On the first of September, Harry and the Weasleys were up at cock-crow, but somehow they still seemed to have a great deal to do. Mrs. Weasley dashed about in a bad mood looking for spare socks and quills, people kept colliding on the stairs, half-dressed with bits of toast in their hands, and Mr. Weasley nearly broke his neck, tripping over a stray chicken as he crossed the yard carrying Ginny's trunk to the car.

Harry couldn't see how eight people, six large trunks, two owls and a rat were going to fit into one small Ford Anglia. He had reckoned, of course, without the special features which Mr. Weasley had added.

"Not a word to Molly," he whispered to Harry as he opened the boot and showed him how it had been magically expanded so that the trunks fitted easily.

When at last they were all in the car, Mrs. Weasley glanced into the back seat, where Harry, Ron, Fred, George, and Percy were all sitting comfortably side by side, and said, "Muggles do know more than we give them credit for, don't they?" She and Ginny got into the front seat, which had been stretched so that it resembled a park bench, "I mean, you'd never know it was this roomy from the outside, would you?"

Mr. Weasley started up the engine and they trundled out of the yard, Harry turning back for a last look at the house. He barely had time to wonder when he'd see it again when they were back: George had forgotten his box of Filibuster fireworks. Five minutes after that, they skidded to a halt in the yard so that Fred could run in his broomstick. They had almost reached the motorway when Ginny shrieked that she'd left her diary. By the time she had clambered back into the car, they were running very late and tempers were running high.

Mr. Weasley glanced at his watch and then at his wife.

"Molly, dear—"

"No, Arthur."

"No one would see. This little button here is an Invisibility Booster I installed — that'd get us up in the air — then we fly above the clouds. We'd be there in ten minutes and no one would be any wiser..."

"I said no, Arthur, not in broad daylight."

They reached King's Cross at a quarter to eleven. Mr. Weasley dashed across the road to get trolleys for their trunks and they all hurried into the station.

Harry had caught the Hogwarts Express the previous year. The tricky bit was getting onto platform nine and ten. It didn't hurt, but it had to be done carefully so that none of the Muggles noticed you vanishing.

"Percy first," said Mrs. Weasley, looking nervously at the clock overhead, which showed they had only five minutes to disappear casually through the barrier.

Percy strode briskly forward and vanished. Mr. Weasley went next, Fred and George followed.

"I'll take Ginny and you two come right after us," Mrs. Weasley told Harry and Ron, grabbing Ginny's hand and setting off. In the blink of an eye they were gone.

"Let's go together, we've only got a minute," Ron said to Harry.

"Harry made sure that Hedwig"s cage was safely wedged on top of his trunk and wheeled his trolley about to face the barrier. He felt perfectly confident: this wasn't nearly as uncomfortable as using Floo powder. Both of them bent low over the handles of their trolleys and walked purposefully towards the barrier, gathering speed. A few feet away from it, they broke into a run and —

CRASH.

Both trolleys hit the barrier and bounced backwards. Ron's trunk fell off with a loud thump, Harry was knocked off his feet, and Hedwig's cage bounced onto the shiny floor and she rolled away, shrieking indignantly. People all around them stared and a guard nearby yelled, "What in blazes d'you think you're doing"

"Lost control of the trolley," Harry gasped, clutching his ribs as he got up. Ron ran to pick up Hedwig, who was causing such a scene that there was a lot of muttering about cruelty to animals from the surrounding crowd.

"Why can't we get through?" Harry hissed to Ron.

"I dunno—"

Ron looked wildly around. A dozen curious people were still watching them.

"We're going to miss the train," Ron whispered, "I don't understand why the gateway's sealed itself..."

Harry looked up at the giant clock with a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Ten seconds... nine seconds...

He wheeled his trolley forward cautiously until it was right against the barrier, and pushed with all his might. The metal remained solid.

Three seconds ... two seconds ... one second...

"It's gone," said Ron, sounding stunned, "The train's left. What if Mum and Dad can't get back through to us? Have you got any Muggle money?"

Harry gave a hollow laugh, "The Dursleys haven't given me pocket money for about six years."

