"Sorry, Aunt Petunia."

Chapter 17: What Of The Cokeworth House

On Wednesday Harry left lunch early, eager to prepare properly for the trip.

Ron wished him a fun trip - or at least Harry thought he did, it was rather hard to understand when his mouth was full of food - but he stayed at the table. It’d probably take nothing short of an apocalypse to drag Ron Weasley away from the lunch spread early.

And so the decision on what he’d wear was Harry’s alone to bear.

He knew one thing for certain: he could not wear anything from the Dursleys. There was a small chance that he’d meet his grandparents, and he really wanted to make a better impression than to seem like a slob.

Not to mention, Professor Snape would never allow him to leave the Castle dressed like that.

It would just have to be his school uniform, then. The dress shirt and pants were Muggle enough. He’d just skip the tie - he barely knew how to tie it anyway - and wear his winter cloak instead of the outer robes.

Professor Snape could always help him transfigure it if it looked too magical, he figured.

Next, he spent nearly a quarter of an hour debating on whether or not to take his wand.

On one hand, he didn’t feel entirely comfortable leaving it behind. On another, he’d be with Professor Snape the entire time, and they were going out into the Muggle world. But then again, he could be meeting his family, and if his mum had been a witch, they’d expect him to have a wand too, right? He could always just keep it hidden in his pocket.

Harry left the Gryffindor Tower at three, figuring that he’d rather be too early than too late. And it was a good thing that he did, too; Peeves apparently decided it’d be great fun to mess with the bathroom on the second floor.

Another ghost seemed to take an offence to that - some Ravenclaw with glasses and long pigtails - retaliating with a lot of water that did absolutely nothing to stop Peeves and only resulted in flooding the entire section of the corridor.

Filch was there, cursing both of the ghosts out, and he apparently had asked Professor Quirrell for help as he was there too, staring at the other ghost weirdly. He kept calling out the word “warren,” too, but what did a rabbit’s home even have to do with this whole mess?

To avoid it, Harry had to backtrack all the way to the fourth floor and take two secret passages, making it down to the dungeons just barely on time.

“Good, you are on time,” Professor Snape said once he spotted Harry, snapping his pocket watch shut. “Any questions before we go?”

“Do I take my wand?”

Professor Snape looked at him for a moment, considering.

“Keeping your wand on your person is a habit worth cultivating,” he said eventually. Then, after a slight hesitation: “Show me how you are storing it?”

Harry fumbled with the wand in his pocket, wanting to take it out quickly and only managing to accomplish the opposite.

Professor Snape had that pinched look on his face again.

“Here, hold it out in your right hand,” he said, demonstrating. Harry followed quickly. “Now say, ‘Brachio inhaero,’ and flip it inside your sleeve.”

Harry did as instructed, of course, but - “Won’t it fall out?”

“Try it.”

Dropping his arm, Harry was ready to catch the falling wand… but it didn’t fall. He shook his hand, going as far as to flap his whole arm wildly. His wand was still stuck in his sleeve.