"Ron, I need my wand!"
When they'd left, Harry and Ron had packed everything together. They hadn't thought they'd need their wands on the train, so they'd put them in their bags.
"In the bag on the back seat! Get it yourself—I'm driving! Get mine out too."
Harry remembered Yulian had mentioned a wizard's battle suit in his letter. It seemed he really did need to get one.
Harry struggled to undo his seat belt and crawled toward the back seat through the violent jolts. The moment his fingers closed around his wand, he felt its familiar, reassuring tremor.
"Incendio!" he shouted, firing a red beam out the back window.
The spell missed its target by at least thirty feet and vanished into the air.
The high-altitude winds, the car's shaking, and the fact that he'd never tried casting while moving—all of it made accurate spellwork nearly impossible.
"No good!" He crawled back to the front seat. "Can you make it steadier?"
"That's hard, but I can make them unsteady!" A rare, wild glint shone in Ron's eyes. "Hold on tight!"
He yanked a yellow lever marked "Emergency Evasion (Don't Touch)."
For the first time in its life, the Ford rolled over, completing a full 360-degree barrel roll in the air.
Harry felt as if his stomach had stayed behind at the original angle while his body had flown into another dimension.
The pursuing riders clearly hadn't expected that move. The nearest one couldn't turn in time, and his broom skimmed past the car's underside, his cloak snapping in the wind.
"We did it!" Ron roared with laughter. "That's the dodgeball tactic!"
But it was only a brief reprieve.
The lead rider—judging by her build, a woman—raised a strangely shaped short wand. A mass of black energy gathered at its