Harry Potter and the Serpent Items: Part 2

When he awoke he was on a bus. Not any kind of bus. This one was apparently called the Knight Bus and it swerved between cars at a horrendously erratic rate, squeezing itself into gaps that there was no way it should fit and somehow managing to drive up the wrong side of one of the roads entirely without being noticed by a single Muggle.

Harry had no idea how they did it, or how he had ended up on the bus in the first place, but he wasn't going to complain as moments after he had 'woken up' he arrived at Diagon Alley and had disembarked along with all of his luggage.

Part of him was curious as to what had happened to Dudley and then another part had already decided that it was a really really bad idea to ask and focused purely on getting himself inside the Leakey Cauldron and then on to Gringotts the first opportunity he had. After all if he was going to be on the run for the rest of his life the wanted to at least be able to afford food and drink, along with somewhere to stay.

The moment he walked into the wizarding pub, he knew something was up, as people had obviously noticed him, but unlike the last time he had come without the Weasleys, he wasn't mobbed. He didn't think news of what had happened in Surry could have reached here that quickly but then he couldn't know everything that was possible with magic...

"Mr Potter. Welcome." Tom, the barkeeper here, hurried over gesturing for one of his staff members to take over behind the bar before ushering Harry upstairs and out of the public eye. "I wasn't aware you were coming."

"It's an unexpected stop." Harry admitted, hoping not to get drawn into a conversation about why he was visiting. "I'm only passing through on my way to Gringotts."

"You want to be careful wandering around on your own." Tom sounded honestly concerned, "It's all over the newspapers, Sirius Black escaped from Azkaban last night and everyone's up in arms about it. It's not safe for anyone to be wondering around alone right now, least of all you."

Harry blinked at him in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"Sirius Black was a Death Eater, one of the worst." Tom looked shocked that he didn't know that, "And you're the one who stopped You-Know-Who."  Tom glanced around nervously for a moment and then continued on a completely different note, "Now if you stop here for a moment and have some of our pub grub, there's a Pure Blood family who pre-ordered their food arriving in a few minutes, the Lovegoods. They'll watch out for you and you'll never be bored."

"I don't know..." Harry hesitated. The last thing he wanted was to hang around a predominant Pure Blood family right now. Not when he was uncertain when he was going to have another black out and was trying to stay out of sight.

“They’re as loopy as fruit cakes the pair of them.” Tom continued as if Harry hadn’t spoken, “But they’re good people. Besides, the girl’s about your age. You’ve probably seen her around the school.”

The name was familiar. Harry had met a Luna Lovegood last year when everyone except his friends had thought that he was the Heir of Slytherin.  The girl had seemed fascinated by his ability to talk to snakes and had even attempted to see if she could learn a little bit, but she had been weird. There had been occasions where Luna hadn’t really seemed like herself and others where she had seemed as nutty as a fruit cake.

Thinking about it in those terms, it was probably the same family.

Harry’s grumbling stomach seemed to answer the question for Tom who ushered him into a private room and handed him a menu, “Just you wait here, Mr Potter, I’ll bring your food to you.”