None of us knows
what the next change is going to be,
what unexpected opportunity is
just around the corner,
waiting a few months or a few years
to change
all the tenor of our l i v e s.


The trunk bumped on to the floor, its clang loud and metallic, the unexpectedness of the sound turning it into an echoing, ear-splitting noise. Ruby's gaze [accentuated by mascara, and eyes as large as saucers] darted around the compartment like a hurt deer's, as she clung to Philippine like she had just been saved from a Killing Curse [trust Ruby to over-dramatize things] and then flaaared up.

"Great! Does that idiot of a driver not know how to do his job?" [Philippine, being the typical good girl that had yet to speak of anyone she considered a good person in such terms, looked shocked at this statement and SHOVED Ruby]. "Oof, Philippine, if you do that again, I'm going to kiss Rylon Mahogany -" Philippine gave a little scream and clutched at thin air, causing Ariel to bliink - "Seriously, though. My hair is ruined. I'm going to tell Professor Dumbledore that our dear driver does not know how to stop a train -"

"Cut it out, okay?" Philippine had drawn herself to her full height, and now glared at Ruby, hands on hips. "How can you speak of Rylon and kissing in the same sentence? Don't you realize how awful it sounds to my ears? Is that how you thank me for saving you from a deadly, runaway trunk? I'm telling you, Ruby Sardin, if you ever kiss my to-be-husband, I'm going to steal your makeup kits and hide your -"

"WHAT?" Ruby sounded like an injured kitten. "You can't do that! My hair is already ruined, and I need my makeup kits. You keep your -"

“You two are bad, bad girls and scared the kitten."

Ruby and Philippine both stopped mid-sentence, and turned round to see Ariel, holding Cam's kitten in her arms, and eyeing them both like they had just jumped out of a spaceship, had antennae sticking out of their hair, and claimed to be Martians. The kitty did look scared and even though both Ruby and Philippine fully believed this to be because the kitten had finally found out how clooosely Ariel watched it [in actual, though, it was the two's banter that had scared it], both of them gave a short nod and fell quiet. For two seconds, that is.

Then Ruby looked in her hand mirror and said, all tearfully,

"My hair is a mess."

[This meant that ONE of her curls had come undone. Just one, yes.]

"You’re still going to get yourself a guy to snog before the night’s out," Ariel offered brightly, as she placed the kitten back in its basket and it cuuuurled up and half-closed its eyes. "In fact -"

"Guys," Philippine said quietly.

Both of them looked up at her and asked, in unison, "Yes?"

“Have you noticed the commotion?" Philippine asked. The three exchanged a glance as they did notice it, not the familiar commotion of students springing to their feet, and clambering and jumping out of the Express, and first years being ushered off, and everyone talking and laughing, but a roaring, daunting commotion. People asking questions, bumping into each other, and not getting off the train.

"This isn't Hogsmeade." Philippine had pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose [a serious sign] and thrown open the window. Outside, the night sky was a coal-black sheet of darkness, and nothing seemed known, and Philippine's voice was suddenly very small. “This is Dolezera -" another station, one a little behind Hogsmeade station - "We shouldn’t have stopped here -- why have we stopped?”

The fear ran through them in such suddenness that, for a long moment, neither spoke. The one term that came to each's mind, almost at once? The Dark Arts.

But hadn't Professor Dumbledore said, at the end of last term, that strength came from union, and union from love? He had sounded pacifying, almost certain that no harm could befall them, not as long as he headed any and all affairs that involved Hogwarts, and they had all believed him because no servant of that dreaded dark wizard that had risen to power in recent years, he-who-must-not-be-named had ever made an attempt on Hogwarts. They had left the majority of their anxieties back at home, and even their parents had been satisfied, because they believed that if a safe place existed, it was Hogwarts castle. But, the thought came to them now, the Hogwarts Express was not Hogwarts itself.

"Guys?" Philippine had risen to her feet. In the past six years, she had boarded the Hogwarts Express twelve times, and knew that it had never come to a halt before it reached its destination. It did not make sense for it to come to one now, especially this close to the actual station.

“There must be a normal explanation,” Ruby had put on the tone that said I'm-scared-to-death-but-I'm-going-to-act-brave, and although she did not realize this, that upset Philippine even more. The dark-haired girl, as intelligent a person as one might come across, scared easily; though once things got really bad, Philippine was almost always the first one to turn the phrase 'keeping one's cool in a critical situation' into reality. "I'm sure there is a normal explanation, in fact I'm sure -"

"You're scaring her, Ruby." Ariel's eyes had narrowed, for the first time in ages. Her gaze turned back into an all-smiles-and-cheer one half a second later, though, and she held up the kitten's basket. "See? Dotty Dot's kitty's asleep!" [It was not asleep, and got offended by this declaration. Could this human not see?] "That means everything is OKAY. I'm pretty sure there's a normal explanation -" Same phrase as Ruby's, but the tone had nothing of the uncertain, scared-to-death touch to it that Ruby's had had. "Let's go out and ask.”

See? Easy-peasy stuff. So said Ariel's tones.

Philippine relaxed. "Right," she said. "You're right. That's the thing to do." She rose to her feet. "I think all three of us should go." There is strength in union - Philippine remembered Professor Dumbledore's speeches like she remembered her date of birth. "Let's ask the -"

She stopped, as the compartment door slid open. In the stillness, sharp as the point of a needle, that had engulfed the compartment in the past few minutes, even the sound of the door opening sounded like the metallic, clanging noise the falling trunk had created [it still lay on the floor, now, since none of them had made a move to put it back in its place] and all three girls looked up, at once and simultaneously, at the door.

Looked up just as a man in deep black robes stepped in, his wand aloft, his eyes cold, a barrier of three more men at his back.



Reference:

[] "None of us knows -" Kathleen Norris.