Su Er lingered in the air for a little while before shakily tucking the Remembrall back inside his robes and pushing his broom down to catch up with his colleagues, who were already flying toward a patch of light.
The lights clustered together, crisscrossing and scattered like stars, stretching in every direction, with deep black squares dotted among them.
They were descending toward one of those deep black squares.
"We're here!" Tonks shouted. A few seconds later, the group landed, and the Disillusionment Charm on Harry was lifted.
The boy's face was numb with cold, his lips bluish-purple.
Only Emmeline Vance's help kept him from toppling off his broom.
This was a patch of overgrown grass near Grimmauld Place, a little square attached to it. The fronts of the surrounding houses looked gloomy and forbidding.
Some of the houses' windows looked as though they had been smashed by stones, and the dim streetlights cast a pallid glow over the shards still clinging to the windowpanes.
"What is this place?" Harry hunched up, partly from fear and partly from cold.
"You don't recognize it?" Su Er sounded a little surprised.
"Should I?" Harry blinked blankly.
"You should." Su Er shook his head. "You've been here before."
Just then, Moody took something resembling a silver cigarette lighter from his pocket and clicked it several times, drawing in all the surrounding light.
"Hurry up. We're not somewhere safe yet." He led the way toward a pitch-black alley on the right side of the little square.
Kingsley and the witch Emmeline Vance drew their wands, watching the darkness warily.
They soon covered the short distance. No burly, bearded man sprang out of the darkness. The familiar surroundings came into view, stirring Harry's memories, and he finally recognized where they were.
"This is..." He seemed