‘You!’
Harry shot out in surprise.
‘Harry!’ Mr Bagman said back going slightly red. He was wearing the
same uniform that the conductor had been wearing last time Harry had travelled
by the Knight Bus. He had obviously lost his job at the Ministry due to his debt
problem and this was the only other place that would take him. ‘So, where to?
We can take you anywhere you want to go.’ Mr. Bagman burned even brighter red.
‘The Burrow, Ottery St Catchpole. How much will that be?
‘Ah visiting the Weasleys’. Such a nice family,’ said Ludo seeming
to cheer up a bit after that awkward moment had passed. ‘That’ll be 12
Sickles or for 14 Sickles you get hot chocolate and for 16 you get a hot water
bottle and a toothbrush in the colour of your choice.’ This rolled off his
tongue as though he had said it non-stop for the past ten years. Harry noticed
that Ernie Prang was still the driver.
Harry took out his 12 Sickles (he noticed the prices had gone up from the
last time he rode the Knight Bus but he supposed that was because The Burrow is
further away than London) and Mr. Bagman led him to his bed behind the driver.
The bus then hurtled off again as lampposts, telephone boxes and sometimes even
whole houses jumped out of the way. Then after about an hour and a half of
travelling and many people alighted at their stops, the bus started to slow
down.
‘Next stop The Burrow,’ Mr. Bagman called down to Harry. Mr. Bagman
had returned to talk to Ernie after trying to strike up a conversation with
Harry but failing – Harry was still too shocked at seeing Mr. Bagman to have a
conversation.
As Harry was alighting from the bus he caught a piece of Mr. Bagman’s
conversation with Ernie.
‘It’s a terrible shame about that family,’ Ernie was saying. ‘All
them - just gone in a flash. People are getting worried that he’s back.
That’s ten people in the past month. The Ministry deny it all of course. Hey
you were in the Ministry weren’t you, Lu?’ Ludo looked terribly
uncomfortable to Harry and seemed not to want to answer that question and
mumbled a reply. Harry pulled his trunk and Hedwig off the bus with the help of
Mr. Bagman.
‘Bye. Thanks,’ Harry called before the doors closed.
‘See you around,’ Mr. Bagman called back.
Harry started pulling his trunk and Hedwig up the path towards the
Weasley’s house as Ron, Mrs. Weasley, Fred, George and Ginny came out to great
him. Mrs. Weasley ran up to him and gave him a big hug as Ron, Ginny, Fred and
George said ‘Hi’.
‘So,’ said Harry as they sat down drinking hot chocolate in front of
the fire in the Burrow. ‘What’s this big thing that’s happening
tomorrow?’
‘Well,’ said Ron ‘Hermione is coming for the rest of the summer too and I told her we’d collect her from her house. The wicked thing is that we’re going on a flying carpet. Dad bought one yesterday. It’s instead of a new car – it’ll be easier to explain to the Ministry than a flying car and they’re all installed with a charm making them invisible to Muggles. We’ll have to leave early to miss the sky-traffic. It gets really busy at about 8:00 in the morning and 7:00 at night. The carpets are really for people who have far to travel to work - that’s why rush hour starts so early.’
Harry realised that he must have been watching carpets speeding across the sky the previous morning.
‘Yes, I think it’s best we leave early, dears,’ said Mrs. Weasley.
‘It’s going to be hectic out there with the traffic.
‘I
thought you said that flying carpets couldn’t be landed in Muggle areas,’
Harry said to Ron.
‘Well,
Dad had to put a spell on it. Mum wasn’t too happy and the Ministry don’t
know about it.’
‘Where’s Percy? I haven’t seen him yet,’ said Harry as they
entered Ron’s room at the very top of the house under the attic.
‘He’s the new head of the Department of International Magical
Co-operation. He’s in the office at the moment. He wants to try to standardise
cauldron thickness with the Minister of Magic in Australia.’
They
headed upstairs to Ron’s room and pulled on their pyjamas. Harry climbed into
the camp bed at the end of Ron’s Chudley Cannon bed, and was soon fast asleep.
***
The
next morning came almost to soon for Harry. He didn’t know what had made him
so tired. The ghoul in the attic was banging pipes just as Mrs. Weasley walked
in to wake himself and Ron.
‘Now, dears,’ she said. ‘Time to get up. We’ll have to leave in
about an hour if we want to miss all the traffic.’
Ron and Harry got up and got dressed. They then went down stairs and had
the biggest meal Harry had ever had. Mrs. Weasley kept pilling more sausages,
bacon and scrambled eggs onto Harry’s plate and seemed not to understand the
phrase ‘No thanks I’m full.’ Mr. Weasley, Fred, George and Ginny were all
still up in bed.
Finally 7:30 came – the moment Harry had been waiting for all morning.
