Harry Potter 02 & The Chamber Of Secrets (Illustrated) (8 page)

The assistant looked as though he wanted to stop them leaving, but he barely came up to Hagrid’s waist and seemed to think better of it. They hurried up the street, the Grangers shaking with fright and Mrs Weasley beside herself with fury.

‘A
fine
example to set to your children …
brawling
in public …
what
Gilderoy Lockhart must’ve thought …’

‘He was pleased,’ said Fred. ‘Didn’t you hear him as we were leaving? He was asking that bloke from the
Daily Prophet
if he’d be able to work the fight into his report - said it was all publicity.’

But it was a subdued group who headed back to the fireside in the Leaky Cauldron, where Harry, the Weasleys and all their shopping would be travelling back to The Burrow using Floo powder. They said goodbye to the Grangers, who were leaving the pub for the Muggle street on the other side. Mr Weasley started to ask them how bus stops worked, but stopped quickly at the look on Mrs Weasley’s face.

Harry took off his glasses and put them safely in his pocket before helping himself to Floo powder. It definitely wasn’t his favourite way to travel.

The end of the summer holidays came too quickly for Harry’s liking. He was looking forward to getting back to Hogwarts, but his month at The Burrow had been the happiest of his life. It was difficult not to feel jealous of Ron when he thought of the Dursleys and the sort of welcome he could expect next time he turned up in Privet Drive.

On their last evening, Mrs Weasley conjured up a sumptuous dinner which included all of Harry’s favourite things, ending with a mouthwatering treacle pudding. Fred and George rounded off the evening with a display of Filibuster fireworks; they filled the kitchen with red and blue stars that bounced from ceiling to wall for at least half an hour. Then it was time for a last mug of hot chocolate and bed.

It took a long while to get started next morning. They were up at cock-crow, but somehow they still seemed to have a great deal to do. Mrs Weasley dashed about in a bad mood looking for spare socks and quills, people kept colliding on the stairs, half-dressed with bits of toast in their hands, and Mr Weasley nearly broke his neck, tripping over a stray chicken as he crossed the yard carrying Ginny’s trunk to the car.

Harry couldn’t see how eight people, six large trunks, two owls and a rat were going to fit into one small Ford Anglia. He had reckoned, of course, without the special features which Mr Weasley had added.

‘Not a word to Molly,’ he whispered to Harry as he opened the boot and showed him how it had been magically expanded so that the trunks fitted easily.

When at last they were all in the car, Mrs Weasley glanced into the back seat, where Harry, Ron, Fred, George and Percy were all sitting comfortably side by side, and said, ‘Muggles
do
know more than we give them credit for, don’t they?’ She and Ginny got into the front seat, which had been stretched so that it resembled a park bench. ‘I mean, you’d never know it was this roomy from the outside, would you?’

Mr Weasley started up the engine and they trundled out of the yard, Harry turning back for a last look at the house. He barely had time to wonder when he’d see it again when they were back: George had forgotten his box of Filibuster fireworks. Five minutes after that, they skidded to a halt in the yard so that Fred could run in for his broomstick. They had almost reached the motorway when Ginny shrieked that she’d left her diary. By the time she had clambered back into the car, they were running very late, and tempers were running high.

Mr Weasley glanced at his watch and then at his wife.

‘Molly, dear -‘

‘
No
, Arthur.’

‘No one would see. This little button here is an Invisibility Booster I installed - that’d get us up in the air - then we fly above the clouds. We’d be there in ten minutes and no one would be any the wiser …’

‘I said
no,
Arthur, not in broad daylight.’

They reached King’s Cross at a quarter to eleven. Mr Weasley dashed across the road to get trolleys for their trunks and they all hurried into the station.

Harry had caught the Hogwarts Express the previous year. The tricky bit was getting onto platform nine and three-quarters, which wasn’t visible to the Muggle eye. What you had to do was walk through the solid barrier dividing platforms nine and ten. It didn’t hurt, but it had to be done carefully so that none of the Muggles noticed you vanishing.

‘Percy first,’ said Mrs Weasley, looking nervously at the clock overhead, which showed they had only five minutes to disappear casually through the barrier.

Percy strode briskly forward and vanished. Mr Weasley went next, Fred and George followed.

‘I’ll take Ginny and you two come right after us,’ Mrs Weasley told Harry and Ron, grabbing Ginny’s hand and setting off. In the blink of an eye they were gone.

‘Let’s go together, we’ve only got a minute,’ Ron said to Harry.

Harry made sure that Hedwig’s cage was safely wedged on top of his trunk and wheeled his trolley about to face the barrier. He felt perfectly confident; this wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as using Floo powder. Both of them bent low over the handles of their trolleys and walked purposefully towards the barrier, gathering speed. A few feet away from it, they broke into a run and -

CRASH.

Both trolleys hit the barrier and bounced backwards. Ron’s trunk fell off with a loud thump, Harry was knocked off his feet, and Hedwig’s cage bounced onto the shiny floor and she rolled away, shrieking indignantly. People all around them stared and a guard nearby yelled, ‘What in blazes d’you think you’re doing?’

‘Lost control of the trolley,’ Harry gasped, clutching his ribs as he got up. Ron ran to pick up Hedwig, who was causing such a scene that there was a lot of muttering about cruelty to animals from the surrounding crowd.

