Chapter Twenty-Six: The Knight Bus

As Harry stomped painfully and aimlessly down the street he couldn't help but feel a twinge of regret.

If he hadn't made things so bloody complicated with Ron by encouraging the little school boy crush his best mate had on him, Harry could have talked to him about this. But he just couldn't help himself, could he? He had to go and fuck things up, and for what? A laugh? An ego boost? He wasn't even interested in Ron in that way, so why was he playing games? He was only going to hurt Ron and Dudley and wind up losing both of them. And he definitely couldn't talk to Hermione about it, he wasn't even sure he was keen on remaining friends with her once the war was over - and the feeling appeared to be mutual. Suddenly it seemed as though Hermione hated Harry, and she'd been shrieking and ranting furiously about him and Ron from the attic ever since George had been forced to lock her up in there.

And then there was this...thing...with Draco...

He'd initially written the letter so he could infiltrate the death eaters and trick Malfoy into giving him information that could help his side in the war, but he couldn't lie to himself and say that was the only reason why he wrote it, or that Draco's response hadn't made him feel more unbearably alive than he had in weeks...months...

Years.

Possibly even in his entire life.

And he didn't know what to do with that. Besides the minor problem of Harry already being in a relationship with Dudley and...some kind of sick flirtatious dance with Ron, Draco Malfoy was BAD. His parents were death eaters who had raised Draco to be one as well, so he was even more of an ignorant, bigoted little shite than Hermione had turned out to be.

Draco Malfoy was a manipulative, sociopathic bully who was always strutting around pompously and sneering at Harry and everyone else as if he were better than them. He was the most sadistic little fuck Harry that had ever encountered, and yet...

Harry kicked an empty old can of Guinness down the street with his bare foot in frustration. He knew he should just swallow his pride, turn around and go back to apologize and speak with Lupin and Sirius, but something inside of him wouldn't allow Harry to do that, so instead he just trudged onward through the eerily empty streets.

Harry wandered aimlessly for at least three quarters of an hour, getting more and more lost in the unfamiliar streets. Since he had essentially been kidnapped when he was taken to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, he didn't even know what part of England he was in and all he had with him was the letter from from Draco - which was still hidden safely down the front of his pajama bottoms - and his wand, which Harry kept tucked firmly between his arsecheeks for safety - Mad Eye Moody had tried to warn him that better wizards than he had blown off their buttocks and bollocks that way, but Harry rarely listened to anything that came out of that paranoid old crackpot's mouth, all he ever did was talk rubbish.

Harry was just about to turn a corner when he heard the sound of men shouting and immediately ducked behind a lamppost to hide - luckily his aunt and uncle had neglected him to such an astonishing degree that the boy was able to successfully conceal himself, being so malnourished that a light breeze could have blown him away.

Harry carefully peeked out from behind the lamppost to see where the shouting was coming from and saw five figures cloaked in black robes and hideously haunting masks looming with wands drawn over a terrified young man who was curled up on the cobblestones, his hands covering his head protectively. As Harry looked on, the masked figures flourished their wands magically and shouted "CRUCIO!" in unison, hitting the poor, prone man with five times the legal limit of the already highly illegal torture spell. Harry's eyes widened in horror as the man let out the most unearthly howl of pain that Harry had ever heard in his life as his body began seizing in agonizing fits.

Harry's heart was pounding like a jackhammer in his chest, but as much as he wished he could look away, somehow he couldn't take his eyes off of the writhing, anguished man.

He had to get out of there, he had to escape. But he had gotten himself so bloody lost that he didn't even know how to get back to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place anymore. There was nowhere he could go.

Harry was fucked.

The cruel figures raised their wands to curse the man again and Harry panicked, fumbling as he tried to pull out his own wand, which flew right out of his clammy, sweat slick hands.

Harry's Seeker instincts immediately kicked in and without thinking he dove after his wand, reaching out his arm and catching it before it fell. And as Harry caught his wand, two completely unexpected things happened all at once:

The masked figures screamed the most unforgivable of all the unforgivable curses at the man on the ground and Harry was forced to witness as the already horrifically tortured man was brutally murdered in cold blood right in front of his very eyes. At the same time, suddenly the violently purple triple decker Knight Bus appeared out of nowhere and Harry fell into it through the conveniently open door, magically escaping the murderous menace as the bus whizzed away from the scene of the crime.

Harry heaved a shuddering sigh of relief.

"'Ello, 'ello, 'ello! Well, if it isn't Neville Longbottom!" Croaked Stan Shunpike, the spotty, Cockney, teenage conductor of the magical emergency transportation service.

Harry automatically opened his mouth to self-righteously correct the youth, but caught himself just in time as he remembered that the first time he was rescued by the Knight Bus he had lied about his identity, using the name of his weak, wimpy school chum and fellow HA member, Neville Longbottom. He clamped his mouth shut again and gave Stan a sickly smile.

"Blimey, fancy seeing you again!" Stan continued, "But wot you doing falling into my bus for, Neville? You been getting into trouble again?" Stan inquired as he did a bit of a jig, clicked his heels together, and tipped his conductor's cap with scrappy street urchin pizzazz.

"Uh...er...n-no, no, I'm not in trouble, I'm just - " Harry stammered, scrambling to come up with a lie as the bus lurched violently through the streets at breakneck speed.

"Step in time!" The conductor exclaimed, launching back into his jig as the bus whipped around a corner and then squeezed itself between two military tanks, popping out the other side just in time for Stan to do a wild pirouette and execute several grand leaps across the length of the bus, before clicking his heels together again and landing in front of Harry in a sweeping bow. "Now, where can ol' Stan Shunpike take you, sunshine?"

"Uh..." Harry froze, his mind as completely blank as the real Neville's.

He needed somewhere safe to hide, somewhere no one would find him, but he couldn't tell Stan to take him to Grimmauld Place - part of the house's magical protection was that it was magically invisible to anyone who didn't know of its existence or location, and Harry couldn't compromise the safety of the other members of the Secret Order of Harry's Army by revealing headquarters to anyone - no, he had to keep it a secret, even if it killed him.

But where else could he go?

Uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia would murder him with their bare hands if he returned to Number Four Privet Drive without Dudley, so he couldn't go back there...

Fuck.

Stan was staring at him intently waiting for an answer as he began doing exaggerated pelvic thrusts in Harry's direction and then shuffled and slid back into a reprise of his raucous jig.

Harry blurted out the first place that came to mind in a blind panic.

"Malfoy Manor!" He ejaculated just as the bus launched itself off of dry land, flew over the river Thames and into the rising sun.