A Place to Hide

 

Everything seemed fuzzy, slow. Harry and Hermione jumped to their feet and
drew their wands. Many people were only just realizing that something strange had
happened; heads were still turning toward the silver cat as it vanished. Silence spread
outward in cold ripples from the place where the Patronus had landed. Then somebody
screamed.

 Harry and Hermione threw themselves into the panicking crowd. Guests were
sprinting in all directions; many were Disapparating; the protective enchantments around
the Burrow had broken.

 “Ron!” Hermione cried. “Ron, where are you?”

 As they pushed their way across the dance floor, Harry saw cloaked and masked
figures appearing in the crowd; then he saw Lupin and Tonks, their wands raised, and
heard both of them shout, “Protego!”, a cry that was echoed on all sides –

 “Ron! Ron!” Hermione called, half sobbing as she and Harry were buffered by
terrified guests: Harry seized her hand to make sure they weren’t separated as a streak of
light whizzed over their heads, whether a protective charm or something more sinister he
did not know –

 And then Ron was there. He caught hold of Hermione’s free arm, and Harry felt
her turn on the spot; sight and sound were extinguished as darkness pressed in upon him;
all he could feel was Hermione’s hand as he was squeezed through space and time, away
from the Burrow, away from the descending Death Eaters, away, perhaps, from
Voldemort himself. . . .

 “Where are we?” said Ron’s voice.

 Harry opened his eyes. For a moment he thought they had not left the wedding
after all; They still seemed to be surrounded by people.

 “Tottenham Court Road,” panted Hermione. “Walk, just walk, we need to find
somewhere for you to change.”

 Harry did as she asked. They half walked, half ran up the wide dark street
thronged with late-night revelers and lined with closed shops, stars twinkling above them.
A double-decker bus rumbled by and a group of merry pub-goers ogled them as they
passed; Harry and Ron were still wearing dress robes.

 “Hermione, we haven’t got anything to change into,” Ron told her, as a young
woman burst into raucous giggles at the sight of him.

 “Why didn’t I make sure I had the Invisibility Cloak with me?” said Harry,
inwardly cursing his own stupidity. “All last year I kept it on me and –“

 “It’s okay, I’ve got the Cloak, I’ve got clothes for both of you,” said Hermione,
“Just try and act naturally until – this will do.”

 She led them down a side street, then into the shelter of a shadowy alleyway.

 “When you say you’ve got the Cloak, and clothes . . .” said Harry, frowning at
Hermione, who was carrying nothing except her small beaded handbag, in which she was
now rummaging.

 “Yes, they’re here,” said Hermione, and to Harry and Ron’s utter astonishment,
she pulled out a pair of jeans, a sweatshirt, some maroon socks, and finally the silvery
Invisibility Cloak.

 “How the ruddy hell – ?”

 “Undetectable Extension Charm,” said Hermione. “Tricky, but I think I’ve done it
okay; anyway, I managed to fit everything we need in here.” She gave the fragile-looking
bag a little shake and it echoed like a cargo hold as a number of heavy objects rolled
around inside it. “Oh, damn, that’ll be the books,” she said, peering into it, “and I had
them all stacked by subject. . . . Oh well. . . . Harry, you’d better take the Invisibility
Cloak. Ron, hurry up and change. . . .”

 “When did you do all this?” Harry asked as Ron stripped off his robes.

 “I told you at the Burrow, I’ve had the essentials packed for days, you know, in
case we needed to make a quick getaway. I packed your rucksack this morning, Harry,
after you changed, and put it in here. . . . I just had a feeling. . . .”

 “You’re amazing, you are,” said Ron, handing her his bundled-up robes.

 “Thank you,” said Hermione, managing a small smile as she pushed the robes into
the bag. “Please, Harry, get that Cloak on!”

 Harry threw his Invisibility Cloak around his shoulders and pulled it up over his
head, vanishing from sight. He was only just beginning to appreciate what had happened.

 “The others – everybody at the wedding –“

 “We can’t worry about that now,” whispered Hermione. “It’s you they’re after,
Harry, and we’ll just put everyone in even more danger by going back.”

 “She’s right,” said Ron, who seemed to know that Harry was about to argue, even
if he could not see his face. “Most of the Order was there, they’ll look after everyone.”

 Harry nodded, then remembered that they could not see him, and said, “Yeah.”
But he thought of Ginny, and fear bubbled like acid in his stomach.

 “Come on, I think we ought to keep moving,” said Hermione.

 They moved back up the side street and onto the main road again, where a group
of men on the opposite side was singing and weaving across the pavement.

 “Just as a matter of interest, why Tottenham Court Road?” Ron asked Hermione.

 “I’ve no idea, it just popped into my head, but I’m sure we’re safer out in the
Muggle world, it’s not where they’ll expect us to be.”

 “True,” said Ron, looking around, “but don’t you feel a bit – exposed?”

 “Where else is there?” asked Hermione, cringing as the men on the other side of
the road started wolf-whistling at her. “We can hardly book rooms at the Leaky Cauldron,
can we? And Grimmauld Place is out if Snape can get in there. . . . I suppose we could try
my parents’ home, though I think there’s a chance they might check there. . . . Oh, I wish
they’d shut up!”

 “All right, darling?” the drunkest of the men on the other pavement was yelling.
“Fancy a drink? Ditch ginger and come and have a pint!”

