Author's Note: the characters of the Harry Potter novels are the property
of their creator, J.K. Rowling, and are used here without her knowledge
or permission. All other characters property of the author. 53,000 words.
January, 2002. Adult situations, mild sexual content and violence.
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Chapter Five – Murder on the Hogwarts Express.
King's Cross
Station was a buzzing hive of activity. Muggles rushed to and fro, nearly
all of them in a hurry. Even so, some were startled from their own business
to notice the admittedly unusual sight of four teenagers pushing carts
piled with distinctly un-Mugglish luggage. None of their carts had
cauldrons, or caged owls, or cloth-wrapped shapes that were still recognizably
broomsticks.
Ginny's broomstick
wasn't even wrapped. She wanted all the world to see the gleaming handle
and sleek twigs, and the sharply-angled lettering like script made from
lightning that read 'Skyblazer.'
Harry and Hermione
had accompanied the Weasleys back to the Burrow for a final dinner the
night before they were due to leave for school. Fred and George came over
too, and as they were in the midst of regaling everyone with funny anecdotes
from Weasley's Wizard Wheezes – their mother, Mrs. Weasley, listened to
these with a firm scowl of disapproval pasted on her features – a large
brown owl came swooping in through the kitchen window and dropped the Skyblazer
squarely into Ginny's hands. A congratulatory note from the proprietor
of the shop had been tied to the handle.
Nothing would
do after that but for Harry to break out his Firebolt, and for the two
of them to practice out back. They took turns dive-bombing the gnomes that
infested the garden, scaring them into sight for Hermione's cat Crookshanks
to chase. Ron's owl, Pigwidgeon, flapped and fluttered madly all about,
wanting to play and trying to keep up with the zipping, darting broomsticks.
Hedwig, Harry's snowy owl, ruffled up her feathers and hunched her head
down into them, and her expression was as patiently exasperated as Hermione's
own.
Ron was purple
with indignation. When Harry had first gotten his Firebolt, a present from
his godfather, Ron had been all over Harry to let him have a ride. But
when Ginny offered him a turn on the Skyblazer, he sniffed and stalked
inside, and slammed the back door so hard that it sent the gnomes bounding
in new directions.
He kept Harry
up until nearly midnight with his tossing and turning. Every so often,
he'd rise up, punch his pillow, and snarl something under his breath. Harry
didn't know what to say. He felt bad for Ron, shown up by his own sister,
but it was nice to see Ginny so happy for a change. She'd had a bad first
year at Hogwarts what with the Chamber of Secrets and all. He figured Ron
would get over it.
They got up
at the crack of dawn to leave for the train station. The Burrow seemed
oddly empty now that Fred and George had a flat in town, upstairs of their
joke shop. Mrs. Weasley still made more food than was needed at meals,
and bundled up a big bag of leftovers for them to have for lunch. Nobody
wanted to hurt her feelings by mentioning Harry's usual habit of treating
them all to goodies from the snack trolley.
While they were
waiting for their turn to surreptitiously approach the entrance to Platform
9 and ¾, Harry caught himself stealing glances at Hermione. She
was dressed up for the trip in a skirt-and-sweater combination not all
that different from ones he'd seen in years past, but it was really remarkable
how shapely her legs were, and how fascinating the contours the sweater
followed.
He had to consciously
quit looking at Hermione, though, when out of the corner of his eye he
caught Ginny looking at him with a suspicious furrow to her brow.
Last thing he needed was for her to get all jealous … or worse, say something
to Hermione. There had been that nasty mess with Rita Skeeter two years
ago, and he'd sooner be eaten alive by scorpion-ants than go through that
again.
Making a big
show of deliberately looking elsewhere, Harry saw a cart with a trunk on
it, and just barely sticking up over the top, the dark-blond head and frightened
violet-blue eyes of Jeremy Upwood. He was rolling his cart aimlessly back
and forth, staring first at the sign that read "Platform 9" and then the
one that read "Platform 10," and was on the verge of tears.
"Jeremy!" he
called. "Over here."
"I can't find
where
I'm supposed to be," Jeremy wailed. "The ticket says --"
"It's all right,"
Hermione assured him. "Just watch how we do it. Here, Ron, show him."
"It's easy-peasy,"
Ron said. "Watch."
