Adventures of Harriet Potter

The Knight Bus

Harriet was several streets away before she collapsed onto a low wall in Magnolia Crescent, panting from the effort of dragging her trunk. She sat quite still, anger still surging through her, listening to the frantic thumping of her heart. But after ten minutes alone in the dark street, a new emotion overtook her: panic. Whichever way she looked at it, she had never been in a worse fix. She was stranded, quite alone, in the dark Muggle world, with absolutely nowhere to go. And the worst of it was, she had just done serious magic, which meant that she was almost certainly expelled from Hogwarts. She had broken the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry so badly, she was surprised Ministry of Magic representatives weren't swooping down on her where she sat. Or pelting her with owls telling her she was expelled.
Harriet shivered and looked up and down Magnolia Crescent. She kept wondering. What was going to happen to her? Would she be arrested, or would she simply be outlawed from the wizarding world? She thought of Ron and Hermione, and her heart sank even lower. Harriet was sure that, criminal or not, Ron and Hermione would want to help her now, but they were both abroad, and with Hedwig gone, she had no means of contacting them. She didn't have any Muggle money, either. There was a little wizard gold in the money bag at the bottom of her trunk, but the rest of the fortune her parents had left her was stored in a vault at Gringotts Wizarding Bank in London. She'd never be able to drag her trunk all the way to London. Unless . . . She looked down at her wand, which she was still clutching in her hand. If she was already expelled (her heart was now thumping painfully fast), a bit more magic couldn't hurt. She had the Invisibility Cloak she had inherited from her father — what if she bewitched the trunk to make it feather-light, tied it to her broomstick, covered herself in the cloak, and flew to London? Then she could get the rest of her money out of her vault and . . . begin her life as an outcast. It was a horrible prospect, but she couldn't sit on this wall forever, or she'd find herself trying to explain to Muggle police why she was out in the dead of night with a trunkful of spellbooks and a broomstick.
Harriet opened her trunk again and pushed the contents aside, looking for the Invisibility Cloak — but before she had found it, she straightened up suddenly, looking around her once more.
A funny prickling on the back of her neck had made Harriet feel she was being watched, but the street appeared to be deserted, and no lights shone from any of the large square houses. She bent over her trunk again, but almost immediately stood up once more, her hand clenched on her wand. She had sensed rather than heard it: Someone or something was standing in the narrow gap between the garage and the fence behind her. Harriet squinted at the black alleyway. If only it would move, then she'd know whether it was just a stray cat or — something else. "Lumos," Harriet muttered, and a light appeared at the end of her wand, almost dazzling her. She held it high over her head, and the pebble-dashed walls of number two suddenly sparkled; the garage door gleamed, and between them Harriet saw, quite distinctly, the hulking outline of a very big, scraggly furred dog, with wide, gleaming eyes.
Harriet stepped backward. Her legs hit her trunk and she tripped. Her wand flew out of her hand as she flung out an arm to break her fall, and she landed, hard, in the gutter — There was a deafening BANG, and Harriet threw up her hands to shield her eyes against a sudden blinding light — With a yell, she rolled back onto the pavement, just in time. A second later, a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights screeched to a halt exactly where Harriet had just been lying. They belonged, as Harriet saw when she raised her head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelled The Knight Bus.
For a split second, Harriet wondered if she had been knocked silly by her fall. Then a conductor in a purple uniform leapt out of the bus and began to speak loudly to the night. "Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this eve —" The conductor stopped abruptly. He had just caught sight of Harriet, who was still sitting on the ground. Harriet snatched up her wand again and scrambled to her feet. Close up, she saw that Stan Shunpike was only a few years older than she was, eighteen or nineteen at most, with large, protruding ears and quite a few pimples. "What were you doin' down there?" said Stan, dropping his professional manner. "Fell over," said Harriet. "'Choo fall over for?" sniggered Stan.
"I didn't do it on purpose," said Harriet, annoyed. One of the knees in her jeans was torn, and the hand she had thrown out to break her fall was bleeding. She suddenly remembered why she had fallen over and turned around quickly to stare at the alleyway between the garage and fence. The Knight Bus's headlamps were flooding it with light, and it was empty. "'Choo lookin' at?" said Stan. "There was a big black thing," said Harriet, pointing uncertainly into the gap. "Like a dog . . . but massive . . ." She looked around at Stan, whose mouth was slightly open. With a feeling of unease, Harriet saw Stan's eyes move to the scar on Harriet's forehead. "Woss that on your 'ead?" said Stan abruptly. "Nothing," said Harriet quickly, flattening her hair over her scar. If the Ministry of Magic was looking for her, she didn't want to make it too easy for them. "Woss your name?" Stan persisted.
