ing with
hunger, jumped off his bed and seized it. The soup was stone-cold, but
he drank half of it in one gulp. Then he crossed the room to Hedwig's
cage and tipped the soggy vegetables at the bottom of the bowl into
her empty food tray. She ruffled her feathers and gave him a look of
deep disgust.
"It's no good turning your beak up at it - that's all we've got," said
Harry grimly.
He put the empty bowl back on the floor next to the cat-flap and lay
back down on the bed, somehow even hungrier than he had been
before the soup.
Supposing he was still alive in another four weeks, what would happen
if he didn't turn up at Hogwarts? Would someone be sent to see why
he hadn't come back? Would they be able to make the Dursleys let
him go?
The room was growing dark. Exhausted, stomach rumbling, mind
spinning over the same unanswerable questions, Harry fell into an
uneasy sleep.
20
He dreamed that he was on show in a zoo, with a card reading
UNDERAGE WIZARD attached to his cage. People goggled through the bars
at him as he lay, starving and weak, on a bed of straw. He saw
Dobby's face in the crowd and shouted out, asking for help, but Dobby
called, "Harry Potter is safe there, sir!" and vanished. Then the
Dursleys appeared and Dudley rattled the bars of the cage, laughing at
him.
"Stop it," Harry muttered as the rattling pounded in his sore head.
"Leave me alone ... cut it out ... I'm trying to sleep . . . ."
He opened his eyes. Moonlight was shining through the bars on the
window. And someone was goggling through the bars at him: a frecklefaced,
red-haired, long-nosed someone.
Ron Weasley was outside Harry's window.
21
H-H A P T E RR T 11-H RR E E
THE BURROW
Ron.l" breathed Harry, creeping to the window and pushing it up so
they could talk through the bars. "Ron, how did you - What the -?"
Harry's mouth fell open as the full impact of what he was seeing hit
him. Ron was leaning out of the back window of an old turquoise car,
which was parked in midair Grinning at Harry from the front seats
were Fred and George, Ron's elder twin brothers.
"All right, Harry?" asked George.
"What's been going on?" said Ron. "Why haven't you been answering
my letters? I've asked you to stay about twelve times, and then Dad
came home and said you'd got an official warning for using magic in
front of Muggles -"
"It wasn't me - and how did he know?"
"He works for the Ministry," said Ron. "You know we're not supposed
to do spells outside school -"
"You should talk," said Harry, staring at the floating car.
"Oh, this doesn't count," said Ron. "We're only borrowing this. It's
Dad's, we didn't enchant it. But doing magic in front of those Muggles
you live with -"
"I told you, I didn't - but it'll take too long to explain now look, can you
tell them at Hogwarts that the Dursleys have locked me up and won't
let me come back, and obviously I can't magic myself out, because the
Ministry'Il think that's the second spell I've done in three days, so -"
"Stop gibbering," said Ron. "We've come to take you home with us."
"But you can't magic me out either -"
22
"We don't need to," said Ron, jerking his head toward the front seat
and grinning. "You forget who I've got with me."
"Tie that around the bars," said Fred, throwing the end of a rope to
Harry.
"If the Dursleys wake up, I'm dead," said Harry as he tied the rope
tightly around a bar and Fred revved up the car.
"Don't worry," said Fred, "and stand back."
Harry moved back into the shadows next to Hedwig, who seemed to
have realized how important this was and kept still and silent. The car
revved louder and louder and suddenly, with a crunching noise, the
bars were pulled clean out of the window as Fred drove straight up in
the air. Harry ran back to the window to see the bars dangling a few
feet above the ground. Panting, Ron hoisted them up into the car.
Harry listened anxiously, but there was no sound from the Dursleys'
bedroom.
When the bars were safely in the back seat with Ron, Fred reversed
as close as possible to Harry's window.
"Get in," Ron said.
"But all my Hogwarts stuff - my wand - my broomstick -"
"Where is it?"
"Locked in the cupboard under the stairs, and I can't get out of this
room -"
"No problem," said George from the front passenger seat. "Out of
the way, Harry."
Fred and George climbed catlike through the window into Harry's
room. You had to hand it to them, thought Harry, as George took an
ordinary hairpin from his pocket and started to pick the lock.
"A lot of wizards think it's a waste of time, knowing this sort of
Muggle trick," said Fred, "but we feel they're skills worth learning,
even if they are a bit slow."
23
There was a small click and the door swung open.
"So - we'll get your trunk - you grab anything you need from your
room and hand it out to Ron," whispered George.
"Watch out for the bottom stair - it creaks," Harry whispered back
as the twins disappeared onto the dark landing.
