𝘄𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘆, the marauders

04. THE KNIGHT BUS

CHAPTER FOUR
✧
-: platform 9¾ :-

── IN WHICH WENDY LEAVES
BISHOP HOME

. . .

THE REMAINDER OF WENDY'S SUMMER PASSED SLOWLY. It dragged it's feet behind it as it ambled on by, with evidently no intent to speed up at all and allow September 1st to arrive. June, July and August seemed to be years long rather than months, and Wendy grew quickly fed up of the dull day-to-day of the home, and found herself questioning how exactly she had managed with it beforehand, when half the time she had been spent locked away in the basement and when she wasn't, boring school days with no friends and no one to talk to and no books to read but the Bible or those ones donated by the community around that had little permanent marker lines blocking out words, sentences, sections of a story that one of the sisters deemed inappropriate.

She read Hogwarts: A History from cover to cover more times than she cared to admit. It was the only thing she had managed to get out from her brand new trunk before Matron locked it away; magic was certainly not a thing there; God would not approve, the sisters would not approve and thus, Wendy would hide the book under her mattress and listen to the whispers that she was being sent to some kind of behavioural facility that would keep her all year long until summer next year. She had managed to keep her wand, too, because whilst her cauldron and uniform and everything else had only the remainder of magic on them, like Wendy, the wand was seemingly magical.

And left with a wand and a book, Wendy spent the majority of her summer either in her room or tucked in a corner of Bishop Street Home's garden. There wasn't much of it, really, but there was a small copse of trees and if one was small enough and knew how like Wendy did, one could make their way in and hide there. Nobody else came there, and nobody would bother her.

But finally, finally, the first of September came around and after spending most of the night tossing and turning early morning came and Wendy woke up. Usually, the sisters would come around to make sure they were all up by seven or before, but that did not matter to the girl, who slipped out of her room just after six, and found herself sneaking along to the Matron's office, where she knew her trunk to be kept. She needed to pack the rest of her stuff, after all.

It was so oddly quiet as she crept around, her bare feet sticking to the shining wooden floors.  Certainly it was not a loud establishment, but at least there usually was a low murmur of chatter from the various rooms spreading into the halls. It was eerie, for it to be so quiet, but somehow it didn't make Wendy as on edge as she was anticipate; she had long since trained her ears to pick up even the quietest of sounds, and could even tell who it was whenever she could pick up heels clicking through the corridors. A couple floors below, she could hear the clanging of pots and pans as the kitchen staff prepared breakfast - which started promptly at ten past seven - but otherwise, there seemed to be no one else about.

Reaching the Matron's office, Wendy wished, hoped, perhaps even prayed for the first time in years, that the door had been left open. She had never tried this before, didn't even know if the woman locked the door or not, but when she tried the handle by some miracle, or perhaps magic, it opened. Within, it was empty, an oddly cold atmosphere despite a lot of that summer heat still remained and she only brushed it off, eyes flickering over to the cupboard set into the wall.

That too, was unlocked. It was evident that Matron did not anticipate the children to misbehave as such, and Wendy lugged the trunk out. She settled it down on the floor and crouched beside it to pull up the clasps. Carefully, she opened up the lid and ensured that it didn't bang down against the floor and rifled through it, making sure everything was in there.