"The train currently approaching the platform is calling at all stations to High Barnet. Please use all available doors and carriage space. Please remain behind the yellow line. All stations to High Barnet."

Harry turned back towards the platform edge, all worries about not getting to platform 9 ¾ on time gone.

"We have to follow them!"

"Mate, I don't think we should," said Ron.

"You're not suggesting we just toddle off and get to our teacher like good little boys, Ron? You know what Grayback is –"

"Actually, yeah, I am," said Ron, cutting Harry off firmly. "We don't know where that train went and we don't know where she'll get off. Maybe Grayback won't even touch her butifhedoes –" here Ron threw up his hands to stop Harry interrupting him. "If he does, we're too late anyway. What we need to do is tell the muggle police he's a rapist or something, and then go and tell Daphne and the other ministry blokes."

"Has Hermione infected you with some kind of sensible disease?" gasped Harry, both exasperated and placated.

"Has Ginny infected you with some kind of loony disease? Come on, we need the blue line, remember?"

Four stations to King's Cross St Pancras suddenly seemed impossibly long. They might as well try flying a Shooting Star to Mars.

At the next station, Lucie got up and changed carriages to get away from the creepy homeless guy sat next to her. He smelled like bad meat and kept breathing heavily in her direction. Just in case, she transferred the bottle of pepper spray from her bag into her pocket.

Stepping back outside into the still climbing heat, she noticed that the weird guy had too. Typical. He was creeping her out so much she was starting to think other guys, like that big blonde one, were following her too. Uncharacteristically removing her earphones and stowing them in her bag, she noticed her two new stalkers strike up a conversation with each other. Seriously wishing she hadn't dropped her phone, she tucked her bag firmly under her arm and started walking as fast as she could towards home. Nice, safe, lockable home.

Nearly there, she decided to take a little-known shortcut down a side alley and immediately regretted it. How, she did not know, but there was now one at each end of the alley. The blonde one, who was behind her and closer, called that he was a police officer, which she sincerely doubted. He said that the boys from the underground were criminals, which she also doubted. Ignoring what he was saying, she looked at the smelly one, then back over her shoulder. She had one hope. Hoping to catch them off guard, she suddenly dove for the dilapidated phone box half way down the alley. At a full sprint, she made it there half a second before the shaggy one, but it was half a second too slow. Struggling with all her might to shut the door, she wrenched the pepper spray from her pocket and sprayed desperately at his face. Rewarded with a yelp of pain, she slammed the door and tried to hold it shut while she scrabbled at the dial. Most of her concentration still bent on keeping her attackers at bay, she only dimly registered what the pleasant female voice was saying. Like she was taught to do at school when communicating with the emergency services, she gasped out her name and location and:

"Please, I need help, there are two men trying to attack me…" Her sentence ended in a shriek as the floor of the phone box started to lower. The woman's voice was still talking, but that was the furthest thing from her mind. Through the shock of what appeared to be a lift in a phone box, she realised that this was the only chance for escape she'd have.

When the floor stopped moving, she started running.

Despite Harry and Ron's best efforts at secrecy, the whisper was starting to circulate the platform. Fenrir Grayback was not in Azkaban. With the familiar hum of panic starting to make the usual chaos more pointed, Harry sought out Ginny and Luna. He'd hoped to wish them a pleasant trip while enjoying a justified smugness at reaching top marks in a class he had started with a black mark against his name. That mark had been put there years before by a house elf named Dobby, who had smashed his Aunt's elaborate cake in an attempt to keep him away from Hogwarts. Remembering that made him feel oddly nostalgic. As he reached Ginny and Luna,his reverie was cut off. The phone in his pocket had started to ring.