He returned as steady as the Mountain Wind

Chapter 2: "You're so cool"

It was a truly pulchritudinous day. A day that lit the creative flames in artists of every trade, a day made for lovers to frolic and for little children to play outside underneath the clear blue sky. So when Harry woke up this morning, he knew that this simply perfect day was going to go to hell in a hand basket very soon.

And true to his intuition, Godric and Salazar were called to the Ministry for another trial day. Bidding them a hasty farewell, Harry flooed to Grimauld Place to meet up with his godparents, Blaise and Regulus. Daphne and Theo had already flooed over to the Black House for breakfast. Someone had let Theo unsupervised with a can of caramel toffee, so when Harry arrived witnessed Theo on another sugar-induced destruction spree, which caused all of them to be late. Then they ran out of floo-powder. The Knight Bus was overcrowded and they could neither apparate onto Platform 9 ¾ (a protection still in place from the war against Voldemort which no one had bothered to remove) nor into the muggle-filled King's Cross Station. Kreacher was out shopping for groceries. So they were forced to use the muggle public transport system.

It was horrible. Regulus got motion sickness from the abrupt turns of the Tube and Theo was still high on sugar and the caffeine from the coffee he had procured from Merlin knows where. Blaise and Sirius were no help either because they got both excited over the muggle technology. Angiola was having a nervous breakdown because she a) was not in the muggle world all that often and when she was, it was connected with nasty memories and because b) she could not contact Hermione with whom they had wanted to meet up. Daphne was staring at the short skirts women around her wore, befuddled by their lack of shame. In the middle of it all stood Harry. Harry whose consciousness seemed to flicker between their normal reality and something that looked like the Wind Spirit King's Realm.

Somehow they made it to the station before half past 10. There they met Hermione who had waited for them. Daphne and Blaise went through the barrier first. Sirius and Angiola followed promptly. When Harry, Regulus and Hermione (with a restrained Theo between them) wanted to go, the Weasley family plus Daniel Potter (whose parents were also at court for the next trial day) pushed in.

It was 10:55 when the Daniel and the youngest Weasley son ran towards the barrier.

And were stopped by a solid brick wall.

"What happened?" barked Weasley.

"I don't know...the barrier won't let us through!"

The two started arguing. It was 10:57.

Hermione leaned towards Harry: "I can feel house elf magic from the barrier. But it's no signature I have ever seen before. I think the barrier is blocked to prevent the entrance of anyone trying to go through..."

10:58

The two Gryffindors tried one last time to get through the barrier. In vain. By now it was 11 o'clock so the train had already left. The entrance was still blocked and you could hear people scream from the other side, unable to get out.

"Come on, let's get out of the station. It will calm Theo down and we do not have to witness these two make fools out of themselves even more." said Harry, Hermione nodding along. Regulus cast a worried look towards the two lions: "Will they be okay?" he asked.

"I am sure they will be." said Hermione, Harry suppressed an eye-roll. Regulus was too pure and innocent for this world sometimes.

Outside they found a nice sunny bench where they stuck Theo (with wandless magic) and their trunks. Hermione and Harry sat on either side of their friend who somehow had found bag of wine gum when they had not been looking, Harry suspected that he actually conjured them, a Theo under sugar influence was a magically powerful Theo. Knowing it was useless to restrain him unless there was rope and a chandelier or a bottle of muggle superglue (DO NOT ASK!), Harry just let the Ravenclaw have his candy. Regulus seemed to have calmed down a bit as well, now sitting on his trunk and letting the warm sun shine on his face.