first place, was so busy apologising to the Porter and taking the bag back herself that she didn't notice anyone on the platform until she heard a shout of "Millie!" in a voice which packed two different octaves into the two syllables. It could have been the normal difficulties of the male voice as it breaks in puberty and is unable to decide stick to a pitch for several months, or it could have been the force of Christopher's delight as he came rushing towards her, taller than ever with snow in his black hair, the magenta coloured lining of his coat flying behind him as he ran. Millie had written to Miss Rosalie with the time of her train and expected to be met by a carriage. For some reason it hadn't occurred to her that that carriage might also contain Christopher.

Dropping the bag again (not quite on the Porter's foot) and with a total absence of self consciousness or any thought behind how smashing it was to see him, she rushed at Christopher and flung her arms around him with such force that he staggered backwards before righting himself and whirling her around. They beamed stupidly at one another in the snow - which felt much less cold as it landed on her face than Millie had expected, she noticed in the midst of her talking and laughing and hugging. A dry cough caused her to look up and see Gabriel De Witt standing a few feet away, dressed entirely in black and looking as though he would actively prefer to be at the funeral he was so suitably attired for.

But Millie remembered how kind it had been of him to take her in, how he'd offered one his lives for hers, how he'd insisted on her taking his surname to lend her an air of respectability amongst her upper class peers at school, despite protestations from many of his staff that rumours would fly that Millie wasn't the great-niece he was claiming but "something worse" and that reports of him having produced an illegitimate child would cause him embarrassment and distraction in his regular dealings with ministers and other officials. Gabriel had insisted that his reputation as utterly lacking in any personal interest in any member of the human race if eithe sex would protect him from any such scurrilous rumours and so it had proved so far - but still, sharing his surname had made Millie feel much more as though she belonged to the world she now lived in, and to Chrestomanci Castle in particular. It was also jolly sporting of him to come and stand on a freezing platform with Christopher to meet her, of course.

So she greeted him with a hug scarecely less enthusiastic than the one she'd given Christopher, although Gabriel patted her arm awkwardly rather than returning it. Christopher took her bag from the Porter, extravagantly if self-importantly tipping him half a crown as he did so.

"What on earth have you got packed in here, bars of lead? No no, it's not too heavy for my manly arms" he proclaimed, immediately enchanting it to weigh next to nothing and twirling it around balanced on his forefinger. Millie laughed and swatted at it, attempting to throw it off balance as she half walked and half skipped down the platform and over the railway bridge.

The excitement of the snow and the dark and the delight of being back together - much stronger than either of them had expected - made them get sillier and sillier as they clamboured up into the carriage, feeling about six years old again and fizzing over with hilarity over everything and nothing. Gabriel wordlessly opted to sit in the front with the coachman rather than remain in the midst of such silliness.

Christopher's black eyes gleamed like coals in the half light of dusk and the faint glow from the gas lamps as he grinned at Millie.

"Let's go home".