King's Cross Station on the first of September was a monument to mundane, chaotic misery. The air was thick with the scent of burning coal, damp wool, and the frantic, vibrating anxiety of hundreds of people rushing blindly toward their respective destinations.
For the Addams family, traversing the mundane side of the station was a remarkably smooth endeavor. Gomez strode forward with the manic, confident elegance of a Victorian aristocrat, his pinstriped suit immaculate, twirling a cane that concealed a rapier. Morticia glided beside him, her black silk gown seemingly unaffected by the soot covering the platform. The mundane commuters, sensing an aura of absolute, uncompromising lethality, unconsciously parted like the Red Sea, clearing a wide path for the gothic procession.
When they reached the barrier between Platforms Nine and Ten, there was no hesitant running or nervous glancing around. Gomez simply placed a hand on the brick wall, smiled a terrifying, razor-sharp smile, and stepped through the solid masonry.
Platform Nine and Three-Quarters was a localized explosion of noise and color.
The Hogwarts Express, a massive, gleaming scarlet steam engine, sat hissing on the tracks. The platform was packed with British wizarding families. Owls hooted from brass cages, cats yowled in woven baskets, and parents fussed over their children with a frantic, suffocating intensity that made the sixty-year-old soul inside Sunshine's body want to retreat into the nearest crypt.
"Look at them, Tish," Gomez murmured, his nose wrinkling in disgust. "They weep over a nine-month separation as if the children are marching to the gallows. And yet, when the children return, they will have learned nothing more lethal than a Tickling Charm. It is a profound waste of emotional energy."
"They are creatures of fragile sentiment, mon cher," Morticia agreed smoothly.
They stood near the very back of the train, away from the dense, suffocating crowds.
Sunshine wore a beautifully tailored, aggressively plain beige traveling dress. Her golden curls were brushed to a high shine, cascading over her shoulders. Around her neck, concealed beneath her high collar, the golden sunflower locket sat heavy against her skin, drawing the raw, immense power of her magical core into its goblin-silver prison. She was officially, biologically, and magically a void.
"The objective is observation, Sunbeam," Gomez said, kneeling down so he was at eye level with her. He didn't offer a tearful embrace. He offered the sharp, proud gaze of a commanding officer sending his best operative into the field. "You are entering the belly of the bureaucratic beast. Learn their habits. Catalog their weaknesses. If the Headmaster attempts to force a medical examination..."
"I will invoke the 1707 Educational Charters and demand the presence of a MACUSA legal representative," Sunshine recited flawlessly, her bright blue eyes cold and flat.
"My beautiful tactician," Gomez beamed, kissing her forehead.
Morticia stepped forward, resting her pale, icy hands on Sunshine's shoulders. She looked down at her daughter, her dark eyes filled with a heavy, protective gravity.
"Do not let their brightly colored robes and their cheerful, sanitized magic fool you, Sunshine," Morticia whispered, her velvet voice cutting through the hiss of the train's steam. "They are a society that worships light because they are terrified of what lives in the dark. They will look at your golden hair and assume you are weak. Let them. A blade is deadliest when it is entirely unexpected."
"I will be the most boring girl in the castle, Mother," Sunshine promised softly.
Wednesday stepped out from behind Morticia's sweeping gown. The six-year-old princess of darkness did not say goodbye. She simply reached out and tapped the hidden goblin-steel bracer strapped beneath Sunshine's beige sleeve.
"Aim for the carotid," Wednesday instructed, her voice entirely devoid of inflection. "A throat wound is messy, but an arterial strike ensures a lack of vocalization. Do not let them scream."
"I will keep the glass darts clean," Sunshine agreed, offering her sister a slow, solemn nod.
With a final, sharp blow of the train's whistle, the warning call echoed across the platform. Sunshine turned, grabbed the brass handle of her bog-oak trunk, and hauled it effortlessly up the steps of the carriage. She did not look back to wave. An Addams did not wave; they merely departed.
The interior of the Hogwarts Express was a narrow, claustrophobic corridor of polished wood and brass fixtures. Children were running up and down, dragging heavy trunks, shouting to their friends, and trading colorful sweets.
Sunshine did not engage. She dropped her gaze, hunched her shoulders a fraction of an inch, and engaged the "Wallflower Protocol."
She smoothed her emotional aura until it resembled the static of a dead radio channel. She walked with quiet, unhurried steps, making no sudden movements. When she passed a group of older students laughing loudly outside a compartment, they did not bump into her, nor did they step aside; their eyes simply slid right off her beige dress, their brains refusing to register her physical presence as anything worthy of attention.
She walked past the compartments holding the main cast of the universe.
Through the glass of one door, she saw a boy with messy black hair and round glasses sitting awkwardly opposite a red-haired boy with dirt on his nose. Harry Potter and Ronald Weasley. The epicenter of the narrative gravity. The heroes.
In her past life, she would have looked at them with awe. Now, she looked at them with the cold, cynical pity of a survivor. They were children, entirely unaware that the Headmaster who had orchestrated this train ride had also orchestrated the miserable, abusive childhoods that had forged them into pliable weapons.
Sunshine kept walking.
She found an empty compartment near the very back of the train. She slid the heavy door shut, stowed her trunk, and took a seat by the window. She pulled a mundane, aggressively boring textbook on foundational accounting from her satchel, opened it on her lap, and stared out the glass.
The train lurched forward, slowly pulling out of King's Cross Station, leaving the mundane world behind and crossing the threshold into the magical one.
For the next three hours, Sunshine perfected her invisibility.
Twice, the compartment door slid open. The first time, it was a pair of older Slytherin boys looking for empty seats. They took one look at the golden-haired girl in the beige dress, reading a book about tax law, staring blankly at the passing Scottish countryside. She did not look up. She projected an aura of such absolute, crushing apathy that the boys physically shuddered, muttered an excuse, and closed the door, preferring the crowded corridors to the stifling boredom of her presence.
The second interruption occurred halfway through the journey.
The door slid open with a sharp, bossy rattle. A girl with bushy brown hair and rather large front teeth stood in the threshold, already wearing her Hogwarts robes.
"Has anyone seen a toad?" Hermione Granger demanded, her voice carrying the shrill, desperate need for authority that masked a profound, crippling insecurity. "A boy named Neville's lost one."
Sunshine slowly looked up from her accounting book. She met Hermione's gaze with wide, empty, painfully polite blue eyes.
"No," Sunshine said, her voice soft, sweet, and entirely devoid of personality. "I haven't seen a toad. I've just been reading."
Hermione's sharp intellect, usually so eager to dissect and engage, hit the brick wall of Sunshine's manufactured banality. There was nothing to analyze. There was no magical aura to challenge. There was just a girl in beige who looked like a porcelain doll that had been left on a shelf.
"Oh," Hermione said, her bossy demeanor faltering slightly. "Right. Well. If you see one, let a prefect know."
"I will," Sunshine smiled softly. "Thank you."
Hermione closed the door and hurried away down the corridor.
Sunshine looked back out the window at the rolling, purple-heathered hills of the Scottish Highlands. The sky was darkening, the heavy rain clouds of autumn gathering over the peaks.
She had successfully bypassed the protagonist, the sidekick, and the smartest witch of her age, and none of them had registered her as anything more than a fleeting, unimportant blur.
She reached beneath her sleeve, her fingers lightly brushing the cold goblin-steel of the Widow's Bite. She was alone on a train full of wizards, traveling toward a castle governed by a manipulative general, but as the shadows lengthened in the compartment, she felt no fear. The Golden Child was entirely off the board, and the game had already begun without her.