Chapter 1: chapter 1
With violent lurch the Knight Bus came to a stop. Harry Potter turned to watch as Stan Shunpike, the bus conductor, saw a rather ill-looking Madam Marsh off of the bus. Then the doors snapped shut and with yet another violent lurch the purple triple-decker bus sped off once again.
Shifting his body to try and find a less painful sitting position, Harry could not help but notice that more than a few of the other passengers were giving him funny looks. This was nothing unusual, of course. Ever since he had re-joined the wizarding world at the age of eleven all kinds of people had been giving him funny looks. The difference now though was that, whereas before the funny looks had a touch of mild curiosity about them, now they contained suspicion and mistrust.
Harry turned away from them in an attempt to ignore them. As he did so he felt a prickle of pain shoot through the lightning bolt shaped scar on his forehead. Harry was aware that the pain was somehow caused by his nemesis Lord Voldemort, though he had no idea how it was being done.
Harry turned his head to rest his forehead against the window of the bus. It was cool and helped soothe the area around the scar. He took a deep, calming breath and closed his eyes before beginning to think over the events that had led him taking this ride on the Knight Bus.
At the end of the previous school year Harry and another student, Cedric Diggory, had been kidnapped from the school by a portkey. Cedric had subsequently been murdered, and Harry used in a ritual to bring Lord Voldemort, one of the most evil wizards ever to walk the earth, back to life. Harry had managed to pull off an escape from Voldemort, and gotten back to the school and tried to raise the alarm. There was a problem, however; whilst Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School had believed Harry to be telling the truth, Cornelius Fudge, the Minister for Magic had not. With the Ministry not prepared to face up to the truth, Dumbledore had taken matters into his own hands and reconvened some kind of vigilante group in the hope of tackling Voldemort and his followers.
And that was all that Harry knew on that front. He had gone home from Hogwarts with all the other students when the school year had ended on the third of July and then for a whole month he had heard nothing. No word from Dumbledore, no word from Harry's Godfather, Sirius Black, and no word from either of Harry's two best friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. No letters, not a telephone call from Hermione, nothing. Not even when he sent off letters asking for answers with his snowy owl Hedwig.
After the third attempt, Hedwig had not returned.
Harry had been so desperate for news that he had actually begun a subscription to the wizarding newspaper The Daily Prophet. Harry had had bad experiences with the Daily Prophet during the past year, particularly one of its reporters, Rita Skeeter, but in the end his desire for news had won out against his personal distaste of the newspaper and its unscrupulous journalists. That, though, had been a wasted effort. If Voldemort was active and attacking people then it would have been front page news. Harry didn't bother to read the papers as they arrived; he merely glanced over the front page and, seeing nothing pointing to the activities of Voldemort and his followers, the Death Eaters, he ignored the rest. He had decided that either Voldemort was playing a waiting game, or, far more likely in Harry's opinion, the Ministry was engaging in a cover-up and putting pressure on the staff of The Daily Prophet to keep quiet.
After a month of being away from Hogwarts and the magical world, Harry had begun to really feel the strain. An orphan, he lived with non-magical relatives from his mother's side of the family. They did not like him and the feeling was very much a mutual one. By the second of August Harry had been reaching the end of his tether. Between his hateful relatives, the lack of news and the weather of Britain suddenly deciding to roast everyone with a heat wave, Harry Potter was just looking for an excuse to take out his magic wand and give someone a good hexing. That evening Harry had bumped into his bullying cousin Dudley. Words between them quickly became heated and, sensing that Dudley about ready to throw a punch, Harry had drawn his wand.
Then it happened.
Two Dementors, monstrous, wraith like beings that fed on the happy memories of people and sucked out their souls had swooped down upon Harry and Dudley, attacking them. Harry had utilised the only effective method of repelling a Dementor, the patronus charm, in order to send the two terrifying abominations fleeing, saving not only his own life but the life of his cousin as well.
Following that event, several things had happened one after another. First Mrs Figg, a batty old neighbour, had arrived on the scene. She had revealed herself to be a Squib (a person born to a magical family but had no magic themselves) and then informed Harry that Dumbledore's people had been keeping an eye on him all summer, following his every move.
Fat lot of good they were if the best that could be provided in a crisis was a Squib.
Dudley was far from being alright after his encounter with the Dementors. Once Harry had gone through the immense effort of dragging the fat tub of lard back home, his relatives were far from grateful. Utterly convinced that he had done something to harm their precious son, Harry's Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had been all for throwing him out on the street. It was testament to how deep his loathing of his family ran that Harry actually found this to be a highly tempting offer.
Then, for the first time in a month, word from the magical world came. It was a letter, delivered by an owl from the Ministry of Magic, informing him that he was now expelled from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This just gave his relatives more encouragement to throw him out onto the streets. With the Ministry also threatening to snap his wand, Harry had been all for making a run for it right there and then. At that moment, however, a flurry of letters from his friend Ron's Dad, from Harry's Godfather and from the Ministry had turned that plan on its head. Though the three letters had barely contained thirty words between them, the gist of their message had been that Harry was not expelled yet, but would have to attend a disciplinary hearing that the Ministry on the twelfth of August.
And that was where he was heading right now.
In the days that had passed since the Dementor attack, Harry had heard nothing from anyone. He had long since given up hope of receiving any friendly correspondence from anyone, but was it too much to ask that someone, either from the Ministry or from Dumbledore's lot would have made contact in order to make arrangements for him to get to the Ministry of Magic building, especially given how he had never been to the place in his life?
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