September 1st, 1921.
A compartment in the Hogwarts Express.
Summer had been an odd thing.
The obvious aside; the utterly nasty events of the school year, her row with Ruth-- the whole three months of summer holidays had sat strangely on her. Not unpleasant. Just… mis-set, like a picture hung a fraction crooked. Not just because of what had happened at school, but at home, too. Things had changed. Not for the better, nor the worse, but in a sickly profound way. It was William. He’d finished at Hogwarts, and that changed the shape of everything. He was no longer simply her brother, always a year ahead of her, the familiar presence she could measure her days against. He was done with it.
It was like removing a load-bearing beam. Everything still stood, of course, but the weight redistributed. Even with him at home, his place had shifted. The adults spoke to him differently. Plans were made with his name in them. Even when he was right there in the house, right in front of her, he already felt half a step into the world beyond it. And Ellen—Ellen was simply the one still at school. With two more years to catch up.
But it was not solely that which gripped her. She understood endings; she had always understood them, and her brother finishing Hogwarts was natural. Inevitable. And yet, inevitability did not make the absence smaller. Or the sudden sinking.. loneliness.
There had been a certain comfort, something steady, in William’s presence throughout her years at Hogwarts, and only now, having boarded the train without him, sitting here in this compartment as the train rushed onward to her fifth year, did she realise how much she had relied on it. He had always been the one to fall back on; the person to sit with if nothing else presented itself.
And with that gone, she was left with one very uncomfortable thought: she was not sure if she had friends. True friends. To just sit with, if she so wanted. To be sat with. Among other things. Ruth, perhaps? Though at present, that connection seemed strained. The same for Lissa Garver.
It was a rather pitiful thought, one she'd never thought of regarding herself. Sure, she knew people, there was Benji, Alice, and.. and..
Well, she knew people, and that mattered. It did. It had to.
.. ugh. How utterly melancholy. Ellen shook her head to herself, and picked up the glossy society magazine in her lap again—Tatler—turning the page with more care than it deserved.
