Harry Potter

[davywavy]

All too soon it was time to leave. Harry, Camp Draco and the Weasleys loaded everything they would need into the boot of Mr Weasley’s old Ford Anglia, which had found its own way back from the Forbidden Forest to The Burrow a month or so earlier, unnoticed by Mr Weasley, who was now very busy at work thanks to Lord Voldemort’s return. The inside of the car’s boot had been magically expanded to the volume of several school trunks, but even so that didn’t stop Camp Draco from making endless pointed remarks about its comparative smallness and cheapness as they loaded up.
“Should be an interesting ride, Weasley, after my father’s flying Bentley … of course, being a classic car, that’s exempt from the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts legislation …”
“Remember the Sorting Hat!” Hermione hissed as Ron’s hand tightened around his wand.
“If I had the Sorting Hat here right now,” Ron muttered grimly to himself, “I know where I’d shove it.”
Finally they were ready to go. Harry went through his checklist one last time. Hermione fussed round everyone, pinning on badges for the EPS, which was her latest tiresome cause. “Where’s Ginny?” said George Weasley, looking round. “She wanted to say goodbye.”
“I think she’s in the house,” said Fred. “I’ll get her.”
A minute later he came sprinting back round the corner.
“Mum’s back!”
“What?” said George, thunderstruck. “I thought she was in London!”
“She must have suspected we were planning something. I don’t reckon she saw me, though … here, grab one of these.”
Fred passed round a handful of Extendable Ears and everyone fell silent, their heads bent in concentration.
“Have you seen your brothers anywhere?” they heard Mrs Weasley saying from the kitchen.
“I, er, think they’re somewhere about,” came Ginny’s cautious reply. “Why?”
“Because when I was emptying their pockets to do the laundry I found this Italian-English Conversational Dictionary.”
“Ciao, bella,” the dictionary said chattily.
“Oh, er, well … maybe they’re hoping to try exporting their jokes?”
“And this collapsible map of Turin.”
“Er …”
“And three of the hands on the kitchen clock are pointing at ‘travelling’.”
“She’s sussed us!” yelled Lee. “Get moving! Go on! Go! Go! Go!”
The Extendable Ears fell in a discarded heap to the ground as everyone scatted. Harry grabbed his Firebolt. Ron leapt into the driver’s seat of the Ford. Camp Draco wrestled with the passenger door, but the car had taken a dislike to him and wouldn’t let him in.
“Try the back!” Ron shouted through the glass.
Camp Draco shot him a look of utter scorn. Then he sped out of the garage and across the back yard where Lee and the twins were mounting their brooms. He levelled his wand. “Stupefy!”
Fred Weasley dropped Stunned to the ground. Catching his broom in midair, Camp Draco vaulted astride it and soared upward, laughing.
Lee and George exchanged a look and kicked off as one in pursuit. Down below they could hear Ron frantically trying to revive his brother.
“Enervate! Enervate!”
Harry peeled away from the others, pulling his Firebolt up into a tight inside loop that took him soaring overhead and swooping back to the yard. He pulled his wand from inside his jacket as he dropped down through the air. “Stand back!”
Ron looked up. He shook his head.
“Don’t … worry … about … us …” Harry heard him shouting, “…see … you … in … Turin …”
He put his arms under Fred’s limp shoulders and started to drag him towards the Ford Anglia.
Harry looked at him, then nodded. He pulled round in a roll and looped back to the others.
“You heard him,” he called to Lee and George. “Come on.”
“But Harry, you saw what happened, that was well out of order.”
“George,” said Harry, “another minute and your Mum would have been on to us, and then we would have been well and truly stuffed. And besides,” he added in a lower voice, so as not to reach Camp Draco’s ears, “do you really think your brother is going to let Camp Draco get away with something like that? Seriously?”
George paused, then smiled evilly.
“Point,” he said.

