Of the Death EatersWere becoming louder; but before Harry in his panic could decide what to do, there was a
Grinding of bolts
nearby, a door opened on the left-side of the narrow street, and a rough voice said:
"Potter, in here, quick!"
He obeyed without hesitation, the three of them hurried through the open doorway.
"Upstairs, keep the Cloak on, keep quiet!" muttered a tall figure, passing them on
His way into the street
And slammed the door behind him.
Harry had had no idea where they were, but now he saw, by the stuttering light of
A single candle,
the grubby, sawdust bar of the Hog's Head Inn. They ran behind the counter and through
A second doorway,
Which led to a trickery wooden staircase, that they climbed as fast as they could. The
Stairs opened into
A sitting room with a durable carpet and a small fireplace, above which hung a single
Large oil painting of a blonde
Girl who gazed out at the room with a kind of a vacant sweetness.
Shouts reached from the streets below. Still wearing the Invisibility Cloak on,
They hurried toward the
grimy window and looked down. Their savior, whom Harry now recognized as the Hog's
Head's barman, was
The only person not wearing a hood.
"So what?" he was bellowing into one of the hooded faces. "So what? You send
Dementors down my street,
I'll send a Patronus back at'em! I'm not having'em near me, I've told you that. I'm not
having it!"
"That wasn't your Patronus," said a Death Eater. "That was a stag. It was
Potter's!"
"Stag!" roared the barman, and he pulled out a wand. "Stag! You idiot - Expecto
Patronum!"
Something huge and horned erupted from the wand. Head down, it charged
Toward the High Street, and
Out of sight.
"That's not what I saw" said the Death Eater, though was less certainly
"Curfew's been broken, you heard the noise," one of his companions told the
barman. "Someone was
out on the streets against regulations - "
"If I want to put my cat out, I will, and be damned to your curfew!"
"You set off the Caterwauling Charm?"
"What if I did? Going to cart me off to Azkaban? Kill me for sticking my nose out
my own front door? Do it,
then, if you want to! But I hope for your sakes you haven't pressed your little Dark Marks,
and summoned him. He's
not going to like being called here, for me and my old cat, is he, now?"
"Don't worry about us." said one of the Death Eaters, "worry about yourself,
breaking curfew!"
"And where will you lot traffic potions and poisons when my pub's closed down?
What will happen to your
little sidelines then?"
"Are you threatening - ?"
"I keep my mouth shut, it's why you come here, isn't it?"
"I still say I saw a stag Patronus!" shouted the first Death Eater.
"Stag?" roared the barman. "It's a goat, idiot!"
"All right, we made a mistake," said the second Death Eater. "Break curfew again
and we won't be so lenient!"
The Death Eaters strode back towards the High Street. Hermione moaned with
Relief, wove out from under the Cloak,
Date: 2015-12-11; view: 681
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