Drabble: The London Underground
I'd meant this for the final day of hp_lit, but the last post went up as I was writing it. I fail at life, obviously.
I have a distinct feeling this will become a piece of a larger story.
Title: The London Underground
Author: justholdstill
Character(s): Nymphadora Tonks
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 485
Warnings: n/a
Notes: The red shoes are borrowed from eudaimon, whose Dora I love.
On the platform, waiting for the train that skims under the streets of London to take her home, she watches the men and women pass her by, smiles at the redhead boy she catches looking at her in her black party frock. They move through the station, tidal, some in suits and some in jeans, a man with a pierced nose quietly holding the hand of a man in a green jumper; a young woman, barely twenty by the look of her , in a pomegranate-colored salwar kameez, her small daughter tucked, sleeping, into her long brown coat. They are people who have other people - some of them are rushing home to wives and pot roasts, children with chocolate on their faces, some to phone calls with far-away relatives, others to new and expectant lovers.
At work they think she’s crazy, risking the crowds, not going by floo, but what keeps her there on the train, moving back and forth each day between her tiny flat and the Ministry, is the pulse of life in the rails, in the city - is the steady, insistent beat of humanity.
She thinks of her father as she takes a seat across from the mother and her daughter, thinks of her mother as they pull forward and hurtle into the gloom. She doesn’t see them often enough, tucked away in the north as they are, she herself so occupied by the increasing demands of her job, but she thinks of them fondly now, on her way to a party, and longs for Sunday, when she will be home again. Tonks looks down the length of the car, at all the eyes staring at the ceiling, at all the feet tapping on the floor. The man next to her who is humming something to himself.
She notices that the little girl - who is perhaps one year old, two at most - has woken, and is surveying her with dark, blinking eyes from the shelter of the coat. The girl’s gaze flicks from her hair (wild and pink, today) to the fuchsia petticoat showing under her dress, and back again, and then she grins around her thumb. Tonks winks back. She pretends to hide a sneeze behind her hand, turning her hair in those few seconds from pink to blue and back again, and when she looks up after making a show of dabbing at her nose with an invisible hanky, the little girl’s eyes are shining with frank delight and fascination.
The next stop is hers; she waves goodbye as if to an old friend, watches as the girl’s fingers fan out in a childish salute, and then turns away, feeling the gust from the train move her skirt around her legs. She almost laughs out loud as she climbs the stairs into the humid August evening. There is a party to attend, and she is wearing her red dancing shoes.
*
I have a distinct feeling this will become a piece of a larger story.
Title: The London Underground
Author: justholdstill
Character(s): Nymphadora Tonks
Rating: G
Genre: Gen
Word Count: 485
Warnings: n/a
Notes: The red shoes are borrowed from eudaimon, whose Dora I love.
On the platform, waiting for the train that skims under the streets of London to take her home, she watches the men and women pass her by, smiles at the redhead boy she catches looking at her in her black party frock. They move through the station, tidal, some in suits and some in jeans, a man with a pierced nose quietly holding the hand of a man in a green jumper; a young woman, barely twenty by the look of her , in a pomegranate-colored salwar kameez, her small daughter tucked, sleeping, into her long brown coat. They are people who have other people - some of them are rushing home to wives and pot roasts, children with chocolate on their faces, some to phone calls with far-away relatives, others to new and expectant lovers.
At work they think she’s crazy, risking the crowds, not going by floo, but what keeps her there on the train, moving back and forth each day between her tiny flat and the Ministry, is the pulse of life in the rails, in the city - is the steady, insistent beat of humanity.
She thinks of her father as she takes a seat across from the mother and her daughter, thinks of her mother as they pull forward and hurtle into the gloom. She doesn’t see them often enough, tucked away in the north as they are, she herself so occupied by the increasing demands of her job, but she thinks of them fondly now, on her way to a party, and longs for Sunday, when she will be home again. Tonks looks down the length of the car, at all the eyes staring at the ceiling, at all the feet tapping on the floor. The man next to her who is humming something to himself.
She notices that the little girl - who is perhaps one year old, two at most - has woken, and is surveying her with dark, blinking eyes from the shelter of the coat. The girl’s gaze flicks from her hair (wild and pink, today) to the fuchsia petticoat showing under her dress, and back again, and then she grins around her thumb. Tonks winks back. She pretends to hide a sneeze behind her hand, turning her hair in those few seconds from pink to blue and back again, and when she looks up after making a show of dabbing at her nose with an invisible hanky, the little girl’s eyes are shining with frank delight and fascination.
The next stop is hers; she waves goodbye as if to an old friend, watches as the girl’s fingers fan out in a childish salute, and then turns away, feeling the gust from the train move her skirt around her legs. She almost laughs out loud as she climbs the stairs into the humid August evening. There is a party to attend, and she is wearing her red dancing shoes.
*