A SUMMER PLACE
by monkeymouse
a/k/a Patrick Drazen
2.9: Rule, Brittania!
[If you found your way this far, you don't need me to tell you that JK Rowling created the Potterverse, and is still creating it…]
Harry woke up very early on August 28, with the sun streaming through his window. Hedwig was sitting on the sill; she'd landed sometime during the night with Cho's latest. He beckoned Hedwig with one hand and reached for his glasses on the bedside table with the other.
Hedwig landed on Harry's chest; he found her weight reassuring. "Go get a rest, then," he said softly to her, as he untied the message. Hedwig seemed to nod to him as she lifted up and flew back out the window.
As he lay in bed, he said a single word: "luxurious." He felt as if he was living the meaning of that word. Breakfast would be waiting for him when he got out of bed; Ron would be by later; and he had Cho's latest letter to keep him company until then:
"Konnichiwa! Daisuki! ("Hello" and "I love you!")
Classes are back in full session now and, frankly, I think everyone's a bit relieved. The Summer Festival was wonderful, but there was so much to do that we're all a bit glad it's over and we can just get back to Potions and Charms—and Quidditch!
You asked about the Quidditch here a while ago. Because of the wind and the snow here even in the summer, you can't play a proper game of Quidditch outdoors; some days you can barely walk, never mind flying! So KMG has its Quidditch arena in the mouth of an extinct volcano! It's out of the weather, but you can't fly too high—the winds get very tricky when you get close to the rim.
The game is mostly the same as in England, but they have some different customs. Organized cheering, for instance; they're very big on that. Also, they like a game that's close scoring; they seem to think that an unevenly matched battle is an insult to the spectators. And anyone who cheats or throws a deliberate foul on the pitch is treated shabbily off the pitch. This last game, one Beater hit someone in the back of the head, and the whole school refused to speak to him for a week.
It would be so nice if Hogwarts sent a team here, and you had a chance to play the KMG team, and look around the campus. Almost everyone here is very nice (Andrew is still Andrew, unfortunately), and you'd be treated like an honoured guest. (Especially by me!) But I'll see you again in just a few more days.
Enjoy yourself (not too much!) until we meet again in Diagon Alley.
Love you,
Cho"
As he reread the letter, something about it struck him. Just to be sure, he read through all the letters he'd gotten that summer from Cho. Even including their argument letters at the end of July, it made for a very pleasant hour. There was nothing definite, nothing he could absolutely point to, but each letter seemed to have the odd phrase, the slight twist of meaning at some point, which hinted that Cho might want—or was that just his wishful thinking?
He had told Ron the truth the other day: while he had a great many fantasies about making love with Cho, he didn't have the first idea how to approach her about it. She was older (if only by one year), and she was smarter (if being Sorted into Ravenclaw counted for anything). Part of him was willing to let her give him the lead in that.
But another part of him was afraid it meant that nothing would happen for another year—at the least. Was there anything that he could do at his end to help things along?
He thought about it a while, then jumped out of bed, grabbing a parchment and quill:
"Dear Zafar,
Thanks again for taking me to your club on my birthday. It turned out to be my best present that day.
Maybe you've heard from the girl who brought the music that day, Cho Chang, that she'll be back there on the thirty-first. Maybe you also know that she means a great deal to me. We'd been seeing each other for a year before she moved to Japan a few months ago. Our next meeting may be the last for a long while, and I want to make it really special. Can you think of anyplace around Brixton that would be good for a picnic?
Thanks again for everything.
Harry Potter"
There was a rustle at the window; as if she'd read his mind, Hedwig was sitting there waiting. Harry tied the letter to her leg, and made a point of carefully pronouncing, "Zafar Ajneeri; he runs the club MoshiMoshi in Brixton." He held out a treat for her; she snatched it from between his fingers, turned and flew off to the south.
As he dressed to go down to breakfast, Harry marveled at why Muggles still used pillar-boxes to send letters. A pillar-box can't love you back.
xxx
Harry was just finishing breakfast when Ron popped out of the fireplace at the Leaky Cauldron. He dusted off the soot and joined Harry at his table.