*

All that day the four of them flew, avoiding Muggle settlements wherever possible as they passed over France. That night they camped out in one of the tents belonging to Perkins, Mr Weasley’s old work colleague, and by the next morning they were climbing steadily into the foothills of the Alps, the air growing cold and clear as they gained altitude.
Although it was the middle of summer, the boys began to notice dazzling white clumps of snow high up among the crags as they rose. As if by unspoken consent, everyone fell quiet, not wanting to trigger an avalanche that could send tons of loose rock and snowmelt crashing suddenly down through the clear air around them.
“What’s that?” said Harry suddenly, but keeping his voice low. “Isn’t it an owl?” He pointed at a speck in the blue sky behind them, rapidly growing in size. The rest of them craned round on their brooms. George shaded his eyes.
“I think … Why, I do believe it’s Errol,” he said. “Mum must have sent him. What’s that he’s carrying?”
“Something red,” said Camp Draco, squinting.
There was a pause, and then they all exchanged horrified glances.
“Can we outrun him?”
“No idea.”
“Never tried it, mate.”
They looked at the looming crags, the slumped mounds of snow half-hanging overhead.
“Well, we’ve got to do something. He’s getting nearer!”
George turned to the others. “No. Listen,” he said. “I’ll deal with this. The rest of you just keep quiet, OK?”
Lee stared. “But George, he’s got a Howler!”
George flapped a hand urgently at him. “I said quiet! Just let me do the talking!”
The elderly owl was approaching now. With a final hoot of exhaustion, he dropped bodily out of the sky and landed heavily on the end of George’s broom, looking completely knackered. A scarlet envelope was clutched in his beak, and this he presented purposefully towards George.
George made a show of reading the envelope. He read it through again. Then he looked the owl straight in the eye.
“Errol,” he said sadly. “Errol, Errol, Errol.”
Harry thought he sounded like Professor Lockhart.
George shook his head sorrowfully. “Errol, Errol, old fellow. It’s not like you to make a mistake like this. Don’t tell me you’re losing it at last.”
The owl ruffled its feathers and hooted.
“Errol, haven’t you read what it says on here?” George traced Mrs Weasley’s writing on the scarlet envelope. “Master George Weasley. George, Errol. George, with a G.”
Errol gave him a beady look.
“Well,” said George, in a slightly concerned voice, “I ought not to have to spell it out, but … you know… I’m not George. I’m Fred, Errol. You know? Fred? With an F? I’m afraid … you’ve got it wrong.” He shrugged. “I’m sorry, but there you are. Still, even the best of us sometimes makes mistakes. Even Mum gets us muddled up sometimes!” He beamed down in a kindly way at the affronted-looking owl. “But you mustn’t blame yourself. Tired, I expect.”
“Could do with a holiday.” Lee Jordan suggested.
“Been working too hard,” agreed George, with an appraising look at Errol, who glared back indignantly. “Never mind. You just fly off now and deliver this to George, and we’ll say no more about it.”
Errol gave a small, disbelieving hoot.
“You ask the others if you don’t believe me,” George added.
He gestured at Lee and Camp Draco.
“Yup,” said Lee, nodding sagely. “No doubt about it. This is Fred all right. Know him anywhere.”
“Word of honour as a Slytherin,” Camp Draco added.
“See?” said George. “There you go.”
Errol gave him one last, long, suspicious glare out of his yellow eyes, then slowly unfolded his grey wings again, heaved his feathery body off the broom handle, and flapped laboriously away towards the distant crags. George watched him go. He rubbed his palms cheerfully together. “Well!” he said in a brisk voice, “that’s got rid of him!” He turned back to the others. “Thanks, lads. For a moment there … what’s the matter with you lot?”
For the others were all staring in horror at the mountain-side ahead. George looked at them in surprise, then turned his head to follow the direction of their stares. His face fell.
“Oh,” he said.
For where the mountain had been empty a minute before, there now stood an ominous line of wizards in dark glasses and sleek, stylish robes, sinister and motionless, completely blocking their path. Lee groaned under his breath.