Ron pressed his ear to the cold barrier.

"Can't hear a thing," he said tensely.

"What're we going to do? I don't know how long it'll take Mum and Dad to get back to us."

They looked around. People were still watching them, mainly because of Hedwig's continuing screeching.

"I think we'd better go and wait by the car," Harry said, "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 ..."

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 into the side road where the old Ford Anglia was parked.

Ron unlocked the cavernous boot with a series of taps from his wand. They heaved their trunks back in, put Hedwig on the back seat and got into the front.

"Check 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.

"OK," 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.

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, smokey and glittering, below them.

Then there was a popping noise and the car, Harry and Ron reappeared.

"Uh oh," Ron said, 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," Ron said, checking the compass on the dashboard, "OK, 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 aeroplanes," Ron said.

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 one 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 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 further and further north, each dip beneath the clouds showing them a different view. London was soon far behind them, replaced by neat green fields which gave way in turn to wide, purplish moors, villages with tiny to churches and a great city alive with cars like multi-colored ants.

They were several uneventful hours later, however, that the fun was wearing off and boredom was kicking in with nothing for Harry to do.

Although there was one thing that Harry could do.

"What are you doing?" Ron asks as he sees Harry take out his photo book with his packet of items.

"Pasting, I was going to start taping in some of the items to the photo book I got from Hagrid. I was thinking about doing it on the train ride but, well..." Harry said sheepishly.

Harry picked up a non nibbled on letter and read it out loud.

"To Padfoot" Harry said and then stopped at the strangeness of the name because he couldn't explain why, but he sure felt that name was familiar to him, probably heard it when he was little.

"You would not believe what happened! Remember when I normally send Lily-flower a bundle of flowers every summer so she can remember me?

Well guess what. She sent me a thank you card this year!

She's finally in love with me I tell you. I'm already planning our wedding. I don't care if we are not graduating till two more years. I'm going to propose again. She just has to accept me now.

From

Prongs" Harry finished reading. This person must have been a good friend to Padfoot, well, Sirius, because Harry couldn't understand how this 'Prongs' person told Sirius so much of his feelings for a girl, this 'Lily-flower'.

"Bloody Hell! What love-sick fool wrote these?" Ron asked in disgust.

"Probably a desperate one." Harry said as he taped the letter in the book and moved on to other items.

"Here's some Chocolate Frog Cards as well, Alberic Grunnion; he made the Dungbomb, Bertie Bott; he made Bertie Bott Every Flavor Beans, Devlin Whitehorn; he founded the Nimbus racing broom company. Hey Ron didn't you say that you were missing some?" Harry asked as he looked through the cards.

"Yeah, just Agrippa and Ptolemy." Ron said as he moved the car around a large cloud.

"Here ya go!" Harry said, handing over a chocolate frog labeled 'Ptolemy'.

"Woah! Really!" Ron said as he got the card, momentarily letting go of the steering wheel, letting the car plummet downward for a moment before Ron brought it back up again.

"Sorry," Ron said embarrassed, "What are those cards."

"These are recipes, I think?" Harry said as he skimmed through them with concern, "Tenderloin Deer Meat, Werewolf stew, Roasted Rat..." he said in mild disgust as Ron scrunched up his nose at the thought of eating a werewolf.

"He's got to be joking right?" Ron asked, "If Professor Black's brother was anything like this when he was young, suppose it was only a matter of time before he got ship to Azkaban."

"I think it's a joke," Harry said as he read the Roasted Rat recipe with a large bite mark out of it that ended with 'grew'.

This was also attached to a note of a potion that removes dog breath, with stars around it.

Then Harry read another letter, one with darker brown parchment.

"Hey Padfoot

I just finished my time, and before you start asking again, no, the Marauders will not be going into the Slytherin Common room just to dump glitter. I am so disappointed in you for thinking of such a thing. Don't you have any morals?

What we SHOULD do, is sneak into the laundry room and place red glitter into all the clothes there. That way none of the other houses feel left out.

It would be the right thing to do.

