Molly Weasley was uncertain, as she stepped through the barrier to Platform Nine and Three Quarters with her youngest, leaving Ron alone at King’s Cross. She expected him to hit the barrier, and fly the car to school- such was Dumbledore’s plan. She and Arthur had debated allowing that to happen, given the difficulties it would give Arthur at work, and finally agreed to allow it to happen.
The tricky part was that Harry wasn’t with Ron, and he was supposed to be.
She glanced down at Ginny, walking quickly next to her. Ginny was… anxious, it seemed. It was certainly an improvement from the summer.
Ever since the family visit to Diagon Alley, Ginny had stayed holed up in her room almost all day every day, crying. That was also the only time she could ever remember seeing Fred or George come to breakfast alone; it seemed they took turns spending the day with Ginny, trying to comfort her.
When Lyra and Hermione had arrived to see Ginny, Molly had entertained them for the better part of an hour while Fred headed upstairs to get his brother and sister. The two girls talked extensively with Ginny, before disappearing with her for a couple minutes to, reportedly, ‘do the Papa Tango’. Why they’d had to go somewhere else to do some kind of dance, she’d had no idea, and hadn’t asked. Then Lyra had offered to make Ginny a student instructor, done some explaining, and gotten a yes. And they’d left.
Ginny had been back to crying in her room ever since.
She’d been in contact with Dumbledore on the topic a few times. Dumbledore was actually debating cancelling Ginny’s part of the plan, and rearranging around it, if she wasn’t able to pull herself together in time for the trip up.
Such a cancellation would involve cancelling the marriage contract, and releasing Ginny to follow her heart without worrying about such a contract, so- including in the letter she’d sent just the night before- she’d been pushing Dumbledore to cancel it, and rework around it. If it was possible to do that, maintaining the existing plan wasn’t worth the pain it was obviously causing her daughter.
She took a deep breath, and glanced behind her, in time to spot Ron coming successfully through the barrier.
Then the whistle blew, and the same deafening noise that had drowned it out last time did it again this time, though not as much- the whistle was a lot louder this time. One look up at the train, and…
Well, they had a lot more cars fully decorated and everything as Hogwarts Express cars this time than they did last year. And, while she still recognized the telltale wrongness in the shape of the locomotives, three of them were painted in Hogwarts Express colors, and looked like they might actually belong there, coupled between the scarlet steam locomotive she was familiar with and the cars.
And all four scarlet locomotives seemed to have blown whistles, even though only the one had smoke coming from it… or the ‘drive rods’ Arthur had told her about when they’d sent Bill off for his first year so long ago. The drive rods it needed to actually move.
“Hurry up,” she told her children. “It’s about to leave!” She completely ignored Arthur’s fascination with the large device the man standing on the back of the nearest locomotive was showing to the normal driver of the Hogwarts Express. Apparently, he’d pushed something on it to make all of the locomotives blow their whistles at once.
Ginny was of half a mind to just leave her trunk where it was, in the middle of the walkway at the front of the frontmost car, and go find herself an empty car to hide in. She repeatedly reminded herself that Dumbledore, and her mother, were relying on her to be strong, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough to keep her going for very long.
It didn’t exactly help that she couldn’t lift her entire trunk. Hermione- who her heart had leaped for as well- had said she was an ‘almost alarmingly strong specialized Aethr’, but that obviously didn’t translate into physical effort. She’d gone through Lyra’s Papa Tango… and nothing had happened. The three week timer would run out the evening of the next day, but so?
So she dragged her trunk by one end, down the length of the train, looking for an empty compartment she could hole up in.
She was most determinedly not crying, but she knew people would be able to tell she had been crying recently. She’d seen herself in the mirror, after all.
She made it to the second car without issue, and without empty compartments. She was almost to the point of not even checking the compartments as she walked past, but she knew she’d never find an empty one if she didn’t check the compartments.
Then, she passed a small gang of upper-year students. They were already wearing their robes, but she didn’t care enough to tell which house they were in, nor guess at which year, except to recognize that they were definitely much older than she.
Then, her ears picked out a few of the words they were saying.
“Did you see the lines on her face? It’s almost like someone killed her owl,” one was saying, quietly. She could at least credit him for trying to be discrete.
“Or like someone stole her spending money,” a second whispered.
A third spoke a little louder, not bothering to keep her from overhearing. “She must’ve fallen in love with her Lockhart books,” he said. “Then someone ruined one.”
She determinedly ignored him. She refused to respond to her rising anger. That’s what he no doubt wanted.
Then the fourth spoke up, and loudly. “Nah, she must’ve fallen in love with some rich kid that didn’t love her back. Right, Weasley?”
She closed her eyes, fighting the tears, and kept going. He’d struck home with that. That girl from Flourish and Blotts. She’d fallen in love… and all the girl had done, was to spend money on her and disappear, after saying only two words that didn’t make sense. And in so doing, split her heart across two unknowns… and making the full satisfaction of the same completely impossible. She’d checked- polygamy was illegal.
Very suddenly, she ran into someone. She was about to draw back to move around her- it felt like a girl- but she stopped herself when she felt the girl’s arms wrap around her.
Then she heard it. That same, smooth, beautiful voice she’d only heard two words from. Only, this time, it was marred by evident fury.
“Get. Out. Of. My. Sight.”
She knew instantly who she’d run into- and her heart leaped in response. She dropped her trunk painfully on the back of her own foot, but she didn’t care as she wrapped her arms around the girl in turn… and tried to comfort herself with her presence.
… Strange. She actually felt those boys’ fear as they fled back into their compartment.
And then, the girl spoke again, this time with concern. “C’mon,” she said. “Just one more car.” She started guiding her down the passage.
As they walked, Ginny not really caring where they were going, she glanced behind them.
Her trunk was floating dutifully behind her, in a reddish-gold magic aura- but those boys were nowhere to be seen.
As they rounded the corner, she thought she saw white and light blue hair in the corner of her eye.
Morning Sun didn’t know the name of the girl she’d just rescued from those Slytherins, but she also didn’t care at the moment.
She’d arrived early, then deliberately picked a compartment at the front of the train to wait for her- for the girl she’d crossed paths with in Flourish and Blotts. She’d had time to analyze and understand her feelings, and found that she loved the girl in turn. Which wasn’t surprising, given that it was the herding magic and even her kind had that. Unfortunately, though, her own love didn’t produce emotional energy.
Not that she cared, in the end; the girl produced enough of that energy to feed an entire hive all on her own.
Then, she’d finally detected the girl’s emotional signature.
The only word she could think of to describe the girl’s emotional state was… heartbroken.
So, she came running.
And just in time. Those Slytherins had been insulting her, hurting her even more. Their fear had climbed on its own a little more than she’d expected when she ordered them to leave- but still not enough.
So she’d taken advantage of her unique ability as an emotovore. She converted some of the love energy coming from the girl into fear energy, which she then poured straight into those boys. By doing that, pouring specific emotional energies into another being, she could manipulate their emotional state. It was utterly useless against other emotovores, as they wouldn’t be affected by it, and it was a losing proposition in terms of energy; they wouldn’t produce nearly as much as she’d burned before the induced emotion faded away.
But, it did what she needed it to. Those boys were instantly and absolutely terrified, and fled back into their compartment. That technique had been known to be used by the elite, back in Equestria, to annul any suspicion against them, and rapidly build trust with their targets.
She held the girl close, as she guided her back to her compartment, the girl’s luggage floating behind her in her magic aura.
As she walked, she noticed a second love bond coming from the girl, but she didn’t recognize the signature it was pointed at.