He checked to
be sure no Muggles were paying particular attention, then purposefully
pushed his cart straight at the brick wall dividing Platforms 9 and 10.
As he reached it, the wall wavered and he vanished through.
Jeremy's mouth
was hanging open. Harry grinned. Things that were old-hat to him now were
new again when he saw them through the eyes of someone else.
"See?" he said,
as Ginny and then Hermione went. "Nothing to it. Here I go."
His vision blurred
briefly as he passed through the illusory wall. Sometimes he wondered what
would happen if a Muggle accidentally blundered against it. Would the wall
know, and reject them? Or would the Muggle suddenly be standing where Harry
was now, in front of the shining scarlet train?
The leading
edge of a cart slammed into Harry's ankles and almost knocked him over.
He jumped out of the way. Jeremy Upwood was there, gaping in amazement.
Harry grinned at him and winked, then went to where Hermione was waving
to him.
He lost track
of Jeremy in the crush of people all loading their luggage and boarding
the train. He spotted Ginny chatting with Dennis Creevey, younger brother
of Harry's admirer, Colin. Since Dennis had also made the Quidditch team
– Beater – at the end of last year's tryouts, Harry hoped Dennis would
be more likely to get to know him as a person now, and less of an idol.
The Hogwarts
Express pulled away from the platform with a bellowing hiss of steam, and
picked up speed as it chugged out of the station. Harry settled into a
compartment with Ron and Hermione. Ron was slumped by the window, wearing
a sulky look, and Hermione already had her nose buried in The Standard
Book of Spells: Grade 6. Harry couldn't help being intrigued by the
way her skirt had hiked a little bit, exposing a pretty knee.
Someone rapped
at the doorframe of their compartment. Neville Longbottom, whom Harry had
had a hand in turning into a frog last Christmastime, stuck his head in.
He'd recovered completely from that ordeal, and while Harry would never
be on Neville's grandmother's list of favorite people, she had quit trying
to have Neville removed from Gryffindor House.
Neville, of
all of Harry's friends and classmates, had changed the least. He was still
pudgy and round-faced, still with a perpetual worried look that said he
knew things were going on around him and was trying his best to comprehend.
"Do you know
who's come back to Hogwarts?" he asked breathlessly, plopping onto the
seat beside Hermione. Harry had sat next to Ron, the better to keep stealing
peeks at her knee.
"Professor Lupin?"
Harry knew it was too much to hope for, but still …
Ron roused from
his sulk. "The girls from Beauxbatons?"
Neville shook
his head at both of them. "Fyren Grimme!"
Harry was blank,
but Hermione looked up from her book and Ron rocked back in his seat.
"No!" said Ron.
"You've got to be kidding."
"Who's Fyren
Grimme?" Harry asked, mentally kicking himself for once more being behind
the times and not knowing all he should about the wizarding world.
"Didn't Professor
McGonagall mention him?" pondered Hermione. "I seem to remember something
in one of her Transfigurations classes … oh! When we were first-years,
and she was telling us why we wouldn't be allowed to practice any human
Transfigurations until fifth or sixth."
"I heard about
it from Fred," said Ron. "Fyren Grimme was a year behind them, but everyone
knew he was going to be trouble. Slytherin, of course. Had Dark wizard
written all over him."
"You say that
about everyone from Slytherin," said Harry.
"Am I wrong?"
"Well …"
"Anyway," Neville
went on breathlessly, "they finally got the spells undone on him and now
he's back."
"Hang on," said
Harry. "That was how many years ago? And it took this long? When you were
a frog, Madame Pomfrey had you back to normal in just a few weeks."
"Don't remind
me." Neville made a face, perhaps recalling what it had been like to live
on a diet of pureed flies.
"I thought he
was expelled," Hermione said. "That after he partway Transfigured himself,
he went mad and bit some students."
"It only had
half to do with Transfiguration," Neville said. "Gran told me that he was
trying to turn himself into an Animagus, and something went wrong." He
went somber. "And she told me that if I ever tried …"
"He did," said
Ron. "Bite some people, I mean. That's what Fred said. I wouldn't think
Dumbledore would be in a hurry to let him back. Are you sure, Neville?"
"I'm sure,"
said Neville. "I passed by a bunch of Slytherins on my way to the bathroom
and Malfoy was introducing him around. He's enormous. Well, not like Hagrid,
but big. Like Marcus Flint, Harry, do you remember him?"
