They looked around. People were still watching them, mainly because of Hedwig’s continuing screeches.
“I think we’d better go and wait by the car,” said Harry. “We’re attracting too much atten —”
“Harry!” said Ron, his eyes gleaming. “The car!”
“What about it?”
“We can fly the car to Hogwarts!”
“But I thought —”
“We’re stuck, right? And we’ve got to get to school, haven’t we? And even underage wizards are allowed to use magic if it’s a real emergency, section nineteen or something of the Restriction of Thingy —”
“But your Mum and Dad…” said Harry, pushing against the barrier again in the vain hope that it would give way. “How will they get home?”
“They don’t need the car!” said Ron impatiently. “They know how to Apparate! You know, just vanish and reappear at home! They only bother with Floo powder and the car because we’re all underage and we’re not allowed to Apparate yet.…”
Harry’s feeling of panic turned suddenly to excitement.
“Can you fly it?”
“No, problem,” said Ron, wheeling his trolley around to face the exit. “C’mon, let’s go. If we hurry we’ll be able to follow the Hogwarts Express —”
And they marched off through the crowd of curious Muggles, out of the station and back onto the side road where the old Ford Anglia was parked.
Ron unlocked the cavernous trunk with a series of taps from his wand. They heaved their luggage back in, put Hedwig on the back seat, and got into the front.
“Check that no one’s watching,” said Ron, starting the ignition with another tap of his wand. Harry stuck his head out of the window: Traffic was rumbling along the main road ahead, but their street was empty.
“Okay,” he said.
Ron pressed a tiny silver button on the dashboard. The car around them vanished — and so did they. Harry could feel the seat vibrating beneath him, hear the engine, feel his hands on his knees and his glasses on his nose, but for all he could see, he 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 Ron’s voice from his 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, Harry, and Ron reappeared.
“Uh-oh,” said Ron, jabbing at the Invisibility Booster. “It’s faulty —”
Both of them pummeled it. The car vanished. Then it flickered back again.
“Hold on!” Ron yelled, and he slammed his foot on the accelerator; they shot straight into the low, woolly clouds and everything turned dull and foggy.
“Now what?” said Harry, 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 Ron.
“Dip back down again — quickly —”
They dropped back beneath the clouds and twisted around in their seats, squinting at the ground.
“I can see it!” Harry yelled. “Right ahead — there!”
The Hogwarts Express was streaking along below them like a scarlet snake.
“Due north,” said Ron, 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 Ron.
They looked at each other and started to laugh; for a long time, they couldn’t stop.
It was as though they had been plunged into a fabulous dream. This, thought Harry, 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 Fred’s and George’s 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 multicolored ants, villages with tiny toy churches.
Several uneventful hours later, however, Harry had to admit that some of the fun was wearing off. The toffees had made them extremely thirsty and they had nothing to drink. He and Ron had pulled off their sweaters, but Harry’s T-shirt was sticking to the back of his seat and his glasses kept sliding down to the end of his sweaty nose. He had stopped noticing the fantastic cloud shapes now and was thinking longingly of the train miles below, where you could buy ice-cold pumpkin juice from a trolley pushed by a plump witch. Why hadn’t they been able to get onto platform nine and three-quarters?
“Can’t be much further, can it?” croaked Ron, hours later still, as the sun started to sink into their floor of cloud, staining it a deep pink. “Ready for another check on the train?”
It was still right below them, winding its way past a snowcapped mountain. It was much darker beneath the canopy of clouds.
Ron put his foot on the accelerator and drove them upward again, but as he did so, the engine began to whine.
Harry and Ron exchanged nervous glances.
“It’s probably just tired,” said Ron. “It’s never been this far before.…”
And they both pretended not to notice the whining growing louder and louder as the sky became steadily darker. Stars were blossoming in the blackness. Harry pulled his sweater back on, trying to ignore the way the windshield wipers were now waving feebly, as though in protest.
“Not far,” said Ron, more to the car than to Harry, “not far now,” and he patted the dashboard nervously.
When they flew back beneath the clouds a little while later, they had to squint through the darkness for a landmark they knew.
“There !” Harry shouted, making Ron and Hedwig jump. “Straight ahead!”
Silhouetted on the dark horizon, high on the cliff over the lake, stood the many turrets and towers of Hogwarts castle.
But the car had begun to shudder and was losing speed.
“Come on,” Ron said cajolingly, giving the steering wheel a little shake, “nearly there, come on —”
The engine groaned. Narrow jets of steam were issuing from under the hood. Harry found himself gripping the edges of his seat very hard as they flew toward the lake.
The car gave a nasty wobble. Glancing out of his window, Harry saw the smooth, black, glassy surface of the water, a mile below. Ron’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. The car wobbled again.
“Come on,” Ron muttered.
They were over the lake — the castle was right ahead — Ron put his foot down.
There was a loud clunk, a splutter, and the engine died completely.
“Uh-oh,” said Ron, into the silence.
The nose of the car dropped. They were falling, gathering speed, heading straight for the solid castle wall.
“Noooooo!” Ron yelled, swinging the steering wheel around; they missed the dark stone wall by inches as the car turned in a great arc, soaring over the dark greenhouses, then the vegetable patch, and then out over the black lawns, losing altitude all the time.
Ron let go of the steering wheel completely and pulled his wand out of his back pocket —
“STOP! STOP!” he yelled, whacking the dashboard and the windshield, but they were still plummeting, the ground flying up toward them —
“WATCH OUT FOR THAT TREE!” Harry bellowed, lunging for the steering wheel, but too late —
CRUNCH.
With an earsplitting bang of metal on wood, they hit the thick tree trunk and dropped to the ground with a heavy jolt. Steam was billowing from under the crumpled hood; Hedwig was shrieking in terror; a golfball-size lump was throbbing on Harry’s head where he had hit the windshield; and to his right, Ron let out a low, despairing groan.
“Are you okay?” Harry said urgently.
“My wand,” said Ron, in a shaky voice. “Look at my wand —”
It had snapped, almost in two; the tip was dangling limply, held on by a few splinters.
Harry opened his mouth to say he was sure they’d be able to mend it up at the school, but he never even got started. At that very moment, something hit his side of the car with the force of a charging bull, sending him lurching sideways into Ron, just as an equally heavy blow hit the roof.
“What’s happen —?”
Ron gasped, staring through the windshield, and Harry looked around just in time to see a branch as thick as a python smash into it. The tree they had hit was attacking them. Its trunk was bent almost double, and its gnarled boughs were pummeling every inch of the car it could reach.