How It All Goes Down
A Place to Hide
- Chaos breaks loose at the wedding. Somehow we knew this would happen.
- Ron, Hermione, and Harry Apparate away – rather inexplicably, to Tottenham Court Road, a busy London street. Hermione, on top of things as always, has a change of clothes for Ron and Harry, who are still in their conspicuous wizard robes.
- Hermione's also got a ton of other necessities magically crammed into a Mary Poppins-like handbag, including books and Harry's trusty Invisibility Cloak. What would we do without Hermione?
- The trio heads into an all-night coffee shop to plan their next move. Hermione's convinced that they're safer in the Muggle world for the time being, where people won't recognize Harry and his famous scar.
- Never mind – two burly workmen come into the café, and turn out not to be Muggles, but disguised Death Eaters. In a split second, curses are flying through the air. Harry, wearing the Invisibility Cloak, Stuns one of the Death Eaters; after an explosion and accidentally Stunning a waitress, Hermione paralyzes the other one.
- Panicking, the trio locks the café and turns out the lights, hoping not to attract (any more) attention. They wipe everyone's memories (the two Death Eaters and the unfortunate waitress) and leave them there.
- Harry decides that they should return to the old Order of the Phoenix headquarters as Sirius's house at Grimmauld Place, despite the danger.
- They arrive at the house and encounter a series of jinxes designed to catch Severus Snape, the only member of the Order to have defected to the Death Eaters.
- Harry feels a sharp pain in his scar – he can tell that Voldemort is angry somewhere. He thinks that the psychic connection between the two of them is still open when Voldemort loses control.
- Ron's father sends his Patronus as a messenger to tell them that the Weasleys are fine, but that they shouldn't reply.
- The pain in Harry's head is unbearable. He flees to the bathroom just in time for another vision – one of the Death Eaters that attacked them in the Tottenham Court Road is being punished for losing Harry. Voldemort is torturing him… or, rather, he's forcing Draco Malfoy to do the torturing. Harry can see the horror and fear in Draco's face.