er-sized man, Dudders, like your father. Yes, I'll have a spot more 
brandy, Vernon...." 

"Now, this one here --" 

She jerked her head at Harry, who felt his stomach clench. The Handbook, 
he thought quickly. 

"This one's got a mean, runty look about him. You get that with dogs. I 
had Colonel Fubster drown one last year. Ratty little thing it was-
Weak. Underbred." 

Harry was trying to remember page twelve of his book: A Charm to Cure 
Reluctant Reversers. "It all comes down to blood, as I was saying the 
other day. 

Bad blood will out. Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, 
Petunia" she patted Aunt Petunia's bony hand with her shovellike one 
"but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then 
she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us." 


Harry was staring at his plate, a funny ringing in his ears. Grasp your 
broom firmly by the tail, he thought. But he couldn't remember what came 
next. Aunt Marge's voice seemed to be boring into him like one of Uncle 
Vernon's drills. 


"This Potter, 5) said Aunt Marge loudly, seizing the brandy bottle and 
splashing more into her glass and over the tablecloth, "you never told 
me what he did?" 


Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were looking extremely tense. Dudley had 
even looked up from his pie to gape at his parents. 


"He -- didn't work," said Uncle Vernon, with half a glance at Harry. 
"Unemployed." 


"As I expected!" said Aunt Marge, taking a huge swig of brandy and 
wiping her chin on her sleeve. "A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy 
scrounger who --" 


"He was not," said Harry suddenly. The table went very quiet. Harry was 
shaking all over. He had never felt so angry in his life. 


"MORE BRANDY!" yelled Uncle Vernon, who had gone very white. He emptied 
the bottle into Aunt Marge's glass. "You, boy," he snarled at Harry. "Go 
to bed, go on --" 


"No, Vernon," hiccuped Aunt Marge, holding up a hand, her tiny bloodshot 
eyes fixed on Harry's. "Go on, boy, go on. Proud of your parents, are 
you? They go and get themselves killed in a car crash (drunk, I expect) 
--" 


'They didn't die in a car crash!" said Harry, who found himself on his 
feet. 


"They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a 
burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!" screamed Aunt Marge, 
swelling with fury. "You are an insolent, ungrateful little --" 

But Aunt Marge suddenly stopped speaking. For a moment, it looked as 
though words had failed her. She seemed to be swelling with 
inexpressible anger -- but the swelling didn't stop. Her great red face 
started to expand, her tiny eyes bulged, and her mouth stretched too 
tightly for speech -- next second, several buttons had just burst from 
her tweed jacket and pinged off the walls -- she was inflating like a 
monstrous balloon, her stomach bursting free of her tweed waistband, 
each of her fingers blowing up like a salami -


"MARGE!" yelled Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia together as Aunt Marge's 
whole body began to rise off her chair toward the ceiling. She was 
entirely round, now, like a vast life buoy with piggy eyes, and her 
hands and feet stuck out weirdly as she drifted up into the air, making 
apoplectic popping noises. Ripper came skidding into the room, barking 
madly. 

"NOOOOOOO!" 

Uncle Vernon seized one of Marge's feet and tried to pull her down 
again, but was almost lifted from the floor himself. A second later, 
Ripper leapt forward and sank his teeth into Uncle Vernon's leg. 

Harry tore from the dining room before anyone could stop him, heading 
for the cupboard under the stairs. The cupboard door burst magically 
open as he reached it. In seconds, he had heaved his trunk to the front 
door. He sprinted upstairs and threw himself under the bed, wrenching up 
the loose floorboard, and grabbed the pillowcase full of his books and 
birthday presents. He wriggled out, seized Hedwig's empty cage, and 
dashed back downstairs to his trunk, just as Uncle Vernon burst out of 
the dining room, his trouser leg in bloody tatters. 

"COME BACK IN HERE!" he bellowed. "COME BACK AND PUT HER 
RIGHT!" 

But a reckless rage had come over Harry. He kicked his trunk open, 
pulled out his wand, and pointed it at Uncle Vernon. 

"She deserved it," Harry said, breathing very fast. "She deserved what 
she got. You keep away from me." 

He fumbled behind him for the latch on the door. 

"I'm going," Harry said. "I've had enough." 

And in the next moment, he was out in the dark, quiet street, heaving 
his heavy trunk behind him, Hedwig's cage under his arm. 

