meant to be (2)

10

Then there was a popping noise and the car, Harry, Ron and I reappeared.

"Uh oh" said Ron, jabbing at the Invisibility Booster. "It's faulty-"

Both of the boys pummelled it. The car vanished. Then it flickered back again.

"Hold on!" Ron yelled, and he slammed his foot on the accelerator, we shot straight into the low woolly clouds and everything turned dull and foggy.

"Now what?" I asked. "We need to see the train to know what direction to go in"

"Dip back down again - quickly-" said Ron.

We dropped back beneath the clouds and twisted around in our seats, squinting at the ground-

"I can see it!" Harry yelled. "Right ahead - there!" The Hogwarts Express was streaking along below us like a scarlet snake.

"Due north." said Ron, checking the compass on the dashboard. "OK, we'll just have to check on it every half an hour or so. Hold on...."

And we shot up through the clouds. A minute later, we burst out into a blaze of sunlight.
It was a different world. The wheels of the car skimmed the sea of fluffy cloud, the sky a bright, endless blue under the blinding white sun.

"All we've got to worry about now are aeroplanes!" said Ron.

We looked at each other and started to laugh; for a long time we couldn't stop. It was as though we had been plunged into a fabulos dream.

This, I thought, was surely the best way to travel past swirls and turrets of snowy clouds, in a car full of hot bright sunlight, with a fat pack of toffees in the glov compartment, and the prospect of seeing Fred, George and Masons jealous faces when we landed smoothly and spectacularly or the sweeping lawn in front of Hogwarts castle.

We made regular checks on the train as we flew further and further north, each dip beneath the clouds showing us a different view.

London was soon far behind us, replaced by neat green fields which gave way in turn to wide, purplish moors, villages with tiny toy churches and a great city alive with cars like multi-coloured ants.

Several uneventful hours later, however, I had to admit that some of the fun was wearing off. The toffees had made us extremely thirsty and we had nothing to drink. Harry, Ron and I had pulled off our jumpers, but my t-shirt was sticking to the back of my seat. I had stopped noticing the fantastic cloud shapes now, and was thinking longingly of the train miles below, where you could buy ice-cold pumpkin juice from a trolley pushed by a plump witch.

Why hadn't we been able to get onto platform nine and three-quarters?

"Can't be much further, can it?" croaked Ron, hours later still, as the sun started to sink into their floor of cloud, staining it a deep pink.

"Ready for another check on the train?" It was still right below us, winding its way past a snow-capped mountain. It was much darker beneath the canopy of clouds.

Ron put his foot on the accelerator and drove us upwards again, but as he did so, the engine began to whine. Harry, Ron and I exchanged nervous glances.

"It's probably just tired" said Ron. "It's never been this far before..."

And we all pretended not to notice the whining growing louder and louder as the sky became steadly darker: Stars were blossoming in the blackness.

I grabbed my jumper and put it on, as I was pretty cold. It suddenly was to big on me, but I was too tired to care.

"Nice jumper." said Harry smirking. Turns out it wasn't my jumper, but Harry's.