"How could I
forget?" said Harry dryly. Flint, the captain of the Slytherin team, had
been a huge, mean bruiser who'd been held back and had to repeat a year,
and taken out his anger about it on the Quidditch field as well as the
bodies of the opposing team. Something struck him. "Say … is he about so
tall, dark haired, shoulders like this?"
"That's him,"
confirmed Neville.
"That's the
one we saw outside Flourish and Blotts," said Ron. "Blimey, he was a big
one. Tough-looking, too. Fyren Grimme and Malfoy, talk about a match made
in Hell. I bet Malfoy's already poisoned him against you, Harry. Better
be on your toes."
"Always."
Just then, as
if on some horrible cue, the lights snapped off, plunging them into darkness.
Total darkness, for at that moment the train was in a long tunnel.
A spate of screams
and startled outcries erupted. Harry bit back an alarmed exclamation of
his own. The last time something like this had happened, dementors had
been aboard.
He pulled out
his wand, the words Expecto Patronus poised at his lips. First would
be the chill, the awful bone-deep chill, like tendrils of icy mist wrapping
stealthy fingers around his insides and slipping into his marrow. Then
the voices, his mother's desperate pleas, his father's last stand, their
dying shrieks.
"Lumos,"
said Hermione. A glow lit the end of her wand.
The frightened
commotion elsewhere on the train died out as others did the same. Soon
the eerie flicker of wandlights was visible all up and down the corridor.
No dementors appeared. The train rushed from the tunnel and afternoon sunlight
poured in through the windows.
"What was that
all about?" asked Ron as the overhead lights came back on too.
He was answered
by a fresh scream, this one full of horror and very close. Harry and Hermione
were quickest to the door, Neville stumbling over Crookshanks and treading
hard on Ron's foot so that the two of them didn't sort it out for several
seconds.
The snacks trolley
was angled crossways in the corridor. The witch who managed it was standing
in the doorway of another compartment, staring down and now screaming through
her fingers as she covered her face. A gaggle of students surrounded her,
elbowing each other and going on tiptoe and trying to see in.
Harry shoved
through them. A surprising number gave way the moment they saw him, his
reputation acting like an invisible wedge clearing him a path. Hermione
came along in his wake, and they reached the witch.
"What's the
matter?" Harry touched her on the shoulder.
She turned to
him, her face the color of curdled milk, and pointed.
The compartment
at first glance looked empty, unoccupied. But there was something on the
floor … a small and crumpled something …
"It's Jeremy!"
gasped Hermione.
Harry squeezed
past the witch in the doorway and dropped to his knees. Jeremy was face-down,
one arm bent behind him so that the tiny hand was palm-up and curled as
if begging for help.
"Jeremy? Jeremy,
answer me."
The boy didn't
move. He was still, so still, and it didn't look as though he were breathing.
Harry looked up at Hermione. She was chewing her lip in anxiety and agitation.
Behind her, the news was being passed from one onlooker to the next.
Carefully, gingerly,
Harry took hold of Jeremy and rolled him onto his back. Jeremy was limp
and cold. His eyes were wide, glassy, like jewels the color of twilight.
Unseeing.
"I think …"
He didn't want to say it because saying it might make it true.
Hermione said
it for him. "He's dead, isn't he?"
A whispering
gasp, like wind through tall grass, stirred through the crowd and ended
all other talk. The witch moaned and covered her eyes.
"Someone's got
to do something," Harry said.
But they were
all looking at him, as if expecting him to do something. Even Hermione
made a sort of 'well, hurry it up' gesture at him.
He still had
his wand out, prepared as he'd been to deal with dementors. Now he pointed
it at Jeremy and said, "Ennervate!"
Light streamed
from the end, but pooled uselessly around the body. If he'd been sleeping,
even if he'd been unconscious … Harry grimly shook his head at Hermione.
"He's not wounded.
What …? Was it …?" she trailed off.
"I don't know."
Harry sat back on his heels and ran a hand through his hair. He rubbed
the faint roughness of his scar under his palm and wondered if he would
have felt anything had someone gone and used the Avada Kadavra Curse
on poor Jeremy. The only other times he'd been around when that spell had
been cast, it was by Voldemort. But this wasn't the Dark Lord's handiwork.
