Charmolypi

Chapter 130

The siblings were several streets away before Harry collapsed onto a low wall in Magnolia Crescent, panting from the effort of dragging his trunk. He sat quite still, anger still surging through him, listening to the frantic thumping of his heart.

"Harry," Thea called quietly, as she crouched beside him. She placed her hand gently on his shoulder and tried to calm him down.

"You were so angry it was hilarious," Thea said, trying to hide her giggle.

"I wasn't that bad," Harry retorted.

"You were," Hermione pitched in. "So were you," she said turning to Ron.

"Me?" Ron asked, clearly offended.

"Yes," all the wizards answered in unison. The Weasley boy shrunk in his seat, his face growing red.

After ten minutes alone in the dark street, a new emotion overtook Harry: panic. Whichever way he looked at it, he had never been in a worse fix. He realized they were stranded, quite alone, in the dark Muggle world, with absolutely nowhere to go. And the worst of it was, he had just done serious magic, which meant that he was almost certainly expelled from Hogwarts. He had broken the Decree for the Restriction of Underage Wizardry so badly; he was surprised Ministry of Magic representatives weren't swooping down on him where he sat.

Thea saw her brother shivering slightly, but a rustling came from one of the bushes near them. She unleashed one of her small knives, despite knowing that it would not harm any mortal if it came to that.

Harry, who didn't seem to notice anything, opened his trunk and pushed the contents aside, looking for the Invisibility Cloak — but before he had found it, he straightened up suddenly, looking around him.

"You have a problem assessing your surroundings," Matteo told him. The Slytherin's voice held no emotion, which surprised the majority of the older generation.

"Do you think something happened?" Barty asked his friends, looking at the two wizards that seemed to have created a tense atmosphere around the group.

"The son of the Dark Lord would know better than to befriend Harry Potter," Bellatrix sneered, looking at Harry.

Her response slightly threw off the group that was sitting around her, not understanding where the hostility suddenly came from.

"What's going on?" Harry asked his sister, his voice barely audible.

"Get what you need quickly," Thea answered her brother quietly.

A funny prickling on the back of his neck had made Harry feel he was being watched, but the street appeared to be deserted, and no lights shone from any of the large square houses. He bent over his trunk again, but almost immediately stood up once more, his hand clenched on his wand. He had sensed rather than heard it: Someone or something was standing in the narrow gap between the garage and the fence behind them. Harry squinted at the black alleyway.

"Lumos," Harry muttered, and a light appeared at the end of his wand, almost dazzling him. He held it high over his head, and the pebble-dashed walls of number two suddenly sparkled; the garage door gleamed, and between them Harry saw, quite distinctly, the hulking outline of something very big, with wide, gleaming eyes.

"Don't do anything stupid, Harry," Thea warned, not liking the look her brother had on his face. Nyx, who had been asleep for the majority of the journey, stood beside Thea and growled threateningly at the thing.

"Even Nyx sensed the danger before Harry," Draco teased, which caused the Potters to laugh slightly.

Sirius had his eyes fixated on the screen, not sure why he felt such familiarity towards this scene. Remus took notice to the shift in behavior of his friend, but didn't dare to say anything.