"September first, lovelies! Now, as much as we'd all like a normal day, don't forget that for the past few years-"

"Decades," someone coughed, getting a few chuckles out of the gathered group.

"-That for some reason or another, all of the crazies come out of the woodwork. Be prepared for anything, and I do mean anything. Last year it was the package of dissected lizard parts found under a seat and I'm sure that one again, we'll be getting reports of owl smuggling and people disappearing into thin air like we have every year. Just jot it all down and we'll deal with it later. And remind any kids who ask about a platform nine and three-quarters that they can be fined for being a public nuisance. If it's some coming of age prank that's been started, I want someone to put a stop to it." The man talking stopped his pacing and tirade, surveying the room. He gave a curt nod when what he saw satisfied him.

"Right, platform assignments are posted," he said. "And before anyone asks, Williams and Carpenter are the ones assigned to platform nine. Good luck to both of you. You're in for a fun morning."

A pair of platform officials groaned.

"I already went through this in June," one of them muttered. "Why am I assigned to nine more than anyone else on the fun days?"

"Because the Captain is still trying to convince you that that particular platform isn't haunted, contrary to your theory," his partner stated. "Honestly James, aren't you too old for ghost stories?"

James Williams rolled his eyes. "Well how else do you explain all of the reports of people vanishing and appearing out of thin air and walking through walls, Louis?" he demanded.

"It's a crowded platform so it's hard to keep track of a person's movements. People think they see something strange out of the corner of their eye. There's plenty of explanations that are more plausible than ghosts," Louis Carpenter drawled.

"You have your theories and I have mine," James said as he and his partner strolled out of the room. "How are Jennifer and Emily?"

"Good," Louis replied. "Emily's already planning her eleventh birthday party, even though it's not for another three months. Jennifer has already had to say no to having pony rides and a slide bigger than our house."

James laughed. "Her dreams keep on getting bigger and bigger every year. Does she still want to be Prime Minister when she grows up?"

"No, she's currently decided that she wants to be a big animal veterinarian."

James raised an eyebrow. "Like horses and cows?" he questioned.

"I wish. She wants to move to Africa and be a vet for lions and elephants and giraffes."

James broke out laughing as they arrived at platform nine. It was just gone six in the morning and already the platform was filling up with people commuting to work and parents taking their kids to school.

The first three hours passed like any other day but both James and Louis knew that it would be around nine o'clock when the reports started coming in.

"Owl on platform ten," James' voice crackled over the walkie-talkie. "I've got the first sighting. You owe me five quid."

Louis chuckled and hit the button so he could respond. "Fine, but you're buying coffee after the shift is done."

"Fine, since technically you're paying."

"Excuse me, sir, but do you know where platform nine and three-quarters is?"

Louis sighed and glanced at the family who had approached him. Mother and father with two children. The oldest of the children had a large trunk with a cat carrier tied on top. Why did people insist on bringing their pets with them wherever they went? "Platform nine and three-quarters? There's no such thing," he informed them. "There's platform nine and platform ten but we don't have any platforms named as something as absurd as platform nine and three-quarters."

The family frowned and walked away, looking at the signs and their daughter's ticket as they did. The father seemed especially frustrated. After a few minutes, they approached a family with an owl (most likely the one James had seen) and talked. Louis raised an eyebrow as the mother holding the owl cage gave him a particularly nasty look. He made a point of looking away and scanning the platform and when he looked back at the area, the two families had disappeared.

"Two down," he commented to his partner as they passed each other. "What's the record?"

"Sightings or questions?"

"Both."

"Twenty-seven sightings three years ago, thirteen questions last year. If there's actually a company or a school responsible for this, they're slipping. It used to be one or two a year a decade ago."

Louis glanced at James. "You've been doing this for far too long," he stated. "A decade? Haven't you only been working here for six or so years?"

James glowered at him. "Don't start implying things about my age," he grumbled. "I just hear a lot of things."

"Must be the side effect of having such large ears."

Louis received another glare from his partner before James' mood lightened and he chuckled. "Just for that, you get to deal with the mother and daughter coming up to us. They look like they've got a question."

