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chapter three ; dementors of azkaban ❪ hogwarts express, 1993 ❫
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THE Hogwarts Express sounds it's horn loudly over the crowd of chattering students, who are eagerly boarding the train with bright smiles. Parents and younger siblings hurry about busily, bidding teary farewells and ushering their children onto the train before eleven o'clock. Aurora had learnt in second year - thank you, Ron, Harry, for your lack of tact - that the express takes no prisoners and will leave, regardless of whether you're on it or not.
Aurora follows slowly behind the golden trio as they board the express, hiding among the chaos. Her eyes flickering around the platform nervously as if expecting Andrew Bennett to appear from thin air - she should know by now, that the man never loiters on the platform to see if his children had made it onto the train. Once on the train, she offers her friends a smile, assuring them that she'll find them later on.
Much like she'd noticed Harry had been doing, she keeps her gaze down as she goes her desperate way. Needing a moment alone before she has to plaster on that fake smile and not let it falter for several months. Needing space to think - to wonder what it would be like if she had a family to bid her goodbye each September, if she had a home to return to each Christmas, Easter and Summer.
The half-blood witch treats Hogwarts as her home. Never having felt such a way in the streets of muggy, dirty, London.
The aisles of the Hogwarts Express are full and crowded with smiling students. All either reuniting with friends they hadn't seen all summer or, in the case of first years and the odd transfer student - which is rare in itself, if she's being honest - nervously trying to make friends.
Aurora Black isn't sure why she'd stepped away from the safety-net that the golden trio offered her. With Harry at her side, she'd be much less the centre of attention that she unfortunately finds herself in now. Perhaps she'd needed to feel independent. Or, perhaps, she needs to see if things were different. If she could still be the very same Aurora that Hogwarts loves.
