CH 8: Rumblings of Thunder (Patreon)

Thoughts of what had caused the disappearances of the children had kept David tossing and turning long into the night. 

He tried to convince himself that it didn’t matter; thousands of people went missing in the U.K. every year, some of them children. It was tragic, David agreed, but the kind of tragedy that got housewives tut-tutting over the morning paper before they got the kids ready for school. Nothing that he needed to involve himself in. Maybe he could run a sale at his shop and donate the proceeds to some charity for at-risk youths. No reason to get more wrapped up in things than that.

Except, he thought, staring up at the shadowed ceiling above his bed, they were all so young. Dawn was beginning to creep its way over the North Sea, and some particularly industrious birds were making themselves known outside his window. Suspiciously young.

He had spent the whole night trying to come up with a muggle pattern to the abductions. In his first life there had been plenty of media that gleefully dissected the minds of killers and creeps. Without fail they had extolled, axiomatically, that there was always a pattern.

Gender, race, socioeconomic status, a thread always emerged. Some through-line that led back to a tortured past or sick fetish that authors and reporters drip fed to their audience in macabre reverence. 

There was none of that in this rash of abduction, according to Mel. No common type of victim or method of attack that the informal network of constables and inspectors that existed even in this nascent era of inter-connectedness could see. 

David kicked off his tangled and sweaty sheets and began pacing the length of his room. The muggle Bobbies couldn’t find a thread because they didn’t have the whole picture. He watched as the sky began to lighten from a deep bruise-purple, the first hints of crimson and orange licking over the horizon. It sounded, David thought, like children–muggleborn–were going missing before they could receive their Hogwarts letter.

He huffed and turned to his kitchen. This was absolutely not his problem and he needed a cup of tea. He had a long enough day in front of him without worrying that muggleborns might be getting abducted. Let the DMLE do their jobs for once (although would they even know that a crime had been committed? The kids wouldn’t have been contacted by the magical world yet.) or Dumbledore meddle like was his wont to do (but wasn’t the man terminally overworked keeping Wizarding Britain from coming apart at the seams?). 

Besides, David mused sardonically, there was no evidence that this had to be magical in nature. Perhaps there was just a particularly undiscerning paedophile on the loose.

David stumbled to the pantry bare chested, and began to reach for a box of PG Tips before reconsidering. Tea wouldn’t be enough after a night of tossing and turning; it was a coffee sort of day.

At the end of the excursion with the Smithwicks, Sarah had mentioned how glad she was that David had told Emily he would escort the family to King’s Cross September first. David had been certain he had agreed to no such thing, but before he could think of a polite way to correct the woman the liar in question had bounded up to them and dragged her mother away.

Now he was trying to slap some feeling into his face as he waited for his over-roasted English coffee to drip through the percolator, dreading another trip to London. 

He didn’t have the same depths of antipathy for the Hogwarts Express as he did Diagon Alley–at least, this end of the line–but that did not mean he wanted to be surrounded by former classmates for an entire morning. Once the young witch and her wide, pleading eyes were safely away from him and ensconced in Hogwarts, David was looking forward to returning to his quiet life.

A few more hours, he sighed as he threw back a scalding cup of terrible coffee, and then he would be free.

David arrived at King’s Cross station for the second time in as many months with a quiet pop. As he strode to where he had arranged to meet the Smithwicks he marveled at the willful blindness of people, both muggle and magical.

He had been in the building for all of five minutes and already he had seen a dozen of wizarding families snaking their way to platform 9 and 3/4s, dressed in robes of all colors and lugging trunks through one the busiest arteries of London. Some of them, he was sure, had proper notice-me-not charms, but he was certain that many didn’t. 

Not that it mattered.

Londoners crossed paths with the migration of wizarding kind without batting an eye. Whether it was the distraction of the morning paper, focusing on a steaming cup of builder’s tea, or the kind of apathy forged over decades of tube travel, the muggle travelers had better things to do than pay attention to some oddly dressed strangers. 

The magical half was equally oblivious. David watched what must be a family of pure-bloods–really, who else would drop their child off for the year in acromantula-silk Wizengamot robes?–flowed around a group of youths dressed in skin-tight leather pants and more rings in their ears and noses than David had on his fingers without batting an eye. He chuckled as a man stumbled drunkenly across the platform, careened unnoticed off a witch’s repulsion ward, before being wrangled by a tired constable who began to explain that if the gentleman needed some hair of the dog he should hide it in a thermos like a proper Englishman instead of sipping straight from a bottle.

This time the Smithwicks spotted him first. A fact he was alerted to by hearing his name shouted across the station and an increased draw on his own aversion wards.

He turned to the group, casually strengthening his wards in the process. He suppressed the urge to sigh and instead summoned up a subdued smile as he saw Emily waving frenetically and nearly vibrating in excitement.

“Mr. Hull! Mr. Hull! You made it!”

“Well someone,” David drawled, “seems to have forced my hand over the matter.”

Sarah looked between David and her daughter as Harrold chuffed quietly behind them. It seemed to dawn on her that perhaps the precise order in which his offer to escort had been conveyed and accepted was open to interpretation, but she soldiered on admirably, “We do appreciate it, David. I’m not sure how exactly one is meant to get to three-quarters of a platform.”

Ah, Severus. Of course he hadn’t explained that aspect when he delivered the girl's letter, why would he? He probably used the thought of some hapless muggle family wandering aimlessly around King’s Cross when he needed the feel of glee for some step in an esoteric brew.

“Besides, Mr. Hull,” Emily said, “you were there for my first trip to Diagon, of course you have to be here for this! You’re the old wizard master from all the stories!” She beamed up at him with an innocent smile.