“Oh, no,” he murmured. “It’s the Italian wizard Mafia.”
There was nothing for it but to land. The Italians had the four of them hopelessly outnumbered. Apprehensively, the boys grounded their brooms and dismounted on to the hot, dusty road.
A stocky, swarthy man with raven-black hair stepped forward from the ranks of the Mafia. Although a hand’s-breadth shorter than Harry, he radiated an aura of immense authority and power. With a shock, Harry realised he recognised the man; it was Signor Cagliostro, a senior Mafia figure whose picture sometimes appeared on the Chocolate Frog cards.
Cagliostro’s dark eyes performed the familiar flickering motion over Harry’s face to his scar, then down to the ground and the Firebolt at his side. He looked amused.
“Your broom?” he asked in heavily accented English.
Harry nodded stiffly without speaking.
Cagliostro’s smile broadened. He signalled with a hand, and from round the bend of the road came a metallic, clanking noise. The next moment another Italian wizard appeared, leading on the end of a chain a small, but very fierce looking dragon; it had creamy scales tipped with gold, and a head tapered like a sea-horse. George Weasley, whose brother Charlie worked with dragons in Rumania, gave a gasp of recognition.
“That’s a Crested Piedmontese!”
Cagliostro’s eyes never left Harry’s. He gave an oily smile.
“Pretty broom,” he said, in a caressing sort of voice.
The dragon crawled forward. Too late Harry realised what was going to happen … a stab of horror ran through his body …but there was nothing he could do to stop it …
With a noise like a blowtorch, twin jets of white-hot fire roared out of the dragon’s nostrils. In half a minute, all that remained of Harry’s treasured Firebolt was an ashy silhouette against the blackened gravel.
Harry stared at the ground, fighting hard to keep his emotions from showing in his face. He remembered, as if it was yesterday, the morning when the Firebolt had arrived at Hogwarts in a long, thin package on Christmas Day; Ron’s cries of amazement, Camp Draco’s disbelief, his own astonished joy; he remembered chill dawns of Quidditch practice, where the players drew dark trails in the dew as they swept low over the turf, and the glorious Third Year summer match, where the broom had seemed to dart and respond to his lightest touch. He remembered Sirius. The broom had been a present from his godfather; for a long time it had been all that Harry had had of him. A lump came to his throat. He swallowed hard and looked up. Cagliostro was still smiling in an unpleasant manner. He gestured with a hand. Behind him, the line of Italian wizards levelled their wands as one.
Harry thought of the Firebolt again. Suddenly, he felt as if his veins were filled, not with blood, but with a cold, calm fury. He narrowed his bright green eyes and glared at the Italian wizard full in the face, and there was not a tremor in his voice as he spoke.
“You’ll be making a grave error if you Avada Kedavra us,” he said quietly. “There are over twenty thousand Italians in the British wizarding community. In ice-cream parlours. In restaurants. In, er –“
“Selling designer robes,” put in Camp Draco.
“Designer robes, yes.”
“Shoes, as well, Italian shoes are very good.”
“Yes, all right. Designer shoes.”
“Luggage. Well, leather goods generally, really.”
Harry ignored him. “There are over twenty thousand Italian shoes, er, wizards, in –“
“Not that you’d know, obviously, Potter – I mean judging by the quality of your footwear.”
“As I was saying,” said Harry loudly and firmly. “There are, er, a lot of Italian wizards in Britain, and this,” (indicating Camp Draco) “is Mr Malfoy’s son, and if anything happens to us, Mr Malfoy will drive them into the sea.”
There was a long silence. A soft mountain breeze rustled the grasses by the roadside. Harry and Signor Cagliostro glared at one another, brown eyes locked with green in a battle of willpower. Harry wondered if the Italian could tell how nervous he was starting to feel.
But Cagliostro was the first to speak.
“Well,” he said. “It’s a long way back to England, gentlemen; and –“ he waved a manicured hand down the way they had come – “it’s that way.”

