Retribution
Merlin's vengeance is slow but sure-this adage had been echoing in Ginny's ears for days.
Tonight was the best moonlit summer night since the summer holidays. With the stars in the sky hidden in the moon's light and only the brightest star, Sirius, clearly visible. The silvery night was a great time to create romance. Ginny was in the bathroom of the Knight Bus on such a romantic evening, romantically fixing the drain.
After leaving Hermione's house, she arrived without incident at the Leaky Cauldron in the city centre. The barman said that the Floo network around London had been suspended for the last three days because Black, the wanted man, had been seen nearby yesterday and the Ministry of Magic had immediately sealed off London and launched a carpet search, digging deep to find him. Ginny was surprised to learn that Black had alerted the police of both worlds. He must be quite a big deal, probably on a par with Mike. If I got the chance to meet him someday, I will ask for an autograph before calling the police, Ginny thought.
The barman took a look at Ginny's bag and said that if she was in a hurry to travel, it would be convenient to get a ride as Stan is here. Without waiting for Ginny's answer, the barman shouted to a young man. Ginny turned around and the young man took a brief look at her, then started yelling in anger:
"You're the one who caused my wages deducted!"
Ginny flinched at the yell. She looked closer in the dim light of the bar. Purple uniform, long thin neck, moon-like face... he's the conductor of Knight Bus!
Ginny jumped up and ran out the door, but Stan tugged on the backpack straps and yanked her back.
"Wanna run, ha? I'll report your misdeeds to your school!"
"No, I'll pay for the last ticket, leave me alone."
"No way!"
"I'll pay you with double the amount!"
"No!"
"Tripple?"
"No!"
Stan was continuing to repeat no aggressively. The guests soon cast curious glances.
Ginny had never seen such a hard-headed man. Her sweat profusely, afraid that anyone knew her well was watching. She shouted in exasperation:
"There is no way for me to pay you back! What do you want!"
"Do you really want me to say it? Heh heh."
Stan's treacherous smile unveiled Ginny's misery. According to him, Ginny have to work for him for a week, doing all the work on the Knight Bus, either easy or complex, single-handedly. After seven days, the feud would be over.
"No report if you agree."
"Agree!"
Half an hour after Ginny squeezed this word out of her teeth, she was scrubbing floors and boiling water in the Knight Bus.
The work in the car wasn't too onerous, just selling tickets, sweeping the floor, scrubbing the glass, boiling water, dealing with a few busy customers, selling boxed meal for lunch and dinner, and serving tea to Stan who was hiding on the third floor doing whatever he's doing.
There is one other thing that doesn't count with the above chores because it could be a separate business in itself-fixing the 'Knight' drain.
The reason the Knight is such a long-distance traveller is all down to the fact that it has a peculiar drainage system. Everything that goes down the drain is not deposited in a sealed box or spilt on the road-it's all gone, nowhere to be found.
"Maybe to another dimension, because the guy who developed the Knight Bus in the first place seems to be into researching spaces or something," Stan said pointing to the drain as he explained the routine to Ginny for the first time.
Ginny approached the drain. The plate-sized hole was dark and seemed like an abyss that was going to swallow the world.
"Be careful, it's not very temperamental."
Stan generally meant that sometimes this drain wasn't working well, either blocking or creating a powerful suction that was trying to suck in everything around it.
"Always tell the guests to stay away at times like this, Stephen seems to be particularly fond of eating people."
"Stephen?"
"That's the name we gave it." Stan shrugged as if naming the drain was perfectly normal.
So began the tug-of-war between Ginny and Stephen. Ginny spent most of her day, apart from attending to her chores, poking Stephen with a rubber.
Tonight there were very few customers and the only two or three that were on the bus had gone to bed early. She had just finished mopping the floor when Stephen came back to haunt her, spitting dark green bubbles. Seeing the situation, Ginny immediately puts on her rubber gloves, pulls out her rubber tug and comes to fight. Suddenly a strong force pulls on the rubber poke and Ginny is unable to pull it up again with all her strength, the stick of the rubber poke slowly slides down and the edges turn up little by little.
