Following the instructions on her letter, she slowly made her way over to Platform nine and three quarters, which too predictably had its hidden entrance in a wall between platforms nine and ten. Walking through the barrier were people in robes and other outdated clothes, disappearing at regular intervals, and she realized that she was fifty minutes early as she glanced at the massive clock over her head. The silence was deafening compared to the noise and chaos on the other side of the entrance. The platform was almost empty, save a few families who had arrived in advance like her, but an old stream train was already there. To be clear, she had nothing against the nineteenth century's methods of transportation. However, the bright red and gold coloring the train was simply flashing, ridiculous and aggressive to her eyes. If she had to bet some money, she would bet that a Gryffindor Headmaster had chosen to paint the train like this to exasperate his colleagues and his students. The only good point, as far as she could tell, was that only a blind student could miss it.
She got her trunk down out of the trolley and then proceeded to try to get it into the train. Needless to say, her strength wasn't enough, and after pushing the trunk in vain for the better part of five minutes she had to use her levitation skill to finally put it inside the wagon. Hopefully, getting her trunk out of the train would be simpler.
Most of the compartments were empty, as expected given how few people were on the platform. Choosing a compartment at the end of the train, she put her trunk in one corner of the compartment and opened it to take a book to read. With the need to change her robes before arrival at the school, she wouldn't put her trunk in a place she couldn't reach. Getting herself comfortable, she started to read Curses and Counter-Curses for the fifth time. Not for long however, as more and more families entered the magical platform and her attention was kept more and more on the newcomers. Watching them, she couldn't help but feel a bit jealous. Unlike her, these children looked happy with those who accompanied them, they were not alone, and they had someone who cared about their education and well-being. All things which never entered the Dursleys' minds, she was sure. For a moment, she really desired to have a family. She briefly wondered if her mother would be proud of her, before dismissing the thought. Asking something to her mother was beyond her power forever.
With fifteen minutes left to go before departure, smoke from the steam engine drifted over the heads of the chattering and growing crowd. The platform was now the site of a gathering of hundreds of people, with more arriving every ten seconds. Each had their own style of wizarding clothes and brought plenty of animals with them. There were cats of every colour, owls of every species. Toads were rare and far between, especially compared to the felines and the birds, but there were also animals which didn't enter any of the categories authorised on the school letter, rabbits and guinea pigs among them.
Trunks were loaded inside the compartments, students came aboard, and the train began to quickly fill itself. She saw a boy with dreadlocks surrounded by many others, opening a box containing a tarantula and unleashing a torrent of screams. Apparently some students felt species like owls were just too tame. The people around the tarantula shrieked and yelled when half of the spider's body started to move and poked outside the box.
Five minutes before eleven o'clock, the activity on the platform grew even more intense, as a round-faced, chubby-built kid with dark brown hair and a lightning scar on his forehead arrived on the platform. He was followed a very old woman carrying a dead vulture on her hat, several other wizards and dozens of fans and journalists (with their outdated cameras, no need to ask who they were). Hearing half of the platform shout "It's Longbottom!" all but confirmed it was indeed the famous and only Boy-Who-Lived, Neville Longbottom himself. From what she could view from the train, the boy seemed to deliberately attract attention while continuing towards the middle of the platform with a pace which would have made many VIP's in the non-magical world jealous. Alexandra had read in some books her family and Neville's had been political allies, but seeing the adulation directed towards him, she realized he profited completely from an event where his parents had ended up dead. Not a good point in her mind.
A minute or so after, another family, this one completely ignored by the rest of the platform arrived to the platform. There were a lot of kids coming together, all had red hair and similar faces affirming there were from the same family.
"Mom – geroff!"
There were five in total, a slightly fat woman with a nice smile on her face and motherly air about her, two older boys who looked like identical twins and displayed the air of persons about to play a prank on someone, a girl who looked to be around a year younger than Alexandra, and the last was the boy she assumed had just spoken. The boy looked to be around her age, but was at least three or four inches taller than Alexandra, and he was quite homely looking. Big hands, big feet, a long nose and ginger hair.