Knight Bus

"Reparo—"

Harry pointed his hand at the rusted hinge between the door and the wall, quickly and expertly reciting the spell.

A silver glow appeared on the rusty hinge, then gradually spread outward. Wherever the silver light passed, the rust vanished, replaced by the gleam of polished metal.

He was already very familiar with this spell. Without a wand, its effect was not particularly strong, and he could only repair these small items bit by bit, but it worked nonetheless.

Once he had fixed the door so it opened and closed properly, Harry gave it a shake. The creaking sound was gone.

Finished!

By now, he had repaired most of the castle.

After finishing everything, Harry walked over to the balcony in the room. It was a vacant room on the third floor, carrying a faint smell of dust, but it was still fairly clean. Harry swept it often.

Beyond the balcony was the cliff. The view from here was even better than standing atop the cliff itself, and he never got tired of it.

After enjoying the breeze for a while, Harry hurried downstairs, left the castle, and began collecting the laundry.

Mu En, lying on the sofa, was abruptly jolted awake by Harry's footsteps.

"Mm... I fell asleep again?" Mu En looked at Lucifer in a daze.

Lucifer nodded. "Yes, you fell asleep again."

"Sigh." Mu En let out a heavy sigh, then said, "Harry, make me an Energy Potion. Half sugar, light ice."

Harry had just brought in the freshly washed clothes and nodded repeatedly. "Okay, I'll get it right away."

"Why have I been so sleepy lately... I don't even feel that tired, but I keep dozing off every now and then." Mu En shook his head in frustration.

"Cats sleep for two-thirds of the day," Lucifer said expressionlessly.

Mu En glared at him irritably. "I'm not a cat."

"Porco wasn't a pig either. But he turned into one—short and fat." Lucifer immediately retorted, "Did you forget how Porco Rosso's height and weight changed all at once when he broke his curse? This curse doesn't just affect your face."

"I suppose... that's true..." Mu En recalled Porco Rosso's transformation back then, then suddenly lowered his head and noticed his stomach as he lay there...

Was that... a love handle?!

He shot to his feet. "Lucifer, Lucifer, where's the scale? Let me see it, now!!"

"You don't need a scale. You have gotten fatter." Lucifer's words stabbed straight into Mu En's heart like a knife.

Mu En took off his shirt and carefully looked down at himself. He used to have a body with perfect proportions, but now... it was covered in a layer of fat.

It was not much, but it was undeniably there.

Yet only he knew that there was no reason his body should have changed shape at all.

With that thought, he drew in a breath, his fingers tracing symbols across his chest. The next moment, strange incantations and magic circles gradually emerged across his skin.

These runes and magic circles normally lay upon his bones, hidden beneath his skin. They ensured that his body always remained in perfect condition, capable of storing energy, restoring magic power, holding items, rapidly repairing biological functions, and more.

A perfect creation built upon human alchemy—and today, it had actually gotten fat.

"Your body is perfectly fine, but you have still gotten fat." Lucifer got straight to the point. "Just as you cannot figure out how you became a cat, you cannot figure out why you have gotten fat either.

"There is only one explanation: the curse has deepened!!"

Mu En remained silent for a long while before helplessly putting his shirt back on.

"Mu En, you need to slow down and enjoy life. The more impatient you are, the more likely the curse is to deepen."

"Perhaps." Mu En pulled on his clothes. Recently, there had been no storms at either the cliff or Privet Drive, leaving him unable to continue with the next step of becoming an Animagus.

"If becoming an Animagus doesn't work either, I'll listen to you and slow down," Mu En said.

Lucifer folded his hands together and said disdainfully, "Sooner or later, you'll realize I'm right. The more desperately you want to get rid of it, the stronger it becomes."

Mu En slapped his chest, and all the runes disappeared. He put his clothes back on, and just then, Harry brought out the Energy Potion and asked curiously, "Uncle Mu En, what are you talking about?"

"His cheeks are filling out," Lucifer said.

Cheeks filling out?

Harry had often been sent to Mrs. Figg's house before. The old woman kept many cats, so he knew what that meant.

It meant a cat's face had grown fatter and rounder.

He glanced at Uncle Mu En. Now that Lucifer mentioned it, it really did seem...

"Lucifer, can you shut up? I'm not a cat. Why would my cheeks fill out?" Mu En snapped.

Then he took a sip of the Energy Potion and immediately changed the subject. "Is the castle repaired?"

Harry nodded. "A lot of the small places are fixed, but there are some broken beams on the third and fourth floors that I can't repair... They're too thick."

As he spoke, Harry's eyes lit up. "Oh, right! I fixed this too."

With that, Harry ran up to the second floor and somehow carried down a gramophone with a huge horn. Mu En had no idea when it had been left behind, but Harry had actually repaired it too.

"Good work." Mu En nodded and said, "I'm going to Diagon Alley. Want to come?"

"Can I?" Harry asked excitedly.

"Of course." Mu En nodded and drained the Energy Potion in one gulp. "If there's no problem, let's leave now."

