A year in the life of Harry Potter
Chapter 6: August, 2
As soon as he had reached King's Cross the day before he had started looking for somewhere to stay over night, but nothing had suited the amount of money he'd brought to last over a few days. He had, in total, £87 31p left, hardly enough to get him a room for two nights. Late evening he'd seen some boys his age and above lingering about in a narrow street. Tired, hungry and thirsty he'd walked over to them, not caring what they'd do to him.
"Hey," he'd said. "I'm Harry. Could it be that you're homeless?" From the ragged clothes and dirty faces of the youngsters he'd tried, like Sherlock Holmes, to deduct everything he could, leaving him with the idea of them being homeless.
"What d'ya wanna do 'bout it?" the tallest and oldest of them had asked him.
Harry gulped. "N-nothing. It's just that I don't have anywhere to stay, and I thought - I thought..."
"That we'd just take you in?" another one of the gang had sniggered.
"Leave him alone, Francis," a female voice had said, and, to Harry's surprise, a girl which was not yet a full grown woman had pushed her way through.
"I'm Abigail," she'd told him. "Where are your parents?"
"I don't have parents. I ran away from the people I lived with. And I've got money," Harry had added hastily. "Something about eighty pounds or so."
The oldest boy had stepped forward, smiling broadly, and patted Harry on the shoulder. "Welcome on board. I'm Henry. Come, let me introduce me to the others."
In total there were, except Harry, Henry, Francis and Abigail three others: twins called Emmett and Frederick and another girl called Miriam. The gang had, for the last three months, managed to keep themselves above the water after they'd run away from a children's home in Cambridge.
They'd spent the night near St. Paul's Cathedral. Harry was glad that he'd found them, for he knew that alone he'd never survived in London.
For breakfast they had the last fruits and wafers Harry had brought, along with some half-full water bottles Abigail had found.
"We need to save your money," Henry told Harry as he asked why they hadn't bought something with his money. "With the amount of money you brought we can easily buy food and water for two or maybe even three weeks. I'm just sorry about those wafers, for they were more than delicious."
"We'll explain to you how we get our money, Harry," Emmett said. "We always go in pairs to some place which works like a magnet." At Harry's confused face Frederick explained.
"What Emmett means -"
"Is that there is something ," his twin continued, "that attracts people, like the Tower of London."
"We go there," Frederick continued."And tell people that we accidentally spent all our money -"
"And don't have any to buy train tickets home or something like that," he finished. "Then we meet up again and see what we have. Sometimes we give in and let ourselves have the luxury of McDonald's or Subway or something like that for lunch or supper."
"But only seldom for we know that for every penny more we spend on food or drinks we have to beg more and more," Henry explained.
Because of his inexperience and because there were now an odd number of them, Harry went with Abigail and Henry, saying that he was their younger brother. In the morning before the mob of people arrived they washed themselves as good as they could at Trafalgar Square with water to look less like homeless people. Then, as soon as there were enough tourists, they went off to try and get money. Harry said that he'd lost his parents and that he needed money to buy a bus ticket to the hotel they were staying in, and it worked pretty well.
For lunch the gang met again.
"Seems that Harry is a gift from the gods," Henry smiled after he'd counted the money. "Our average intake raised in two pounds twenty-two pence."
"I insist upon buying you all something to eat at Subway," Harry said. Henry gave him a warning look, but, smiling, the young boy pulled a handful of vouchers out of his pocket. "Two for One. A man working at Subway gave them to me. How about that?"
"Okay," Henry gave in. "But this stays an exception."