‘It’s that time again’ she thought to herself, while tearing off a piece of some sort of stale bread to dip into her soup in the Hogwarts staff room. She slipped on her red cotton tank top and headed to the secret nook she had found a few years ago. This was her place, where she did it every year. She swished her wand a few times at a large silver trolley as blue and pink sparks spewed out of it and just like that the trolley was filled to the brim with every kind of magical sweet you could imagine, with a little tray on the side for the money.
The small, old lady hobbled along to Dumbledore’s office to say she was off. After a brisk and painful walk to the train station she made it just in time for the departure to Kings Cross, platform nine and three quarters. She was hoping there weren’t any nasty first years this time. She looked back into the past when Fred and George had joined Hogwarts and played a nasty trick on her by giving her the teeth of a rabbit, meaning that every carriage she went to she got lots of strange looks and sniggers.
The train had arrived and crowds of children with all sorts of things with them piled in, looking for sweets and seats. After a while of confusion and tearful goodbyes, the great steam-powered beast started to move again, letting out a blood-curdling scream of the whistle as first years scurried to try and find somewhere to sit. It was her time.
She went around all of the little pockets in the steam engine, saying the same thing every time in her soft old voice: ‘Anything from the trolley, dears?’ Usually people would just buy a few chocolate frogs or some Berty Bots jelly beans for a joke, or a group of Slytherins would rudely tell her to buzz off. She didn’t like most Slytherins, because they were like spiders waiting to catch someone in their web of mischief.
As she made it to the final seating area and opened the slightly rickety door she immediately recognised a face she thought she would never in her lifetime see in person… Harry Potter. This was nerve-racking, as she thought he would be a mean, lean, cocky machine, but to her surprise, he seemed very timid compared to what she’d heard. She said her line and all he replied with was ‘We’ll take the lot,’ handing her a big pile of money. This obviously surprised the Weasley who was sitting across from him as well, with his bright ginger hair and many freckles.
And that was her shift for another year, and it was a good one at that.