*

“Hello, chaps,” said George that evening as he, Camp Draco and Harry made their appearance at the abandoned villa outside Turin where the gang had agreed to meet up. “Sorry we’re late. Had a bit of a run-in with the Mafia.”
Fred’s eyes opened wide. An expression of pure, naked envy wrote itself across his face. “You jammy bastard,” he said simply.
Stan Shunpike, seated on an upturned packing case, merely gawped at them. Professor Nigellus was chasing a chubby Venus round the ceiling frescos and it seemed likely that he hadn’t even noticed the new arrivals.
“Well … not all that lucky, in fact,” George admitted after a moment, taking pity on his brother. “Harry’s Firebolt got torched. We were lucky to get away.”
Fred looked appalled.
“Aw, no! No way! Harry! Your Firebolt!”
“Yeah, well,” said Harry. He didn’t feel like talking about it.
“Downer,” added Fred sympathetically.
“Too right it was,” said Camp Draco. “We had to share brooms the rest of the way. There were air pockets too. Bloody uncomfortable.”
“Yeah?” said Fred. He looked speculatively at Camp Draco. “Well, in that case, I guess I owe you.”
“Yes, Weasley, I guess you do,” Camp Draco agreed smugly.
“Cheers, then,” said Fred. He held out a hand.
Smiling, Camp Draco took it.
There was a loud crackling, fizzing noise. Camp Draco gave an ear-splitting yell. Every single one of his sleek blond hairs stood out on end, giving his head the appearance of a large dandelion clock, and for an instant all the bones in his skeleton lit up and could be seen glowing brightly through his pale skin. Fred let go. Camp Draco collapsed to the ground.
“Serves you right,” Fred remarked with a satisfied chortle.
He sauntered over to join his twin at the window.
“Looks like Errol is starting to lose it at last. He tried to deliver me a Howler this afternoon addressed to Master George Weasley.”
“Yeah, well, the thing is, I told him I was you.”
“Really? That’s funny,” said Fred. “I told him I was me too.”
“Wonder where he is now.”
They both gazed thoughtfully out at the evening sky, now darkening to a deep, sapphire blue. Above the roofs of the city, the sombre foothills of the Alps stood out in a jagged, shadowy line.
Just then Lee Jordan came bursting through the door and dropped his Wizarding Wireless Network press card on a chair.
“Worked like a charm,” he announced jubilantly. “Nobody suspected a thing. They all assumed I was covering the match.”
Lee had taken a detour from the others to plant the Professor’s hexes along the proposed escape route. He caught sight of Camp Draco.
“Nice one, boys, told you it would work better on fine flyaway hair.”
Harry cleared his throat.
“If we’re all here,” he announced to the room in general, “I’d like to run through the plan.”
“This is the big one,” grinned Fred.
“The pay-off,” added George.
“Shut up,” said Harry. He unrolled a large piece of parchment against the wall and tapped it with his wand. “I solemnly swear,” he intoned, “that we are up to no good.”
Spidery lines of ink appeared, crawling across the surface of the parchment until the whole city of Turin was shown in detail. Tiny moving pictures and arrows indicated the route of the convoy. Quickly, Harry explained how the van carrying the Galleons would be forced into the central piazza by the hexed Turin traffic system, ready for the gang to attack, and how they would get away afterwards.
“Actually, we can all read a map, Potter,” said Camp Draco, smoothing down his hair.
“The map’ll be in your head,” said Harry, “because I’m burning this one. Incendio!”
The map flared briefly, then curled into a blackened crisp.
“Here, I was still reading that,” Ron complained.
“Oh, sorry. Um.” Harry looked round. “Er. Well. Yes. Any other questions?”
“Yeah,” Camp Draco drawled. “Now that we’ve lost the Firebolt, Potter, what do we do for backup if anything goes wrong?”
“That’s well out of order,” Lee Jordan objected. “That broom meant a lot to Harry, and you know it.”
“Yeah, we’ll manage.”
“And when we get back with the loot,” added George, “he can buy <.i>fifty Firebolts, if he wants! And your Manor with the change!”
Harry managed a weak smile. “Thanks, lads,” he said.
“Shall we synchronise our watches?” Ron wanted to know.
“Knickers to your watches,” retorted Harry, whose own watch had stopped in the school lake the previous year. “You be there at quarter to, and don’t get caught in the traffic, neither.”
Ron nodded. People started getting up. “Oh, and lads,” said Harry, “one other thing -?”
They all looked at him expectantly.
“ In this country, they drive on the wrong side of the road.”
Everyone groaned, apart from Stan Shunpike who simply looked nonplussed, and the meeting broke up.

