6. A Short But Memorable Cameo.
"Harry! Oh, Harry!"
Harry Potter half-turned from the display window of the Quidditch shop to see where the voice had come from. A girl with bushy brown hair, pushing her way through the crowded streets, smiled and waved at him.
"Hi, Harry!" she said when she finally reached him.
Harry grinned. "Hey, Hermione," he said. "When'd you get here?"
She pushed her hair out of her face. "Only just. My mum and dad let me off at the 'Cauldron. Ron's also around here somewhere with his family, but I've not found them, yet." She paused to catch her breath. "How are you?"
"Fine," shrugged Harry. "Had a decent enough summer, for once. The Dursleys went on holiday to Majorca and left me with Mrs. Figg." Normally, Harry wasn't fond of the old woman and her menagerie of cats, but as he'd gotten older she seemed to behave a lot nicer toward him. "Spent most of the summer sacked out in the garden reading my school books."
"Oh, wonderful," exclaimed Hermione, and Harry had to try very hard not to laugh. He'd expected her to say something like that about him studying through the hols. "Then you'll be prepared for our O.W.L.S. this year, I expect."
"Ready as I'll ever be," said Harry. "I- hang on, look there."
He pointed, and Hermione turned. "What?"
"Those two," said Harry. "Just there. Those two men."
Hermione frowned. Two men had just stumbled into Diagon Alley from the Leaky Cauldron, looking rather dazed and decidedly out-of-place. Harry would have thought them Muggles if it weren't for the fact that non-magic folk couldn't even see the Leaky Cauldron, let alone get inside.
They had to be wizards of some sort. Except...
"I've never seen wizards like them, before," said Hermione.
"Neither have I," said Harry. He watched with narrowed eyes as the two men – one rather tall, dressed rather well in a camel-hair coat, and the other leaner and clad in black – picked their way up the street, looking around as if they'd never been there before. The one in black looked particularly put out.
Harry snickered. "They look like I did," he said, "when Hagrid first brought me here. All confused and frightened."
"Probably just foreigners," said Hermione, dismissively. "Americans, perhaps."
"I don't know." Harry frowned. "That squashy one looks pretty English to me. And a bit-"
"Harry!" Red hair and freckles appeared beside them. Ron grinned and draped his arms around Hermione and Harry's shoulders. "When did you two get here?"
The two strange men were instantly forgotten as the reunion moved down the road to the ice-cream shop. Which was unfortunate, because if they'd waited a few more minutes, they would have heard the thin, dark one curse rather loudly as he found himself face-to-face with a very large and angry-looking owl.