Kings Cross Rain

Kings Cross Rain

Harry stands with his hands in his pocket, staring at the platform awash with boots and puddles. He leans against a nearby pillar of brick and pulls on his hood, concealing his forehead and eyes. He will observe them, but they will see intermittent puffs of vapor emanating from a cloaked figure in the corner and think absolutely nothing of it.

Kings Cross Station hasn't changed; he doubts it has changed at all since magic claimed Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters as its own. No, the wizarding world is always methodical. Wake up, child, wake up and catch the train. Dear, the barrier is your way in but, don't worry, it's not solid at all -- maybe run and you won't feel so sick about it. Now don't get in trouble once you're on your way. Imagine, detention before term begins! Oh, the shame!

A little girl in a cream-colored pea coat tugs at his side. "Mister wizard, I can't find my mum and the train's leaving in five minutes. Can you help me find her?"

Harry looks down -- she's a first year all right, and he refuses to believe that he was ever himself that small. He is reluctant to leave his little niche, but he smiles reassuringly, takes her hands, and leads her through the throngs of people. He sees her short stature and laughs to himself. Of course she would get lost. "What does your mum look like?" he asks.

"She's short," she says. "Has got a bright orange coat that she wears everywhere."

"Erm, right."

Orange. Ron's favorite color, and he sees it only a few feet away. He lets her run to her mum and quietly slips away before any word of thanks can be said. For the wizarding world, Harry Potter will disappear. The hunt and destruction of the horcruxes must be carried out in absolute secrecy. There can be no whispering about the Chosen One's whereabouts.

From the corner of his eye, though, he watches them. The woman in lurid orange asks someone to help her lift her daughter's trunk into the train compartment. The little girl's eyes water. She weeps and grins as she parts with a hug, kiss, and promise to send daily owls. Everywhere this is repeated as it has been done the year before and the year before that, the concerned mothers wiping at their bright-eyed darlings' cheeks while dabbing their own free of tears, the reunion of friends after a summer spent apart, the expectations hovering and swirling with the steam billowed by the Hogwarts Express. The world changes but Hogwarts does not, its traditions ever isolated, ever preserved.

Harry wonders. He wonders, shivering in the nipping breeze, what he'll do now that those traditions have been exorcized from him. Education will do no more for you now, they told him. Go and do what must be done. The silent grace and the unspoken prayer, the clock tower tolling at eleven sharp. Godspeed, Harry. Godspeed.

No one asked him to return, and he knows he cannot. He should not be here. Times of normalcy have passed. The board has switched hands and the pieces do not move the way they used to move, but Harry remembers the ticket Hagrid gave him, the ragged little ticket he held to his heart at night, and he remembers there will be no journey without a beginning. His beginning is here in the wet cold of September 1.