"What do you want to do, then?" Ron asked.
"Well, I really don't know much about London. It ought to be full of interesting things, though. I know that people come thousands miles just to look around the city."
"Well, you probably know more about it than I do, growing up with the Muggles and all."
"Don't forget; we're talking about MY Muggles. I doubt they've read five books a year between the three of 'em."
"Well, the Grand Tour was boring enough. I don't want to have to look at something else that just sits there. Can you think of anything good?"
"By good you mean…"
"Something with a little blood and torture to it."
Harry thought for a few seconds; then a light came to his eyes. "The Tower of London, of course! That's where Henry the Eighth had four or five wives put down…"
"Geroff!"
"And Richard the Hunchback killed off I don't know how many relatives to take the throne."
"Now you're talking! Where's the Tower?"
"I don't know. Let's just get to King's Cross; we should be able to get directions from there."
"Okay. Er, you think this looks allright?"
Ron had dressed for the occasion in Muggle style, with a striped T-shirt and blue jeans. Harry had done the same, except that his shirt was a synthetic button-down. With his glasses and unkempt hair, Harry looked every inch the "nerd".
It was then that Harry noticed for the first time the knapsack on Ron's back. "What's that for, then?"
Ron dropped his voice. "My wand, of course. Can't just go wandering around without protection. Besides, Mum told me I had to take it or I couldn't come along. She's all worried about You-Know-Who."
"You honestly think he'll attack in the middle of London?"
"Don't you?"
To tell the truth, Harry hadn't really given Voldemort much thought all summer. He saw the occasional article in the Daily Prophet, but it was all part of some other world--a world that could just wait until Harry Potter decided to visit. Still, he thought he'd better not take too many chances. "Mind if I put my wand in there too, then?"
"Help yourself."
Harry dashed up to his room to get his wand, unused and neglected most of the past two months, from his trunk. "Going on an outing, then?" the mirror asked.
"Tower of London."
"Super! Give my best to the ghosts."
"They have ghosts there?"
"Quite a number of them, so they say. Pity I couldn't get to see them."
"I'll give you a full report." Harry, wand now in hand, dashed back down the steps. He stuffed it into Ron's knapsack.
"Hold on," he said as they were just leaving the Leaky Cauldron. "You think this'll take money?"
"Just about everything does in the Muggle world."
"I'd better change some money, then. Have a pastry or something while I dash over to Gringotts."
"On you?"
"Of course."
"Well, if you put it that way…"
As Harry rode the crazy underground cart to his vault at Gringotts, he was worried about two things. One was the cart leaving the rails and falling into a bottomless abyss. The other was Ron. As long as he'd known Ron, Harry was very aware that there wasn't a lot of extra money in the Weasley household. He'd worn Dudley's hand-me-downs mainly because the Dursleys couldn't stand the idea of Harry owning anything. Ron, on the other hand, wore his brothers' old clothes because there was no avoiding it. This always made Harry feel embarrassed when he saw (as he did now) the contents of the vault. The Weasleys could make better use of that money than he ever could, even though it had been set apart for Harry Potter…
By whom? And when? And where did it come from? Harry never did learn the answers to those questions. Dumbledore would probably know, and so would Sirius Black. He figured, as he raked money into a leather pouch, that he'd probably get straighter answers from Sirius.
After a quick stop to change gold Galleons into paper Muggle money, Harry and Ron were off to the Tower of London.
xxx
Getting there was fairly easy, although it cost Harry more than he thought at first. From King's Cross they took the Underground to Baker Street. They were only there for a little while, waiting for their next ride, while Harry tried to explain to Ron about Sherlock Holmes.
"Sounds like Hermione's idea of a real man," Ron complained. "All he does is think, then?"
"There's more to it than that. He was a kind of an Auror, I guess."
Before Harry could explain any further, a double-decker bus with LONDON PRIDE painted on the sides pulled up. They rode through a variety of stops: Piccadilly Circus, Nelson's Column, Downing Street, Big Ben, London Bridge… These were places Harry had seen on television, if he'd seen them at all, and they were completely new to Ron. Harry could tell that, even though Ron liked to pretend that such tours were boring, he was fascinated in spite of himself, especially by the sheer size of London. Harry, who remembered some of the names from grade school history, enjoyed it all.
