The seven o'clock news had just ended, and yet again there was nothing that sounded like the work of Voldemort.
Harry reached over and picked up the book he'd been reading while waiting for the seven o'clock news to start, but had only been reading again for a few seconds when there was suddenly a loud crack. From inside the house came a shriek and the sound of china breaking, and nearby a cat streaked out from under a car and tore off down the road.
Instinctively, Harry pulled his wand out from his jeans pocket and rolled over onto his stomach to peer out though the bushes at the street, where it sounded like the noise had come from. But the street seemed to be completely deserted, the only sign of life being several neighbors looking out their windows curiously, wondering what had cause the unusual noise.
"Where is that boy?" he heard his uncle growl from inside the house through the open window. "Making a racket like a pistol right outside our house!"
Harry rolled his eyes, his uncle always assuming that anything out of the ordinary had to be him, the wizard. Though this time, he had to partially agree with his uncle — that had sounded exactly like the sound Dobby made when he apparated and disapparated. But there was absolutely no one to be seen on Privet Drive, house elf, wizard, or muggle.
After several minutes of waiting and watching to see if anything else would happen, and to make sure his aunt and uncle weren't still looking out the window above him to possibly see him sneaking out from under the bush, he finally began to slowly creep out from his hiding spot. Once out from behind the bush, he crossed the yard and started slowly walking up the street, a couple hours still to waste until he could enter the house just before his cousin and not get yelled at, or at least glared at, by his uncle for either being in the house during the day, or out past Dudley — it was a very fine line to navigate.
He eventually wandered his way to the nearby park where he'd met Hermione several times earlier in the summer, and settled into the one remaining swing that hadn't been broken by Dudley and his crew, to continue reading until the evening light faded.
~HP~
Almost two hours later, as Harry sat swinging lightly in the swing, looking out unseeingly at the nearby street, idly wondering what his girlfriend was doing at the moment, he heard the voices of Dudley's crew coming that direction.
Having no interest in meeting his cousin or his cousin's fellow hooligans, Harry silently hopped down from the swing and slipped off across the parched grass to Elm Street. It was a longer route back home than the one Dudley would be taking, but he knew his cousin would just be strolling along, having no reason to get home quickly as Vernon and Petunia had never been upset with their son for anything in his entire life, so he'd still easily beat his cousin back to Number Four Privet Drive without any trouble — he'd done so repeatedly that summer.
But a few streets later, as he turned down the narrow alleyway that would take him over to Wisteria Walk, he gave a shuddering gasp, as though someone had thrown ice water on him. At the same time, the night around him suddenly went pitch-black dark, all the stars, moon, and streetlights at either end of the alleyway vanishing, along with all the background noises of the night. The previously balmy temperature became ice cold, causing him to shiver as he looked around to find the source of this sudden change.
He knew the only thing it could possibly be, having experienced it on a far greater scale two years earlier saving his godfather, but it was completely impossible that they could actually be there, in Little Whinging. As he stared unseeing into the darkness, his wand out and ready, and spell on the tip of his tongue to shout if he was right, he listened as hard as he could, knowing he would hear them before he saw them.
And few seconds later, he did hear the long, hoarse, rattling breath that meant he was unfortunately right. As he felt a chill creep up his spine from behind, he spun around shouting, "Expecto Patronum!", his happiest memory of snogging Hermione occupying his mind. The enormous stag that was his patronus burst out of the tip of his wand, and charged down the towering, hooded figure that was gliding down the narrow alleyway towards him. The silver stag threw the dementor backwards with its antlers, forcing the dementor to swoop away into the night, defeated.
But to Harry's horror, the night didn't return, and he felt another chill and heard another rattling breath from behind him — there had been at least two dementors, and they had been trying to trap him in between them.
"THIS WAY!" he shouted at his patronus, wheeling around to face the second dementor.
His stag came galloping past him, catching the second dementor in what would have been its heart if it had one, just as it had the first one.
As that dementor swooped away as well, and his stag finished cantering to the end of the alleyway and disappeared into silvery smoke, the night finally returned to its previous mundane self, and Harry breathed a sigh of relief. But before he could even begin to contemplate the fact that there had been two dementors in Little Whinging that had tried to kiss him (for he had no doubt that was their intended goal, trapping him between them in a narrow alleyway as they had), he suddenly heard footsteps running up behind him. Turning, wand still out and ready for any new fresh danger, he saw it was Mrs Figg.
