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── IN WHICH THEY BOARD THE TRAIN
. . .
THAT YEAR, SAME AS THE TWO PRIOR, it had been deemed entirely unnecessary for Bella and Ana to travel to King's Cross with the company of their mother. Before, it was simply because Bella wanted to exercise some kind of independence and responsibility and Luisa had wanted to see that too, or because they were already there - either staying at Diagon Alley for their shopping, or because they were with friends just to make it easier; magic still made their mother uneasy. Now, however, it was impossible, for she was looking after Samuel's kids for the day and the two of them were easily old enough to get a journey to London from Leeds.
After all, it was a straight journey there, no changes, all Luisa had to do was book the tickets, looked over them as they packed, drop them off at the station and kiss them on the cheek goodbye, with the tightest hug they would receive from her all year round, promises to write as soon as an owl appeared on the perch in the garden floating after them.
The year after that, and Ana would be doing the journey alone. It would not bother her; she could sit and read and listen to her music. She would miss the company, though, because her sister had a way of making everything funny, like how the old man across from them sniffled and shuffled his newspaper and ate an egg sandwich that smelt so bad that they had to go down to the toilets just to get away from the smell. Anabella only just managed to convince her sister to not throw a dungbomb just to get back at him.
By the time their train arrived in London, and, bearing in mind they had set off so early that majority of their trip was spent sleeping, it was a rush to get to Platform 9 and 3/4, through rush of people boarding and disembarking trains, but finally they lugged their trunks through the barrier, and were greeted by quite the sight.
"Bella!" Two symmetrical voices from two symmetrical voices seemed to pop up out of nowhere, throwing arms around her sister's shoulders.
"Long time no see." Fred continued. "C'mon, we have quite the crowd here, and even if you don't get all those N.E.W.T.s you do all that studying for, it'll be good to meet some of those Aurors you wanna work with."
"What?" Bella blinked. "Is that Mad-Eye Moody? What? I - Ana, I'll see you on the train."
"Ana, hi, good to see you, kid." George shouted behind them, as Ana rolled her eyes and began to drag her trunk over to the luggage car close to the entrance. There, it disappeared with a swish of a man dressed in a uniform that matched the train, and she began to make her way down the train, just as the whistle blew.
