✓ epiphany ━━ cedric diggory

﹙ 𝐢 ﹚ welcome back, i hate you

🖇·˚ ༘ ┊͙[ chapter one ] ! ˊˎ

╰─▸ train rides, breakdowns, and corridor collisions

     I HAD NEVER BEEN CLAUSTROPHOBIC BEFORE and yet as soon as I felt myself push through the wall between platforms nine and three quarters, the almighty flood of people overwhelmed me. Now, you'd expect this station to be a happy place. And sure, parents were saying goodbye to their eleven-year-olds and this would be the longest they would be away from them, but they were starting the next stage in their life: learning the art of being a witch or wizard.

     I never saw it that way. And honestly, I hated the next few hours and until I could crash out in my dorm room, away from all the crying parents and confused first years, I was pretty much in a bad mood. My two friends might possess the ability to lighten the mood but I still wasn't as happy as some.

     Maybe I didn't see it as a big deal because on my first day of Hogwarts my father was the one that had the joy of dropping me off. I imagine my mother was working, so that meant the 'goodbye' was as dull as ever. She takes the happiness with her. I don't see it as this ambivalent experience of both sadness and pride, because mine was emotionless. I didn't even get a hug goodbye.

     I could smell them too as I walked past. The people I mean: an unholy fusion of perfumes, body odour and over-applied cologne. You could call the crowd of parents and students a river of people. If that river had an unmerciful current and sucked you in if it had the chance. I was counting how many times people were crashing into me as I tried to weave myself and my load of a trolley out of people's ways. I was currently at four. Apparently, no one else was doing the same. Except the platform wasn't even that busy. Or overcrowded. But the way people moved around, it made it feel that way.

     As I blocked out the cries of the mother's around me, I braved it and slipped into the crowd hoping to make it out to the other side. And I did. Passing over my bags off of my cart to the man, I stared into practically nothing, awaiting the dreaded journey to a place I wasn't even sure if I wanted to go back to.

     "Oi, y/l/n!"

     I waited until all my bags were safely secure until I turned around where I saw a relatively tall girl with yellow blonde hair and immediately recognised the girl before me.

     "Medlar," I nodded. She ran up to me and pulled me in for one of her Spencer hugs. "Someone's missed me." I chuckled as she pulled away to look at me.

     "And you haven't?" she queried.

     Spencer was the kind of girl that always had a smile on her face. She was a Slytherin and a lot of things pissed her off, sure, but she saw the good in a lot of things.

     "Well maybe. Just very glad to be returning to the place I love most in this wonderful world." I replied with a sarcastic tone.

     She knew how much I hated school and sighed at the fact I had already complained. "Ohh come on. We haven't got that long left." She replied, throwing her arm over my shoulder as we boarded the train.

     "Don't remind me that I still have to put up with two years of this crap." I groaned.

     Don't get me wrong, Hogwarts was a great school. And sure, lessons were exceedingly boring and most of the time it pained me to sit in a classroom for the duration of a lesson, but it was the best Wizarding school out there. I just hated the people. With a few exceptions of course.