Finally the driver announced the Tower of London. They got off the bus, and Harry expected that they'd be at a tall, thin building like the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts. Instead, they saw that they were in front of an ancient castle, its thick stone walls blackened with age.
They fell in with a group of other tourists, listening as a guide started to explain things. He started with himself and his uniform: red with gold piping and the kind of wide ruffle at the neck worn by Nearly Headless Nick. This was the uniform of a special group of guards known as Beefeaters.
Ron whispered to Harry, "What do they wear for ham and eggs, then?"
Harry tried not to laugh—not to laugh too loudly, anyway. He realized that he was lucky to have Ron for a friend. True, he acted up a lot, and often at the wrong time, but he knew that Ron was more than just a clown; Harry knew he'd fight like a lion if the need arose.
The guard explained the history of the Tower: built by William the Conqueror, it had been used as everything from a zoo to a prison. THIS was what a history lesson should be, Harry decided. Rather than memorizing a list of names and dates, they were standing right there where it had all happened. He wondered if there wasn't a way Professor Binns' class could be like this. Then he realized that a lot of what Binns talked about in History of Magic involved bloody battles between goblins and other, scarier creatures. Reliving that past might not be such a good idea.
At one point in the tour, while they were in a corridor of the so-called Bloody Tower, Ron fell back to the end of the group, then lingered by a closed door.
"Come on," Harry whispered, "we don't want to get left behind."
Ron pointed to the door. "You hear that?" Harry could indeed hear something; it sounded like children's voices, but they were muffled by the door. Before Harry could say anything, Ron reached into the knapsack, pulled out his wand, and used an unlocking charm ("the twins taught me that one"). He then slipped into the room, with Harry right behind him.
The room was nondescript—nothing more than stone walls at odd angles, with doorways and corridors. It could have been anything from a bedroom to a torture chamber in the old days. For now, though, it was occupied by two boys, one a few years older than the other. Both, however, had long blonde hair—longer than Hermione's.
"I will not!" shouted the younger one.
"Will so!"
"Will not!"
"Will so!"
"You'll do it because I said so and I'm King!"
"You WERE King, but now you're dead, so you're nothing!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
Ron started to laugh at their argument; he caught himself, but he'd been heard. The two children turned to look at them; then the older one ran off round a corner, shouting "Uncle! There's strangers here!"
The younger one walked up to Ron and Harry. He was now close enough for them to see that he really was a ghost. He looked at the two rather critically, then said, "You get lost on the tour, then?"
"No," Harry replied, "we just heard the voices."
"You must be wizards, then. Most folks just leave us alone."
"You're right; we are. I'm Harry and this is Ron."
"I'm Richard, and that old thing was Edward. He'll be back in a minute, the spoilsport."
"Edward?" Harry said, trying to remember his Muggle history lessons. "He wasn't King Edward the Fifth, was he?"
"Yeah, for a little while. Then Uncle Richard had us locked up in here and killed. It's been pretty boring since then."
"Aren't there any other ghosts?" Ron asked.
"Yeah, but none of them are kids. And some of the grown-up ghosts are pretty useless." Prince Richard was interrupted by a weird bellowing coming from down a corridor. "Here comes one now."
Edward reappeared, trying to steer an adult ghost—a man who could hardly walk at all, much less walk a straight line. This ghost was feeling quite happy as he howled out an old song in a very bad voice: "Alas my love, you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously…" followed by a colossal belch.
Ron was losing the battle to keep a straight face. Harry felt pretty sure who this ghost was. "You'd be the Duke of Clarence, wouldn't you?"
"I would be, laddie, if I still were. Alive, that is. They don't expect you to keep your dukedom if you lose your life. It would rather slow things up in the House of Lords."
Ron leaned over to Harry and whispered, "What's his problem, then?"
Harry answered, "He was drowned in a barrel of wine."
"Cool."
