things i'll never say ~ l.l.p.

eight - train

The Hogwarts Express was less crowded than it had been on 1 September, but was nevertheless packed full of people eager to get home for the Christmas holidays. I'd struggled to decide whether I wanted to stay at school for the break or not, but eventually had, at the behest of my cousins and friends, opted to return to Godric's Hollow. So there I was, piled into a compartment with Autumn, Mason, and Rose and Hugo Weasley. Charlie and Scarlett had been with us back at the station, but they slipped away soon after we boarded the train. Their families were going abroad together, and they apparently had some plotting to do.

The conversation in the compartment largely revolved around various plans we had for the holidays. Autumn's siblings were all coming for Christmas, so she was happy that her house would actually be full of people for once. Rose and Hugo and I would, of course, be attending plenty of gatherings hosted by one Weasley or another over the course of the next few weeks, with the actual Christmas day celebration being at the Burrow. Mason and his mum typically went to stay with his grandparents, who had moved to America after the War, but this year they were coming to England, so he'd be around to spend time with and the whole Bones family would doubtless be invited to the New Year's party we'd be hosting at my house.

The train ride was long, and difficult to sit through with the endless possibilities of several weeks without school ahead of us, but somehow we made it to Platform 9¾ without losing our minds. We were out of our seats before the train had come to a stop, and when it had we practically launched ourselves out the door. It was easy to find my family - who else could such a large clump of redheads be but my mum and my uncles? And then, of course, the bushy mass of brown locks was my Aunt Hermione, and the sleek blonde sheet of hair was my Aunt Fluer. And right in the middle of it all, the eternally tousled dark hair that could only belong to my dad. He spotted me first, and the grin that spread across his face made me realize just how much I'd missed him.

I sprinted across the platform, dodging elbows and jumping over the occasional misplaced pet, and tackled my mum and dad in one leap. They somehow managed not to lose their balance, and laughed at my antics as they embraced me. "Godric, Lily," my Dad muttered, "how much taller did you get in three and a half months?"

"Just a couple of inches," I said, smirking. "I think I'll be taller than Al before you know it."

"Oh, I hate this part," sighed Mum, who had materialised at Dad's shoulder.

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"The part where you come home from school and we find you've grown up," my mother explained, a hint of sadness in her voice.

"What, Lily? Grown up? Don't be silly, Mrs. Potter, there's no fear of that. She can't even write an essay without help-" I shot a cold glare at Mason, who immediately shut his mouth, although his chocolaty eyes laughed.

I glanced at my parents, hoping they wouldn't read too much into his words, only to find Mum's eyes fixed on the boy at my side. Uncertainty wasn't a look I'd often seen on her face, but I saw it now, along with something else that seemed peculiarly like pain.

After a moment of strange, tense silence - well, whatever semblance of silence was possible on a crowded train platform - in which I watched my parents have a conversation with their eyes that seemed to end in my mum's favour, Dad spoke.

"Say, Mason, have you spoken much with your mum lately?" My father's voice seemed unusually cautious, much like it sounded when he was trying to avoid fighting with James, and I couldn't understand why.

"Not really," Mason said, knitting his eyebrows together. "The last I heard from her was when she wrote to say Grandad and Nana were coming. That must have been at least a week and a half ago. Where is my mum, anyways? I thought she'd be here."