Hogwarts' Knight Bus For the Troubled - Introduction
Title: Hogwarts’ Knight Bus For the Troubled
Author: letterando (AO3), CumuloNembo (LJ)
Rating: T for now
Chapter Word Count: 1728
Summary: Harry’s Knight Bus stops for a boy that is way, way younger than he should be.
Content/Warning(s): Mention of madness, Depression
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: I’m tired of waiting to finish a story to publish it, so I’m posting this here.
I have no beta for this chapter. I’m not a native speaker of English. I’ve re-read this once as of 3/11/17. Any feedback is appreciated.
.
.
.
A peculiar bus started to roam the streets of Britain and Scotland after the end of the Second war against Voldemort (simply known as “the Second War,” most commonly mentioned as “the War”).
The bus was not affiliated with any transportation company or drivers’ guild, as far as witnesses could tell and as far as companies reported. The bus was populated by two beings: a young man, probably in his twenties, and an elderly house elf. Sometimes, a hippogriff and a thestral were seen perched on the open upper level of the vehicle, though never at the same time. The bus ran mostly by itself: nobody sat at the steering wheel. Sometimes the young man and occasionally even the house elf would lounge by the driver’s seat, but there was inconclusive evidence over whether they actually maneuvered the vehicles themselves, or didn’t.
The peculiarities of this bus did not end there, though. Most oddly, the bus did not appear to any transportation call that was tried by either civilians nor by specialists of the law enforcement. There have been on-going investigations by at least three separate departments of the Ministry of Magic and one private agency. The data indicated no clear pattern in the age, belief, profession and ethnicity of the passengers. The few witnesses known to the Ministry revealed that they had seen sleeping muggles amongst the seats and cots. The keeper of the bus allegedly did not want to give the authorities any reason to pursue him by breaking the Statute of Secrecy, but after such reports, the department of Muggle Relations also got involved in the investigations. The witnesses’ recounting also revealed that the keeper and supposedly owner of the bus was a British young man, and that he did not openly antagonize the authorities as far as the witnesses would share about what the man told them.
Any other word exchanged between this young man and the witnesses remains shrouded in secrecy, since any legal interrogatory technique known to the Ministry work on them, and their memories about their time in the bus could not be extracted for examination. The people involved in the investigation on the bus hypothesize that the number of witnesses who have come forward for interrogation are a fraction of the actual passengers of the bus. Apart from the usual Notice-Me-Not charms around the bus, the people who access and leave the vehicle had been impossible to trace to their residences. Moreover, the route or routes of the bus could not be traced, too, and investigators conjectured that the bus doesn’t follow a fixed route, nor is it limited by territorial jurisdiction. Witnesses have been picked up from Northern Ireland to Northern Scotland, from Wales to Cornwall.
The characteristics of the peculiar bus hinted at very powerful magic at work, greater than a collaboration between a young wizard and an old house elf, with the result that the investigation of the bus landed even in the Auror’s department. However, without any evidence of harassment left on the witnesses, the public’s opinion about the bus remained a mixture of curiosity and indifference. Even the Ministry of Magic didn’t seem too concerned with the oddity.
After all, who had the time and energy to hunt down such a mysterious, wacky knight bus, when Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the Savior of the Wizarding world, had disappeared 21 months after the Battle of Hogwarts?
.
.
.
I should have the bus run a MOT test, thought Harry as the world outside the windows turned an orchid color. It could have been attributed to a cloudy sunset, but until a moment before everything was black, since it was past 8pm on a winter evening.
That was not the first time it happened. The first time was a couple of months before. It had been a lovely, windy morning in Hull, and the passengers of the bus (Harry and Kreacher alone since they had just let off two brothers, one of whom was a squib), had been having breakfast watching the great expanse of the river Humbert.
Kreacher had been muttering something about changing the bed linens with thicker ones, while Harry had been wondering whether they had ought to cross over at Burton-upon-Humbert or drive all the way down to Howden.
Lost in his thoughts, Harry had looked outside the windows, and the aquamarine tinge of an early morning had turned violet. Harry had immediately stood on alert, wand in hand, eyes fixed on the houses and backyards that they had been passing by. Apart from the supernatural hue, everything looked normal. But then the bus had exited the residential area and the periphery had stretched outside of the bus. Harry had just the time to notice that the cottages in the distance had looked abnormally blurred, and was about to ask Kreacher if he was also seeing the world in violet, when the bus had jerked to a halt.
