A Bite of Hogwarts - chapter 42

Clang! Urgh…

As Mrs. Weasley was organizing her children so that they could enter Platform 9¾ in an orderly fashion, she heard a bang followed by the pained groans of a man.

Mrs. Weasley curiously looked over and saw that at the intersection of platforms 9 and 10, the man from before was holding a swollen cheek as he slowly stood up. He reached out to the hard metal barrier and stroked it, his eyes brimming with confusion and concern.

Quite a few travelers in the station stopped to point and whisper at this strange man.

Nearby, two police officers had immediately noticed this disturbance. Gripping their truncheons in a very strange manner, they began to walk through the crowd.

“Mom, what do we do now?”

The oldest red-headed boy, Percy, stopped and looked at his mother. It was obvious that they couldn’t go through with their original plan to enter Platform 9¾ while all the Muggles were watching.

So she had been a young witch from a Muggle family? Mrs. Weasley immediately realized what was going on after seeing Benitez’s confused reaction. Her kindhearted words had ended up making a mess.

“Percy, wait with your brothers and sister here. I’ll go over and help the man over there with his problem.”

Glancing at the two Ministry of Magic members wearing Muggle uniforms, Mrs. Weasley frowned and quickly walked over.

Her husband, Arthur Weasley, worked at the Ministry of Magic, so she was well aware of how this process worked. The combination of the Memory Charm and Muggle-Repelling Charm was simple and effective.

But this was only for masters of the Memory Charm. The majority of wizards and witches lacked precision when it came to the memories they wiped.

This also meant that this man had a high chance of losing his precious memories from just now forever.

“Excuse me, thank you…I’m sorry, please let me handle this matter.”

Mrs. Weasley squeezed her way through the crowd to the two Ministry of Magic members and then took out her little wand and waved it in front of them, at the same time pulling Benitez away from the dividing barrier.

“Miss, might I ask…”

“I am Molly Weasley. My husband is Arthur Weasley, and he also works at the ministry. I’m sending off my children to school today. I’m sure that all of us want the children to smoothly board the train today, right?”

Mrs. Weasley hastily explained, at the same time, indicating with her chin that the ‘police officers’ should look behind them.

The police officers turned their heads and saw those boys pushing carts with owls on top of them and the surrounding crowd of travelers. The two of them glanced at each other, nodded, and put their police truncheons back on their belts.

“Well then, thank you for your assistance. We’ll quickly take care of this situation so that it won’t prevent your children from getting to school.”

After saying this, the two police officers turned around and began to scatter the crowd like ordinary officers, once more restoring the flow of traffic.

“Forgive me, sir, I must apologize. I didn’t think…”

Mrs. Weasley pulled Benitez to the side and immediately began to apologize.

“You don’t need to apologize. I should have expected this. In such a crowded place, if you don’t have this sort of set-up, the place would be a mess. I’m just worried about little Alina.”

Benitez shook his head, a bitter smile on his lips.

After getting to know the Magic World a little, he had already realized when Mrs. Weasley appeared that this ‘invisible’ door only opened to witches and wizards.

“Madam, you must be a witch. Could you take a small request from me? If you see Alina inside, mm, that silver-haired girl, could you see how she’s doing? I’m worried that her luggage might be too heavy.”

Benitez paused, and then he earnestly spoke in a slightly pleading tone to the short and plump witch. This was all he could do as an ordinary person.

A single wall felt like a yawning chasm.

“Relax.”

Mrs. Weasley gently replied, waving at the children behind her.

“Percy, George, Fred…when you get to the platform, save the chatting with your classmates for later and help this mister’s daughter get to her seat. That should be fine, yes?”

“Of courses, mom.”

“No problem. She might even be a new student at our house.”

“She definitely won’t be Slytherin.”

The three boys enthusiastically nodded and immediately agreed to their mother’s request.

Mrs. Weasley smiled, and just when she was about to say something more, she heard a boy timidly interrupt her.

“Excuse me…”

Molly Weasley turned her head and saw a black-haired boy wearing glasses.

The boy was also pushing a large cart, and inside the cage atop the trunk was a beautiful snowy owl that was curiously observing its surroundings.

Yet another lost young wizard.

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Weasley softly chuckled. She kindly said, “Another one headed for Hogwarts…”

…

Meanwhile, on the other side.

King’s Cross Station, Platform 9¾.

After passing through the entrance to the platform, Alina looked up and sighed in praise.

“I didn’t think I’d get to see a steam engine in London. This might be the last one in service in all of Great Britain, maybe? Though its locomotion has probably been mostly modified with magic.”

The steam from the engine curled above the chattering crowd while cats moved around their feet.

The chattering of the crowd, the clunking of their unwieldy trunks, and the owls hooted at each other.

A red steam-engine train had stopped next to the packed train platform.

A sign near the front of the train declared ‘Hogwarts Express, Departing at 11 am.’

If one excluded the illegal flying car of the Weasley family, this was probably one of the few successful attempts at a magical machine, perhaps the only one.

But as the nation where the First Industrial Revolution began, Great Britain had entered the age of internal combustion in 1952. If one merely looked at the bright red shell of the train, one would find it very hard to imagine that this was an old model that had been in operation for fifty years.

But this single Hogwarts Express had required two terms of the Minister for Magic, one hundred and sixty-seven Memory Charms, and the largest Concealment Charm ever used in Britain to smoothly set up this train route between King’s Cross Station and the village of Hogsmeade.

Based on the records in ‘A History of Magic’, after 1945, when the technology of the Non-Magic World began to rapidly develop, technological development in the Magic World came to a standstill.

“It seems that if I want to try anything big, I first have to find out what happened that year.”

As Alina pondered, her finger played around with the silver hair on her shoulder.

If it was merely because of the International Statute of Secrecy established in 1692, the technological development of the Magic World shouldn’t have come to such a shuddering halt. Something else must have taken place after this.

Until she determined what sort of dispute was being hidden in the shadows, Alina had no plans to start an Industrial Revolution in the Magic World. After all, she didn’t want to end up a prisoner in Nurmengard.

“But that’s a problem for later. I’ve got an even more serious problem right now.”

Standing at one of the train carriages near the end, Alina helplessly pushed at the two large black trunks on her cart. Just how was she going to move these two trunks onto the train?

There was no doubt that Benitez had thought every method possible to fill every possible inch of space in the chest, or else it could never have been this heavy.

A saying suddenly came to Alina’s mind: the love of a father is like a mountain.

She! Simply! Couldn’t! Move it!