"Lydia Inkwood," said Harriet, saying the first name that came into her head. "So — so this bus," she went on quickly, hoping to distract Stan, "did you say it goes anywhere?" Harriet kept her voice casual, while internally worried her lie would be exposed at any moment. "Yep," said Stan proudly, "anywhere you like, long's it's on land. Can't do nuffink underwater. 'Ere," he said, looking suspicious again, "you did flag us down, dincha? Stuck out your wand 'and, dincha?" He sounded uncertain, like they'd made this mistake before. "Yes," said Harriet quickly. "Listen, how much would it be to get to London?"
"Eleven Sickles," said Stan, "but for firteen you get 'ot chocolate, and for fifteen you get an 'ot water bottle an' a toofbrush in the color of your choice." Harriet rummaged once more in her trunk, extracted her money bag, and shoved some silver into Stan's hand. She and Stan then lifted her trunk, with Hedwig's cage balanced on top, up the steps of the bus. There were no seats; instead, half a dozen brass bedsteads stood beside the curtained windows. Candles were burning in brackets beside each bed, illuminating the wood-paneled walls. A tiny wizard in a nightcap at the rear of the bus muttered, "Not now, thanks, I'm pickling some slugs" and rolled over in his sleep.
"You 'ave this one," Stan whispered, shoving Harriet's trunk under the bed right behind the driver, who was sitting in an armchair in front of the steering wheel. "This is our driver, Ernie Prang. This is Lydia Inkwood, Ern." Ernie Prang, an elderly wizard wearing very thick glasses, nodded to Harriet, who nervously flattened her bangs again and sat down on her bed. "Take 'er away, Ern," said Stan, sitting down in the armchair next to Ernie's. There was another tremendous BANG, and the next moment Harriet found herself flat on her bed, thrown backward by the speed of the Knight Bus. Pulling herself up, Harriet stared out of the dark window and saw that they were now bowling along a completely different street. Stan was watching Harriet's stunned face with great enjoyment.
"This is where we was before you flagged us down," he said. "Where are we, Ern? Somewhere in Wales?" Harriet was further stunned by that idea alone, to have gone from Wales to Surrey and back again in under an hour. "Ar," said Ernie. "How come the Muggles don't hear the bus?" said Harriet. "Them!" said Stan contemptuously. "Don' listen properly, do they? Don' look properly either. Never notice nuffink, they don'."
"Best go wake up Madam Marsh, Stan," said Ern. "We'll be in Abergavenny in a minute." Stan passed Harriet's bed and disappeared up a narrow wooden staircase. Harriet was still looking out of the window, feeling increasingly nervous. Ernie didn't seem to have mastered the use of a steering wheel. The Knight Bus kept mounting the pavement, but it didn't hit anything; lines of lampposts, mailboxes, and trash cans jumped out of its way as it approached and back into position once it had passed.
Stan came back downstairs, followed by a faintly green witch wrapped in a traveling cloak.
"'Ere you go, Madam Marsh," said Stan happily as Ern stamped on the brake and the beds slid a foot or so toward the front of the bus. Madam Marsh clamped a handkerchief to her mouth and tottered down the steps. Stan threw her bag out after her and rammed the doors shut; there was another loud BANG, and they were thundering down a narrow country lane, trees leaping out of the way. Harriet wouldn't have been able to sleep even if she had been traveling on a bus that didn't keep banging loudly and jumping a hundred miles at a time. Her stomach churned as she fell back to wondering what was going to happen to her, and whether the Dursleys had managed to get Aunt Marge off the ceiling yet.
Stan had unfurled a copy of the Daily Prophet and was now reading with his tongue between his teeth. A large photograph of a sunken-faced man with long, matted hair blinked slowly at Harriet from the front page. He looked strangely familiar.
"That man!" Harriet said, forgetting her troubles for a moment. "He was on the Muggle news!" Stan turned to the front page and chuckled. "Sirius Black," he said, nodding. "'Course 'e was on the Muggle news, Lydia, where you been?" He gave a superior sort of chuckle at the blank look on Harriet's face, removed the front page, and handed it to Harriet. "You oughta read the papers more, Lydia." Harriet held the paper up to the candlelight and read: