The girl across the aisle seemed familiar. He had eased his long limbs down into the seat, settling himself austerely on the faded fabric of the seat, and it was as he had begun to shake out his newspaper he had noticed her. At first, all he had noticed was the hair. It spilled down to her shoulders, bounced up from her scalp in ringlets that caught the sickly light of the train, frizzed in unpredictable ways that the girl seemed supremely unconcerned about.
Other than the hair, she was entirely unremarkable. A little stocky in build, burrowed under layers of sweaters and scarves necessitated by the cold that seemed to permeate everything in the murky November afternoon, the girl was not particularly interesting. Far more alluring was the woman four seats ahead, with sleek dark hair and curiously slanting eyes.
But ah, fate works in mysterious ways. As the train pulled away from the station, the girl glanced up from her laptop computer and gazed absently across the aisle, looking out at the sleeting rain. Their eyes met hesitantly, and as hers widened in recognition he buried himself in the newspaper, his dark eyes boring holes through the words.
The car was quiet, in the way that long-distance train cars tend to be early in the morning. Surrounded by crumpled paper and empty coffee cups, the girl’s table was as disordered as her hair. He resolved not to look up until the train reached London.
“Sir?”
It was the girl. Her voice was tentative and strained over the sound of the train moving over the tracks.
He rattled his paper in reply.
“I nearly didn’t recognize you,” she would tell him later, smiling. “At first, with the short hair, it was almost impossible.”
He would snort, irritated at the blatant falsehood.
“Little has changed about me in forty-five years of life, Hermione.”
“Mm. But much has changed to me,” she will return, saucily, and though he rarely smiles, even now, his lips might twitch and his scowl become less pronounced.
“Miss Granger,” he growls, finally, after minutes have passed and she has not moved, and at first there is no way to tell if it is an admonishment, an acknowledgment, or a threat.
“Why are you taking a train to London?” she asks, and when he doesn’t respond she continues. “I’m a student at Uni now, sir. A Muggle one,” she adds, cheekily.
“Miss Granger, I could not possibly have any interest in the goings-on of a former student.”
But he will.
A/N: I hate abandonment as much as the next person, but with the completion of my undergraduate degree and the impending commencement of my graduate program, I feel a certain lassitude towards any recreational writing. This is my attempt to get back on the horse.
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