—𝕹𝖆𝖙𝖆𝖑𝖎𝖆 𝕻𝖊𝖓𝖉𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖔𝖓—

She doesn't look back when she boards the train.

Dragging her trunk behind her, Talia avoids recognizing their familiar faces through her peripheral vision until she's far enough inside that she can't see them through the compartments. A part of her feels guilty, admittedly⁠—she won't be seeing her father or her sisters for the majority of the year, she should at least give them a proper farewell... but whenever she looks into their eyes, she remembers the cold stares that they'd given her brother as they turned him away. Those stares often follow her into her dreams. If they find out about what she's done, would they look at her the same way?

Lips pursed, she marches on.

Many of the compartments have already been occupied; a young boy and his friends shove past her into an empty one to her right, and she goes deeper down the corridor with her head bowed and a small frown.

She finds an empty compartment near the end of the hall. With an anxious look both ways, she closes the door behind her and states at the window to the busy platform⁠—after a second's hesitation, she closes that shut as well.

The compartment is large enough for multiple people, Talia decides, but she knows no one. The Pendragons weren't estranged from society by any means; between her father's success as an Auror to her brother's fall from grace under the same profession, their family has, certainly, received its fare share of attention from the magical population of Britain. However, Natalia has always been a sore subject, sore enough that they have never touched on her altogether. 

After all, who would want to relive the untimely, heartbreaking death of Felicity Pendragon, a beloved healer who could not be healed from the ailments she received from childbirth? One could say she's a victim of life's cruel sense of irony, but there are others whose opinion on the matter borders on the superstitial. 

Natalia frowns and shakes the thoughts away. Aunt Delphine certainly wouldn't want her to remember what she'd found out that day.

With a minute nod of determination, she moves to put her trunk in the overhead compartment, but it takes only one tug for her to realize that, while the trunk can certainly be dragged around on its tiny wheels, it is certainly too heavy to be lifted higher than her knees. She props her hands on her hips and sighs miserably. Maybe she should have at least asked her father to help her with her luggage.