ReOpened TFL² (Tips For Life on the Transport For London) PV Adlai

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[ @Adlai Rod ] DATE 1st September 2022 OUTFIT [x] [x] [x] [x] causing a queue to start and being overwhelmed

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For almost the entire summer holidays, the plan was the same as it had always been. Ebony and Willow would, as per usual, go with Lucia and Briar to King's Cross on the first of September, and the Hogwarts students would get the train. Rosa, the family's house elf, would stay behind to run the wizarding section of Ebony's bookshop, as she usually did, and the Muggle section would be closed for the morning. It was a tried and tested system which had worked perfectly in Lucia's entire time at school.

There was about a week to go before the start of term before the plan began to fall apart.

First, Briar got invited to a friend's house for a sleepover on the thirty-first of August. The friend's parents assured Ebony that they could drop both children off at the station and make sure they got the train, so Ebony reluctantly agreed to the proposition and that was Briar sorted.

And then, Ebony discovered that she had to be at the shop to receive a book order for the entire day of September the first. "Muggles," she grumbled as she read the letter, which informed her that the order needed to be met by an employee of the shop who could sign for it, and that there wasn't a specific time that it would arrive. "Could they be any less organised?" If this was a wizarding company, it would have been an easy fix. Rosa would have been able to accept and sign for the order, and that would have been that. But as far as the muggles were concerned, Fox's Magic Shop was a one-woman establishment - and only one woman was able to sign for the order.

There only seemed to be one solution to the problem: Lucia would have to get to King's Cross by herself. A Muggle map of London was found in a drawer, and the fastest (and simplest) method for Lucia to get from Charing Cross Road, where the Leaky Cauldron was, ended up being by taking the London Underground. Ebony explained each step that Lucia would have to take very carefully. "Rosa will stay with you until the Leaky Cauldron. Don't ask her to stay with you - she can't because of all the Muggles." Lucia nodded. This made sense. "You'll have to walk to Leicester Square (I've written down the route for you but it isn't very far)." Lucia knew this. She'd traced the route so often on the map now that she was sure she could make the journey in her sleep. "The station should be easy to spot - there will be a sign like a red circle with a blue line through it and probably some stairs going down. Or there might be an esc- an esc-ah-lay-tor." Ebony hesitated after having to pronounce the foreign word. "I don't know if this is a good idea. Maybe I should cancel the order and come with you."
Lucia shook her head. "No, I can do it!" she assured her mother. They had done too much preparation to give up now. And, anyway, there was a small part of Lucia (well, a pretty large part) that was excited to be doing this by herself. She'd never traveled by herself on anything but the Floo network before, and that was only a few seconds or so, without any actual independance needed. "What's an ess-car-lay-tor?"
"It's like a moving staircase," Ebony explained after a pause. "It should make it easier with your trunk. Just stand still and walk off at the end." Lucia took in this information and nodded. "So, the Underground is just a regular train line but, well, underground," continued Ebony. She went on to explain how Lucia should buy a ticket from the conductor, and ask to pay in 'cash' instead of 'card'. Rosa, after seeing that Ebony had missed out an important detail, introduced Lucia to the basics of Muggle currency and wrote down some notes on it just in case Lucia forgot how much each coin and little plastic rectangle was worth. "You'll be fine," both of them insisted. "Just remember to get the eastbound train to Cockfosters, and get off at King's Cross, and you'll be fine." And Lucia believed them.

Oh, how wrong they all were.

As promised, Rosa was the one who saw Lucia off from the doorway of the Leaky Cauldron after the two of them Flooed from Oxford to Diagon Alley. "Have a good year," she said with a curtsey, and Apparated back to the shop, leaving Lucia on her own. The walk to the station wasn't too bad, and was just as short as Ebony had promised. The only thing Lucia had to look out for was crossing the road - the traffic here in London was much worse than it was in Oxford. To add to that, there were just so many people! Lucia had been to London before but had never spent more than a few minutes in the Muggle area of it, and never on her own. It was almost overwhelming. Even so, she made it to the station quickly, and navigated her first obsticle - the steps - with something close to ease.

