Aboard the Hogwarts Express, on the route from King's Cross Station to Scotland, there were noisy fellow passengers, pets running about everywhere, attendants pushing trolleys and selling sweets, and beautiful scenery beyond the windows.
But most students never looked. Even if they did, they would not carefully note how many bridges they passed or how many mountains they crossed, especially after entering the Scottish Highlands.
Mountainous terrain inevitably required tunnels to be dug and bridges to be built. The workload was more than double that on the plains; sometimes even a small ravine increased the difficulty of construction. Even if the work crews did not have to race against time like those building the railroads across America, there were still costs to consider.
In The Tales of Beedle the Bard, there was a Tale of the Three Brothers. Death waited on the far side of a swift river. Some travelers did not know how deep it was and thought they could wade across, while others sensed something was wrong and turned back to take another route.
After all, not everyone possessed the Three Brothers' ability to use magic to build a bridge.
"Why didn't the locals build a bridge? If they did, wouldn't it be much more convenient for them to cross?"
A Muggle-born new student had once asked Pomona that. He had just arrived in this utterly unfamiliar world, and Pomona had told him this wizarding fairy tale as a bedtime story.
She did not know how to describe such a complicated issue to a child.
A lively party could bring joy, yet when that lively party ended, leaving everyone gone and the place in a mess, what it revealed was loneliness.
Peace was not the same as loneliness, but it was not easy to find someone who could