*

Ordinarily the Cenerentola bullion van would have slipped through Muggle traffic like the Ministry of Magic cars, but on this particular morning, it quickly became clear that something was slowing it down. At the first set of red traffic lights, the troll driver found himself stuck behind a Fiat; the lights changed, the Fiat accelerated away, and – the lights were red again! The driver scratched his head. His van stopped again. Still, he was paid to guard the gold, not think. The lights changed back to green … but the traffic seemed very dense … there was only one place in the road he could get the van through … he turned … there was another red light ahead … the road to the left was jammed with cars …
Pale and sweating, the boys huddled in the Ford Anglia, watching as the golden van crept closer and closer towards them through the traffic. Harry rubbed absently at his scar. Ron fiddled nervously with his EPS badge. Everyone else had thrown theirs away. Now they could clearly see the security troll at the wheel, frowning with concentration … now the van was only twenty yards away … ten … five …
“Go! Now!”
Ron jammed down his foot and the Ford swung smoothly into place behind the armoured van. Together, in convoy, the two vehicles moved through the Turin streets.
Camp Draco handed out some masks that he had found in his father’s study, and everyone put them on.
Trapped on all sides by the traffic, the armoured van swung into the Piazza Palazzo di Citta, the Ford Anglia directly behind it. The traffic brought it to a standstill again. Ron threw the brake.
“NOW!”
Wands at the ready, the mob piled out.
“Stupefy!”
The air of the piazza crackled as jets of green light sizzled through the air, zooming over the heads of Italian Muggles and bouncing off the stone facades of building. Troll guards lurched here and there, raising their stone clubs and blundering into rays of green light … there was a smell of singed troll … one by one the trolls tottered stupidly, swaying on their feet, then crashed to the stone flags, concussed.
“Locomotor van! Go! Go! Go!”
As Harry helped the others manoeuvre the floating van through the great oaken doors of the Palazzo Municipale, he thought what a good thing it was that Muggles sometimes didn’t seem to notice what was going on under their own noses. Fred scattered a handful of Dungbombs behind them, and the heavy doors swung shut with a thud. Pulling out his wand, Harry started running through every Locking spell he knew. Ron was hunched in a corner with his eyes tight shut and his hands clutched hard over his ears.
“Ron, what are you doing?” Harry asked.
Without opening his eyes, Ron jerked a thumb over his shoulder. Lee and the twins were counting down at the back of the van. At that moment there was a small, neat ‘pop’ and with a curl of purple smoke and a distinct smell of haddock the doors clanged to the floor. Inside the van lay a mound of money bags.
“Come on,” Harry said impatiently.
Already he could hear sirens outside in the street.
Quickly the boys started transferring the Galleons to magically expanded saddlebags fitted to the three getaway brooms. The great doors shuddered as a heavy blow landed from outside. Sparks flew through the keyhole.
“Hurry up! Get moving!”
Money bags passed frantically from hand to hand. A second blow shook the doors from top to bottom. Splinters peeled from the frame.
“Come on, come on.”
With a final, resounding crash the doors flew open. Italian wizard police streamed into the courtyard of the Palazzo Carignano.
But the thieves had gone.
And the van was empty.
Three English-made brooms, red, white and blue, each with two riders and pair of panniers, came tearing out of the palazzo and headed out through the city streets, in and out of the traffic. Up over the pavement they soared, and down over the heads of Italian Muggles standing on the broad staircase of the Palazzo Madama, swerving round startled pedestrians and zooming back into the street outside. Down the shadowed alley of colonnades, one after the other, swooping low to avoid the café umbrellas, slaloming round the stone pillars. Ron grabbed a chicken leg from a table as they shot past.
“I could eat a horse,” he mumbled indistinctly.
Harry looked over his shoulder. Several Italian wizard police had appeared behind them. He urged the broom faster. The three brooms hurtled low over the marble floor of the Galleria San Federico and accelerated out, with the Italians in hot pursuit. Down the subway stairs they raced, dodging round slow-moving Muggles as if they were Bludgers in a Quidditch game, braking, looping, swerving, accelerating. Behind them, a yell and a crash suggested that at least one of their pursuers had come to grief.
