After wandering through London and seeing the sites, the time finally came for us to board the Hogwarts express. We drive down to the busy King's Cross Station and step out of our rental car. As we head in, busy travelers hustle to their trains. Becky spots the brick wall first, but I hesitate. By the wall, there is a family of 5 that awkwardly ask a trainmaster about platform 9 3/4 . After he scolds them and tells them to go take a hike, I go up to the girl with long blonde hair. I calmly tell her, "Um… you were asking about platform 9 3/4? Well, I know how to get there."
She looked super confused and asked me how.
"Well," I started, "It seems kinda stupid, but you have to walk through that wall right there."
The family looked at me strangely, and the two boys in the group started howling in laughter. I looked at them, up at the parents, and then to the 2 boys'… sister? She gave me a look that said, "It happens all the time".
Platform 9 3/4 . It was crowded from front to back, busy with scrambling people, dearly hoping not to be late. The girl and I had gotten on the train after saying goodbye to our parents and that we would see them at Christmas. Peering out the window, we watched our parents chat while the girl's brothers chased each other around the station with chairs. Where they got the chairs from, I have no idea. It was soon time for the train to leave, so the girl hopped off to tell them. She made them put the chairs down, and get their luggage onto the train. They piled their stuff on our table, and slammed the compartment door behind them. We both stared in the direction of the door, and then looked at each other with confusion. I said, "What is your name anyway?"
She face-palmed herself, and smiled "My name is… Grace… the panda girl... hi… who are you?"
I respond with the same thing, a smile, and say "I'm Emilee, Emilee Calahan… the chicken girl."
We spent the rest of the ride sharing stories, telling each other about our annoying siblings, and eating all the chocolate we could buy. I had introduced her to my Chica riding with us, and she introduced me to her kitten, Panda. And yes, she did nickname it Panda, because she can't have an actual panda. Supposably, her kitten is named Pebbles, but I will stick with Panda so Grace doesn't get disappointed. I let Grace pet my owl and told her the story of why I named my owl the way I did.
As we sat there and played with Panda, Chica sat there and stared rudely at us. All of a sudden, the compartment door slid open again, and there appeared a spikey-haired boy standing with Grace's brothers, Will and Xander. This was all weird, because this was a kid that lived in my old Lincoln neighborhood. His name was Hutch.
My first reaction was, "Hutch! How did YOU get a Hogwarts acceptance letter?????? You told me that you never read and never liked the Harry Potter series!!!!"
He just grinned stupidly and shrugged. "Well, my mom finally convinced me in June to read it, and I'm up to the middle of the 5th book already! What is it called again, the… Phoenix Lament or something like that?"
"No dummy, it's called the Order of the Phoenix. How could you be accepted if you don't even know the title to the book??? This is just weird, Hutch. Just plain weird."
He ignored this comment and plopped down in the compartment seat with Will and Xander following. We chatted a little bit, got some candy in between conversations (of course Will and Xander fought over their share), and fell asleep as we rode through the night.