Harry surely would have felt that.
Bedlam was taking
over the train, a near-panic spreading like wildfire among the students.
Harry didn't know what to do. When the dementors had come, Professor Lupin
had saved them and cured the worst of the residual chill with chocolate.
The trolley was right there within arm's reach, but what good would chocolate
do for Jeremy Upwood now?
Hermione had
come to similar conclusions because she was holding a thick bar, turning
it over and over in her hands. "Isn't there anything we can do?"
"You're the
book-smart one," he said dismally. "Don't you have any ideas?" When she
shook her head, he looked up at the witch. "What did you see?"
"All the lights
went out," she said. "Someone came out of this compartment, pushed by me,
nearly knocked me over."
"Who was it?"
demanded Hermione.
"Couldn't see.
Might've been a man."
Harry's initial
impulse was to look around for Draco Malfoy, as he recalled the Slytherins'
snide remarks about Mudbloods, Muggles, and stricter laws. But any suspicion
aimed at Draco quickly vanished when Harry saw him, rumpled and trying
to straighten out his clothes, emerging from the tiny, one-person lavatory
with Pansy Parkinson behind him. Pansy, too, was rumpled, her make-up smudged.
Malfoy's face
was flushed and indignant, as if all of this had interrupted something
he really hadn't wanted interrupted, and he wasn't a good enough actor
to be counterfeiting those emotions. Further, when word reached him that
there'd apparently been a murder on board, his look of surprise was entirely
genuine.
The conductor,
a wizard in dark red robes with shoulderboards trimmed in gold braid, and
buttons all down the front with raised images of the Hogwarts crest, pushed
into the compartment. He blanched as he saw Jeremy, but gathered his wits
and motioned people back, sliding the door shut. Harry saw Ron, craning
to peer over the heads of the crowd, and then Ron was gone as the door
thunked home.
The snack-trolley
witch, inside with Harry and Hermione, collapsed onto the nearest seat
and began sobbing with her head in her apron. The conductor knelt opposite
Harry and, not without a grimace and a hesitation, grasped Jeremy's outflung
wrist and felt for a pulse.
"Nothing," he
said. "The lad's gone. What did this to him?"
"We don't know,"
Harry said, and explained how they'd been in their compartment when the
lights went out, and then heard the witch's screams.
"Shouldn't we
cover him?" Hermione took a folded blanket from one of the upper shelves
and shook it out. Harry caught the other end and together they lowered
it over Jeremy. He made such a small, pitiful lump.
Then, from beneath
the blanket, Jeremy hitched in a shuddering breath. His hand, which hadn't
been covered, spasmed as if grabbing at thin air.
Hermione voiced
a thin shriek and sprang back. Her bottom hit Harry, and the backs of his
knees hit the edge of the seat. He landed sitting, with Hermione in his
lap and her skirt flipped most of the way up her thighs, but thoughts of
her legs were as far as could be from his mind. He scrambled out from under
her and whipped the blanket off of Jeremy.
Those violet-blue
eyes shifted to look at him. Their color was clouded, twilight sky viewed
through a thin veil of cloud, but alert. He sat up.
The snack-trolley
witch pealed a scream like a siren and bolted for the door. She fought
wildly with the conductor, tore free, yanked the door open, and burst out
into the still-crowded hallway. Her sudden arrival set off new outbursts
of panic.
"What's going
on?" asked Jeremy Upwood in a faint, strained voice.
The conductor's
mouth opened and closed, opened and closed.
"Jeremy?" asked
Harry cautiously. "How do you feel?"
"I'm fine."
But he didn't look fine; he looked pale and drawn, and there was
a greyish underhue to his complexion that reminded Harry of something that
he couldn't immediately place.
The boy got
up, unsteadily. The doorway was a wall of faces and wide, astonished eyes.
He uncomfortably averted his face from them.
The conductor
reached out for Jeremy's wrist, perhaps meaning to assure himself that
he'd simply felt in the wrong place for a pulse. Jeremy edged away, tucking
his arms around himself.
"I'm fine, really
I am," he insisted.
"I guess he
must be," Hermione said, with doubt coloring her tone. "What do you think,
Harry?"
"I think … we
ought to just let it be," he said, telling her with a look that they'd
talk more about it later.
** |