Platform 9¾ — September 1, 2020

Parallel play with @Rhys Hughes @Jacquelyn Gibson @Felix Renshaw

There was a class reunion going on at Platform 9¾. Not for Aeron, he hadn’t even had his first year of tuition yet, but for the parents. His mother had stepped through the barrier with him, gasped with delight, and swept him off to say hello to “old Clary Fuddet,” and “dear Emmy Easton.” He knew his mother was a social creature and he figured he had met most of her friends by now, the ones that mattered anyway, but the past ten minutes on the platform proved how very, very wrong he was. It seemed his mother had known everyone when she was at Hogwarts, and that they were all there today with children of their own. It seemed he was drowning in the sea of introductions and names and chatter.

“— some lil’ chap, Lysa!”
“You do take after your mother, don't you... Are you heading to Slytherin too?”
“—Thank you, ma’am—Yes, sir—Yes, I hope to be Slytherin like you and mama.“

“Aeron.”

The voice was calm, quiet. Barely a murmur amidst the welter of conversation, but Aeron locked in on it. “Papa!” He took his father’s hand and let it draw him out to the edge of the crowd. The impromptu reunion was growing by the second.

“Lysa. Yes, I have him— caught up just in time, I see. What a zirkus. Ah, and here comes the Prophet. Of course.” Caspian Frey eyed the approaching reporter dispassionately before looking down at his son with a far fonder expression. “Come. Let’s get a snack and wait for mama.”

"You did well back there."

"I know." That made his father laughed, but Aeron did know. He had been Careful. But— "It's easier with mama around. She's so… People don't pay as much attention to me when I'm with her, or you..." Aeron trailed off into a gloomy silently, gnawing on his half of the licorice wand his father had bought. They sat together on a narrow bench, half an eye on the scarlet train, the other on the reunion of Hogwarts, Class of 'Bloody-All-of-Them. He couldn’t see his mother any more, but every so often he caught her distinctive laugh rising out of the crowd.

"And you'll do well at school too. Without us."

Aeron wasn't so sure about that.

"There's my favorite boys."

Aeron was down to the end nub of his licorice when Lysandra Frey made her way out to them, the luggage trolley gliding gently along beside her. She ruffled his hair and he leaned into the touch.

“Was it all too much or just terribly boring for you, mmh?”

“Mostly boring. You’re all talking about things I don’t get. What happened with the badgers in Hogsmeade, mama? Who was Counterweight Nate?”

“Ah well,” she started, and Aeron saw his mother had gone just slightly pink. “I suppose those are a bit hard to explain, and… You had to be there.” She brushed his cheek with her thumb, before continuing more strongly, “And now you are going to be there, and you’ll make your own friends and adventures. You’ll have such fun, my love. I promise.”

Cast

Reducio

Aeron Frey: A blond cherub with a sombre, watchful expression. :|

Caspian Frey: A tall gentleman dressed in sleek grey robes with a high collar and a low cap pulled down across his brow. His features are youthful, though his hair is silvery white.

Lysandra Frey: A glamorous witch with with striking blue eyes, her honey blond hair up in an elegant twist. Dressed in emerald green and the latest fashions.

Daily Prophet NPC: Here to do a fluff piece on start of the latest Hogwarts term, and anything else of note.

Random NPC alums:
Clarence Fuddet, Slytherin
Emmaline Easton, Hufflepuff

“Never seen so much bloody traffic.”

“It was just like this in Owen’s last year. And Gwen’s. And almost every year before that, now that-”

“Eira, are you saying us being late is my-”

“No, of course not.” She said, tone even where his had risen. “It’s always busy. Before now and after now.” An exchange of looks between the front seats, the third time in the three loops the car had made around the lot. “I’m saying it makes no difference when we come, Des. It’s London.”

His father didn’t say anything else. His side profile retreated so that Rhys was staring at the back of his head again, the one hand gripping the top of the wheel a bit harder, whitening the knuckles, the other arbitrarily adjusting the volume of the radio. Up and down, up, up, down.

Down.

His mother didn’t seem to notice, or at least said nothing about either the music or the grip, looking stoically out her passenger window the way she looked out their kitchen window. “Oh, back there!” She declared suddenly, crumpling halfway around in her seat and pointing. “Just back there.”

Without any warning, Rhys felt his stomach lurch hard against his insides, harder against the seatbelt across his lap as his father hit the brake. “Finally.” Desmond Hughes breathed, jamming the car into Park. “Looks tight though. I’ll have to cram ‘er in. Everyone out.”

Whoa oh, tell me baby. What’s the matter with you? Why don’t ya hear me crying? Whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whoooo.

The radio was playing some rendition of an old blues song he thought he knew, or at the very least knew he had heard before.

As if to match the age of the artefact that was their automobile, dented on the driver’s side door and gathering a new layer of rust along its belly each year, the only music it ever seemed to play was whatever relics from bygone decades his father thought to preserve on scratched CDs and on repeat in their heads. Not exactly ideal road-tripping music in Rhys’ mind— but it had a way of staying with him, burrowing deep into the revolving tracks of short-term memory. And from the backseat, sandwiched between two overtired and under-stimulated sisters, it was easier to listen to that than the silence, sighing, and the slight annoyance sliding between his parents up front.

