In The Safety Of Magical World

Chapter 29

On September 1rst it wasn't even 10 am when Stella and I arrived on King's Cross. Though we lived relatively close to the train station, I hadn't stepped foot here for 19 years. The anxiety that I could have forgotten which one of the brick walls was enchanted with the magical barrier, got the best of me and we left the house very timely. Wouldn't be nice to miss the Express just because we couldn't find the right way to get on the platform.

It was a beautiful Autumn morning. A dazzling gold sun was shining through the myriads of yellow and scarlet leaves that rained from the trees upon the heads of the passerby. The voices of starlings, sparrows, and doves chirped in bushes and on ridges of buildings. 

The streets were filled with leaves to the curbs and we waded through the matt of these plant stem appendages. The street sweepers seemed to give up the fight with the leaves as it was kinda useless – wherever their brooms cleared the pavement, the trees shamelessly scattered down more.

Despite the exhaust gases, the air was still crisp and much cooler than before. Even if you lived in the middle of a forest with no calendar, phone, or any other means of communication, you only had to inhale once to know that summer was over. Autumn smelled like rain, wet earth, decomposing leaves, hot chocolate, and above everything – melancholy. Because that's how I felt, thinking about my daughter not being around anymore. Now I was only getting to see her three times a year.

We had told nothing to our grandmother. My mother was still alive, but elderly and her life had lately been riddled with diseases. She had been living in a retirement home for the last two years and Stella was her biggest light, joy, and pride. My mother never came to love and admire magic. She was scared of it and in a way, resented it. 

Magic had taken the family house from her, almost slain her only son and she even blamed it for the premature death of my father. To find out that her beloved granddaughter was indeed a part of the community my mother was trying hard to avoid, might be too big of a shock for her. That's why Stella and I kept quiet.

Londoners hurried past us as we walked through the station. Some muttered angrily as they knocked their ankles against Stella's luggage cart. On top of all the boxes, bags and trunks sat the cage of Stella's owl that she had named Oscar. The bird's eyes darted all around the station, annoyed of being woken so early.

" Did your parents accompanied you too when you walked to the Express as a boy? " Stella asked, her knuckles white from pushing the heavy cart.

" They didn't. They couldn't, to be precise. The situation back then was very complicated and nobody could accompany me. I had to get through it on my own. "

" That must have been scary, " she said pensively. " Especially for a Muggle. I don't think I would be able to get around here without you, dad. "

I looked at the people who rushed through the station grumpy, dissatisfied, and with a wrinkle of anger between their eyebrows. For them, the ordinary Muggles, King's Cross was nothing more than a place they used every day to get to their destinations. For me, each corner was tied to memories. 

I recognized the dirty homeless man who was sitting in the corner next to the sweets shop the day I returned from Hogwarts and was sitting there to this day. I remembered the cashier of the flower store when I looked behind me to make sure nobody was following me and my parents. Except for its hustle and bustle and the symphony of all kinds of noises, King's Cross seemed to have jumped to 19 years old past.

I wondered where would I be today had I never known magic. How different would have my life been if Voldemort never needed me? I would have finished school without any rush and only left my childhood house when it was the right time to do so. My parents would have spent their lives there. Most likely I would have never discovered I was attracted to males. And when I had a child, I doubted they would have been magical.