Harry dashed around his room, collecting his things and passing them
out of the window to Ron. Then he went to help Fred and George
heave his trunk up the stairs. Harry heard Uncle Vernon cough.
At last, panting, they reached the landing, then carried the trunk
through Harry's room to the open window. Fred climbed back into
the car to pull with Ron, and Harry and George pushed from the
bedroom side. Inch by inch, the trunk slid through the window.
Uncle Vernon coughed again.
"A bit more," panted Fred, who was pulling from inside the car.
"One good push -"
Harry and George threw their shoulders against the trunk and it slid
out of the window into the back seat of the car.
"Okay, let's go," George whispered.
But as Harry climbed onto the windowsill there came a sudden loud
screech from behind him, followed immediately by the thunder of
Uncle Vernon's voice.
"THAT RUDDY OWL!"
"I've forgotten Hedwig!"
Harry tore back across the room as the landing light clicked on - he
snatched up Hedwig's cage, dashed to the window, and passed it
out to Ron. He was scrambling back onto the chest of drawers when
Uncle Vernon hammered on the unlocked door and it crashed open.
For a split second, Uncle Vernon stood framed in the doorway; then
24
he let out a bellow like an angry bull and dived at Harry, grabbing
him by the ankle.
Ron, Fred, and George seized Harry's arms and pulled as hard as
they could.
"Petunia!" roared Uncle Vernon. "He's getting away! HE'S
GETTING AWAY!"
But the Weasleys gave a gigantic tug and Harry's leg slid out of
Uncle Vernon's grasp - Harry was in the car - he'd slammed the
door shut
"Put your foot down, Fred!" yelled Ron, and the car shot suddenly
toward the moon.
Harry couldn't believe it - he was free. He rolled down the
window, the night air whipping his hair, and looked back at the
shrinking rooftops of Privet Drive. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and
Dudley were all hanging, dumbstruck, out of Harry's window.
"See you next summer!" Harry yelled.
The Weasleys roared with laughter and Harry settled back in his seat,
grinning from ear to ear.
"Let Hedwig out," he told Ron. "She can fly behind us. She hasn't had
a chance to stretch her wings for ages."
George handed the hairpin to Ron and, a moment later, Hedwig soared
joyfully out of the window to glide alongside them like a ghost.
"So - what's the story, Harry?" said Ron impatiently. "What's been
happening?"
Harry told them all about Dobby, the warning he'd given Harry and
the fiasco of the violet pudding. There was a long, shocked silence
when he had finished.
"Very fishy," said Fred finally.
25
"Definitely dodgy" agreed George. "So he wouldn't even tell you who's
supposed to be plotting all this stuff?"
"I don't think he could," said Harry. "I told you, every time he got close
to letting something slip, he started banging his head against the wall."
He saw Fred and George look at each other.
"What, you think he was lying to me?" said Harry.
"Well," said Fred, "put it this way - house-elves have got powerful
magic of their own, but they can't usually use it without their master's
permission. I reckon old Dobby was sent to stop you com
ing back to Hogwarts. Someone's idea of a joke. Can you think of
anyone at school with a grudge against you?"
"Yes," said Harry and Ron together, instantly.
"Draco Malfoy," Harry explained. "He hates me."
"Draco Malfoy?" said George, turning around. "Not Lucius Malfoy's
son?"
"Must be, it's not a very common name, is it?" said Harry.
Y.
"I've heard Dad talking about him," said George. "He was a big
supporter of You-Know-Who."
"And when You-Know-Who disappeared," said Fred, craning
around to look at Harry, "Lucius Malfoy came back saying he'd never
meant any of it. Load of dung - Dad reckons he was right in You-
Know-Who's inner circle."
Harry had heard these rumors about Malfoy's family before, and they
didn't surprise him at all. Malfoy made Dudley Dursley look
like a kind, thoughtful, and sensitive boy.
"I don't know whether the Malfoys own a house-elf said
Harry.
26
"Well, whoever owns him will be an old wizarding family, and they'll
be rich," said Fred.
"Yeah, Mum's always wishing we had a house-elf to do the ironing,"
said George. "But all we've got is a lousy old ghoul in the attic and
gnomes all over the garden. House-elves come with big old manors
and castles and places like that; you wouldn't catch one in our house .
. . ."
Harry was silent. Judging by the fact that Draco Malfoy usually had
the best of everything, his family was rolling in wizard gold; he
could just see Malfoy strutting around a large manor house. Sending
the family servant to stop Harry from going back to Hogwarts also
sounded exactly like the sort of thing Malfoy would do. Had Harry
been stupid to take Dobby seriously?
"I'm glad we came to get you, anyway," said Ron. "I was getting
really worried when you didn't answer any of my letters. I 