 “Let’s sit down somewhere,” Hermione said hastily as Ron opened his mouth to
shout back across the road. “Look, this will do, in here!”

 It was a small and shabby all-night café. A light layer of grease lay on all the
Formica-topped tables, but it was at least empty. Harry slipped into a booth first and Ron
sat next to him opposite Hermione, who had her back to the entrance and did not like it:
She glanced over her shoulder so frequently she appeared to have a twitch. Harry did not
like being stationary; walking had given the illusion that they had a goal. Beneath the
Cloak he could feel the last vestiges of Polyjuice leaving him, his hands returning to their
usual length and shape. He pulled his glasses out of his pocket and put them on again.

 After a minute or two, Ron said, “You know, we’re not far from the Leaky
Cauldron here, it’s only in Charing Cross –“

 “Ron, we can’t!” said Hermione at once.

 “Not to stay there, but to find out what’s going on!”

 “We know what’s going on! Voldemort’s taken over the Ministry, what else do
we need to know?”

 “Okay, okay, it was just an idea!”
They relapsed into a prickly silence. The gum-chewing waitress shuffled over and
Hermione ordered two cappuccinos: As Harry was invisible, it would have looked odd to
order him one. A pair of burly workmen entered the café and squeezed into the next
booth. Hermione dropped her voice to a whisper.

 “I say we find a quiet place to Disapparate and head for the countryside. Once
we’re there, we could send a message to the Order.”

 “Can you do that talking Patronus thing, then?” asked Ron.

 “I’ve been practicing and I think so,” said Hermione.

 “Well, as long as it doesn’t get them into trouble, though they might’ve been
arrested already. God, that’s revolting,” Ron added after one sip of the foamy, grayish
coffee. The waitress had heard; she shot Ron a nasty look as she shuffled off to take the
new customers’ orders. The larger of the two workmen, who was blond and quite huge,
now that Harry came to look at him, waved her away. She stared, affronted.

 “Let’s get going, then, I don’t want to drink this muck,” said Ron. “Hermione,
have you got Muggle money to pay for this?”

 “Yes, I took out all my Building Society savings before I came to the Burrow. I’ll
bet all the change is at the bottom,” sighed Hermione, reaching for her beaded bag.

 The two workmen made identical movements, and Harry mirrored them without
conscious thought: All three of them drew their wands. Ron, a few seconds late in
realizing what was going on, lunged across the table, pushing Hermione sideways onto
her bench. The force of the Death Eaters’ spells shattered the tiled wall where Ron’s head
had just been, as Harry, still invisible, yelled, “Stupefy!”

 The great blond Death Eater was hit in the face by a jet of red light: He slumped
sideways, unconscious. His companion, unable to see who had cast the spell, fired
another at Ron: Shining black ropes flew from his wand-tip and bound Ron head to foot –
the waitress screamed and ran for the door – Harry sent another Stunning Spell at the
Death Eater with the twisted face who had tied up Ron, but the spell missed, rebounded
on the window, and hit the waitress, who collapsed in front of the door.

 “Expulso!” bellowed the Death Eater, and the table behind which Harry was
standing blew up: The force of the explosion slammed him into the wall and he felt his
wand leave his hand as the Cloak slipped off him.

 “Petrificus Totalus!” screamed Hermione from out of sight, and the Death Eater
fell forward like a statue to land with a crunching thud on the mess of broken china, table,
and coffee. Hermione crawled out from underneath the bench, shaking bits of glass
ashtray out of her hair and trembling all over.

 “D-diffindo,” she said, pointing her wand at Ron, who roared in pain as she
slashed open the knee of his jeans, leaving a deep cut. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Ron, my hand’s
shaking! Diffindo!”

 The severed ropes fell away. Ron got to his feet, shaking his arms to regain
feeling in them. Harry picked up his wand and climbed over all the debris to where the
large blond Death Eater was sprawled across the bench.

 “I should’ve recognized him, he was there the night Dumbledore died,” he said.
He turned over the darker Death Eater with his foot; the man’s eyes moved rapidly
between Harry, Ron and Hermione.

 “That’s Dolohov,” said Ron. “I recognize him from the old wanted posters. I think
the big one’s Thorfinn Rowle.”

 “Never mind what they’re called!” said Hermione a little hysterically. “How did
they find us? What are we going to do?”

 Somehow her panic seemed to clear Harry’s head.

 “Lock the door,” he told her, “and Ron, turn out the lights.”

 He looked down at the paralyzed Dolohov, thinking fast as the lock clicked and
Ron used the Deluminator to plunge the café into darkness. Harry could hear the men
who had jeered at Hermione earlier, yelling at another girl in the distance.

 “What are we going to do with them?” Ron whispered to Harry through the dark;
then, even more quietly, “Kill them? They’d kill us. They had a good go just now.”

 Hermione shuddered and took a step backward. Harry shook his head.

 “We just need to wipe their memories,” said Harry. “It’s better like that, it’ll
throw them off the scent. If we killed them it’d be obvious we were here.”

 “You’re the boss,” said Ron, sounding profoundly relieved. “But I’ve never down
a Memory Charm.”

 “Nor have I,” said Hermione, “but I know the theory.”

 She took a deep, calming breath, then pointed her wand at Dolohov’s forehead
and said, “Obliviate.”

 At once, Dolohov’s eyes became unfocused and dreamy.