Harry's heart thudded so loudly he was sure the whole street could hear it. The fog clung to his skin like cold fingers, and every shallow breath tasted of damp earth and copper. The Inferi hadn't moved yet, but their presence pressed down on him, suffocating.
His knuckles were white where they clutched the little pendant Mrs. Figg had tied around his neck. This was supposed to be an ordinary walk home, he thought miserably. Cake, books, tea, and now… zombies. Brilliant.
The thing kneeling over the bleeding man finally rose, straightening with a grotesque, deliberate slowness. Its pale, waxy face caught the weak streetlight, revealing hollow eyes and long, wet canines smeared with crimson. Blood dribbled down its chin, and Harry had the absurd urge to offer it a napkin.
"Harry… Harry… Po… Potter?" it rasped, its voice like a rusty hinge creaking open.
Harry froze, throat dry. Oh, that's just bloody fantastic, he thought. Not only does the vampire wannabe snack on people, it knows my name. Lovely.
Out loud, he managed a weak, "I don't believe we've met, Mr…?" His attempt at polite small talk sounded far too squeaky to be taken seriously.
The creature didn't answer. It stalked forward, its rotten entourage shuffling around him in a slow, deliberate circle. Harry's breath came quicker, fogging the cool evening air. Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his legs remained rooted.
When the pale figure came within inches of him, the stench hit him—a foul mix of blood and rot. Its gnarled hand rose, claws blackened and dripping with something he definitely didn't want identified. One claw pressed against his cheek, sharp enough to nick skin.
Harry flinched but didn't move. If this thing wanted to kill him, he figured jerking away would only speed things up. Warm blood welled, and the creature caught it neatly on one long, curling claw before licking it clean.
The rasping voice came again, stronger this time. "Harry… Potter. Harry…"
Harry's brain supplied many possible reactions—panic, scream, faint dramatically—but he settled for swallowing hard and thinking, Right. So, not a fan of my blood. Or maybe I'm dessert. Perfect.
Then, quite suddenly, the creature threw back its head and let out a bone-deep screech. The Inferi twitched, their heads jerking unnaturally toward the sound. Before Harry could decide whether this was a cue to bolt, he heard another sound—low at first, then swelling into a roar.
Somewhere beyond the mist, an engine thundered. A glare of light sliced through the fog, growing brighter by the second. Harry squinted hard, his heart leaping between terror and desperate hope.
The pale creature hissed, drawing back. The Inferi shuffled nervously. And then, bursting through the heavy mist, came the strangest sight Harry had ever seen—and that was saying something.
A giant of a man—at least twice as wide as Uncle Vernon and half again as tall—was barreling toward him on a massive black motorbike. The machine roared like a living beast, its chrome gleaming under the sputtering streetlamps. Goggles hid the man's eyes, but his long, wild beard streamed behind him like a banner of chaos.
"Get aside, yeh bunch o' varmints!" the giant bellowed over the engine.
The Inferi hissed and screeched, scrambling back into the mist like frightened insects. The pale, bloody figure took one last look at Harry, then vanished into the fog with an unearthly shriek.
The bike screeched to a halt beside him, its engine growling softly. The giant swung off with surprising grace for someone built like a small mountain. He yanked off his goggles, revealing beetle-black eyes, and reached behind him to unstrap what looked suspiciously like a pink frilly umbrella.
"Right," he said, crouching slightly to meet Harry's wide-eyed stare. "That'll hold 'em off for now." He tossed a small, glinting object onto the pavement, and a puff of black smoke burst forth, rolling out in tendrils that pushed the mist back like an invisible wall.
Then, with a grin that was all teeth and mischief, he added, "Name's Hagrid. Rubeus Hagrid. Gameskeeper at Hogwarts School o' Witchcraft and Wizardry. Finest school there is." He glanced toward the shadows where the creatures had vanished and muttered, "An' a good thing I got here when I did, eh?"
Harry blinked up at him, still trying to breathe normally. His thoughts had become a jumble of nonsense: Motorbike. Giant. Zombies. Bloodsucker. Gameskeeper? Hogwarts?!
"Gameskeeper?" he echoed faintly. "Hogwarts?"
