The Potions Master's Daughter

PART 2, Chapter 5: Old friends, new friends

'It's not starting!' yelled Aunt Honora, trying for the third time to start the engine of their old teal Morris. The car was parked in the front yard of their Honington cottage with Alice in the backseat, crammed behind her huge school trunk.

'Is it not working?' she asked in a muffled voice, craning her head from behind the trunk. Their car (probably older than Aunt Honora herself) had refused to start its engine the morning of the departure of the Hogwarts Express. Aunt Honora had been using it to drive Alice to King's Cross for three years now, ever since Severus enhanced the car's abilities so it could skip through traffic, squeeze between other cars and reach the speed of more than 200 miles an hour without other drivers noticing. Alice was nervously tapping her fingers on the side of her trunk and glanced at her watch. It was 10 AM and Hogwarts Express was departing in an hour. If they didn't fix the car quick enough, everyone would be leaving without her.

Finally, Uncle Ernest, covered in grease, emerged from underneath the car and threw his arms to the side hopelessly. 'I can't fix it! It just won't start!'

Alice sighed and moaned, feeling her stomach tighten from stress. 'Great,' she muttered to herself, 'just great.'

She scrambled out of the car and watched helplessly as Aunt Honora and Uncle Ernest dove underneath the car again, opened up the front and back, basically deconstructing the machine, with no apparent success. She kept pacing around them, sighing and looking at her watch. 'We won't make it,' she said. 'It's too late now.'

Aunt Honora wiped the sweat of her forehead and walked up to her. 'Don't panic, Alice, we'll try and contact Severus --'

'How?' Alice cut her off. 'We don't know where he is.'

'Hogwarts, I assume?' said Aunt Honora and Alice shrugged. It was true, she too assumed Snape was at Hogwarts; she just didn't really want to speak to him. After last night's revelations, she wanted time away from him.

'Well, what else do we do then?' Aunt Honora snapped. She was getting visibly annoyed. 'Any other mode of transport you can think of?'

Alice frantically searched her mind. 'Er --'. As an underaged witch with her Squib Aunt, she was excluded from practically every magical form of transport. 'We could try the Floo network to Diagon Alley and get to King's Cross from there ... I don't know of any Portkeys in our area so that's not an option ... I do know Daphne has one at home but she's probably already left ...'

'In that case, we'll try the Floo network,' Aunt Honora commanded and ordered Uncle Ernest to help her out with the heavy trunk. Alice glanced at her watch nervously, realising they only had half an hour to get to King's Cross on time. She said her hurried goodbyes to Uncle Ernest who helped them fit the trunk in the fireplace, and soon they found themselves inside the familiar train station at the Diagon Alley. Thankfully there were significantly fewer wizards and witches there that day, so they didn't have to squeeze through the crowd with the heavy trunk.

'Here,' yelled Aunt Honora, rushing up to a rickety wooden table by the station exit, covered in flyers and magical magazines. By the pile of yesterday's editions of the Daily Prophet lay a couple of old, dusty London Underground maps. Aunt Honora grabbed one and skimmed through it, muttering to herself, 'Piccadilly line ... Leicester Square ... That's around the corner. Right, Alice, let's go!'

Alice sighed with relief, thankful to have Aunt Honora by her side. Aunt Honora lived in London once, in her twenties, so she knew the city quite well. She helped Alice drag the heavy trunk behind her as they made their way through the empty Leaky Cauldron and out onto Charing Cross Road. Alice kept glancing at her watch, trying to keep up with Aunt Honora and ignoring the passers'-by suspicious looks.