Instead of waiting for the passenger to get on on his or her own as he usually did, Harry immediately walked to the door by the empty driver’s seat. There, Harry saw the Impossible standing in the muddy grass by the street, in front of the open bus door. He looked 15, judging by the slightly ruffled clothes and hair, as he had just messed it up by running his finger through the pale locks once too many times. He had the same stoic posture and expression that Harry remembered.
“Who are you?” asked the Impossible.
As Harry fantasized on telling the truth, he studied the boy’s grey eyes. They shifted continuously yet minutely, trying to take in as much of the bus as possible without keeping Harry out of his direct line of sight.
“I’m the conductor, and this is a special knight bus. You can come in if you want to. I won’t hurt you.”
The impossible boy crinked his nose and his wandering eyes stopped to consider Harry more closely.
“Do you think I’m going to get on a knight bus that I didn’t call, after a stranger calls it ‘special’ and adds that he won’t hurt me? Do I look like a Hufflepuff or a bloody Griffindor to you?”
Harry smiled at the sneering tone, which served to irritate the boy, who scowled even more in annoyance, which made Harry smile even more. The boy’s existence was impossible. There was a high probability that Harry had gone out of his mind and was hallucinating, but still Harry couldn’t restrain himself from finding the sneering boy slightly amusing in his juvenile convinctions.
The impossible boy huffed in annoyance and looked sideways, towards the road. He also started to press his hands to his forearms in a subtle attempt to warm himself up. Now that he noticed it, Harry also started to shiver in the chilly wind.
“I said ‘special’ because this bus only stops for those in need. As you said, you didn’t call for it. This means that you need to take a break from whatever’s troubling you, you need the shelter that this bus can be for you.”
Harry observed the boy closely out of habit. Every reaction of his passengers was important, because they determine how Harry and Kreacher were supposed to approach and deal with the wizards, witches, and muggles in need. But the impossible boy scowled and scoffed again and looked at Harry like he had just heard a bunch of idiotic nonsense.
“Far from me keeping this special bus from those in need then. Have a pleasant day,” said the Impossible, and he immediately started to walk away from the street, into the surrounding muddy hills.
That was good, thought Harry. The boy, the violet tinge of the world, everything that happened in the past few minutes had been but a figment of Harry’s imagination. He ought to be glad for the moment of madness to end, for the boy to go away, but something tugged at Harry’s chest at the sight of the boy’s pale hair and hunched shoulders in the purplish fog.
“This bus is the best protected vehicle in the country, and it’s one of the best protected places after Hogwarts and Azkaban.”
The impossible boy turned his head, regarding Harry and the bus with suspicion. He was too far for Harry to see if there was also interest in his eyes. When the boy turned back and resumed walking in the morning fog, Harry didn’t stop him.
Suddenly, the doors of the bus closed, and the world turned into its proper color. Grumbling about old-smelling linens, Kreacher staggered to where Harry was still staring at the green fields, the muddy roads, and the awakening country side. Soon, the bus would start driving beside other buses full of sleepy muggle children and teenagers headed to school. Was the impossible boy headed to school, too? Or had Harry’s sick mind given him the Hogwarts uniform only for old time’s sake?
“The boy?”
Harry looked down at Kreacher. His thin arms were full with a self-mending pillow case, and his signature thunderous expression had a note of doubt in it, as if he himself wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer to his question.
“Draco Malfoy,” said Harry, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible and probably failing.
“The young Malfoy heir,” murmured Kreacher in a tone that let Harry know that his wannabe-nonchalant tone did not work for a second. It was also the same tone that Kreacher used when Harry commented Malfoy’s mention in the papers.
“Unusually young. He looked 14? 15,” pointed out Harry.
Kreacher, instead of instantly telling Harry what the hell was going on, had the gall to sigh as if he had just talked with a barely teenager Malfoy that was his age in real life. As Kreacher walked away muttering about the next batch of pear marmalade, Harry leaned on one of the poles of the bus and stared at the brightening morning. The first cars of the day lazily passed them by, and the engine of the bus almost as lazily switched gears.
In the comfort and privacy of his alcove by the empty driver’s seat, Harry sighed and rubbed his face and quietly thanked Merlin and God that if he had finally gone stir-crazy, at least Kreacher was right there with him.