It was one of Stephen's old habits to absorb everything around him indiscriminately, only this time it came with such ferocity that Ginny's two feet, which acted as pillars, slid forward with it.
"Stan, Ernie! Somebody give me a hand!"
Squeal-the speeding Knight Bus came to a halt without warning. Struggling Ginny tumbled out with her rubber poke. The rubber poke sucking firmly into the ceiling as Ginny rolled to a stop at the feet of the driver, Ernie.
"Thanks for the halt, well done."
"Don't thank me, thank him." Without looking up, Ernie pointed out the window. A little light loomed in the night, the glow of a wand, and it looked like some other wizard had embarked on a hasty journey to catch this night bus.
Not caring about her aching body, Ginny hurriedly got up, straightened her appearance and opened the door to her new guest with a welcoming smile.
"Welcome aboard the Knight Bus, I am the acting captain of this bus..."
She paused, her attention fully focused on the new passenger in front of her. The boy dropped to the ground, his hair dishevelled, his body lean, wearing a poorly fitting t-shirt and a pair of glasses hanging askew on his face.
"Harry?"
"What?"
Ginny ran up quickly and leaned down to look at Harry.
"Me, Ginny."
"What a coincidence!" Harry stood up and dusted himself off, "What are you doing here? Is Ron here with you?"
"He's not here, I'm here.. Well... Work-Study programme."
"That's amazing, very ambitious."
"Hehe... yeah" Ginny remembered that it wasn't the time to giggle and pushed Harry's suitcase towards the bus. "Get on the bus."
"Get on the bus?"
"Yeah, weren't you the one who lit the wand? That was the signal asking to stop."
"I lit my wand because there's a big black thing over there." Harry pointed uncertainly across the road, "Crouching there like a dog."
Ginny looked in the direction he was pointing and there was nothing there.
"Maybe it's just a wild dog, leave him alone. If it is a monster there are monster hunters to clean it up, don't worry about it."
"That's true, I'll get on the bus."
"Don't call me Ginny on the bus, I'll tell them my name is Luna Longbottom."
"Okay, then I'm Neville Lovegood."
Luna Longbottom and Neville Lovegood returned to the bus and settled into a window bunk.
By this time, Stephen had settled down considerably and Ernie adjusted the car to auto-pilot, flattened the seat and dozed off.
Ginny grabbed some fast food from the pantry and handed it to Harry, sitting across from him and chatting.
One of them had attacked his aunt and absconded, the other had been attacked by her sister and was in exile. As they listened to each other's stories, they both sighed and shared a sense of empathy, wondering why it was so unlucky as a child.
Ginny says that the world is unfair. Blowing up your aunt is an outrage, then why taking your sister as a frozen chicken nugget is congratulatory?
Harry immediately enlightened her with the famous Bill Gates quote that life is not fair, get used to it.
The two looked out of the window together at the bright moon and sighed deeply.
Time passed, midnight came. Ginny and Harry had a mountain of snack packets in front of them, the more they talked the more spirited and forgetful they became until Stan's angry roar came from upstairs. Ginny snapped back to attention, waving her hand at a nervous Harry, gesturing not to panic.
"Upstairs is the Stan who's blackmailing me, he dreams every day of Armstrong landing there with his face as the moon."
"What an unrelenting nightmare."
Ginny nodded, suddenly noticing the mountain of snacks on the table and quickly began to do the math in her mind.
After a moment, she whispered to Harry.
"Do me a favour."
"For what?"
"Is it okay to put these snacks... on your account? Including the money for the tickets, the total is... "
"Ginny, I don't have any money."
"Hahahahahahahahaha... You're so funny."
"Hahahahahahahahaha... I'm not kidding."
The two were speechless relative to each other, but they had a thousand lines of tears.
After a while, Ginny felt that it was not an option to stay here. She walked stiffly up to the third floor and said softly to the door of Stan's room.
"Boss Stan, one more employee, is it okay?"