“Faster,” Harry yelled.
A flight of stairs rose ahead of them. Without slowing, the three brooms angled upwards as one and shot out into the sunlight again. Police were still on their tail; Harry glimpsed dark glasses, the sleek outlines of the grey Cenerentola brooms. Colonnades and neon shot past in a blur; the three brooms dipped, rose, then they were in the open air again and heading down to the river, the police still giving chase.
“Get a blooming move on!”
Along the weir the three brooms flew, spray flying up from trailing feet, blinding their pursuers. They heard a shout as someone behind them tumbled into the river. The next moment they were in darkness again as the sewer closed about them like a long, dank tunnel. With a chorus of “Lumos!” light blazed from six wands … they were hurtling down the sewer, swinging wildly from side to side as the pipe twisted and turned around them … brown mud spattered across Harry’s glasses … there was a bright circle of daylight ahead … and then the three brooms were out in the open again, the metal grille devised by Professor Nigellus sprang up to block the exit, and there was a heavy clang as the first Italian ran straight into it, then a second clang as another ran into him, knocking the grille askew from its hinges. It hung there for a moment, then toppled awkwardly into the river and was carried off slowly downstream.
Down the autostrada cruised the Knight Bus with Stan Shunpike at the wheel. Profesoor Nigellus’s portrait, propped up in the back, caught sight of the approaching brooms, and waved them forward. Harry, with Ron riding pillion, was in the lead.
“Now!”
With pinpoint accuracy Harry swept the broom through the narrow entrance of the Knight Bus and stopped dead. Both boys jumped off and hastily moved the broom aside – Lee and Camp Draco were making their approach …
“Now!”
The second broom swooped in and stopped beside the first. People moved the brooms and Galleons aside hastily, making room for the twins …
“Now!”
“Oof,” complained George as the twins broom hit the conductor’s pole and bounced off again, spinning back down the road. Ron watched their antics scathingly. “And I’m supposed to be the useless one at flying, am I,” he muttered.
“Sorry boys, try that one again.”
The twins’ broom steadied and revved up down the road again.
“Now!”
“Yay!”
In they swept, to cheering from the others; and a few minutes later, the innocuous-looking Knight Bus trundled innocently under a road bridge - where a couple of Italian wizard police could be seen forlornly scouring the sky for three brooms - and headed off down the autostrada away out of Turin and towards the lowering foothills of the Alps and the Swiss border.
“YES!!! WE DID IT!”
Fred and George had shaken up a couple of bottles of Butterbeer and were spraying them about the inside of the Bus like champagne. People were laughing, whooping, slapping one another on the back as if the whole gang had just won the Quidditch Cup. Lee started opening more Butterbeers and passing them round to everyone, including Stan Shunpike, who gave him a thumbs-up and took a draught from the bottle.
“Er, Lee, are you sure Stan ought to be drinking?” Harry asked doubtfully.
“Yeah, definitely, he says driving makes him nervous.”
Camp Draco was looking at Ron in amazement.
“I can’t believe you’ve still kept that stupid badge on, Weasley.”
“No way! He has, too,” added Fred, stopping in mid-shake. “What does EPS stand for, anyway, Ron?”
Everyone turned to look at Ron, who immediately went as pink as a radish. He looked sheepishly at his feet.
“It’s the Elf Preservation Society,” he muttered.
Fred and George howled with laughter.
“The Elf Preservation Society!” They both went off into a sort of song and dance routine. “This is the Elf Preservation Society … This is the Elf Preservation Society …”
“Oh, shut up,” said Ron, as Lee joined in. Camp Draco began singing as well. Then the portrait of Phineas Nigellus joined in as well, and Harry heard Stan Shunpike’s tuneless voice from the driver’s seat. Harry laughed. It was impossible to be angry with them. They’d done it, after all. He took a swig of Butterbeer. “This is the Elf Preservation Society,” sang Harry, and finally Ron’s face cracked into a reluctant grin and they swayed up and down the Bus, carousing hilariously, as the Knight Bus left the city behind and headed up towards the mountains.

