Fylde Railway Station

The passing train brought with it a heavy gust of fresh air from the outdoor track, pushing through the June humidity like [a witty simile cutting through the consciousness of a budding author], shading in cerulean the outlines of a woman's thighs in the cloth of a robin's egg pencil dress she'd chosen from her closet that morning. She leaned forward slightly, eyelids drooping to shield the slick membrane of her iris from the breeze, allowing the rest of her exposed face to catch the chill with no further impediment. The woman was waiting for a ride back to a village north of her present location to meet an old primary school friend for a lunch date. The two had reunited through a convenient networking mishap, something about a misrecorded e-mail address. She was already deciding what to order, having looked up the restaurant's menu prior to the actual date of the visit: crab bisque with rosemary garnish, a slice of pumpernickel toast, and a glass of water on the side with two lemon slices -- one perched on the rim of the glass, and one on the coaster plate. Something straight from the pages of a highly-respected recipe magazine. Perhaps placed against a cream tablecloth in ceramics to match (aside from the water, of course).

The gust subsides as quickly as it came, and the woman stands straight again, exhaling what she'd managed to hold back of the breeze for an instant more. Filled with a fresh outlook, she surveys her surroundings: a small sitting area just behind the track for those who lack the will to stand. A portly man in his sixties dressed in a very drab tee and khaki cargos. A stumpy university student with what looked like a black mop rooted to his scalp, a pasty, sunken-eyed man in gray sweats who hadn't been there a minute before, an open-handed arm extended toward the track. A mass of varying reds and boney-whites spattered along the track, a trail which lead to the three parallel upper sixths of a bespectacled man in his early forties, cleanly sliced through at the midsection, while another two, jagged cuts -- likely incited by the wheels of the train -- were likely the source of the trail itself.

That was unexpected. A scream sounded, sirens joined, the news was out within the minute. The magical world was (again!) without a minister. The man with the sunken eyes had vanished as he'd arrived.

The woman had returned to the scene of the crime -- the one in the blue dress which she had, coincidentally, chosen to wear again that day. She was fishing in a small, silvery clutch handbag for a tube of tinted lip balm when she noticed that, similarly, the man with the sunken eyes had also returned. He was seated on a bench near where he'd stood the week before dressed exactly as he had been then, focusing on the concrete platform itself, a ticket stub in hand. The woman paused, staring, breath quickening slightly as the events replayed in her mind's eye -- as little as she'd seen, that is. He looked worse-off, she noticed, than he had: his acne was worse, his hair moving on to "doused" in its own oils as opposed to a "light grease". A yellowish stain was embedded in the stitches of the worn sweatshirt, just beneath his collarbone. The handbag clipped shut, and before she realized what she was doing, she heard the click of her low-heeled shoes as she approached the man to broach the subject of what exactly happened the week prior.

"Excuse me." She initiates once within two feet.

The man slowly raises his glassy eyes to meet somewhere along the bridge of her nose. It takes him a moment to verbally respond. "Can I help you?"

"I, ah..." She hesitates. "I believe you were here last week... some time...? Tuesday?"

Shit! Did she see? Did she know? Impossible; she was definitely a muggle. Even so, why did she ask? "Why do you ask?" He'd unintentionally taken the offensive. Likely, not a very good move.

"Just asking..." The woman was Scottish. "I thought I'd seen you just as that... that thing happened." She noted his lisp.

Hugh's lips pursed. "Oh, yeah." An admission.

"Terrible thing, that was." She took the open space beside him on the bench, resting her handbag in her lap. "Supposedly some foreign politician, at that. Real shameful thing. Stumped the, ah... the autopsy people."

"Hrm." The digital sign above a large poster had caught Hugh's eye. The text scrolled along the date, the time to the second, the temperature... June 9. He thought of Sophia, and how she must have given birth by then. He wondered what its name was.

Every once in a while a certain man would go on a train ride to clear his head. This certain man being Drew Brown, he just so happened to need to clear his mind at the same time that greasy lad and pretty lady were at the station. The three of them were the only ones at this stop, simply by chance. Simply by chance, Drew was wearing capris with deep pockets to safely hide his wand away from the unobservant eye. Though, if one looked hard enough, it was possible to see where his wand poked at the fabric. Drew was dressed casually, in mere capris, flip-flops, and a white T-shirt. His hair had that messy-but-fiiiiine look to it, as he had barely brushed it this morning. It was growing out, and starting to resemble its appearance back around his fourth year of Hogwarts.

Oh, those were the days.