11 May 2018, 04:21
Compartment #42
Celynne Flores wandered through the train, peering through each window as she passed by each compartment. She held her book close to her chest, hiding it under the folds of her robe, lugging her baggage with her. Every window she peeked through had at least one person inside already, but truthfully, she didn't feel like socializing right now. Well, or ever, but especially not now.
Number 39. Number 40. Number 41... 42. She stopped by the 42nd compartment, grinning despite herself at her find. Completely bare, empty, vacant. Finally.
Sliding open the door, she tugged her trunks after her, scanning the clean red seats. The girl hefted her luggage, pushing it upward into the overhead shelf. One, two, done-- only the third bag remained, full of her robes and other fabric property. After attempting to shove it into the tiny space between her first two and making it thunk onto her head painfully instead before dropping to the ground, Cel shrugged, placing it on the seat next to her. She did have the entire compartment to herself, anyway-- she just needed to make sure it stayed that way.
Cel's gaze shifted to the window. Nobody had decided to come this far into the back of the train... at least for now. What if someone decided to enter and join her? She couldn't very well refuse, that was rude, but she would have to spend such a long ride with a stranger...
She reached into the bag, pulling out a blanket, a pencil box, and a sketchbook she forgot she had thrown inside at the last second. The young girl didn't often use it, but she thought she might include it anyway. Tearing off a sheet of paper, she uncapped a pen and wrote the words "COMPARTMENT FULL" in gigantic, bold, and extremely exaggerated letters. Then she ripped off a piece of masking tape-- Know it's me who brings masking tape to a school of magic, she thought to herself-- and stuck the sign, letter side out, onto the window of the door.
As soon as she finished positioning the sign, Cel lifted the giant blanket. She wasn't absolutely sure why she had brought it-- or at least she couldn't remember why at the moment-- but it was certainly useful: the girl positioned the fabric over the window, covering the entire pane with the deep blue peacock patterned blanket, completely blocking the compartment's interior from view.
With a sigh, she settled herself in one of the velvet seats of the train, one leg crossed over the other. Opening the book still clutched in her arms, The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection she began to read again, continuing it from where she had left off. The train, it seemed, wouldn't be starting for a while yet.
Last edited by Celynne Gray on 3 Jun 2018, 16:42, edited 5 times in total.
12 May 2018, 16:52
Compartment #42
Cel shifted in her seat, stretching her back. At some point, the train had begun moving, and she had taken a couple of minutes to watch the moving landscape with wide eyes, gazing through the vista of the stone and brick of Platform 9 3/4 shift into the wide open fields and stoic mountains. Then she had gotten bored, switched her seat, and gone back to sticking her nose back in the textbook.
After finishing a couple of chapters of the volume-- Leave it to me to read textbooks like adventure novels, the young girl thought to herself-- she had discarded it for Hogwarts: A History. A great book, she decided, especially because of Hogwarts' complete, fascinating history, just like a novel from one of her gigantic bookshelves lining her bedroom back in Oxford.
Now her posture had changed as well, her shoes removed and resting on the ground. One was upside down, but she didn't bother to change it. Cel's legs were slung over the armrest closest to the window, while her back was propped up against the one closer to the door.
Someday, she knew, her bad posture would come back to her.
Something-- someone-- knocked, and the door began to rattle open. Cel jumped, scrambling to sit up against the back of the chair like anyone else would. So far nobody had bothered her-- the sign had done the trick-- though she thought she could hear the laughing of the adjacent compartments filled with students through the walls of hers.
Fortunately, as the person opening the door came into view, she saw not a dreaded student, but a plump, aged lady-- a witch-- pushing a gigantic cart filled with sugar and sweets of the typical wizard, she supposed. The text read Honeydukes Express.
"Anything from the trolley, dears... dear?" the witch corrected, raising an eyebrow at the evident emptiness in the compartment.
"Um. Sure," she tried to smile. Cel wasn't sure whether or not it had worked-- probably not. But she stared a the trolley, registering all the sweets there. Pumpkin Pasties. Drooble's Best Chewing Gum. Chocolate Frogs. "Can I have... a, um, chocolate frog? And a pumpkin pasty?" She reached over the seat to dig some coins out from her bag and handed them over in exchange for the sweets.
The trolley lady looked at her with a concerned look on her face. "You shouldn't be here alone, dear; I won't tell anyone the compartment's not full, but it's not healthy to be alone all the time."
"I guess," she sighed noncommittally. "Maybe next time I'll socialize." Ha. No way that was going to happen. Cel only said that to quell the witch's questions.
"All right, then," she replied, shutting the door to the compartment. Cel heard the shaky wheels of the trolley rolling over the train aisle, fading away.
She settled down to read again, comfort taking over her worries again.
Last edited by Celynne Gray on 3 Jun 2018, 16:42, edited 1 time in total.
27 May 2018, 17:51
Compartment #42
SCCCRRREEEEEEEEEEECCCCCHHHHHH
With a thump, the young girl's book was dropped onto the floor as she yelped then winced with a grimace at the old train's stentorian halt, fingers going to plug her ears. Cel could feel the train slowing, and as she drew the curtains aside with a hand, she could see the vista gradually ceasing its fast scrolling. The view. It was night now-- she realized she hadn't needed to close the curtains as she did, the moonlight's lace seeped into the room softly and gently, not like the harsh beams of the sun. The stars above did not blink, as some said they did, but hung in the dark canvas, spots of white against the dark blankness, except that this blankness was not blank at all, but layered in different shades of purple, blue and brown, not quite black.
The train's screech faded gradually as the Hogwarts Express came to a full stop, allowing Cel to marvel at the exquisite Scottish highlands behind the vista of the station. Meticulously cut hedges, glowing street lamps, brick-walled residences, and towering edifices-- all could be seen through the pane of clear glass, roofs washed over by the paint of night time, grounds decorated by the brushstrokes of Luna. But the true beauty in the scene peered out from behind the buildings, and Cel had to crane her neck to truly gaze at it in awe: the mountains. Mountains, layered one over another, some close, some far, some higher, some lower. Mist enclasping the highland in its fragile embrace, barely visible under night's gaze, and layers of dark, dark green lining the horizon: trees, they must have been.
Hearing the din of compartment doors being slid open and footsteps making their ways into the aisle and out of the train, Cel hurriedly stuffed her book into one of her bags, carefully pushing the sliding door to the side and tugging her paraphernalia out of the now-empty compartment. She tore the blanket down, doing her best to cram the fabric, now cold from sitting against the door without contact, back. The paper sign she crumpled and jammed into a random vacant side pocket, planning to trash it later, and Cel stepped out of the compartment for the first time in hours.
Immediately she groaned. Curse herself for not taking any breaks from reading and standing up or stretching at all. Her legs felt as if they had suffered a direct hit from the Jelly-Legs Curse-- great, she was remembering some of what she had read!-- and her vision was fuzzy and unclear. Her stomach seemed to have stayed back at Oxford-- motion sickness, Cel supposed, something that she was quite accustomed to. That didn't, of course, mean it wasn't extremely uncomfortable.
Not that motion sickness was ever going to get her to stop reading while moving. Neeeeeever happening. Nope.
Cel could see several of the students disembarking, most while chatting with newly-made friends. She could hear a couple discussing what House they could be sorted into, another triumvirate pondering what they might learn, an older-looking girl seemingly indoctrinating a younger-looking boy on homework at Hogwarts... she stopped straining her ears. They could banter all they wanted; it wasn't any of her business and she didn't need it to be.
The girl closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped off the Hogwarts Express.
Hogwarts, here we come.