Saturday, January 5, 2019

Harry Potter and the Clue of the Screeching Owl: Harry Potter characters in a Hardy Boys setting (3)


Harry and Hermione jumped into the back seat and the car took off with Ron in the driver’s seat.

“Bloody ehw!” screamed Ron as he swerved the car out of the way of a flock of flying horses. They only came out on cloudy days so they wouldn’t be seen by the muggles below.

He had to descend quickly to avoid hitting then. But straight ahead was a mountain. There was no time to pull up.

“AHHHHHHHH!” screamed Ron and Harry. “Eviscerate!” cried Hermione, pointing her wand at the mountain.

The mountain before them crumbled and tumbled into the valley below, leaving a path for the car.

“Oops” said Hermione, as she saw the villagers below running for their lives.

“Avalanche Leviosa!” The rocks all hung in space while the villagers watched, dumbstruck.

“Mons Repairo!” The rocks all fell upwards and the mountain, now far beneath them, was just as it had been before they started messing with it.

Pointing her wand towards the dumbstruck villagers, Hermione shouted, “Obliviate!” The villagers, who now seemed quite small from the car, looked at each other for a moment as if they were wondering why they were all standing there. Then they went back to their work.

“A little underage magic there, eh, Hermione?” smiled Harry

“We would have been killed, Harold.” She was apparently still miffed, more so because she was breaking school and ministry rules, which she never felt comfortable doing. This brings up the obvious question as to why she spent so much time with Harry and Ron since they rarely followed rules of any kind. 

“So what does the letter say, exactly?” Harry asked Hermione, whose arms were folded tightly and whose face expressed a combination of humiliation and rage.

Harry wasn’t as interested in the contents of the letter as he was in putting Hermione in a better mood. She was always the first to raise her hand in class and loved when the teachers called on her to read aloud.  Harry and Ron needed Hermione on their side and Harry thought a request to read might do the trick. It worked.

Hermione pulled out the letter. “Dear Arthur”, she read, in a tone that sounded almost upbeat, “There have been some funny goings-on around Black Hollow. Look into it.”

She put the letter down, with a slightly disappointed look on her face, as if she wished it had been longer.

“Funny?” called Ron from the front seat, as he swerved to avoid another flock of flying horses. “Funny as in jokes? Or funny as in weird?”

“I would think the latter, Ron” said Hermione.

Harry smiled. It was Ron and not Ronald. Things were back to normal.  

“That town up ahead, Ron,” said Harry, “the one in the crater. Could that be Black Hollow?”

“It’s not a crater, Harry” corrected Hermione. “We’re not at war or on the moon. It’s called a hollow when a piece of land is lower than that which surrounds it. See how it’s much lower than those woods?”

"Looks like a good place to leave the car" said Ron, descending the car, making shre no muggles were watching. "Sincerely ‘ope there are no spiders in there."

“Why, Ron?” asked Harry, as they walked into the clearing. 

Ron stopped and scratched his head. “Not sure.”

As they neared Black Hollow, they saw, arising from the midst of the crater, a huge Ferris wheel.

“Blimey!” shouted a smiling Ron. “It’s a carnival! I love carnivals! I can smell the popcorn from here!”

He ran towards the smell, his friends tailing him, begging him to slow down. But Ron, if a bit thick, was a very fast runner, and soon Hermione and Harry were poking their heads into every carnival tent, looking up at every ride to see if Ron was riding the “Whip”, the “Octopus” or if he was soaring high on the enormous Ferris wheel.

They finally found him inside a tent labeled “Colonel Bill Thunder: Fearless Animal Trainer.”

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