"Aye," Hagrid said matter-of-factly, as though it explained everything. "Magic, spells, witches, wizards… the whole lot. An' you're one of us. Yer a wizard, Harry." He blinked. "Oh, and yeh coming with me."
Harry opened and closed his mouth a few times. No sound came out. He suspected this was what shock felt like.
"I'm… what?"
"A wizard," Hagrid repeated, slower this time, as though dealing with someone exceptionally dim. "Always were. Surprised yeh ain't blown up yer aunt's kitchen yet."
Harry blinked again. He half-considered pinching himself, but given the blood-drinking loon and his zombie mates, he was fairly confident this wasn't a dream.
"But I don't even know you," he protested weakly, his voice cracking in a way that made him sound about five years younger. "I can't just… just go with you. That's mental."
"Well," Hagrid said with a shrug that seemed to suggest giants didn't bother much with mundane concerns like kidnapping etiquette, "I did just save yeh from a nest o' Inferi an' a bleedin' Nosferatu. If I meant yeh harm, yeh'd be a snack by now, wouldn't yeh?"
Harry hesitated. He had to admit, the man had a point.
Before he could form another objection, a low, echoing howl rose somewhere in the mist, followed by several more. Hagrid's expression darkened immediately.
"No time fer arguin', lad. They'll regroup soon enough. Hop on." He jerked his head toward the motorbike.
Harry's instinct screamed at him not to trust strangers on giant motorbikes who claimed he was magical, but his survival instinct yelled louder. Reluctantly, he climbed into the sidecar, clutching the pendant at his throat.
Hagrid swung one massive leg over the bike and revved the engine. The machine growled, eager to run.
"Hold on tight," he called over the roar. "An' whatever yeh do, don't look down!"
"Don't look down?!" Harry spluttered. "Why would I—"
And then the motorbike soared into the air.
Harry's scream was lost to the wind as the ground fell away beneath them, the fog a swirling sea below. For a wild, terrible, glorious moment, he forgot the Inferi, the blood-drinker, and the whole horrifying mess. The night air whipped through his hair, and his stomach dropped in a way that was both exhilarating and slightly nauseating.
"Magic's real," he whispered to himself, clutching the sidecar's edges until his knuckles ached. "Magic's actually real."
Beside him, Hagrid grinned like a maniac and gunned the throttle.
The motorcycle roared like a living beast beneath them, and Harry clung to the sidecar for dear life. His knuckles were white against the metal frame, the wind tearing at his face and whipping his hair into a frenzy. He had never been so high, so fast, or so utterly convinced he was about to plummet to his death.
Control, he realised, was an illusion.
The thought came unbidden, as if whispered by someone just behind his ear. It made his stomach twist unpleasantly, and not just because the ground was a dizzying blur beneath them.
The pendant around his neck thumped lightly against his chest with each jolt of the bike, as if reminding him it was there—reminding him of Mrs. Figg, of her strange, quiet warnings, and the books she'd slipped into his hands like secrets. Secrets that were no longer fiction.
Harry squinted over the side of the sidecar and wished he hadn't. The mist had rolled back under the force of their ascent, revealing Privet Drive in its eerie entirety. The neat rows of houses were cloaked in darkness, windows blank and unwelcoming, as if the whole street had simply… given up.
And there, sprawled under the pale wash of a streetlamp, was the dead man.
Harry's stomach dropped faster than the bike ever could. The image burned itself into his brain—the slack jaw, the half-lidded eyes, the wrongness of a body being so utterly still. He felt his throat tighten. Had the man died because of him?
That pale creature—whatever it was—had been repeating his name. Over and over. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Was he the reason that man lay motionless on the pavement?
"Are yeh okay?!" Hagrid's booming voice yanked him back to reality. "Those bast—ruddy things didn't hurt yeh, did they?!"
Harry shook his head violently, realising belatedly that Hagrid probably couldn't see him. "I—I'm okay!" he shouted, his voice cracking against the roar of the wind.
"Tha's good, then!" Hagrid called back, though his tone sounded distracted as he glanced over his shoulder, checking their rear every few seconds.
"Are we—" Harry gulped, gripping the sidecar tighter. "Are we going to take Mrs. Figg too?!" he yelled. "She's a wizard too, right?!"