I'll be at Prong's house in a couple of days. Please don't break anything until I arrive.

From,

Moony"

This Moony character must be quite the jokester to come up with placing glitter in clothes and what did he mean by 'finished my time.'

"They were pranksters?" Ron asked with a mild laugh at the thought of the whole school in glitter.

"Apparently."

"And what are those papers there," Ron asked, spotting oddly written parchment that laid on the dashboard.

"Just a bunch of shapes and squiggles, I guess it's a large map of something. Maybe Hogwarts," Harry said as he tried to connect the lines with little luck, placing those pages in the back of the photo book.

"That is so weird, do they really think they can make a map of Hogwarts. Mental I say. I mean, look at the name Sirius Black was called in his letters, Padfoot, what kind of a name is that." Ron said which got a snicker out of Harry.

"Probably a pet name. Sirius sure liked dogs," Harry said showing a bunch of picture to Ron of what looked to be the same giant black dog, "Probably named it that and it just stuck on to him as a nickname?" he said binding the pictures on a page.

Harry got another letter, this one far neater the others?

"It's a letter from my mum, it looks newer than the rest," Harry said opening it up for a photo to slip out. It showed a man and a woman in muggle clothing. of who Harry recognized to be his parents. Although the focus on this picture wasn't on them really, more on the small child, barely flowing above the ground on a small toy broom. It was obvious, he didn't even have to ask anyone of who that little boy is.

"Dear Padfoot

Thank you, thank you, for Harry's birthday present! It was his favorite by far. One year old and already zooming along on a toy broomstick, he looked so pleased with himself, I'm enclosing a picture so you can see. You know it only rises about two feet off the ground, but he nearly killed the and he smashed a horrible vase Petunia sent me for Christmas (no complaints there). Of course, James thought it was funny, says he's going to be a great Quidditch player, but we've had to pack away all the ornaments and make sure we don't take our eyes off him when he gets going.

We had a very quiet birthday tea, just us and old Bathilda, who has always been sweet to us, and who dotes on Harry. We were so sorry you couldn't come, but the Orders got to come first, and Harry's not old enough to know it's his birthday anyway! James is getting a bit frustrated shut up here, he tries not to show it but I can tell -- also, Dumbledore's still got his Invisibility Cloak, so no chance of little excursions. If you could visit, it would cheer him up so much. Wormy was here last weekend, I thought he seemed down, but that was probably the news about the McKinnons; I cried all evening when I heard. Bathilda drops in most days, she's a fascinating old thing with the most amazing stories about Dumbledore, I'm not sure he'd be pleased if he knew! I don't know how much to believe, actually, because it seems incredible that Dumbledore could ever have been friends with Gellert Grindlewald. I think her mind's going, personally!

Lots of love,

Lily"

Harry didn't even realize he was crying till his tears dripped onto the paper.

"Wow," Ron said trying to break the uneasily sadness, "Your parents always knew you would be great in Quidditch, that's great, I bet they would have loved your first game, probably the loudest people there, cheering away, would have loved to meet them."

"Yeah, me too." Harry said leaving the letter on the seat; he'll find a perfect place will it once he's done. Maybe surrounded by more baby pictures of him and his family?

"Let's read another one," Ron said placing his chocolate frog card

They continued on reading and pasting, leaving the car ride, a little bit more pleasant. Although that sure left probably two of the most strangest questions to date in Harry's mind.

Who were Moony and Prongs, how were they friends with Sirius Black?

Who is old Bathilda and how did she know his parents?

What's a Wormy and the McKinnons?

What's the Order?

Who's Gellert Grindlewald and how was he friends with Dumbledore?

What was Professor Black brother's obsession with rats, deer, dogs, and werewolfs? 

Bonus

•If I made you cry today, clap your hands *clap clap*

•I loved the letter between Sirius and Lily so much that I was a bit disappointed it did not play a bigger part in 'Deathly Hallows'or properly mentioned in the movie, it explained why Dumbledore took the cloak, and gave in sight on first war.

•Can you imagine. "This is the best picture I have of your father Harry." "This is a picture of a deer." "My point exactly."