.
.
.
Author: letterando (AO3), CumuloNembo (LJ)
Rating: T for now
Chapter Word Count: 1728
Summary: Harry’s Knight Bus stops for a boy that is way, way younger than he should be.
Content/Warning(s): Mention of madness, Depression
Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: I’m tired of waiting to finish a story to publish it, so I’m posting this here.
I have no beta for this chapter. I’m not a native speaker of English. I’ve re-read this once as of 3/11/17. Any feedback is appreciated.
.
.
.
A peculiar bus started to roam the streets of Britain and Scotland after the end of the Second war against Voldemort (simply known as “the Second War,” most commonly mentioned as “the War”).
The bus was not affiliated with any transportation company or drivers’ guild, as far as witnesses could tell and as far as companies reported. The bus was populated by two beings: a young man, probably in his twenties, and an elderly house elf. Sometimes, a hippogriff and a thestral were seen perched on the open upper level of the vehicle, though never at the same time. The bus ran mostly by itself: nobody sat at the steering wheel. Sometimes the young man and occasionally even the house elf would lounge by the driver’s seat, but there was inconclusive evidence over whether they actually maneuvered the vehicles themselves, or didn’t.
The peculiarities of this bus did not end there, though. Most oddly, the bus did not appear to any transportation call that was tried by either civilians nor by specialists of the law enforcement. There have been on-going investigations by at least three separate departments of the Ministry of Magic and one private agency. The data indicated no clear pattern in the age, belief, profession and ethnicity of the passengers. The few witnesses known to the Ministry revealed that they had seen sleeping muggles amongst the seats and cots. The keeper of the bus allegedly did not want to give the authorities any reason to pursue him by breaking the Statute of Secrecy, but after such reports, the department of Muggle Relations also got involved in the investigations. The witnesses’ recounting also revealed that the keeper and supposedly owner of the bus was a British young man, and that he did not openly antagonize the authorities as far as the witnesses would share about what the man told them.
Any other word exchanged between this young man and the witnesses remains shrouded in secrecy, since any legal interrogatory technique known to the Ministry work on them, and their memories about their time in the bus could not be extracted for examination. The people involved in the investigation on the bus hypothesize that the number of witnesses who have come forward for interrogation are a fraction of the actual passengers of the bus. Apart from the usual Notice-Me-Not charms around the bus, the people who access and leave the vehicle had been impossible to trace to their residences. Moreover, the route or routes of the bus could not be traced, too, and investigators conjectured that the bus doesn’t follow a fixed route, nor is it limited by territorial jurisdiction. Witnesses have been picked up from Northern Ireland to Northern Scotland, from Wales to Cornwall.
The characteristics of the peculiar bus hinted at very powerful magic at work, greater than a collaboration between a young wizard and an old house elf, with the result that the investigation of the bus landed even in the Auror’s department. However, without any evidence of harassment left on the witnesses, the public’s opinion about the bus remained a mixture of curiosity and indifference. Even the Ministry of Magic didn’t seem too concerned with the oddity.
After all, who had the time and energy to hunt down such a mysterious, wacky knight bus, when Harry Potter, the Chosen One, the Savior of the Wizarding world, had disappeared 21 months after the Battle of Hogwarts?
.
.
.
I should have the bus run a MOT test, thought Harry as the world outside the windows turned an orchid color. It could have been attributed to a cloudy sunset, but until a moment before everything was black, since it was past 8pm on a winter evening.
That was not the first time it happened. The first time was a couple of months before. It had been a lovely, windy morning in Hull, and the passengers of the bus (Harry and Kreacher alone since they had just let off two brothers, one of whom was a squib), had been having breakfast watching the great expanse of the river Humbert.
Kreacher had been muttering something about changing the bed linens with thicker ones, while Harry had been wondering whether they had ought to cross over at Burton-upon-Humbert or drive all the way down to Howden.
Lost in his thoughts, Harry had looked outside the windows, and the aquamarine tinge of an early morning had turned violet. Harry had immediately stood on alert, wand in hand, eyes fixed on the houses and backyards that they had been passing by. Apart from the supernatural hue, everything looked normal. But then the bus had exited the residential area and the periphery had stretched outside of the bus. Harry had just the time to notice that the cottages in the distance had looked abnormally blurred, and was about to ask Kreacher if he was also seeing the world in violet, when the bus had jerked to a halt.