"Excuse me, you disrespectful pups, but it's rude to talk about someone in front of their face. Though I guess I don't really have no face no more, do I?" The ghost sat heavily down on the stone floor and started weeping.
Prince Richard turned to the wizards. "How would you like to put up with him for five hundred years? Would've killed us if we weren't dead already."
Edward turned on his younger brother. "Can't you be positive for a change? Can't you be pleasant for once in your afterlife?"
"What's there to be pleasant for? I'm stuck with a drunken old sot for an uncle, and a brother who won't let me forget he was King."
"Well I WAS King!"
"Fat lot of good it did either of us. You probably said something to Uncle Richard to make him mad, and you got us both killed."
"Take that back!"
"Won't!"
"Yes you will!"
"No I won't!"
While their squabble continued, the Duke of Clarence started in again: "Alas my love you do me wrong…"
Harry and Ron decided it was time to sneak out and rejoin the tour. They ran down the halls of the Tower, finally catching up with their group in the room housing the Crown Jewels. Once they were there, Ron said, "D'you think they were that stupid when they were alive?"
Harry, who had been wondering much the same thing, just shrugged. "They're still Muggles, royal or not."
"You think we'll ever have a wizard king?"
"I dunno. There's so much more they have to know these days."
The rest of the tour was uneventful. It was getting late, so they caught the bus, which took them to the Underground, which took them to King's Cross. From there they went to the Leaky Cauldron. Once they were there, Ron handed Harry his wand and took a vial of Floo powder out of his knapsack. "See you on the platform, then?"
"No; come on by day after tomorrow. Hermione will be back from her trip, shopping for supplies."
"Oh good. Just between you and me, the Barrow isn't the same this year without her staying over. Ginny's really missed talking with her."
Harry grinned; "Yeah? And what about you?"
Harry was joking with Ron, but Ron looked halfway serious as he said, "Like they say at the Ministry, no comment. See you then." He dashed some Floo powder into the fire, stepped in after it and was gone.
When Harry got up to his room, Hedwig was on the windowsill with Zafar's reply. Harry couldn't help but grin: "Perfect."
…to be continued…
by monkeymouse
a/k/a Patrick Drazen
2.9: Rule, Brittania!
[If you found your way this far, you don't need me to tell you that JK Rowling created the Potterverse, and is still creating it…]
Harry woke up very early on August 28, with the sun streaming through his window. Hedwig was sitting on the sill; she'd landed sometime during the night with Cho's latest. He beckoned Hedwig with one hand and reached for his glasses on the bedside table with the other.
Hedwig landed on Harry's chest; he found her weight reassuring. "Go get a rest, then," he said softly to her, as he untied the message. Hedwig seemed to nod to him as she lifted up and flew back out the window.
As he lay in bed, he said a single word: "luxurious." He felt as if he was living the meaning of that word. Breakfast would be waiting for him when he got out of bed; Ron would be by later; and he had Cho's latest letter to keep him company until then:
"Konnichiwa! Daisuki! ("Hello" and "I love you!")
Classes are back in full session now and, frankly, I think everyone's a bit relieved. The Summer Festival was wonderful, but there was so much to do that we're all a bit glad it's over and we can just get back to Potions and Charms—and Quidditch!
You asked about the Quidditch here a while ago. Because of the wind and the snow here even in the summer, you can't play a proper game of Quidditch outdoors; some days you can barely walk, never mind flying! So KMG has its Quidditch arena in the mouth of an extinct volcano! It's out of the weather, but you can't fly too high—the winds get very tricky when you get close to the rim.
The game is mostly the same as in England, but they have some different customs. Organized cheering, for instance; they're very big on that. Also, they like a game that's close scoring; they seem to think that an unevenly matched battle is an insult to the spectators. And anyone who cheats or throws a deliberate foul on the pitch is treated shabbily off the pitch. This last game, one Beater hit someone in the back of the head, and the whole school refused to speak to him for a week.
It would be so nice if Hogwarts sent a team here, and you had a chance to play the KMG team, and look around the campus. Almost everyone here is very nice (Andrew is still Andrew, unfortunately), and you'd be treated like an honoured guest. (Especially by me!) But I'll see you again in just a few more days.
