Harry Potter 03 - Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

shivered and looked up and down Magnolia Crescent. What was going to happen to him? Would he be arrested, or would he simply be outlawed from the wizarding world? He thought of Ron and Hermione, and his heart sank even lower. Harry was sure that, criminal or not, Ron and Hermione would want to help him now, but they were both abroad, and with Hedwig gone, he had no means of contacting them.
    He didn’t have any Muggle money, either. There was a little wizard gold in the moneybag at the bottom of his trunk, but the rest of the fortune his parents had left him was stored in a vault at Gringotts Wizarding Bank in London. He’d never be able to drag his trunk all the way to London. Unless …
    He looked down at his wand, which he was still clutching in his hand. If he was already expelled (his heart was now thumping painfully fast), a bit more magic couldn’t hurt. He had the Invisibility Cloak he had inherited from his father – what if he bewitched the trunk to make it feather-light, tied it to his broomstick, covered himself in the Cloak and flew to London? Then he could get the rest of his money out of his vault and … begin his life as an outcast. It was a horrible prospect, but he couldn’t sit on this wall for ever or he’d find himself trying to explain to Muggle police why he was out in the dead of night with a trunkful of spellbooks and a broomstick.
    Harry opened his trunk again and pushed the contents aside, looking for the Invisibility Cloak – but before he had found it, he straightened up suddenly, looking around him once more.
    A funny prickling on the back of his neck had made Harry feel he was being watched, but the street appeared to be deserted, and no lights shone from any of the large square houses.
    He bent over his trunk again, but almost immediately stood up once more, his hand clenched on his wand. He had sensed rather than heard it: someone or something was standing in the narrow gap between the garage and the fence behind him. Harry squinted at the black alleyway. If only it would move, then he’d know whether it was just a stray cat or – something else.
    ‘Lumos,’ Harry muttered, and a light appeared at the end of his wand, almost dazzling him. He held it high over his head, and the pebble-dashed walls of number two suddenly sparkled; the garage door gleamed, and between them, Harry saw, quite distinctly, the hulking outline of something very big, with wide, gleaming eyes.
    Harry stepped backwards. His legs hit his trunk and he tripped. His wand flew out of his hand as he flung out an arm to break his fall, and he landed, hard, in the gutter.
    There was a deafening BANG and Harry threw up his hands to shield his eyes against a sudden blinding light …
    With a yell, he rolled back onto the pavement, just in time. A second later, a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights had screeched to a halt exactly where Harry had just been lying. They belonged, as Harry saw when he raised his head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windscreen spelled The Knight Bus .
    For a split second, Harry wondered if he had been knocked silly by his 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 Harry, who was still sitting on the ground. Harry snatched up his wand again and scrambled to his feet. Close to, he saw that Stan Shunpike was only a few years older than he was; eighteen or nineteen at most, with large, protruding ears and a fair few pimples.
    ‘What were you doin’ down there?’ said Stan, dropping his professional manner.
    ‘Fell over,’ said Harry.
    ‘’Choo fall over for?’ sniggered Stan.
    ‘I didn’t do it on purpose,’ said Harry, annoyed. One of the knees in his jeans was torn, and the hand he had thrown out to break his fall was bleeding. He suddenly remembered why he 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 Harry, pointing uncertainly into