‘Why can’t we get through?’ Harry hissed to Ron.

‘I dunno -‘

Ron looked wildly around. A dozen curious people were still watching them.

‘We’re going to miss the train,’ Ron whispered. ‘I don’t understand why the gateway’s sealed itself …’

Harry looked up at the giant clock with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach. Ten seconds … nine seconds …

He wheeled his trolley forward cautiously until it was right against the barrier, and pushed with all his might. The metal remained solid.

Three seconds … two seconds … one second …

‘It’s gone,’ said Ron, sounding stunned. ‘The train’s left. What if Mum and Dad can’t get back through to us? Have you got any Muggle money?’

Harry gave a hollow laugh. ‘The Dursleys haven’t given me pocket money for about six years.’

Ron pressed his ear to the cold barrier.

‘Can’t hear a thing,’ he said tensely. ‘What’re we going to do? I don’t know how long it’ll take Mum and Dad to get back to us.’

They looked around. People were still watching them, mainly because of Hedwig’s continuing screeches.

‘I think we’d better go and wait by the car,’ said Harry. ‘We’re attracting too much atten-‘

‘Harry!’ said Ron, his eyes gleaming. ‘The car!’

‘What about it?’

‘We can fly the car to Hogwarts!’

‘But I thought -‘

‘We’re stuck, right? And we’ve got to get to school, haven’t we? And even underage wizards are allowed to use magic if it’s a real emergency, section nineteen or something of the Restriction of Thingy …’

Harry’s feeling of panic turned suddenly to excitement.

‘Can you fly it?’

‘No problem,’ said Ron, wheeling his trolley around to face the exit. ‘C’mon, let’s go, if we hurry we’ll be able to follow the Hogwarts Express.’

And they marched off through the crowd of curious Muggles, out of the station and back into the side road where the old Ford Anglia was parked.

Ron unlocked the cavernous boot with a series of taps from his wand. They heaved their trunks back in, put Hedwig on the back seat and got into the front.

‘Check no one’s watching,’ said Ron, starting the ignition with another tap of his wand. Harry stuck his head out of the window: traffic was rumbling along the main road ahead, but their street was empty.

‘OK,’ he said.

Ron pressed a tiny silver button on the dashboard. The car around them vanished - and so did they. Harry could feel the seat vibrating beneath him, hear the engine, feel his hands on his knees and his glasses on his nose, but for all he could see, he had become a pair of eyeballs, floating a few feet above the ground in a dingy street full of parked cars.

‘Let’s go,’ said Ron’s voice from his right.

The ground and the dirty buildings on either side fell away, dropping out of sight as the car rose; in seconds, the whole of London lay, smoky and glittering, below them.

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

‘Uh oh,’ said Ron, jabbing at the Invisibility Booster. ‘It’s faulty -‘

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

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

‘Now what?’ said Harry, blinking at the solid mass of cloud pressing in on them from all sides.

‘We need to see the train to know what direction to go in,’ said Ron.

‘Dip back down again - quickly -‘

They dropped back beneath the clouds and twisted around in their seats, squinting at the ground -

‘I can see it!’ Harry yelled. ‘Right ahead - there!’

The Hogwarts Express was streaking along below them 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 they shot up through the clouds. A minute later, they 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.

They looked at each other and started to laugh; for a long time, they couldn’t stop.

It was as though they had been plunged into a fabulous dream. This, thought Harry, was surely the only way to travel: past swirls and turrets of snowy cloud, in a car full of hot, bright sunlight, with a fat pack of toffees in the glove compartment, and the prospect of seeing Fred and George’s jealous faces when they landed smoothly and spectacularly on the sweeping lawn in front of Hogwarts castle.

They made regular checks on the train as they flew further and further north, each dip beneath the clouds showing them a different view. London was soon far behind them, 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, Harry had to admit that some of the fun was wearing off. The toffees had made them extremely thirsty and they had nothing to drink. He and Ron had pulled off their jumpers, but Harry’s T-shirt was sticking to the back of his seat and his glasses kept sliding down to the end of his sweaty nose. He 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 they 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 them, 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 them upwards again, but as he did so, the engine began to whine.

Harry and Ron exchanged nervous glances.

‘It’s probably just tired,’ said Ron. ‘It’s never been this far before …’

And they both pretended not to notice the whining growing louder and louder as the sky became steadily darker. Stars were blossoming in the blackness. Harry pulled his jumper back on, trying to ignore the way the windscreen wipers were now waving feebly, as though in protest.

‘Not far,’ said Ron, more to the car than to Harry, ‘not far now,’ and he patted the dashboard nervously.

When they flew back beneath the clouds a little while later, they had to squint through the darkness for a landmark they knew.

‘There!’
Harry shouted, making Ron and Hedwig jump. ‘Straight ahead!’

Silhouetted on the dark horizon, high on the cliff over the lake, stood the many turrets and towers of Hogwarts castle.

But the car had begun to shudder and was losing speed.

‘Come on,’ Ron said cajolingly, giving the steering wheel a little shake, ‘nearly there, come on -‘

The engine groaned. Narrow jets of steam were issuing from under the bonnet. Harry found himself gripping the edges of his seat very hard as they flew towards the lake.

The car gave a nasty wobble. Glancing out of his window, Harry saw the smooth, black, glassy surface of the water, a mile below. Ron’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The car wobbled again.