Enjoy yourself (not too much!) until we meet again in Diagon Alley.
Love you,
Cho"
As he reread the letter, something about it struck him. Just to be sure, he read through all the letters he'd gotten that summer from Cho. Even including their argument letters at the end of July, it made for a very pleasant hour. There was nothing definite, nothing he could absolutely point to, but each letter seemed to have the odd phrase, the slight twist of meaning at some point, which hinted that Cho might want—or was that just his wishful thinking?
He had told Ron the truth the other day: while he had a great many fantasies about making love with Cho, he didn't have the first idea how to approach her about it. She was older (if only by one year), and she was smarter (if being Sorted into Ravenclaw counted for anything). Part of him was willing to let her give him the lead in that.
But another part of him was afraid it meant that nothing would happen for another year—at the least. Was there anything that he could do at his end to help things along?
He thought about it a while, then jumped out of bed, grabbing a parchment and quill:
"Dear Zafar,
Thanks again for taking me to your club on my birthday. It turned out to be my best present that day.
Maybe you've heard from the girl who brought the music that day, Cho Chang, that she'll be back there on the thirty-first. Maybe you also know that she means a great deal to me. We'd been seeing each other for a year before she moved to Japan a few months ago. Our next meeting may be the last for a long while, and I want to make it really special. Can you think of anyplace around Brixton that would be good for a picnic?
Thanks again for everything.
Harry Potter"
There was a rustle at the window; as if she'd read his mind, Hedwig was sitting there waiting. Harry tied the letter to her leg, and made a point of carefully pronouncing, "Zafar Ajneeri; he runs the club MoshiMoshi in Brixton." He held out a treat for her; she snatched it from between his fingers, turned and flew off to the south.
As he dressed to go down to breakfast, Harry marveled at why Muggles still used pillar-boxes to send letters. A pillar-box can't love you back.
xxx
Harry was just finishing breakfast when Ron popped out of the fireplace at the Leaky Cauldron. He dusted off the soot and joined Harry at his table.
"What do you want to do, then?" Ron asked.
"Well, I really don't know much about London. It ought to be full of interesting things, though. I know that people come thousands miles just to look around the city."
"Well, you probably know more about it than I do, growing up with the Muggles and all."
"Don't forget; we're talking about MY Muggles. I doubt they've read five books a year between the three of 'em."
"Well, the Grand Tour was boring enough. I don't want to have to look at something else that just sits there. Can you think of anything good?"
"By good you mean…"
"Something with a little blood and torture to it."
Harry thought for a few seconds; then a light came to his eyes. "The Tower of London, of course! That's where Henry the Eighth had four or five wives put down…"
"Geroff!"
"And Richard the Hunchback killed off I don't know how many relatives to take the throne."
"Now you're talking! Where's the Tower?"
"I don't know. Let's just get to King's Cross; we should be able to get directions from there."
"Okay. Er, you think this looks allright?"
Ron had dressed for the occasion in Muggle style, with a striped T-shirt and blue jeans. Harry had done the same, except that his shirt was a synthetic button-down. With his glasses and unkempt hair, Harry looked every inch the "nerd".
It was then that Harry noticed for the first time the knapsack on Ron's back. "What's that for, then?"
Ron dropped his voice. "My wand, of course. Can't just go wandering around without protection. Besides, Mum told me I had to take it or I couldn't come along. She's all worried about You-Know-Who."
"You honestly think he'll attack in the middle of London?"
"Don't you?"
To tell the truth, Harry hadn't really given Voldemort much thought all summer. He saw the occasional article in the Daily Prophet, but it was all part of some other world--a world that could just wait until Harry Potter decided to visit. Still, he thought he'd better not take too many chances. "Mind if I put my wand in there too, then?"
"Help yourself."
Harry dashed up to his room to get his wand, unused and neglected most of the past two months, from his trunk. "Going on an outing, then?" the mirror asked.
"Tower of London."
"Super! Give my best to the ghosts."
"They have ghosts there?"
"Quite a number of them, so they say. Pity I couldn't get to see them."