Hagrid barked a short laugh, though he didn't look at him. "She's a Squib!" he shouted, leaning into the handlebars as they banked sharply to the left. "An' no, we can't take her! She'll be fine!"
Harry's stomach clenched. Fine? How could she be fine? She lived alone. She was the one who'd given him the books, the pendant. If the pale thing and its rotting entourage knew his name, knew about him, wasn't she in danger too?
Uncle Vernon could probably glare a dragon into submission, but Mrs. Figg? Harry pictured her with her ancient kettle and battalion of cats and felt his throat tighten.
"But what if they go to her?!" Harry yelled, panic flaring. "They could try to find me there! Hagrid, we have to—"
"Oi, listen!" Hagrid bellowed, cutting him off without looking away from the dark horizon. "There are others, yeh hear me? There'll be people takin' care o' Mrs. Figg, an' yer folks, an' the street. Yeh don't need ta worry, Harry!"
Harry bit down on his lip, hard. Again, he was being asked to trust a stranger. A giant, motorcycle-flying stranger, sure, but still.
The pendant bounced against his chest, cool and solid against his skin. He clutched it, wishing it could tell him if Hagrid was telling the truth.
Hagrid must've noticed, because he chuckled low in his throat and yelled, "Yeh don't believe me, do yeh?"
Harry blinked. He hadn't said anything.
"Go on then," Hagrid said, nodding toward the pendant. "Try holdin' it tight an' say, Defendren!"
Harry gawked at him. "What?"
"Say it! Go on!"
He hesitated for only a moment longer before wrapping his fingers tightly around the pendant. If this was nonsense, fine—at least it would distract him from the endless drop beneath them.
"Defendren!" he shouted over the roar of the engine.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then, with a low whummm, a sphere of light shimmered into existence around him—a bubble of blue and gold energy, crackling faintly, humming like it had a heartbeat of its own. The wind no longer stung his face; the chill vanished. Inside the sphere, he felt… safe.
His mouth dropped open. "I—I did magic!"
"Course yeh did!" Hagrid grinned, teeth flashing white through his wild beard. "Believe me now, do yeh? That pendant came from her, Harry! Mrs. Figg's one o' ours. She'll be safe as safe can be."
Harry nodded mutely, still staring at the fading sparks of light as the sphere dissolved into nothing.
But curiosity bubbled up almost immediately, as it always did. "What was that?" he asked, still breathless. "That—shield thing?"
Hagrid beamed, about to answer—when his smile froze. He twisted around, goggles glinting in the starlight, and his expression darkened like a storm front.
"What happened to yer cheek?!"
Harry frowned, instinctively reaching up to touch the small cut. "It's fine! That monster thing just scratched me and, um… drank some blood. That's all!"
The effect was instantaneous.
The motorbike lurched, veering wildly as Hagrid swore loud enough to make Harry's ears ring. Harry yelped, clutching the sidecar's edges as something dark and winged whizzed past them with a shrill, bone-rattling screech.
The bike steadied after a heart-stopping moment, but the engine roared louder now, angrier, and Harry felt his stomach drop again—not from the altitude this time, but from the tension radiating off Hagrid.
"Me an' my ruddy head!" Hagrid thundered, voice raw with panic. "Why didn't yeh tell me sooner?!"
Harry blinked at him, bewildered. "Why—what's wrong?! What's happening?!"
Hagrid didn't answer at first, his massive hands white-knuckled on the handlebars. The motorcycle screamed as he twisted the throttle, pushing it harder, faster, higher.
"Change o' plans!" he bellowed finally, leaning forward like a man preparing to ram a dragon. "We're headin' ta the Weasleys' place! How's yer aim?!"
Harry stared at him. "My what?!"
Hagrid shoved something toward him—an umbrella.
Harry gawked at it. "You—you want me to fight with this?!"
"She ain't just an umbrella, lad!" Hagrid roared, eyes wild as shapes moved in the mist below. "Now hold on tight an' get ready—we're about to have company!"
Harry swallowed hard, knuckles aching as he gripped the umbrella.
The night had taken another sharp turn. Again.