He looked down at his wand, which he was still clutching in his hand. If
he was already expelled (his heart was. now thumping painfully fast), a
bit more magic couldn't hurt. He had the Invisibility Cloak he had
inherited from his father -- what if he bewitched the trunk to make it
feather-light, tied it to his broomstick, covered himself in the cloak,
and flew to London? Then he could get the rest of his money out of his
vault and... begin his life as an outcast. It was a horrible prospect,
but he couldn't sit on this wall forever, or he'd find himself trying to
explain to Muggle police why he was out in the dead of night with a
trunkful of spellbooks and a broomstick.
Harry opened his trunk again and pushed the contents aside, looking for
the Invisibility Cloak - but before he had found it, he straightened up
suddenly, looking around him once more.
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 him. Harry squinted at the black alleyway. If only
it would move, then he'd know whether it was just a stray cat or --
something else.
"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.
Harry stepped backward. His legs hit his trunk and he tripped. His wand
flew out of his hand as he flung out an arm to break his fall, and he
landed, hard, in the gutter --
There was a deafening BANG, and Harry threw up his hands to shield his
eyes against a sudden blinding light --
With a yell, he rolled back onto the pavement, just in time. A second
later, a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights screeched to a halt
exactly where Harry had just been lying. They belonged, as Harry saw
when he raised his head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which
had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelled
The Knight Bus.
For a Split second, Harry wondered if he had been knocked silly by his
fall. Then a conductor in a purple uniform leapt out of the bus and
began to speak loudly to the night.