"I'll give you a full report." Harry, wand now in hand, dashed back down the steps. He stuffed it into Ron's knapsack.
"Hold on," he said as they were just leaving the Leaky Cauldron. "You think this'll take money?"
"Just about everything does in the Muggle world."
"I'd better change some money, then. Have a pastry or something while I dash over to Gringotts."
"On you?"
"Of course."
"Well, if you put it that way…"
As Harry rode the crazy underground cart to his vault at Gringotts, he was worried about two things. One was the cart leaving the rails and falling into a bottomless abyss. The other was Ron. As long as he'd known Ron, Harry was very aware that there wasn't a lot of extra money in the Weasley household. He'd worn Dudley's hand-me-downs mainly because the Dursleys couldn't stand the idea of Harry owning anything. Ron, on the other hand, wore his brothers' old clothes because there was no avoiding it. This always made Harry feel embarrassed when he saw (as he did now) the contents of the vault. The Weasleys could make better use of that money than he ever could, even though it had been set apart for Harry Potter…
By whom? And when? And where did it come from? Harry never did learn the answers to those questions. Dumbledore would probably know, and so would Sirius Black. He figured, as he raked money into a leather pouch, that he'd probably get straighter answers from Sirius.
After a quick stop to change gold Galleons into paper Muggle money, Harry and Ron were off to the Tower of London.
xxx
Getting there was fairly easy, although it cost Harry more than he thought at first. From King's Cross they took the Underground to Baker Street. They were only there for a little while, waiting for their next ride, while Harry tried to explain to Ron about Sherlock Holmes.
"Sounds like Hermione's idea of a real man," Ron complained. "All he does is think, then?"
"There's more to it than that. He was a kind of an Auror, I guess."
Before Harry could explain any further, a double-decker bus with LONDON PRIDE painted on the sides pulled up. They rode through a variety of stops: Piccadilly Circus, Nelson's Column, Downing Street, Big Ben, London Bridge… These were places Harry had seen on television, if he'd seen them at all, and they were completely new to Ron. Harry could tell that, even though Ron liked to pretend that such tours were boring, he was fascinated in spite of himself, especially by the sheer size of London. Harry, who remembered some of the names from grade school history, enjoyed it all.
Finally the driver announced the Tower of London. They got off the bus, and Harry expected that they'd be at a tall, thin building like the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts. Instead, they saw that they were in front of an ancient castle, its thick stone walls blackened with age.
They fell in with a group of other tourists, listening as a guide started to explain things. He started with himself and his uniform: red with gold piping and the kind of wide ruffle at the neck worn by Nearly Headless Nick. This was the uniform of a special group of guards known as Beefeaters.
Ron whispered to Harry, "What do they wear for ham and eggs, then?"
Harry tried not to laugh—not to laugh too loudly, anyway. He realized that he was lucky to have Ron for a friend. True, he acted up a lot, and often at the wrong time, but he knew that Ron was more than just a clown; Harry knew he'd fight like a lion if the need arose.
The guard explained the history of the Tower: built by William the Conqueror, it had been used as everything from a zoo to a prison. THIS was what a history lesson should be, Harry decided. Rather than memorizing a list of names and dates, they were standing right there where it had all happened. He wondered if there wasn't a way Professor Binns' class could be like this. Then he realized that a lot of what Binns talked about in History of Magic involved bloody battles between goblins and other, scarier creatures. Reliving that past might not be such a good idea.
At one point in the tour, while they were in a corridor of the so-called Bloody Tower, Ron fell back to the end of the group, then lingered by a closed door.
"Come on," Harry whispered, "we don't want to get left behind."
Ron pointed to the door. "You hear that?" Harry could indeed hear something; it sounded like children's voices, but they were muffled by the door. Before Harry could say anything, Ron reached into the knapsack, pulled out his wand, and used an unlocking charm ("the twins taught me that one"). He then slipped into the room, with Harry right behind him.
The room was nondescript—nothing more than stone walls at odd angles, with doorways and corridors. It could have been anything from a bedroom to a torture chamber in the old days. For now, though, it was occupied by two boys, one a few years older than the other. Both, however, had long blonde hair—longer than Hermione's.