But as he tried to hastily stow away his wand before the old muggle lady could see it, she shrieked, "Don't put it away, idiot boy! What if there are more of them around? Oh, I'm going to kill Mundungus Fletcher!"
Harry stared at her in disbelief for several. He had heard the name Mundungus Fletcher a few times over the past few years and definitely from the wizarding world, though he couldn't at the moment remember when or where, but he had no clue who the guy actually was. Or how his batty old cat-lady neighbor could know him. Then he realized she had specifically told him not to put his wand away, because there might be more of them — the dementors — around, and he knew she must have some magical connection.
"Mrs Figg?" he asked in confusion, not even sure what to actually ask.
"He left!" shouted Mrs Figg, wringing her hands and seemingly talking mostly to herself. "Left to see someone about a batch of cauldrons that fell off the back of a broom—"
The old woman seemed to be just rambling, so Harry quickly cut her off.
"You're a witch?" he asked.
"I'm a Squib, as Mundungus knows full well, so how on earth was I supposed to help you fight off Dementors?" she practically shrieked. "He left you completely without cover when I'd warned him —"
But Harry's mind was busy putting two and two together, and he realized it must have been this Fletcher person who had made the loud crack in front of the Dursleys' house earlier that evening, as he had disapparated away to buy a bunch of cauldrons or whatever she'd said.
When he tuned back into Mrs Figg, he found her still rambling on. "— but luckily I'd stationed Mr Tibbles under a car just in case, and Mr Tibbles came and warned me, but by the time I got to your house you'd gone — and now — oh, what's Dumbledore going to say?"
Actually looking at Harry again, she said, "Now come on! We have to get you back inside! I'll be no help if they come back, I've never so much as Transfigured a teabag."
As they hurried down the alleyway and turned onto Wisteria Walk, she told him, "Keep your wand out. Never mind the Statute of Secrecy now, there's going to be hell to pay anyway, we might as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg. Talk about the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery...this was exactly what Dumbledore was afraid of - What's that at the end of the street? Oh, it's just Mr Prentice...don't put your wand away, boy, don't I keep telling you I'm no use?"
They quickly made it down Wisteria Walk to Privet Drive, Mrs Figg still mumbling under her breath about Fletcher, Dumbledore, the Dursleys, and who knew what else — Harry was too busy constantly checking around them to make sure they weren't attacked again to pay much attention to her. But just as they turned onto Privet Drive, there was another loud crack, and who Harry assumed must be Mundungus Fletcher appeared before them.
After a large amount of yelling by Mrs Figg, Fletcher disapparated off again to go tell Dumbledore what had happened, and Harry and Mrs Figg continued on to Number Four. When they reached his house, Mrs Figg told him once again to stay inside, before disappearing back down the street, leaving Harry to walk up the garden path alone.
Opening the door and entering the house, he was pleased to find that he'd still beaten Dudley home despite the minor dementor hiccup on his way, and also that his aunt and uncle weren't standing around anywhere waiting for their son to arrive, to question Harry about why he was trying to enter the house before their Diddykins could even be seen walking up the street. He quickly slipped up to his room and collapsed onto his bed, thinking hard about everything that had happened.
Several minutes later, he heard Dudley enter the house, and make his way into the kitchen doubtlessly hoping to sneak a late night snack without his parents knowing. But based on the noise of indistinct conversation he heard floating up to his bedroom, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had been waiting in the kitchen to foil his plan.
Harry payed little attention to this noise from downstairs, until he suddenly heard Vernon bellowing up through the house at him, "HARRY! GET DOWN HERE NOW!"
Wondering what the hell he could have possibly done this time, Harry headed downstairs. Walking into the kitchen, he found Uncle Vernon standing there glaring at him, holding out a large parchment envelope that Harry could just make out the Ministry of Magic emblem on — Ministry owls were apparently still as incapable of delivering their letters to their intended recipients as they had been three years earlier when the Ministry owl had dropped Harry's warning letter on top of muggle Mrs Mason's head in the dining room, instead of dropping it in the kitchen where Harry was mopping up the mess Dobby had made with the pudding. And this owl had apparently thought it best to drop the letter off in the kitchen with the three muggles of the household, instead of pecking on the window of Harry's bedroom where he actually was to deliver it to him directly.