Instead of waiting for the passenger to get on on his or her own as he usually did, Harry immediately walked to the door by the empty driver’s seat. There, Harry saw the Impossible standing in the muddy grass by the street, in front of the open bus door. He looked 15, judging by the slightly ruffled clothes and hair, as he had just messed it up by running his finger through the pale locks once too many times. He had the same stoic posture and expression that Harry remembered.
“Who are you?” asked the Impossible.
As Harry fantasized on telling the truth, he studied the boy’s grey eyes. They shifted continuously yet minutely, trying to take in as much of the bus as possible without keeping Harry out of his direct line of sight.
“I’m the conductor, and this is a special knight bus. You can come in if you want to. I won’t hurt you.”
The impossible boy crinked his nose and his wandering eyes stopped to consider Harry more closely.
“Do you think I’m going to get on a knight bus that I didn’t call, after a stranger calls it ‘special’ and adds that he won’t hurt me? Do I look like a Hufflepuff or a bloody Griffindor to you?”
Harry smiled at the sneering tone, which served to irritate the boy, who scowled even more in annoyance, which made Harry smile even more. The boy’s existence was impossible. There was a high probability that Harry had gone out of his mind and was hallucinating, but still Harry couldn’t restrain himself from finding the sneering boy slightly amusing in his juvenile convinctions.
The impossible boy huffed in annoyance and looked sideways, towards the road. He also started to press his hands to his forearms in a subtle attempt to warm himself up. Now that he noticed it, Harry also started to shiver in the chilly wind.
“I said ‘special’ because this bus only stops for those in need. As you said, you didn’t call for it. This means that you need to take a break from whatever’s troubling you, you need the shelter that this bus can be for you.”
Harry observed the boy closely out of habit. Every reaction of his passengers was important, because they determine how Harry and Kreacher were supposed to approach and deal with the wizards, witches, and muggles in need. But the impossible boy scowled and scoffed again and looked at Harry like he had just heard a bunch of idiotic nonsense.
“Far from me keeping this special bus from those in need then. Have a pleasant day,” said the Impossible, and he immediately started to walk away from the street, into the surrounding muddy hills.
That was good, thought Harry. The boy, the violet tinge of the world, everything that happened in the past few minutes had been but a figment of Harry’s imagination. He ought to be glad for the moment of madness to end, for the boy to go away, but something tugged at Harry’s chest at the sight of the boy’s pale hair and hunched shoulders in the purplish fog.
“This bus is the best protected vehicle in the country, and it’s one of the best protected places after Hogwarts and Azkaban.”
The impossible boy turned his head, regarding Harry and the bus with suspicion. He was too far for Harry to see if there was also interest in his eyes. When the boy turned back and resumed walking in the morning fog, Harry didn’t stop him.
Suddenly, the doors of the bus closed, and the world turned into its proper color. Grumbling about old-smelling linens, Kreacher staggered to where Harry was still staring at the green fields, the muddy roads, and the awakening country side. Soon, the bus would start driving beside other buses full of sleepy muggle children and teenagers headed to school. Was the impossible boy headed to school, too? Or had Harry’s sick mind given him the Hogwarts uniform only for old time’s sake?
“The boy?”
Harry looked down at Kreacher. His thin arms were full with a self-mending pillow case, and his signature thunderous expression had a note of doubt in it, as if he himself wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer to his question.
“Draco Malfoy,” said Harry, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible and probably failing.
“The young Malfoy heir,” murmured Kreacher in a tone that let Harry know that his wannabe-nonchalant tone did not work for a second. It was also the same tone that Kreacher used when Harry commented Malfoy’s mention in the papers.
“Unusually young. He looked 14? 15,” pointed out Harry.
Kreacher, instead of instantly telling Harry what the hell was going on, had the gall to sigh as if he had just talked with a barely teenager Malfoy that was his age in real life. As Kreacher walked away muttering about the next batch of pear marmalade, Harry leaned on one of the poles of the bus and stared at the brightening morning. The first cars of the day lazily passed them by, and the engine of the bus almost as lazily switched gears.
In the comfort and privacy of his alcove by the empty driver’s seat, Harry sighed and rubbed his face and quietly thanked Merlin and God that if he had finally gone stir-crazy, at least Kreacher was right there with him.
.
.
.