*

As soon as Mr Malfoy emerged from his cell, he heard it - from the prisoners pausing on the gantry to turn and stare; from faces framed behind the bars of cell windows; from the benches of the dining hall below; perhaps even from the Dementor guards themselves – a low, excited buzz that seemed to run through Azkaban like an electric charge. He looked down. Kreacher was at his side, eager but reverential.
“They did it, Mr Malfoy, sir.”
Malfoy didn’t smile; but a faint, beatific expression lit in his eyes as he strode along the gantry; and as he progressed, the murmur grew in volume around him, like a gathering wave, swelling, rising, finally resolving itself into a pounding, triumphal chant:
“Ta-ta! Ta-ta-ta! Ta-ta-ta-ta-Malfoy!”
Malfoy half-raised his hand as if in protest; but still the sound gathered, like the roar of a great Quidditch crowd, until the whole of Azkaban rang with it; and as he made his regal descent of the iron stair to the dining hall, it rose up around him in a deafening, triumphant crescendo:
“Ta-ta! Ta-ta-ta! Ta-ta-ta-ta-Malfoy!”
And from every table, from every side rose the rhythmic clatter of tin plates, of knives, forks, the drumming of heels, as every prisoner, Death Eater and ordinary convict alike, hammered out their rapturous paean of victory, while Malfoy, his expression showing him to be almost overcome by this display, nodded in gracious acknowledgement to right and to left as he descended the stair, step by step, savouring to the full the bouquet of such a cup of triumph as no denizen of Azkaban had ever before known.

