The bombs have stopped falling and they are finally returning to London (it’s not really home, though Lucy is wild to see Mum again) after months at the Professor’s and at least 15 years in Narnia (though it surely is far, far longer, for Peter is the one who notices that things that would take two months here, like a Bitch’s pregnancy, took far more time in Narnia).

Edmund is worried, wondering how he can apologize to Mum for being such a prat without explaining how , and they’re all fretting over how to explain their seeming new-found adulthood and profound changes -- it’s one thing to be at the Professor’s – he’d been to Narnia after all – but Mum is a secretary who will have dolls and tin soldiers for them and she’ll still want to wipe their dirty faces with handkerchiefs and smooth mussy hair with spit on her hand.

They’re arrayed at the London station, cases in hand, hopefully and dreading, and Mum pushes through the crowd, ready to embrace them and then stops cold, staring, mouth open, and there is something glowing in her eyes that Lucy had only seen in Narnia; Susan gasps and exclaims, “Mum?” for she sees the magic, too, and then their Mother sweeps them all up in a hug, “Well, you lot have had an adventure, haven’t you, by the Fae, Peter, I think you are older than I am now!”