Brighter Than the Sun

Chapter Nineteen

The dog recovered and skidded around, looking for a new attack. I rushed forward, whipping out my wand. As the dog sprang back toward them I pushed Harry aside and aimed a kick at the dog. Ron tried to hurl himself at the dog, but the dog's jaws fastened instead around Ron's outstretched arm. Harry and I lunged forward, he seized a handful of the brute's hair, but it was dragging Ron away as easily as though he were a rag doll.

I leaped to my feet, but out of nowhere, something hit me so hard across the face I was knocked off my feet again. I heard Hermione shriek with pain and fall too. Harry fell beside me with a thud.

"Lumos!" I heard him whisper.

The wandlight showed us the trunk of a thick tree. We had chased Scabbers into the shadow of the Whomping Willow and its branches were creaking as though in a high wind, whipping backward and forward to stop us going nearer.

"You've got to be kidding me!" I exclaimed.

At the base of the trunk, the dog was dragging Ron backward into a large gap in the roots — Ron was fighting furiously, but his head and torso were slipping out of sight —

"Ron!" Harry shouted, trying to follow, but a heavy branch whipped lethally through the air and he was forced backward again. I tried to stay low, away from the branches, but it was a lost cause.

All we could see now was one of Ron's legs, which he had hooked around a root in an effort to stop the dog from pulling him farther underground — but a horrible crack cut the air like a gunshot; Ron's leg had broken, and a moment later, his foot vanished from sight.

I stood, staring in horror.

"Harry — we've got to go for help —" Hermione gasped; she was bleeding too; the Willow had cut her across the shoulder.

"No! That thing's big enough to eat him; we haven't got time —"

"Harry — we're never going to get through without help —"

Another branch whipped down at them, twigs clenched like knuckles.

"I'm sorry, Hermione," I said, "But I think Harry's right this time. I won't hesitate to act if the dog tries anything. You know that, right?"

Hermione glanced in the direction of the pocket where my bow and arrow keychain was hidden and sighed. "I know."

Harry didn't say anything. I nodded at him, and we assessed the scene before us, darting here and there, trying to find a way through the vicious, swishing branches, but we couldn't get an inch nearer to the tree roots without being in range of the tree's blows.

Crookshanks darted forward. He slithered between the battering branches like a snake and placed his front paws upon a knot on the trunk. Abruptly, as though the tree had been turned to marble, it stopped moving. Not a leaf twitched or
shook.

"Crookshanks..." Hermione was nearly speechless. "How did he know to do that?"

"He's friends with that dog," Harry replied grimly. "I've seen them together."

We covered the distance to the trunk in seconds, but before we'd reached the gap in the roots, Crookshanks had slid into it with a flick of his bottlebrush tail. Harry went next, then Hermione. I followed and crawled forward, headfirst, and slid down an earthy slope to the bottom of a very low tunnel. Crookshanks was a little way along, his eyes flashing in the light from Harry's wand.

"Where's Ron?" Hermione whispered in a terrified voice.

"This way," said Harry, setting off, bent-backed, after Crookshanks.