As soon as he finished speaking, his face changed into that sharply defined appearance. He tidied his hair, put on his clothes properly, and donned a hat.

Harry stood beside him, barely able to contain his excitement as he tied the old headscarf around his head as well.

But what Harry had not expected was that Uncle Mu En did not take him directly to London. Instead, he opened the door and stepped out onto Privet Drive.

"Uncle Mu En, what are we doing?"

Mu En gave his sleeve a light shake, and a small wand appeared in his hand. He gently waved it and said,

"I heard that if you wave your wand by the roadside, a magical bus will come pick you up. I don't know whether it's true, so let's give it a try."

As he spoke, Mu En lightly waved his wand, and the tip glimmered faintly.

Harry was a little puzzled. A bus would come just because someone waved a wand? That was far too strange.

As he was thinking that, he suddenly heard something. It was not coming from the road, though, but from the alley between Number 13 and Number 12, Privet Drive.

The sound gradually grew louder. Harry looked over, but the alley was pitch-black, and something blocked it from view, preventing him from seeing the other end.

Mu En noticed the strange disturbance in the alley as well. He turned toward it, raising his eyebrows in surprise.

The noise grew louder and louder, like thunder. Harry quickly moved to Mu En's side, his eyes fixed on the alley without blinking.

Rumble—

A massive dark shadow burst out of the alley like a rocket.

With an ear-piercing screech of brakes, the enormous dark shadow came to a stop on the road one second later, right before them. It even whipped up Mu En's trench coat.

Harry looked up and discovered that it was a bus with three whole levels!

Yes, a massive three-decker bus had just emerged from the narrow alley between two houses.

Large golden cursive letters were written along its side—Knight Bus.

"Welcome aboard the Knight Bus, emergency transportation for witches and wizards in distress.

"Simply hold out your wand and step aboard, and we can take you anywhere you want to go. I'm the conductor, Stan Shunpike. You're the ones who gave the signal, right?"

Mu En straightened the hat that had been blown crooked. "Yes. Do you go to The Leaky Cauldron?"

Stan Shunpike snapped his fingers and smiled, showing eight teeth. "Of course. The Knight Bus doesn't have a fixed route. We travel all across Britain according to our passengers' needs."

Mu En nodded and stepped aboard first. "Come on, kid. I have a feeling this ride will be exciting."

Harry swallowed. He thought of the way the Knight Bus had appeared. Calling it reckless driving would have been an understatement—it was practically flying over land.

He adjusted the headscarf covering his scar, then gathered his courage and jumped onto the bus.

"All right, brace yourselves. We're leaving. You're lucky—there are no other passengers right now, so we can go straight to The Leaky Cauldron. It'll only take a little over twenty minutes.

"Oh, and it's eleven Sickles each. If you pay fourteen, you get hot cocoa too."

There were no seats on the Knight Bus, only rows of beds. Harry was rather surprised. This was nothing like a normal bus.

As he was thinking that, Mu En had already paid.

Stan Shunpike knocked on the railing with a clang. "Let's go, Ernie. The Leaky Cauldron."

There was another enormous BANG, and Harry, who had been testing the softness of the bed, was thrown onto it. Then he rolled over and slammed onto the floor.

He staggered to his feet, completely disoriented, and could only cling tightly to the bedframe to keep from being flung away.

And this... came with beds??

No matter how he looked at it, this thing should have had roller-coaster-style safety seats instead.

Then he looked at Uncle Mu En and found that Mu En's feet seemed rooted to the floor. No matter how wildly the bus tilted, he showed no sign of falling.

"Michael Jackson?!" Harry muttered.

After his shock faded, he looked out the window again and was instantly horrified. The bus was charging straight onto the pavement.

Then he realized that although it had driven onto the pavement, it hit nothing. Rows of lampposts, mailboxes, and rubbish bins all jumped aside as the bus approached, then returned to their original places after it passed.

It was as if space itself had been twisted. Lampposts and pedestrians that had originally been barely a few inches apart were forcibly pulled far enough away for the bus to pass through.

More than twenty minutes later, accompanied by a huge screech of brakes, Harry finally realized that they had arrived on Charing Cross Road.

"Finally... we're here..." His face was flushed red, and he felt sick.

Almost the instant the doors opened, he leaped off the bus and breathed in the calm, fresh air.

Mu En ambled down after him, smiling in puzzlement. "I didn't expect someone so good at riding a flying broomstick to be unable to handle a bus."

Harry leaned against a lamppost, suppressing the surging acid in his stomach. His vision swam as he said, "I... maybe I'm only good at flying by myself..."

Just then, they both heard an indignant girl's voice. "Mum, Dad, come over here! I'm sure there's a very old pub there. Why won't you believe me?!"

"Sweetheart, your mother and I have come here so many times. We've never seen any pub," a man replied helplessly, then quickly added, "Slow down, child."

Mu En and Harry turned their heads and saw a girl with bushy brown hair walking down the street, tugging her parents hard toward them with one hand on each side.

Behind her, the couple she was pulling exchanged a look and smiled helplessly...