Mrs. Weasley took a large rug out of the sitting room and laid it on the dew
filled grass out side the front door. She then tapped it with her wand and the
rug rearranged its self so that there were three benches of carpet going width
ways across the carpet. Mrs. Weasley then conjured up some cushions, which were
laid down on top of the carpet’s benches. Ron and Harry sat on the middle
bench while Mrs. Weasley sat at the front.
‘Nairby House,’ Mrs. Weasley said clearly as the carpet rose from the
ground. 30 feet, 40 feet, 50 feet and soon 100 feet. And then the carpet shot
off at the speed of a snitch. Harry feared that he might fall off but he noticed
that Ron seemed unperturbed as he risked opening his eyes for a moment before
shutting them tight again. The only thing he’d ever done that was like this
was when he used floo powder, which made him feel sick.
After a few minutes the carpet started to slow down and lose altitude.
Harry opened his eyes, to see that they were floating over a house with a very
organised looking garden. There was only one person who could live here –
Hermione Granger.
The carpet settled down in the front garden. Once everyone was off the
carpet it lay down flat again and the cushions rested neatly on top of it. At
that moment Hermione rushed out to greet them and she gave each of them a hug in
turn. She then invited them inside and they sat down at the kitchen table with
Crookshanks on Harry’s lap, while Mrs. Weasley went into the sitting room to
talk to Mr. and Mrs. Granger
‘So, what have you two been doing all summer?’ asked Hermione. ‘I went to Belgium. You know, they have some amazing museums there on the history of magic. One of them has been open since 510 AD. It’s a fantastic museum. It would do you two good to visit it – good way to get ready for the OWLs. Naturally I’ve started revising for them. I just do hope I learned enough from those museums. I hope you two have started to study also.’
‘Hermione,’ said Ron, ‘the OWLs are not for another 10 months. We
don’t need to do any revising for a good while yet.’
‘I should have known,’ Hermione sighed sounding fed up.
Just at that moment someone, with their head buried deep in a book,
walked through the kitchen door. ‘Hi, Harry. Hi, Ron.’ It was a girl the
image of Hermione but a bit smaller, around 11 years of age.
‘Hi’ they chorused sounding a bit confused. She got a glass of water
and then left the room.
‘Hermione, who was that?’ Harry asked.
‘My sister, of course. She’s starting in Hogwarts this year. Mum and
Dad where really proud - two witches in the family.’
‘You sister?’ queried Harry. ‘Since when do you have a sister?’
‘Yeh,’ said Ron. ‘You never told us you had a sister.’
‘Honestly!’ said Hermione. ‘Do you two ever listen to anyone but
yourselves? I’ve been talking about her ever since our first day of
Hogwarts.’
‘Not to us you haven’t,’ said Harry. ‘What’s her name?’
‘Aoife – it’s an Irish name,’ said Hermione. ‘My parents have
always liked the Irish.’
‘She’s preparing for the OWLs too, I see,’ said Ron.
‘Honestly, the two of you,’ said Hermione. ‘You’d swear that
school wasn’t an important part of life. I don’t know how either of you are
going to be able to get any OWLs with this kind of attitude towards them.
You’re unbelievable.’
‘Can we meet her then?’ asked Harry.
‘I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,’ said Hermione.
‘She’s only got a few weeks before school starts and she needs to do a lot
of work before them.’
‘Oh, Hermione,’ said Harry. ‘She deserves a break every now and
then.’
‘Oh all right,’ said Hermione finally giving in and they left the
kitchen and climbed up the stairs and into Aoife’s room.
Aoife’s room was a large room, but it wasn’t how an ordinary
11-year-old girls room normally would be. The walls could not be seen at all but
not because they were covered in posters of boy bands, but because of the
bookshelves that were stuck to the wall, reached up to the ceiling, covered all
four walls and were filled with books of all sizes, but most of them were large
books. The only space left was for the bed, a desk, and a wardrobe. Aoife was
currently sitting at the desk with her head once again buried deep in her book.
‘Aoife, Harry and Ron want to say Hello,’ said Hermione to Aoife’s
back.
‘That’s nice,’ replied Aoife. ‘But could they not have just said
it while I was in the kitchen earlier instead of disturbing me now?’
‘Apparently, they didn’t know you existed,’ said Hermione. ‘They
never seem to listen to me. I’m always talking about you.’
Aoife then turned around and stood up. Her attitude had changed
completely. ‘Hi, I’m Aoife, Hermione’s sister. Nice to meet you.’ She
put her hand out waiting for Harry and Ron to shake it and both of them did.
‘I’m really sorry,’ said Aoife, ‘but do you mind if I get back to
reading ‘Hogwarts; A History – Revised and Lengthened’. I have a lot to
learn before September.’
She sat back down and started reading her book again. Harry Ron and
Hermione left her in peace and went back downstairs to the kitchen where they
spent the rest of the afternoon talking about their summer (Harry’s being the
worst and most boring while Hermione’s was the most educational). At five
o’clock Mrs. Weasley came into the kitchen.
