(1) Lux Brumalis (R. Weasley)

Chapter Nine

Pixie glances to her watch as it passes twelve and then out the window. They've only been on the train an hour and she is already bored. She reaches into the bag she brought with her, just a little thing that slips over her shoulder. She pulls out a copy of 507 Mechanical Movements and opens it up, pulling a leg under her on the seat and leans against the corner wall. Harry and Ron are talking about Harry's muggle family and how he lived off of hand me downs. Pixie doesn't know what that feels like. Tony has given her anything she has ever asked for. She knows she's had it good. Not half an hour later, there is a clattering outside of the compartment causing the three of them to glance at the door before it slides open. An older woman with a food trolley smiles warmly at them.

"Anything off the cart, dears?" She asks, Harry is instantly on his feet the second the question leaves her mouth. Pixie sets her box on the small table in front of her and digs her hand into her pocket for her coin, watching as Harry literally orders something of everything off the cart. Harry carries his horde back into the compartment and dumps it all onto the seats. Pixie squeezes past him to reach the trolley. "Anything else?" The woman asks.

"A packet of Drooble's gum" Pixie offers still staring at Harry. The older woman hands over the packet of bubble gum, Pixie hands over the coin and drops back into her seat. She sets the rest of her coins, only a couple of each, back into her pocket. Tony had wanted to literally fill her pockets with coins but Tatiana had talked him down, she's eleven, she's going to boarding school, she doesn't need a lot of coins. Just enough for the train there and back. At least for this year.

"Hungry, are you?" Ron asks Harry.

"Starving" Harry answers and then takes a huge bite of the pumpkin pasty in his hand. Ron takes out a lumpy package and unwraps it, revealing four sandwiches inside, he pulls one of them apart and then pulls a face.

"She always forgets I don't like corned beef" He complains a little. Harry watches him a moment before looking at his horde of pastries, candies and cakes.

"Swap you for one of these" Harry offers as he holds up another pastry. "Go on..."

"You don't want one of these" Ron argues. "She hasn't got much time, you know, with five of us"

"Go on, have a pastry" Harry pushes and then looks at Pixie. "You too, Pixie" She raises an eyebrow and looks at Ron who shrugs back at her before taking a pastry from Harry.

.........

Sometime later, Pixie sits cross-legged on the seat, her book forgotten on the table as she laughs with Ron and Harry, the three of them making their way through a pile of chocolate frogs and every flavoured beans.

"Bertie Bott's Every Flavoured Beans?" Harry asks them.

"They mean every flavour" Ron answers. "There's chocolate and peppermint, and there's also spinach, liver, and tripe" Harry pulls a face. "George swears he got a bogey-flavoured one once" Harry takes the bean he was chewing out of his mouth and glances at Pixie who lifts the corner of her lips into a smirk.

"I got a scotch bonnet one once" Pixie offers as she looks at Harry. "I thought I was going to die" She adds and shrugs. Harry then picks up a chocolate frog box and turns it around in his hand.

"These aren't real chocolate frogs, are they?" He asks them, Pixie snorts a little and shakes her head.

"It's only a spell" Pixie assures him.

"Besides, it's the cards you want" Ron adds. "Each pack's got a famous witch or wizard. I got about 500 myself" Harry opens the chocolate frog box and the frog then leaps from the packet and onto the window, climbs up, then leaps out the window...disappearing. The three of them watch it go before Ron shrugs.