"I will not!" shouted the younger one.
"Will so!"
"Will not!"
"Will so!"
"You'll do it because I said so and I'm King!"
"You WERE King, but now you're dead, so you're nothing!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
Ron started to laugh at their argument; he caught himself, but he'd been heard. The two children turned to look at them; then the older one ran off round a corner, shouting "Uncle! There's strangers here!"
The younger one walked up to Ron and Harry. He was now close enough for them to see that he really was a ghost. He looked at the two rather critically, then said, "You get lost on the tour, then?"
"No," Harry replied, "we just heard the voices."
"You must be wizards, then. Most folks just leave us alone."
"You're right; we are. I'm Harry and this is Ron."
"I'm Richard, and that old thing was Edward. He'll be back in a minute, the spoilsport."
"Edward?" Harry said, trying to remember his Muggle history lessons. "He wasn't King Edward the Fifth, was he?"
"Yeah, for a little while. Then Uncle Richard had us locked up in here and killed. It's been pretty boring since then."
"Aren't there any other ghosts?" Ron asked.
"Yeah, but none of them are kids. And some of the grown-up ghosts are pretty useless." Prince Richard was interrupted by a weird bellowing coming from down a corridor. "Here comes one now."
Edward reappeared, trying to steer an adult ghost—a man who could hardly walk at all, much less walk a straight line. This ghost was feeling quite happy as he howled out an old song in a very bad voice: "Alas my love, you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously…" followed by a colossal belch.
Ron was losing the battle to keep a straight face. Harry felt pretty sure who this ghost was. "You'd be the Duke of Clarence, wouldn't you?"
"I would be, laddie, if I still were. Alive, that is. They don't expect you to keep your dukedom if you lose your life. It would rather slow things up in the House of Lords."
Ron leaned over to Harry and whispered, "What's his problem, then?"
Harry answered, "He was drowned in a barrel of wine."
"Cool."
"Excuse me, you disrespectful pups, but it's rude to talk about someone in front of their face. Though I guess I don't really have no face no more, do I?" The ghost sat heavily down on the stone floor and started weeping.
Prince Richard turned to the wizards. "How would you like to put up with him for five hundred years? Would've killed us if we weren't dead already."
Edward turned on his younger brother. "Can't you be positive for a change? Can't you be pleasant for once in your afterlife?"
"What's there to be pleasant for? I'm stuck with a drunken old sot for an uncle, and a brother who won't let me forget he was King."
"Well I WAS King!"
"Fat lot of good it did either of us. You probably said something to Uncle Richard to make him mad, and you got us both killed."
"Take that back!"
"Won't!"
"Yes you will!"
"No I won't!"
While their squabble continued, the Duke of Clarence started in again: "Alas my love you do me wrong…"
Harry and Ron decided it was time to sneak out and rejoin the tour. They ran down the halls of the Tower, finally catching up with their group in the room housing the Crown Jewels. Once they were there, Ron said, "D'you think they were that stupid when they were alive?"
Harry, who had been wondering much the same thing, just shrugged. "They're still Muggles, royal or not."
"You think we'll ever have a wizard king?"
"I dunno. There's so much more they have to know these days."
The rest of the tour was uneventful. It was getting late, so they caught the bus, which took them to the Underground, which took them to King's Cross. From there they went to the Leaky Cauldron. Once they were there, Ron handed Harry his wand and took a vial of Floo powder out of his knapsack. "See you on the platform, then?"
"No; come on by day after tomorrow. Hermione will be back from her trip, shopping for supplies."
"Oh good. Just between you and me, the Barrow isn't the same this year without her staying over. Ginny's really missed talking with her."
Harry grinned; "Yeah? And what about you?"
Harry was joking with Ron, but Ron looked halfway serious as he said, "Like they say at the Ministry, no comment. See you then." He dashed some Floo powder into the fire, stepped in after it and was gone.
When Harry got up to his room, Hedwig was on the windowsill with Zafar's reply. Harry couldn't help but grin: "Perfect."
…to be continued…