Golden Snitch with wings on an upper arm

Inside, under a folded bus timetable and a child's mitten, lay a ball no bigger than a plum. It was gold in the way old pennies are gold, rubbed warm by someone's palm, and from its sides two wings unfolded with a sound like a page turning. They were thin and veined and slightly torn at the edges, the kind of wings a moth might wear to a dance. She set it on the counter. It did not roll. It hovered an inch above the wood, turning slowly, as though looking for a way out.

The train from Leeds was due at ten past six. Ruth carried the tin out onto platform four with the lid tucked under her arm, and the crowd parted around her the way crowds do around anyone holding something they shouldn't. At the far end, where the signal gantry met the evening sky, the ball lifted out of the tin and climbed in a tight spiral, gathering the last orange light until it was only a spark, then nothing.

By the time the guard blew his whistle, Ruth had the tin empty in her hands and a timetable in her pocket that she hadn't meant to keep. She stood there a while longer than she needed to, watching the place where the light had been.