Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter 3
I walked through the streets for a while with Harry. We didn't know where we were going or what we were doing. We were homeless and poor and we had just broken the law against underage magic.
"Do you think that they'll break our wands like they did to Hagrid?" I asked.
"I don't know, but I don't really want to find out," Harry said.
We walked a little further and ran into a bench that sat on the side of the road. We sat down for a minute, trying to decide what our next move would be. Then I saw something moving in the bushes.
"What was that?" we said at the same time.
We looked at each other and then simultaneously pulled out our wands. We pointed them towards the bush, ready to fight whatever was inside of them.
"Lumos!" I said.
For only a second I saw a huge outline of what appeared to be some kind of animal. It had huge, yellow eyes that were looking directly at the two of us.
I didn't see anything else because in the next moment, I was laying on the ground. In front of me, what had apparently knocked me over, was a triple decker bus. Harry sat on the ground too, staring off into the distance where the animal had just been.
"What are you doing on the ground?" a man asked.
I looked back at the bus and saw a man standing at the door of it. He wore a purple outfit that matched the color of the bus, which I had just now realized read The Knight Bus. Harry stood up quickly and helped me up too.
"Sorry," Harry said. "We just tripped."
The man straightened up his jacket and made sure he looked all proper, stood up straight and started talking.
"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 evening."
"Anywhere?" I asked.
"That's what I says!" Stan said. "Aren't ya listenin'?"
"Can you take us to London?"
"That'll be eleven Sickles, what did ya say yer names were?"
There was silence for a moment. We couldn't tell him our real names in case the Ministry was looking for us so they could snap our wands.
"I'm Neville Longbottom," Harry said.
"Hermione Granger," I said.
"Okay Neville and Hermione," he said looking at our foreheads strangely. "Just get your stuff in this here bus and we'll be gone in no time."
Harry grabbed his luggage, but Stan quickly grabbed for mine. He didn't give me a second look, so I assumed that it was customary for him to help with the bags.
Right when we sat down, I looked nervously over at Harry. I wasn't sure who these people were, but what if the recognized us?
Stan walked to the front of the bus and started saying something to the old man that was driving the bus. I looked around and noticed several other people in there, all of them were asleep.
"Harry...should we trust these people?" I whispered. "What if they turn us in?"
"We don't really have much of a choice now," he frowned.
I kept looking around the bus, still afraid that someone would recognize us. Just look at the way Stan looked at our scars? Someone was going to put two and two together and realize that we weren't supposed to be there.
"It's going to be fine," Harry whispered and squeezed my hand.
"Here we go!" Stan yelled.
Suddenly the bus took off. Outside of the windows I could see things flying by quickly. There were loud banging noises coming from the sides of the bus as if it was about to fall to pieces if we kept moving.
"What if the Muggles see us?" Harry yelled over all the noise.
"Muggles?" Stan laughed. "Them don't hear nuthin' or see nuthin.' They don't pay attention, you see?"
"Oh..." Harry said as he looked out of the window.
I looked around the bus and I saw several people sitting around and some were laying down on beds that were in the back of the bus. When I looked up front, I saw a poster with a familiar face on it. It was the man that I had seen on the news that Uncle Vernon had been watching before.
"Who is that man?" I asked Stan. "I saw him on the Muggle news!"
Stan looked around for a minute and then finally noticed that I was talking about the man that was on the wanted poster.
"'Him?" he asked sounding a bit shocked. "You don't know who Sirius Black is?"
"No..." I said and I looked over to Harry who looked just as confused as I did.
"Let me see that," Harry said and he took the paper with Sirius Black on it.
As he read through the paper, I started to talk to Stan about who exactly this guy was.
"So, what did Black do that was so bad?" I asked him.
"You don't get out much, do ya Miss?" Stan asked me. "Sirius Black is a murderer! He done killed thirteen people with one curse!"
"Thirteen people?" I said.
"That's right!" Stan said. "He was a big supporter of You-Know-Who! Right after dem Potter twins killed You-Know-Oo, he went crazy in da streets and killed a bunch o' people!"
Right after he said the Potter twins, I made sure that my hair was covering up my scar. Ever since I was little, I always had side bangs to cover up the scar. It wasn't really my own decision, it was more Aunt Petunia wanting to make sure the hideous scar on my forehead was covered up.
"You know what he did after 'e was caught?" Stan asked. "He started laughin' like a mad man! He was crazy that man was..."
"If he was caught, why would there be posters up?" Harry asked.
"'Cause he got out, Neville!" Stan said. "Don't ya read the papers? The mad man is on the loose and everyone is goin' crazy lookin' for 'im! Some people think that them Askaban guards let 'im out...they are kinda scary..."
It was silent after that, well, the bus was still making noise, but not a single person in it was talking. I looked out the window and watched as everything passed at what seemed to be the speed of light. Then, within minutes, we arrived at the Leaky Cauldron in London.
We waved to Stan as we stepped out, but were confronted as soon as we moved forward.
"Just the people that I wanted to see!" the man said. "Harry and Emily Potter!"
It was Cornelius Fudge - the Minister of Magic. Just the man that we were trying to avoid.
"What did ya just call 'em Minister?" Stan asked. "That's Hermione and Neville!"
"What?" Fudge asked. "These two are Harry and Emily Potter..."
"I knew it!" Stan yelled. "I done seen their scars and everything!"
"Yes..." he said. "Well, we need to talk," he said to us."
We both hung our heads in shame, knowing that we had been caught. I thought of all the people that we were going to leave behind. The world that we would never be able to see again. Ron, Hermione, Neville, Ginny, Fred...George...we would never see them again because we were criminals. Criminals that got caught.
As we walked into the Leaky Cauldron, we were greeted by Tom, the owner. He lead us into a private room where the Minister would be able to yell at us properly and snaps our wands in half. Snap our lives in half is more like it...
"Sit down, you two."
We both sat down in the arm chairs that were around the room and looked at the floor.
"I am happy to see that the two of you are safe!" he said happily. "I thought that you might have been...nevermind. You should be happy to know that your aunt is back to normal and everything has been sorted out just fine!
There was a long drawn out silence between all of us. I was waiting for more, but nothing came.
"So..." I started. "What's our punishment?"
"For what?" Fudge asked sounding confused.
"We performed underage magic," Harry said.
"We broke the law!" I said.
"We're not going to punish you two for what you've done tonight!" he said with the wave of his hand. "It was an accident!"
I felt so much better after he said that. We would be going back to Hogwarts!
"So, I'm going to go get a room for the two of you to stay at for the remainder of the break," Fudge said as he exited the room.
There was a moments silence when he was gone, but then I turned to Harry who looked completely shocked.
"We're going back to Hogwarts!" I said smiling. "AND we don't have to go back to the Dursleys! To think that we were going to get punished - this is more of a reward!"
"Yeah, maybe we should do this more often," Harry laughed.
Thanks for reading! I know that it wasn't that much, sorry! I'm going to be posting a new chapter every other day for a little while and I'm sorry for that. A lot of things have come up recently with school and my dad's wedding, so I hope that you all understand that I don't have as much time as I want and I really hope that you stick with the story!
Tell me what you think of this chapter and maybe add in some ideas for future chapters. If you all have any questions, I will be happy to answer them! PLEASE REVIEW!