Harry quickly tore open the envelope to read the short missive. How an owl had gotten there so quick from the Ministry Harry didn't have a clue, and he didn't really care — if Mrs Figg was right, this was not going to be the Ministry finally apologizing for refusing to believe the truth that Voldemort was back.
Finishing reading the expulsion and court summons, Harry thought hard.
Thanks to Hermione, he knew the Daily Prophet, which was nothing more than the propaganda department of the Ministry by that point, was running a censorship campaign to discredit Dumbledore and himself, and make everyone think they were crazy or power hungry for saying that Voldemort had returned. And barely over a month earlier after the third task, the head of the Ministry, the Minister himself, had threatened trying to take over Hogwarts. Now here he was being expelled by the Ministry after defending his life because he was attacked by the creatures the Ministry had guarding the wizarding prison they ran. Not to mention the fact they were trying to snap his wand before the hearing he would presumably have the opportunity to defend his actions at, though now he was seriously doubting he would be given any chance to do any such thing.
All in all, it seemed incredibly suspect.
The only thing he knew for sure, though, was that he had to leave there, and in a hurry. His wand was his means of self-defense, and had been his most important tool in saving his life numerous times since he'd bought it from Ollivander five years earlier — not to mention the fact that, according to Dumbledore, it had been his very specific wand and its shared core that had enabled him to even have the opportunity to overpower Voldemort in their duel in the graveyard, so it wasn't like he could just buy a new wand after he was cleared by the Ministry of all wrongdoing at the disciplinary hearing and it be just as good — plus wand chooses the wizard and all that. So he had to protect his wand at all cost, even if that meant using his wand to protect it. He'd defeated Voldemort one-on-one — he certainly wasn't losing his wand to the Ministry for not doing anything wrong.
But that would be easier to do, and more likely that it wouldn't be necessary to do, if he could get away from there to somewhere that the Ministry would have a much harder time of finding him before this could all be sorted out by Dumbledore or one of the other adults constantly insisting they had his best interests in mind.
Fortunately, as he stared around the kitchen trying to think of both where to go and how to get there, he remembered something — he not only had a place of his own to go to now, he had several places, and presumably a way to get there. Now if he could just figure out how to contact one of his house elves he'd never met and didn't know the names of.
"House elf? Can you hear me? How does this work? There has to be some way to call you, like sticking your wand hand in the air to get the Knight Bus," he shouted out into the air, causing the three Dursleys in the room to stare at him like he had completely lost his mind.
But a second later there was a loud crack and a house elf appeared in the middle of the kitchen.
With a bow it said, "Lord Potter, sir! Minkey at your service!"
The Dursleys stared at the strange creature gape-mouthed.
"Hi, Minkey," Harry said, ignoring them. "Forgive my ignorance, but you are?"
"Head of security for Potter Estate," replied the elf. "Normally stationed out of Potter Manor."
"So you're one of my house elves Griphook told me I had?" asked Harry.
"Yes, Lord Potter," replied Minkey with another bow.
"Can you take me to one of my houses, then?" asked Harry. "I can't stay here — the Ministry is coming."
"Of course, Lord Potter, Sir. Just grab my hand and we'll be there immediately," answered Minkey, like a good house elf never questioning why his Master needed to escape the Ministry.
"Uh...any chance you have any magic to pack my trunk in a hurry as well?" asked Harry hesitantly. "I don't mean to offend you if that's not part of your job."
But the house elf merely snapped his fingers twice, and Harry's trunk appeared next to them, fully packed Harry presumed. Grabbing the handle with one hand, he grabbed Minkey's hand with the other, and the next second he was pulled into darkness, reappearing a few seconds later in a dark and shadowy, but elaborate from what he could tell, completely marble entrance hall.
Meanwhile, back in the Dursley's kitchen, where the Dursleys were staring in open-mouthed shock at the spot Harry, the horrible creature, and Harry's trunk had just been standing, an owl collided with the kitchen window with the second loud crack they'd heard in just a few seconds. They continued staring at the spot Harry had disappeared from for several seconds, expecting the second crack to be him reappearing, before finally realizing that that wasn't it.
Looking around, they just spotted the owl shaking its feathers outside the window before it took off again — its recipient had just disappeared from the location and showed back up a long flight away, in the English countryside.
"What the bloody hell?!" exclaimed Uncle Vernon, but no one in the kitchen had any answers.