Louis turned his head and he gave a small shake of his head when he spotted the barn owl, whose cage was sitting on top of the old-fashioned trunk. He was pleasantly surprised when there was no mention of the dratted platform nine and three-quarters, just a simple question about where a bathroom was. He pointed it out and tried not to stare as the mother and daughter headed in that direction.

"I don't understand it," he mentioned to James the next time they passed. "Some of these families look completely out of touch with the world and others seem completely normal. And it's always new families. How are they hearing about this supposed platform?"

"Probably through the kids," his partner suggested. "Haven't you noticed that it's only the kids who have the tickets?"

Louis had noticed. It had actually been one of the first things he had noticed during his first year at King's Cross, back in 1991, when a green-eyed boy had come up to him asking about platform nine and three-quarters and a train that left at eleven o'clock. The boy had stuck out because he hadn't been accompanied by any adults.

When it was a particularly slow day, Louis sometimes found himself wondering what had happened to that kid. Those moments were becoming even more common as his daughter Emily was approaching the age of eleven, roughly the same age that boy had been.

As with every other September first, the strange sightings and reports stopped after eleven o'clock. Louis and James ended their shift with twenty sightings and seven questions, not even coming close to the records James had mentioned earlier. They gave their reports and after changing out of the uniform, stopped for coffee on their way out of the station.

"See you tomorrow?" Louis asked after a few last minutes of conversation.

James nodded. "Let me know how Emily's first day of school went," he said.

Louis' lips turned upwards in a small smile. "She's probably on top of the moon since it's her final year at primary school and therefore she gets to boss all of the younger kids around. It's going to be a shock next year when she's bottom of the food chain again."

"Have there been any more incidents since that one you mentioned?"

"Which one? The one where the teacher was insisting that she set his lesson plans on fire with simply a look or the one where she supposedly froze a boy during P.E. when he was about to nail her with a ball?"

"I was talking about the lesson plan incident but really, she froze a boy?"

Louis' face fell. "Supposedly. He stopped moving for a few seconds and when he was able to regain movement, he couldn't move his feet from the floor. He swore up and down that Emily was behind it but no one could figure out how. Eventually they just decided that the entire class was seeing things and checked the school for a gas leak."

James snorted in amusement. "I'm looking forward to the next time you have one of those stories. Your daughter is something else."

"Hopefully there isn't a next time," Louis muttered as he tossed his cup in the rubbish bin.

There was.

Shortly before her eleventh birthday, James received a call to attend an immediate meeting with the headmistress, Emily's fourth period teacher, his daughter, and his wife Jennifer. Normally he would've let his wife handle things but he was immensely curious to hear about this incident first hand.

"Let me get this straight. You dropped a spider on Joey's desk and it grew to the size of his face within seconds?" he asked flatly.

"I didn't know it was going to grow!" Emily declared. "I thought it would be funny to hear him scream because he was making fun of Liam for screaming like a girl and I knew he was afraid of spiders. I didn't know spiders could grow like that!"

Louis glanced at the teacher. "Do we still have this spider?"

The teacher shivered. "One of the janitors came and collected it. I took pictures but everyone wanted it out of the room as soon as possible." She passed over her phone and Louis flipped through the three pictures. He paled as he saw for himself how large the spider had supposedly grown.

"How did you find the spider?" he asked his daughter.

Emily scuffed the floor with her shoes and was looking at the floor as she spoke. "It was on the radiator. I sit right next to it and Joey is right behind me, so I picked it up, turned around, and put it on his desk. The next thing I knew, it was growing."

"Nothing is really going to happen as a result of this," the headmistress assured Louis and his wife. "Joey has already gone home and his parents weren't thrilled hearing about his behavior that led to this incident. They didn't want any action taken, so all we're doing is sending Emily home early. Normally I wouldn't even do that but I understand that there's been a few other incidents in the past couple of years."

Emily's cheeks colored in embarrassment. "I don't know why these things keep happening," she whispered. Jennifer wrapped her daughter in a hug.

