𝑅𝑒𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑎𝑟𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 - 𝑎 𝑇𝑜𝑚 𝑅𝑖𝑑𝑑𝑙𝑒 𝐹𝑎𝑛𝐹𝑖𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛

Chapter 2

The two had made their way back to the shack in complete silence, and Catherine wasn't too unhappy about that.

She told the maid that she wouldn't be needed that day anymore, and that she should come visit her the next time on September 1st so that they could travel to Kings Cross station together.

After the housemaid had left, the girl quickly started unpacking her books onto her bed and safely stored the box containing her wand in her worn-down bedside table. She opened the first book, titled The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble, and found herself already knowing almost every spell given in the book.

***time skip to the morning of September 1st***

Catherine couldn't have slept more than a few hours that day, having spent most of her time learning her books by heart to be perfectly prepared for the school year, and then be woken up early in the morning by a feeling of nervousness washing down her throat.

She had already packed her things together in a medium sized, dark brown, shabby trunk that she had found lying around in the attic of the shack because she did't have a newer one since she had only been to London once and had forgotten to buy one because her mind had been to occupied with taking in all the new images.

The housemaid knocked on the worn-down front door at around 10 o'clock to take Catherine to London via the Floo Network and then travel to King's Cross by the Underground.

Everything was rather new for the eleven-year-old, for she hadn't traveled further than the local village during the roughly four years of time that lied between the incident on the graveyard and the arrival of her Hogwarts letter in the Summer of 1938.

The modern-looking trains on Kings Cross station, the many muggles, the occasional happening of a witch of wizard stepping through the barrier and out of sight from the muggles. Catherine took a deep breath, only to smell the stinky pollution produced by the trains, and took off towards the wall between platforms 9 and 10 in a run.

Right when she was about to hit the wall, she closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she took in the glorious sight before her. Even though the grey and cloudy skies above London could be seen through the rooftop windows, the place seemed to be emitting a golden glow, enhancing the figures of many wizarding families with children that were all on their way to Hogwarts. Owls hooted above the heads of the crowd, cats sneaked their way through the many legs and occasionally you would hear the barking of a dog or the squeaking of a pet rat.

Almost everyone looked happy and content with the idea of going back to Hogwarts or even, like in Catherine's case, visit the legendary school for the first time. Proud parents bidding their children last goodbyes, tears falling and hugs being exchanged, Catherine suddenly realised that she would never have this. No one, except for the maid, which was waiting patiently next to her, would ever come here with her as a parent, hug her a last time before not seeing her for half a year, placing a gentle kiss on top of her hair and telling her to be careful and have fun.

She had ruined that moment of ever happening, not that any of the remainders of her close family would have missed her anyways.

But with everyone being so happy together, Catherine still thought about how it would be to have a loving family, when she spottet a young boy, not far away from her, looking just as lonely and lost as her. He too had no one with him, no family to bid him goodbye, no mother to give him a warming hug, no father to give him last advice on different teachers and how to act in their classes.