‘We better go now, dears,’ she said. ‘We want to miss the evening
traffic and I also want to have the dinner ready for when Arthur comes home –
if he ever does.’
Harry and Ron then went up to Hermione’s room (whose walls were also
covered in books) to fetch her trunk. They dragged it down the stairs and out to
the garden to where the carpet still lay with Mrs. Weasley, Crookshanks,
Hermione and her parents following them. Mrs. Weasley then tapped the carpet
with her wand and it rearranged itself so that the three benches of carpet had
appeared again. Once again Mrs. Weasley sat on the front bench while Harry, Ron
and Hermione sat on the second row. Hermione shouted bye to her parents who were
now standing at the front door. Mrs. Weasley shouted ‘The Burrow’ and they
were soon back at the Weasleys’ on the damp grass.
With a swish of her wand, Mrs Weasley rolled up the carpet and sent it
into the sitting room where it unrolled again. As they went inside the house
Harry suddenly realised that he hadn’t told Ron or Hermione who he had seen
the night before or what he had heard.
‘Can we talk somewhere?’ Harry whispered to the two of them.
‘Yeh, lets go to my room,’ said Ron. The three of them went up to
Ron’s room and Harry told them about Mr. Bagman being on the Knight Bus and
about all he had heard Ernie say.
‘I heard all about those killings over the summer from the Daily
Prophet,’ said Hermione. ‘They’ve been mostly around London. People claim
to have seen the Dark Mark over the houses the people were killed in. And it’s
not only wizards that have been killed. Most of them in fact were Muggles or
were of Muggle parentage. I wonder if You-Know-Who is doing all of these or is
he getting the Death Eaters to do it for him. No ones claiming to have seen him
yet. I would have thought that everyone would have known by now that he is back
especially after Dumbledore telling us all at the end of last year.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Ron, ‘people don’t want to believe he is back and
they don’t say anything in hope that they imagined what they saw.’
‘Yes,’ said Hermione. ‘That’s quite probable. Mr. Bagman must be
in serious debt problems if he’s left the Ministry. He must have been kicked
out. It’s all been hushed up though. Not a word about it in the newspapers.
But I suppose that’s because of my little deal with Rita Skeeter. She hasn’t
written a single column in the paper since I let her free in Kings Cross.’
‘I hope a bird got her,’ Harry said hopefully. ‘Do you think we
should go down and help your mum with the dinner?
‘Yeh, sure,’ said Ron as they got up and went down the stairs to help
Mrs. Weasley. Mrs. Weasley was already cooking a stew in a big pot and Ginny had
started to set the table. Harry, Ron and Hermione started to help. There would
be eight of them for dinner so Mrs. Weasley had to conjure up an extra long
table.
Ginny
blushed as she and Harry both went to pick up the same fork. She seemed to be
even more quite than she usually was around Harry (if that was possible).
At
7:30 Mr. Weasley Apparated into the kitchen. Mrs. Weasley went over and hugged
him. ‘Oh! You’re early for once. I hope this happens more often.’
‘I
don’t know, Molly,’ he said. ‘What with all these deaths and everything.
People sending in owls continuously wanting to know if You-Know-Who’s back.
The letters have been sent to all offices in the Ministry because there’s so
many. Of course we aren’t allowed to tell them anything. And I’ve got loads
of work to do with the flying carpet business. People sending in owls wanting to
know if they can use a 20 feet by 30 feet carpet so they can ‘carpet pool’
and of course there’s no way. Imagine trying to hide one of those from
Muggles. They may not be the cleverest of people but they’re not that
stupid.’
That
evening they had a wonderful meal of a beef stew with mashed potatoes, green
beans and cabbage. Harry could hardly remember when he had had such a nice meal
– in the Dursleys’ he seemed to have been given the scrapings from the
saucepan and the most burnt parts too.
***
For
the rest of the summer Harry, Ron and Hermione played exploding snap, played
Quidditch with Fred and George and discussed what Dumbledore could be doing to
help prevent Lord Voldemort getting back as much power as he had had before.
Hermione who always had an excuse as to why Dumbledore wouldn’t do a
particular thing to stop Lord Voldemort quickly squashed all of their ideas,
however.
‘Don’t
either of you read at all? You can’t attempt to kill someone with the Avada
Kedavra spell unless they are within five wand lengths from you and I doubt that
Dumbledore would go look for You-Know-Who just to try a curse that probably wont
work anyway.’
‘He
could try the Blastio spell,’ said Ron. ‘That’s quite powerful.’
‘What’s
that?’ asked Harry.
‘The
Blastio spell is a destroying spell,’ said Hermione. ‘The power of it can be
changed, depending on what you want destroyed. It could destroy a whole street
if you want – that’s probably what Wormtail used when he was faking his
death. But I doubt Dumbledore would put so many people in danger just to do that
spell. And that probably wouldn’t even work either – it is You-Know-Who
we’re talking about after all.’