One Last Ride | Remus Lupin

One Last Ride

The tall man ran through the brick wall of Platform 9 ¾ at King's Cross Station in London for the first time since 1978. The years had flowed like a river, but the platform had remained an anchor in the swirling tides of time. It was never changing.

The floodgates of nostalgia opened wide as he ran through the wall, his trunk on a squeaky cart, just like in the old days. He was the first one to arrive that day; the station shrouded in a quietude that seemed almost surreal.

For a fleeting moment, he was transported back in time, to his youth, to being that young lad from his memories. Memories that had grown hazy over the years but suddenly came into sharp focus. The distant past, so unreachable, became tangible once more.

He stood there for a couple of minutes, gazing at the majestic Hogwarts Express, remembering his eleven-year-old self anxiously trying to figure out what to do with himself. He clearly remembers how he struggled with his heavy-as-hell trunk, full of clothes and school supplies, and a cage with his owl. He almost lost a tooth by tripping over his own legs; it was truly embarrassing.

Contrary to now, it was really noisy when he first set foot here. Students chatted animatedly, their excitement palpable, while parents yelled above the din, ensuring their children had all they needed until the Christmas break.

He'd done his best to navigate amidst the bustling crowd, eventually finding his way onto the train and hauling his burdensome belongings.

Following the memory lane, he went inside, going straight to the compartment he remembered so well. He slid the door open, pausing to savour the silence and calm, and then proceeded to gently place his trunk in the overhead compartment.

He let out a deep sigh and sat down in his usual seat, resting his head against the headrest and closing his eyes. In his mind, he was young once again, surrounded by three other boys whose laughter and antics filled the compartment. They were loud and annoying, and he pretended to be angry at them for disrupting his reading while trying to suppress the small smile that threatened to appear on his face. Those guys were his friends. His brothers by choice.

They always chose the same place to sit in. He doesn't really know why, it just happened that way and stayed like this until their graduation.

Occasionally, there were other people whose heads would pop up in the doorway. A group of girls, some kind and smart, some crazy and amazing. Two boys, identical in appearance, whose smiles were highly contagious and their wit unsurpassed.

The same faces passed through that one compartment numerous times throughout the seven years he spent as a student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The same faces he saw in battles afterwards. The same faces that haunted his nightmares, begging him to help them. The same faces that left him all alone in his misery. Oh, how he misses those faces.

With a heavy heart, he decides to take a nap, because despite all those bittersweet memories, for the first time in a long time, Remus feels at home.