*

“This is the Elf Preservation Society …”
Higher and higher into the Alps climbed the Knight Bus, veering precariously from side to side of the narrow winding road as Stan Shunpike steered with one hand and conducted the singing with a can of Butterbeer held aloft in the other. On roared the party inside. Lee, Fred and George had formed a three-man conga and were swaying hilariously up and down the aisle, lurching out of control from one side to the other as Stan took the corners. Ron had his arm round Camp Draco’s shoulders. “I jus’ wan’ to tell you,” he slurred, “you’re my bes’ mate, Camp Draco, I don’ care about you bein’ a Slytherin. Nah. Let ‘em say that. I don’ care. You are a top man, Camp Draco, one of the bes’.”
“Yeah, you too, Ron, my friend,” said Camp Draco, “’N fac’, I s’pose this is as good a time as any to tell you …”
“This is the Elf Preservation Society …”
The conga reached the far end of the aisle.
“Mad-Eye Moody, lads,” called out George.
Gurning horribly, the conga came limping and clumping in two-four time back down the aisle again. “This is the Elf Preservation Society …”
Ron peered at them with distaste. “Y’know,” he confided to Camp Draco, “the trouble with my brothers is, they’re jus’ so immature.”
“Teenagers,” observed Phineas Nigellus disdainfully from out of his portrait. “They just can’t take their drink.”
His eyes crossed, and he toppled out of sight.
Harry laughed. Something grey and feathered fluttered in through the window and dropped to the ground. “What’s that?” he said, pointing vaguely.
Fred stared owlishly at the panting heap of feathers, and made a discovery. “It’s Errol!” he announced.
“Errol, old man!” said George expansively. “How spiffing of you to join us. Do have a drink.”
The bus careered round a corner. Fred rounded on his brother, staggering slightly.
“George,” he said, in a voice of calm reason, “Errol’s an owl. He doesn’t drink alcohol.”
George turned belligerent. “How do you know?” he demanded.
“He’s got something in his beak,” Lee said wisely.
Everyone looked at Errol. There was indeed a scrap of scarlet paper in the owl’s beak. Deep in Harry’s Butterbeer-fuddled brain, something stirred.
“Hang on. I know what that is. That’s the – Get rid of it, quickly!”
But it was too late.
“WHAT THE BLAZES DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING AT A TIME LIKE THIS GOING OFF ABROAD WHEN YOU-KNOW-WHO IS ON THE LOOSE AGAIN? DON’T YOU KNOW THERE ARE STILL DEATH EATERS EVERYWHERE? YOU COULD GET YOURSELVES KILLED! AND HAVE YOU NO CONSIDERATION FOR YOUR FATHER’S POSITION AT THE MINISTRY? GINNY TOLD ME ABOUT THE CAR, AND YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENED LAST TIME, I SHOULD HAVE HOPED YOU COULD ALL BE A BIT MORE GROWN-UP BY NOW, BILL AND CHARLIE NEVER GAVE US ANY TROUBLE LIKE THIS …”
Mrs Weasley’s voice, amplified a thousand times over, echoed and boomed off the looming Alpine faces and precipices all around them. The very crags seemed to tremble. Small boulders rumbled down the mountainside and bounced off the roof of the Bus. Gibbering with terror, Stan spun the wheel. Tyres screamed on gravel. Round and round skidded the Knight Bus … people were flung against the sides like dolls … the brakes were screaming … blue sky flashed past the windows … mountains … sky … mountains … a solid, rocky mountain face …
The Bus shuddered to a standstill.
“ … is everyone all right?” asked Harry in a small voice.
Gingerly, people started picking themselves up off the floor, which seemed to be rocking slowly in a strange, buoyant way, as if the Bus itself was floating or suspended in air. There was a faint creak of metal.
“Blimey, that was close,” said Fred, brushing dust off his front. He straightened up. A peculiar expression crossed his face.
“Er … guys?”
Behind them reared the solid rocky face of the mountain, and the back wheels of the Knight Bus stood rooted on solid road. But the front of the Bus appeared to be suspended in an empty bowl of sky. A couple of yards ahead of them, in the middle of the aisle, the pile of stolen Galleons lay twinkling and shifting slightly with the gentle creaking motion of the floor.
For a moment, nobody moved. Then Harry signalled everyone to keep absolutely still. Slowly, nervously, he took a single, cautious step toward the Galleons. Immediately the Bus began to swing forwards. Hurriedly he stepped back again. The Bus swung back.
Creak.
Harry let out a careful breath.
“We’re balanced,” he said, “right on the edge.”
He looked round.
“All right,” he said quietly. “First things first. We’d better get the Galleons up this end. Anyone got their wand on them?”
Everybody patted their pockets anxiously.
“Yeah, I’ve got mine,” said Ron, producing it from his jacket. “Leave it to me, guys. Accio Gold!”
Acrid smoke exploded from Ron’s wand. The pile of Galleons shot down to the very far end of the Bus, which started tipping forward over the edge.
“Get back! Get back!”
Everyone dived to the back. The front end of the Bus swung slowly back up until it was level again.
Creak.
Harry looked accusingly at Ron. “Your ruddy wand’s broken again,” he pointed out.
Ron turned over the sorry bent object in his hand with a look of hurt astonishment. Down at the front end of the Bus, the pile of Galleons twinkled with a tantalising golden light.
Creak.
“The Galleons,” said Lee, “are pulling us over the edge.”
“The Galleons,” said Camp Draco in a meaningful voice, “and Stan Shunpike.”
There was a long, thoughtful pause. Everyone looked down to the Bus at Stan, who swallowed hard. They saw the pallid Adam’s apple bob up and down in his throat. Beyond him lay a clear blue void of sky, and the distant faces of the Alps.
Creak.
Harry was the first to break the silence.
“Hang on, lads,” he said. “I’ve got a great idea.”

The End

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

I found this Italian-English Conversational Dictionary.”
“Ciao, bella,” the dictionary said chattily.

Ahahaha!

This is great! I really liked the film, and this captures it just perfectly :-) The chase scene's especially good. And I'm still giggling far too much at Camp Draco!