"We're fine taking her home," she informed the headmistress. "It's the last day of school before winter break, so I'm sure she won't be missing too many lessons."

A few minutes later and Emily was collecting her rucksack and books. Louis sighed as he watched his daughter go down the school corridor. "I'll take her to work with me," he told Jennifer. "She'll like that better than being at your office."

Jennifer nodded. "Do you have any idea why these incidents might be happening?" she asked her husband. "I've never heard of any of the other parents mention things like this happening with their children."

Louis shook his head. "I wish I knew, Jenny. I wish I knew."

It was the first Saturday in June when the Carpenter family finally received an answer to their questions. Louis and Jennifer's schedules had finally matched up for the first time in months and the family was set to enjoy the day together when a knock came on the door.

With a small groan, Louis got to his feet and answered the door. He frowned in confusion when no one immediately came into sight when a man cleared his throat and brought his attention downward.

"Hello, my name is Filius Flitwick," the unusually short man introduced himself. "I've come in regards to an Emily Carpenter's secondary education."

"She's already been enrolled."

"Many of the students we talk to are, but Hogwarts is a school that is more designed to fit her specialized needs. May I come in and talk with your family?"

Louis' eyes narrowed. "Specialized needs?"

The man glanced down at a piece of paper in his hand. "It's been my understanding that there's been a couple of incidents. One involving setting fire to lesson plans and another involving a rapidly growing spider?"

Louis' eyes widened. He and Jennifer had made sure that those incidents had never been put into Emily's school record. "You can tell us what caused those?" he demanded.

Filius Flitwick nodded and that was all it took for Louis to open his door for the man.

A few hours later, Louis, Jennifer, and Emily sat in stunned silence. "Magic?" Emily whispered. Jennifer's hand twitched and Louis saw the struggle in his wife's eye as she tried not to make the sign of the cross.

"That certainly explains some things," he commented. He turned to Filius Flitwick, who the family had learned was a Charms professor at the school for magic Emily had been accepted to. "What are the next steps?"

"There's a shopping day arranged for Muggleborn students at Diagon Alley so they can get supplies and to meet other families. This year the date is July seventeenth but if your family is unable to make it, I or another professor can make arrangements to bring you to the Alley on a different day. The train ticket for the Hogwarts Express will arrive sometime in August and on September first, students catch the train at King's Cross Station from platform nine and three-quarters."

Louis made a choked sound, drawing alarmed looks from his wife and daughter. He opened his mouth to explain but all that came out was laughter.

"Louis, what are you doing here? I thought you took the day off!"

Louis Carpenter grinned as his partner approached him, looking thoroughly confused. The look of confusion only grew when he saw Emily beside him, pushing a cart with a trunk and an owl cage strapped to it.

"Excuse me, but do you happen to know where I might find platform nine and three-quarters?" Louis barely managed to get the words out before he broke down in a fit of laughter. He had been planning this ever since Emily had received her ticket and he had seen James' name on the schedule as the platform attendant for platform nine.

James glared at his partner. "You better be joshing right now," he snarled and cursed when Louis gave a helpless shrug.

After a few more seconds, Louis stopped chuckling and beckoned his partner of seven years over to the wall between platforms nine and ten. "Emily and I have something to show you," he said. "Hold on to her ticket."

It was tricky with three people holding on to one small train ticket but the awkward experience was worth it when Louis watched James' eyes widened as he took in the platform nine and three-quarters sign and the Hogwarts Express.

"It existed?" James demanded as Emily began pushing her cart away from the platform entrance. "All these years and it bloody existed?"

"Yeah, who knew?" Louis said. James turned to him.

"How?" he asked. "How?"

Louis clapped a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Tell you what," he said. "After your shift is done, I'll meet you at the south entrance and we'll go out for drinks and I'll explain. You're buying."

"Okay," James agreed. As he stared at the platform, he suddenly cursed. "We're never getting another platform assignment on September first again, are we?"

Louis grinned. "Never," he confirmed. "I've already made the captain promise. From now on, platforms nine, ten, and nine and three-quarters are ours every September first."