The Fifth Time || Selfparagraph
This was it, this was it!
Leia had basically ran the distance between where her mother had parked their car and King’s Cross Station itself. Her mother running after her, grinning at her little daughter’s enthusiasm, yet already wearing her doctors robe. It was right back to the hospital after Leia was sitting safe and sound inside the train, send on her way.
The Gryffindor didn’t feel sad about that, though - it had already been really nice to see her mother at all, who had taken days off to spend with her daughter. Even her father had visited for a whole week, even though he was working in China again, at least for the rest of this year.
Yes, it really had been a nice time with her parents, and Leia had missed them, but in Hogwarts, no, in the train already, were her friends. People who were there for her every single day. Never did she have to feel the odd loneliness that came from having loving, dedicated parents that just weren’t there the majority of the time in Hogwarts.
“Leia, slower, sweetling!”, her mother called after her, but Leia just replied with a “But we’re almost there, mummy!”, jogging past the pillars to just the right one. Standing in front of the stone wall, grinning and panting like a lunatic, muggles other than her mother would probably think she was just such one.
“Take my hand, mum!”, Leia said to her mother, who pulled her dark brown hair into a ponytail, and when Elizabeth did take it, after one quick look around, they were seemingly gone from King’s Cross altogether.
It was a horrible feeling to Mrs Liu, walking through that wall, no matter if she did it 10 or 100 times. Sort of pulled on your skin, walking through stone onto the fabled platform 9 3/4. Messed with your head little, leaving you a little dizzy, and then blinded by the light again.
Instantly, there was more chatter, more noise - owls were rebelling against their cages, cats were chasing after rats and toads, their owners running after them squealing. The train, too, already steaming as if they weren’t just right on time, if not a little early. It was all a little much for Elizabeth Liu, a little too chaotic for someone who loved having order and knowing how crucial it was to success in life.
But in midst all this clutter of trunks and bags, her daughter, pulling her hand, ran so quickly and happily, it made her rucksack bounce on her slim back. This was her world, Elizabeth thought, and remembered the day that lady, that witch had visited them. Remembered how Leia had first smiled this intense, radiating grin of overwhelmed joy that she had when she was talking about his - about the Wizarding World.
A little heartbreak snuck into Elizabeth’s heart for a second, only to be gone in a flutter again. This was what she was feeling in the hospital, too, being needed, helping people. This was what Longwei felt when he was travelling, when he was improving hospitals and the medical field. Elizabeth knew that Leia never had it easy with parents who were as... absorbed into their careers as Longwei and she were. Maybe with all of this, Leia would be able to understand them better.
“Mum, the train’s leaving soon!”, Leia pulled her mother out of her thoughts, already standing on the steps into the train, “I’ll write you, yes? Weekly, like I’ve done before. Everything super exciting and amazing! I hope I’ll make new friends! Do you think I will, mummy?”
Elizabeth smiled at her bubbly mess of a daughter. “Of course you will. After all, you’re the sweetest girl I’ve seen on this whole platform.”, Leia’s mother said and Leia rolled her eyes cheekily in response.
A kiss on the forehead, and her sweetling ran through the tight train hall, into a compartment where other kids hugged her and hung themselves out of the windows, waving good-bye as the train took off.
Waving back eagerly, Elizabeth stood on the platform for a while after the train had left. It felt all so... odd to her, the laughing witches and wizards around her, the school for magic her daughter visited.
But of course it did. She was a muggle, afterall.