She sat next to him, hip to hip, holding hands, bouncing excitedly with the conversation. Outside the window, the winter sun descended over pristine white fields, snow-decked forests, and mountains dim and hazy with distance. The light turned dusky and purple and the shadows grew long. Eventually, the lanterns of the Hogwarts Express lit themselves with soft popping sounds, bathing the entire train in golden light, and James knew that the journey was very nearly over.
A pang of trepidation came over him as he remembered that, with their arrival at Platform Nine and Three Quarters, the familiar part of the holiday would be over. Suddenly, he missed the comfortable banality of the Burrow, the gingerbready smell of his mother’s frantic baking and the warmth of Grandma Weasley’s hugs, the homely live spruce Christmas tree decorated with beloved family ornaments and the bullfrog croaking voice of Kreacher.
Kreacher, at least, he didn’t have to miss very much. He had just seen the ancient house elf only the morning before, awaking to his patiently grave stare and drooping watery eyes as the elf stood on the foot of his bed, a stack of wrapped presents at his feet.
James had decided that he couldn’t open the presents yet, despite Kreacher’s monotone holiday benediction.
“It’s not Christmas yet,” James had said, yawning and stretching, his hair still prickling from the shock of waking under the elf’s unblinking glare. “I’ll open them when I get back. It’ll give me something to look forward to.”
The elf had accepted this with stoic grimness, vanishing shortly thereafter with a snap of his bony fingers, leaving a scent of pine needles and peppermint in his wake.
Now, as the train steamed slower and slower, the chug of the engine dropping from a staccato rhythm to a descending bass drum-beat, with the dark brick walls and chimneys of the city sweeping past the windows, James cursed himself for agreeing to go with Millie for the holiday. He knew now that he had mostly done it just to spite Albus and Lily. But now he felt that he was only punishing himself, and digging himself into a deeper hole with Millie, with whom he still intended to break up just as soon as the moment was right.
If the moment was ever right.
He scanned the crowd of waiting parents and families as the train slowed, hissed, and shimmy-rattled to a halt. He knew he wouldn’t see his own parents there. It had become tradition for he, Albus, Lily, Rose, and the rest to travel via Portkey directly to the Burrow. The enchanted Christmas sweater Portkey had arrived only a few days earlier, addressed to Albus and Lilly. James had seen it and acted disinterested—had even made a snide comment about how much fun he’d be having in the city instead. Albus hadn’t cared, but Lily had looked sincerely jealous, and James felt nastily gratified by that.
The platform milled with people in coats and hats, scarves and boots, festively dusted with snow and watching bright-eyed as the travelers began to disembark. James saw Scorpius’ parents, Draco and Astoria, standing in long dark coats near the edge of the crowd, looking just as severe and haughty as always. Other vaguely familiar faces shone like moons in the lantern light. As James climbed down onto the cold footpath, he scanned the crowd for anyone who might be part of Millie’s family.
For her own part, Millie made a huge show of saying goodbye to her friends, hugging them one by one, clasping their hands earnestly, as if she wouldn’t be seeing them again for months or years, rather than mere days. James tried not to feel impatient and forgotten.
“So which one’s your mum or dad?” he finally asked when she joined him again.
“Oh, mummy and daddy don’t meet us at the platform,” she said breezily, smoothing her hair and tugging her yellow gloves onto her hands.
“Ah,” James frowned. “So… your grandma Eunace then?”
“Grandmother Eunace!” Millie laughed and shook her head.
“Don’t be silly! Grab your bag and come on.”
She slung her own bag onto her back and shouldered into the throng, leaving James to catch up. After a moment, she reached back with one yellow-gloved hand, found his, and pulled him eagerly onward, threading through the crowd and eventually out through the brick wall portal into the Muggle reality of King’s Cross station. Still she did not look back but wended this way and that along the broad concourse, her boot heels clacking over the sound of recorded Christmas carols and toneless announcements of arrivals and departures. Muggle travelers milled all around, some happy and festive, meeting relatives and friends, others frowning and harried, checking their watches or pocket telephones, flowing in all directions.
Finally, Millie led James to the lofty, echoing expanse of the main terminal, flooded with light and seemingly as huge and crowded as a football stadium. There, she stopped momentarily, looking this way and that.
James, however, saw the man a moment before her.
“Um,” he said, squeezing Millie’s hand to get her attention and pointing with the other. “I assume he’s for us?”
Millie followed James’ pointing finger, and then smiled and nodded excitedly. She began to tug him forward again.
The man James had seen held a large sign at chest height, clutched in black-gloved hands. The sign read VANDERGRIFF AND GUEST in neat copperplate letters. It was not the sign, however, that made the man stand out. It was the fact that he was at least ten feet tall, with a head so huge and blocky that it might have been hewn at Stonehenge. His thinness was almost freakish, emphasized by a double-breasted black uniform so snug that it appeared to have been sewn directly onto his body. The double row of brass buttons on his chest glinted in the overhead fluorescents, as did the patent-leather brim of his chauffer’s cap.
None of the other travelers seemed to notice the mantis-like man who towered over them like a telephone pole, his grey eyes unmoving and patient in the shadow of his cap. But even that was less amazing than what sat behind the chauffer, completely unnoticed amidst the flowing, busy, hectic throng.
It was a car, but not like any James had ever seen. It was very old, immensely long and low, its fenders sweeping back like smooth metal waves over fat white-walled tyres. Chrome gleamed from the spoked hubcaps, the gigantic round headlamps, and the tombstone-like frame of its grill. The passenger compartment was so long and regal that it looked as if it might contain a ballroom. Jutting from the moon-grey slope of the hood was a silver figure, a robed woman leaning forward as if into a gust of delicious wind, her chin raised, her arms thrown back so that her sleeves trailed like wings.
The throng of travelers flowed around the car like water around a rock, giving it not so much as a sidelong glance.