Of course, it was just when Lucia thought she had it all sorted that everything started to go wrong. When she got down the steps, she couldn't even see the escalators. There were Muggles everywhere (so many Muggles!) and there were giant metal things on the walls and there were little shops and there were advertisments everywhere and, worst of all, there were plastic and metal barriers which Ebony hadn't told her about. Lucia stared at them. They were like little see-through gates with a metal cuboid between each one, and each Muggle was slapping their hand on the metal cuboid as the gates opened before them. "Oy!" A shout from behind Lucia startled her, and she realised she was blocking half of the staircase with her trunk. She pulled it behind her and went to stand near the wall so she wasn't in anyone's way, and kept watching the Muggles. They all seemed to know what they were doing. Maybe that was the key. Lucia just had to pretend like she belonged here and copy everybody else. Maybe the gates would let her through if she copied everyone else.

Attempt one. Lucia stood straight and marched towards the largest of the gates, trying to ignore the man wheeling a buggy behind her. When she got to the gate, which had blue stickers on it for some reason, she could see more clearly that the metal cuboid had a slot in the side for a ticket. A ticket? Was Lucia supposed to have her ticket already? But- no. Nobody she had seen had used this slot. They'd all just tapped their palms on the yellow circle on top of the cuboid and the gates had opened. Lucia took a deep breath and placed her hand, palm down, fingers spread out, on the yellow circle. "Please work," she muttered under her breath. Nothing happened.
"Hey, honey, you gotta hurry up." The man with the buggy spoke for the first time. "You don't have a card or a ticket, you're not getting through."

Lucia paused. She needed a 'card'? Like the 'cash or card' thing? Lucia didn't have one of those. She didn't even know what one of those was. She looked around her again, forcing herself to stay calm, examining the Muggles around her. Now she was closer, she could see that they were all, indeed, holding little plastic rectangles. Were these 'cards'? Experimentally, Lucia took out one of her own plastic rectangles (what were they called? 'Notes'?) and tapped it on the yellow circle. Once again, nothing happened. She guessed she shouldn't have been hopeful. After all, this rectangle was flexible and partly transparent, and the ones the Muggles were using weren't like that.
"Oh, for goodness' sake," a different voice grumbled from behind her. Lucia looked around to see that a queue had formed. "Get on with it or get out of the way."
This wasn't what Lucia had imagined her journey being like. She was supposed to be able to take the 'escalator' and get onto the train and buy her ticket on the train but instead she'd been felled at the first hurdle. "I'm- I'm sorry..." she mumbled and, blushing furiously, moved out of the way to let the people get past.

Lucia had never felt more apart from everything else. Muggles streamed around her, intent on their destinations. A few gave her strange looks and Lucia quickly realised that she was almost certainly the youngest solo traveller in the station. What was the right age for someone to travel on their own? Was she, at fourteen, too young to take the Underground train by herself? Assuming she could even get on the train, that is. She spun around where she stood, surrounded by people but perhaps the most alone she had ever been. No direction appeared to lead to where she wanted to go except the way that was blocked by those infernal barriers. It seemed Lucia only had three options. Firstly, she could ask someone for help. This option was only to be a last resort, she told herself. She didn't want a Muggle asking too many questions. The second option was that Lucia could investigate the metal things on the wall, and see if they could help her, but there were queues for those as well and they looked far too alien for Lucia to even be able to use. The final option, although the least helpful, was the one that Lucia chose. She leaned back against a column and, without even noticing she was doing it, slid down until she was sitting on the floor, knees against her chest, blue-black hair shielding her from the world. Gripping her trunk with one hand and her satchel with the other, Lucia blinked hard, trying to keep from crying. It was ten o' clock on September the first, and here she was, stranded in the middle of the largest Muggle city in the entire United Kingdom. If only there was someone who could help her. "Merlin's beard," she croaked to nobody in particular. "Oh, Merlin..."