Muggle World

4: A Curious Interlude

“GET DOWN FROM THERE! GET DOWN FROM THERE!” Aunt Petunia was yelling at Harry, her horsy face poking-out more bizarrely than usual. Her neck was pencil-thin as it stretched its way up toward him.

Harry was riding on a flying motorcycle, elevated about thirty feet above the Dursleys’ backyard. Sitting in front of him, monstrous hands fastened on the handles, sat the massive, bushy bus driver from a few weeks ago. He smiled back at Harry, beetle-black eyes shining underneath his helmet.

“GET DOWN FROM THERE! GET DOWN FROM THERE!” Aunt Petunia continued, parrot-like. Her feet were firmly attached to the ground, but her neck was growing longer and longer.

A gigantic, balloon-like head of Uncle Vernon floated up beside Harry, puce-colored and bloated beyond reason. Dudley hung effortlessly from his father’s enormous mustache, clutching his Smeltings stick.

Harry’s blond cousin was laughing loudly at something as Uncle Vernon’s saucer-plate eyes fixed venomously on him. Uncle Vernon’s head grew larger and larger, rounder, and more and more colorful... Larger... Larger... Larger... It burst, and hot hair blasted through the sky--

Harry held onto the motorbike as tight as he could, heart hammering in fear as the sweeping winds tried to pry him off. Dudley was thrown into the air, laughing and laughing as he flew out of sight over the horizon, apparently having the time of his life. The bus driver, immediately thrown-off the bike by the blast, was shouting as his massive body was thrown into the distance, “I’m sorry I couldn’ help yeh...!”

And suddenly, Harry was the only one left on the flying motorcycle. Plunging down, it jerked this way and that. The wind was thrown through Harry’s messy hair as he fought against mighty torrents. He scooted up to clench his fists on the handles. The bike was swerving dangerously beneath him as it raced across the open air of the countryside. Everything beneath him was green and lush.

The motorcycle slammed into the side of the great, stone fortress of Hogwarts, the bike wedging itself within the crater it had made in the wall. Harry was sent flying backward, and gripped onto the edge of his vehicle with the tips of his pale fingers. He knew he was high up when he looked down, and saw wispy clouds inching beneath his feet. Harry’s heart was pumping very fast, now.

A decorative gargoyle flew down from the ledge and nibbled Harry’s hair, not being very much help at all. The bike gave Harry a monstrous jerk as it was slightly dislodged. Harry felt blood drain from his face as the gargoyle glided back to its ledge. Another jerk, and--

“How ‘yuh doin’? Glad yeh could make it!”

A familiar, large, welcome hand reached out of a nearby window, and pulled Harry away from the bike. The once-flying motorcycle plummeted down the side of the castle.

Harry was drawn into the window by the giant bus driver, and found himself walking down a dark corridor. The driver, now, was nowhere in sight.

‘Well, okay,’ Harry thought. ‘Sudden corridors are always in dreams, and mostly in the important ones, so...’

He walked down the windowless hall. Empty walls – instead of being lined with electric lamps, like when he and Vernon were at Hogwarts – were lit with burning torches. Blackness loomed further down the corridor, like a charcoal-colored flower with deep, empty peddles. Eyes wide, Harry gaped as a sleek, hooded figure emerged from the darkness ahead of him.

Then came a high, cold laugh.

Harry found himself chilled to the bone at the sound, rigid and sunken as if his body had been plunged into ice water.

When the figure’s hand removed his glistening hood, he was revealed to have a smooth, white head with luminous, blood red eyes and two slits for nostrils.

He frowned.

A forked tongue poked out between two rows of razorblade teeth: “You’re not him...”

Harry’s heart almost stopped when he found himself plunging down the side of the castle once more. He barreled through the clouds, now, looking up to see the bus driver again, waving his gigantic arms madly from another window way up high. And then—

And then Harry Potter woke up.