Even after he clambered out of the car, hefted his trunk from the boot, watching through the rear window as his mother wrestled Caerwyn — utterly perturbed — from the clutches of a seatbelt, then Carys — still absolutely lifeless, still sound to the world in her drive-induced sleep — from her carseat, Rhys could still hear it. The twang of the guitar and the scratchy timbre of that voice moaning Whoa oh, stop your train. Let her go for a ride. Don’t you hear me cryin’? Whoo hoo, whoo hoo, whooo.

For some reason it was all he could hear, despite the horns of impatient cars behind them, despite his father shouting something out the window that was undoubtedly rude because it courted more voices and drew more enraged honking.

Shaking out his shoulders, Rhys gripped his trunk a bit harder. A sudden touch at his other hand made him jump, then quickly take her much smaller hand tightly in his, grinning down at Caerwyn as they followed their mother over the curb and toward the entrance of King’s Cross.

The distant rumble of the next train drifted out to them and he glanced back at the grey Cortina slowly angling its way between two Mercedes.

“It won’t make much difference if he’s a minute or two behind us.” Still walking, he saw his mother checking her watch. “You’re not late quite yet, darling. Let’s go wait inside.”

“Will he be able to get to the Platform without us?”

Readjusting Carys in her arms, that little head of wavy hair lolling sleepily against her neck as she switched shoulders, his mother smiled back at him. “Not going all the way inside. Just inside. He’d never find the platform on his own.” She winked. “But he’ll find us. Alright with your trunk?”

Rhys nodded.

“Mammy.”

“Just a minute, Caerwyn love.”

“Mammy.”

“Look. Here comes Daddy.”

“Mammy.”

“Every time.” Desmond muttered, squeezing his way over to the group of fidgeting girls plus frozen boy. “Every bloody time. It’s a good thing London isn’t going anywhere because the people here only know how to go in circles.”

Rhys watched him take in the people nearest them, a large group of well-dressed muggles from what he could tell, both of them could tell— but that didn’t do much to hide his father’s obvious discomfort. He didn’t hide much about him, anyway. The plaid jacket missing the top two buttons, leaving his white shirt and a dollop of dark chest hair peeking out. The long slightly bowed gait of those long thin legs clothed in faded denim and fresh grease. Long looks of displeasure from an unshaven face. A cowboy’s reluctant sojourn into a metropolis.

“Well, let’s get to the Platform before we all spiral out.” His mother said brightly, shouldering her purse.

“Mammy.” Caerwyn whined. “I need to pee.”

Eira looked down at her like she had just uttered a few unmentionable curses and sighed, checking her watch, considering. Handing Carys to their father and taking Caerwyn by the hand, she said, “Okay, quickly, quickly. This way.” Then she looked back at Rhys and said firmly, “You won’t be late, darling. Still got time,” before disappearing into the crowd.

The light seeping into the packed station glinted off glasses, phones, gold-trimmed trunks, suitcases, windows, and Rhys squinted, watching the masses of people boarding the train nearest of them, the long sweeping coats and quick steps blurring along the ground in a river of movement. Harsh whistles rang out intermittently, some a little too close to his ears, and he turned away, looking instead at his father. Up on his shoulder, Carys’ bleary eyes had peeled open and narrowed against the whistles too, and Rhys reached up and touched her nose with his index finger. She smiled, wrinkling her nose, and buried her face in the shoulder.

If it had been three minutes or another three hours — because really what was another three hours after the first three between Cardiff and London — Rhys couldn’t be sure. He shifted from foot to foot, watching the train as the doors shut and then edged along, grabbing small increments of speed until it was gone. Gone. Just like that. He looked in the direction his mother and Caerwyn had disappeared, looked in the other, toward the secret barrier to Platform 9 ¾, looked straight ahead. In what felt like no time at all another train had filled the space left behind by the first and Rhys felt like he couldn’t breathe.

There were people everywhere, everywhere he could think to look, and they all appeared to know where they were going. Worst of all, actually going there.

The congestion, the tight-knit of the ever-changing crowd, was starting to get to him, and he thought, maybe, that if he could move with it, move in any direction that wasn’t nowhere, that maybe he wouldn’t feel as swallowed up, as invisible, as immobile as he was and had been for the past eleven years.

It all became the same. The congestion and clunking. The crenellated bites in someone’s sandwich. The red streak of a girl’s hair. The smell of grease and people and excitement and hurry. The itch of his shirt and the growing weight of impatience. The light and the steam and the rushing of hot air battling with cold A/C.

A whistle blew, interrupting. A moment later a woman’s bored, detached voice echoed over the PA Train to Liverpool has been delayed 33 minutes. New departure scheduled for 11:16.

But then, all at once, all over again, there was the shouting, calling, cursing, sighing, sneezing, laughing, the growing and fading of hundreds of voices that came and went like the trains they boarded. Then it was all just noise-- the hiss, clank, squeal of steam, doors, iron wheels on iron track, the echo of trunk wheels rolling and bumping on stone floor. The whitenoising of all the senses. The malodorous mingling of cloying perfume and savoury food. The bright refractions of light and twisted shapes of shadows. He was both lost in and left behind in it all. A rock at the bottom of a rushing river.

“Alright, Rhys?”

Whoa oh, what’s the matter with you… Just a minute, Caerwyn... Dear Sir Hughes… Every bloody time... Train to Liverpool has been delayed... Whoa oh, stop your train. Let her go for a ride. Don’t you hear me cryin’?

“Rhys?”

Whoo hoooo

Rhys blinked a few times and nodded, nonchalant. “Yeah, I’m fine.”