Another Potter

ninteen

chapter nineteen
the chamber of secrets

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Daphne unlocked the cavernous trunk with a series of taps from her wand. They heaved their luggage back in, put Marie on the back seat, and got into the front.

"Check that no one's watching," said Daphne, starting the ignition with another tap of her wand. Amelia stuck her head out of the window. Traffic was rumbling along the main road ahead, but their street was empty.

"All good," she said.

Daphne pressed a tiny silver button on the dashboard. The car around them vanished, and so did they. Amelia could feel the seat vibrating beneath her, hear the engine, feel her hands on her knees and the hairband in her hair, but for all she could see, she had become a pair of eyeballs, floating a few feet above the ground in a dingy street full of parked cars.

"Let's go," said Daphne's voice from her right.

And the ground and the dirty buildings on either side fell away, dropping out of sight as the car rose. In seconds, the whole of London lay, smoky and glittering, below them.

Then there was a popping noise and the car, Amelia and Daphne reappeared.

"Uh-oh," said Daphne, jabbing at the Invisibility Booster. "It's faulty. . . ."

Both of them pummelled it. The car vanished. Then it flickered back again.

"Hold on!" Daphne yelled, and she slammed her foot on the accelerator. They shot straight into the low, woolly clouds and everything turned dull and foggy.

"Now what?" said Amelia, blinking at the solid mass of cloud pressing in on them from all sides.

"We need to see the train to know what direction to go in," said Daphne.

"Dip back down again," Amelia said, "quickly. . . ."

They dropped back beneath the clouds and twisted around in their seats, squinting at the ground.

"I can see it!" Amelia yelled. "Right ahead, there!"

The Hogwarts Express was streaking along below them like a scarlet snake.

"Due north," said Daphne, checking the compass on the dashboard. "Okay, we'll just have to check on it every half hour or so. Hold on. . . ."

And they shot up through the clouds. A minute later, they burst out into a blaze of sunlight.

It was a different world. The wheels of the car skimmed the sea of fluffy cloud, the sky a bright, endless blue under the blinding white sun.

"All we've got to worry about now are airplanes," said Amelia. They looked at each other and started to laugh. For a long time, they couldn't stop.

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It was as though they had been plunged into a fabulous dream. This, thought Amelia, was surely the only way to travel. Past swirls and turrets of snowy cloud, in a car full of hot, bright sunlight, with a fat pack of toffees in the glove compartment, and the prospect of seeing all of their friends jealous faces when they landed smoothly and spectacularly on the sweeping lawn in front of Hogwarts castle.

They made regular checks on the train as they flew farther and farther north, each dip beneath the clouds showing them a different view. London was soon far behind them, replaced by neat green fields that gave way in turn to wide, purplish moors, a great city alive with cars like multicoloured ants, villages with tiny toy churches.