CHAPTER THREE 

THE KNIGHT BUS 

Harry was several streets away before he collapsed onto a low wall in 
Magnolia Crescent, panting from the effort of dragging his trunk. He sat 
quite still, anger still surging through him, listening to the frantic 
thumping of his heart. 

But after ten minutes alone in the dark street, a new emotion overtook 
him: panic. Whichever way he looked at it, he had never been in a worse 
fix. He was stranded, quite alone, in the dark Muggle world, with 
absolutely nowhere to go. And the worst of it was, he had just done 
serious magic, which meant that he was almost certainly expelled from 
Hogwarts. He had broken the Decree for the Restriction of Underage 
Wizardry so badly, he was surprised Ministry of Magic representatives 
weren't swooping down on him where he sat. 

Harry shivered and looked up and down Magnolia Crescent. 

What, was going to happen to him? Would he be arrested, or would he 
simply be outlawed from the wizarding world? He thought of Ron and 
Hermione, and his heart sank even lower. Harry was sure that, criminal 
or not, Ron and Hermione would want to help him now, but they were both 
abroad, and with Hedwig gone, he had no means of contacting them. 

He didn't have any Muggle money, either. There was a little wizard gold 
in the money bag at the bottom of his trunk, but the rest of the fortune 
his parents had left him was stored in a vault at Gringotts Wizarding 
Bank in London. He'd never be able to drag his trunk all the way to 
London. Unless... 

He looked down at his wand, which he was still clutching in his hand. If 
he was already expelled (his heart was. now thumping painfully fast), a 
bit more magic couldn't hurt. He had the Invisibility Cloak he had 
inherited from his father -- what if he bewitched the trunk to make it 
feather-light, tied it to his broomstick, covered himself in the cloak, 
and flew to London? Then he could get the rest of his money out of his 
vault and... begin his life as an outcast. It was a horrible prospect, 
but he couldn't sit on this wall forever, or he'd find himself trying to 
explain to Muggle police why he was out in the dead of night with a 
trunkful of spellbooks and a broomstick. 

Harry opened his trunk again and pushed the contents aside, looking for 
the Invisibility Cloak - but before he had found it, he straightened up 
suddenly, looking around him once more. 

A funny prickling on the back of his neck had made Harry feel he was 
being watched, but the street appeared to be deserted, and no lights 
shone from any of the large square houses. 

He bent over his trunk again, but almost immediately stood up once more, 
his hand clenched on his wand. He had sensed rather than heard it: 
someone or something was standing in the narrow gap between the garage 
and the fence behind him. Harry squinted at the black alleyway. If only 
it would move, then he'd know whether it was just a stray cat or -something 
else. 

"Lumos," Harry muttered, and a light appeared at the end of his wand, 
almost dazzling him. He held it high over his head, and the 
pebble-dashed walls of number two suddenly sparkled; the garage door 
gleamed, and between them Harry saw, quite distinctly, the hulking 
outline of something very big, with wide, gleaming eyes. 

Harry stepped backward. His legs hit his trunk and he tripped. His wand 
flew out of his hand as he flung out an arm to break his fall, and he 
landed, hard, in the gutter -


There was a deafening BANG, and Harry threw up his hands to shield his 
eyes against a sudden blinding light -


With a yell, he rolled back onto the pavement, just in time. A second 
later, a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights screeched to a halt 
exactly where Harry had just been lying. They belonged, as Harry saw 
when he raised his head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which 
had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelled 
The Knight Bus. 

For a Split second, Harry wondered if he had been knocked silly by his 
fall. Then a conductor in a purple uniform leapt out of the bus and 
began to speak loudly to the night. 

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch 
or wizard. just stick out your wand hand, step on board) and we can take 
you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be 
your conductor this eve --" 

The conductor stopped abruptly. He had just caught sight of "Harry, who 
was still sitting on the ground. Harry snatched up his wand again and 
scrambled to his feet. Close up, he saw that Stan Shunpike was only a 
few years older than he was, eighteen or nineteen at most, with large, 
protruding ears and quite a few pimples. 

"What were you doin' down there?" said Stan, dropping his professional 
manner. 

"Fell over," said Harry. 

"'Choo fall over for?" sniggered Stan. 

"I didn't do it on purpose," said Harry, annoyed. One of the knees in 
his jeans was torn, and the hand he had thrown out to break his fall was 
bleeding. He suddenly remembered why he had fallen over and turned 
around quickly to stare at the alleyway between the garage and fence. 
The Knight Bus's headlamps w