David snorted. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. Besides, who was she calling old? Thirties were the new twenties, didn’t the chit know? 

Regardless, he thought, he was here now.

“Yes, well, follow me I suppose,” he said. Pausing to shoot a quick levitation charm at the trunk in Harrold Smithwick’s arms–the man startled briefly before giving him an appreciative nod–, he led the family through the station.

The group wove their way through the crowd as David explained the intricacies of how students made their way to and from Hogwarts every year. “9 and ¾s is just a pillar between platforms nine and ten that’s been enchanted to function as a gateway to the Hogwarts Express,” he revealed, “I’m sure you’re would’ve figured out on your own eventually–just follow the crowd of people walking through a London train station carrying birds of prey–but you just walk through to get to the platform.”

“How did your people manage to hide a train platform from the rest of the city?” Harrold asked.

“There is a whole host of intricate spellcraft involved,” David said, “but at the end of the day a powerful space-expansion charm is what underpins the thing.” He paused, seeing the confused look on the couple’s faces. “It’s, ah, better not to think about it too hard. There hasn’t been a disbelief-induced collapse of a spatial field since 1833 and it shouldn’t matter since the two of you are muggles and shouldn’t stress the magic, but–” he shrugged “–better not to test these kinds of things if you can avoid it.” For some reason that did not comfort the pair.

David hurriedly moved on, explaining that the journey would be six or seven hours by train–commandeered from muggles, he had admitted when Harrold asked where wizards had gotten a steam train–and that there would be an opportunity to buy snacks if Emily got hungry. When Sarah had admitted sheepishly that she hadn’t thought to bring the family’s limited supply of wizarding currency her daughter was despondent. The witchling turned her tear filled eyes to him, and David grumbled and handed over the Sickles he had in his pocket.

Soon enough the family and their reluctant escort arrived at the innocuous brick stanchion that separated the mundane world from the magical. Seeing their hesitation at walking through what appeared to be a solid wall, David huffed and stepped through, into a space he hadn’t visited since he graduated Hogwarts over a decade ago.

A brief moment of disorientation later–becaue no method of magical transportation passed up an opportunity to test its travelers–and he emerged onto a crowded platform that wouldn’t have been out of place in the 19th century, mostly.

The rattle of muggle trains had been replaced by the hissing steam of the Hogwarts Express, and in place of muffled announcement of arrivals and departures there were the chirps of aggrieved owls, shouted charms, and the croaking of toads belonging to children whose parents didn’t love them enough to buy a good pet. The miasma of London had been traded for the cooling mists of the steam engine, obscuring everything overhead. Kneazles danced around the ankles of travellers; David knew they would magically find their way to the carriage of their charges before the train departed at eleven.

Despite everything that made platform 9 and ¾ distinct from every train station other than its partner in Hogsmeade, it still shared some ineffable quality with the muggle world that all places of change possessed. Some energy that imbued locations where journeys began that seemed to promise new discoveries and the ending of relationships and the wonder of the unknown all at once. 

Behind him, the Smithwick’s stumbled onto the platform. First Emily, then her mother, and then–after a beat too long–her father. He smiled at their stupified expressions, before urging them to step away from the entrance.

“It’s so red!” Emily breathed, gazing in amazement of the huffing train.

David blinked. She wasn’t wrong, but that was not what he expected her first thought to be.

“So I just get on anywhere?” she asked, bouncing on her toes.

“Exactly so,” he confirmed, “just look for an empty spot or find children your age, I suppose.”

Sarah choked back a sob behind him, the fact that she wouldn’t see her daughter until Christmas sinking in. She wrapped the girl in a tight hug. “Be good,” she said, “and make lots of friends.”

“Mum,” Emily sniffled, “you promised not to cry!”

“I lied,” Sarah murmured into Emily’s hair.

“Write every day,” Harrold said, “Your mother and I want to hear everything there is to know about Hogwarts and magic.” The man was making a commendable attempt at the British stiff upper lip, but David could see the worry in his eyes. The patriarch was terrified that the daughter that stepped off the gaudy red engine in December would be a girl he no longer recognized.

Emily whined playfully, “Da! Once a week, at most.”

“Twice a week,” Harrold bargained, before hugging the girl.

David turned away to give the family their privacy as they exchanged their final goodbyes. He was only startled out of his thoughts when he felt tiny arms wrap around him. 

“Goodbye, Mr. Hull,” Emily said, “I hope you don’t mind if I write if I get stumped on my homework?”

He awkwardly patted the girl on the back, “I’m sure you’ll be just fine,” he dissembled. Seeing the child’s glare he sighed in defeat. “Very well,” he conceded, “write when you need to. Unless it’s potions, then I’m afraid I will be quite useless.”

“Brill!” she cheered, before disengaging from her hug.

The three adults watched as the girl skipped onto the train, trunk dragging along behind her. Harrold had his arms wrapped tightly around his wife as she openly wept. 

The three stood on the platform until the train pulled out of the station, Emily waving madly at her parents as the engine picked up speed. When the Smithwick’s could no longer their daughter they began to make their way back to muggle London. Harrold muttered a quiet thanks to David as he walked by, an exhausted Sarah on his shoulder. David nodded to the man, too polite to openly revel in the fact that he was once again free of any bothersome muggleborns or anything else magical that would pry him from his comfortable routine. 

Nothing else could drag him into the wizarding world once he got home. Maybe he would leave the country for a bit. He had been meaning to see what all the fuss about Japan was. The second war would be won just fine without him, and Aldeburgh should still be there when he was ready to come back. Yes, some travel sounded like just the thing.

The next day found David standing in his dining room, every local paper concerning missing children in southeastern England he could find strewn across the table.