The Cupboard Series 1: The Cupboard Under The Stairs

Chapter 1

Disclaimer – Everything you recognise belongs to JKR. All the rest is simply me playing in her sandbox.

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"Hermione, dear, slow down, the train doesn't leave for another half hour," Emma Granger laughed at her eleven year old daughter.

Surprisingly, Hermione actually pulled her trolley to a stop to wait, but instead of looking back to plead with her to hurry up as Emma expected, she seemed to be staring at something across the busy floor of King's Cross Station.

As Emma rapidly closed the distance with her daughter, she peered around to try to determine what had caught her daughter's attention. She knew that it couldn't be the entrance to the hidden platform that that strange, stern teacher had shown them three weeks earlier as they were still some distance from that part of the station.

It may have been a Sunday, but King's Cross was never an empty place so Emma was forced to watch dozens of people criss-crossing in front of her. Not one of them looked out of place or different in any way. There was no one there that they knew and nothing to indicate that there were any ... magical ... people like her daughter around.

The catch in her throat and her eyes widening like saucers caused her the revise her previous thought.

There, sitting elegantly atop a trunk laden trolley, was a cage containing the most beautiful snowy owl that Emma had ever seen. And owls, she now knew, were used to carry letters between magical folk. As the crowd parted, she was finally able to spy the owner of that amazing owl and her eyes widened even more before quickly narrowing.

A bespeckled dark haired boy, no older than her own Hermione, leant on the handle of the trolley, his hands holding on so tight that even from a distance she could see the knuckles were white. His head pivoted backwards and forwards as though he was searching for something. The expression on his face was something between lost and scared with just the hint of determination.

But it was the boys' clothes that had caused Emma's maternal instincts to cry out in alarm.

The cuffs of his badly dyed grey pants were turned up so many times that his feet were pushed farther away from each other than what she thought would be comfortable. His shirt, a dull faded orange, was also blatantly many sizes too large for him and just like his pants, the sleeves were rolled up and the neckline flapped open and closed at his barest movement. Even his shoes looked like they'd fall apart at the drop of a hat.

Emma took a single step towards him before changing her mind.

"Hermione, dear, how about I wait here with your trolley and you go see if that boy's looking for your train? It doesn't look as though he knows how to get on to the platform."

Hermione looked up at her mother, her bottom lip firmly in the grasp of her teeth. With a single nod, she slowly walked across the hallway.

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With his uncle's parting laugh still ringing in his ears, Harry Potter stared around at King's Cross Station.

His ticket plainly said 'Platform Nine and Three Quarters'. But where that was was anyone's guess. Hagrid had stressed that keeping a hold of his ticket was very important and he assumed that that meant that it'd help him get on to the station. Somehow.

But right at this minute, Harry was feeling as though he could burst into tears. He didn't know what to do. The Dursley's had simply left him. There was no Hagrid or anyone else who even looked remotely as though they were magical. The whole place was filled with muggles.