Chapter 5
Meanwhile, Zachary, Jessie and Finn had woken up with the sunlight beaming onto their faces.
Zachary managed to pull himself up and told Jessie and Finn, who were partially lodged under a rock, “Hey! Come on! It’s time to go!”
“Shut up,” Finn glowered, but Zachary tugged him up.
Jessie, who now had a red nose, shivered. “I-I’m cold,” she held her hands under her armpits, as she had done throughout the night, “d-do you k-k-know the w-way h-h-h-home?”
“I think it’s over that way,” Zachary pointed a freezing cold finger towards some mist, “come on!”
They skidded down the hill faster than any of them wanted, mainly due to Finn slipping on some mud and getting his trousers and brand new school shirt ruined. His hands were red and sore and chapped and Jessie thought that he might need a hospital.
“Look, there’s a village at the bottom of the mountain,” Zachary tried to persuade them, “and I can’t go alone because I might not find you.”
Jessie wiped her runny nose on her wet sleeve and mumbled, “I hope you’re right.”
When they had come across a cluster of buildings on the country road, they could barely stand up from exhaustion. Jessie was leaning on Finn’s shoulders, her feet almost skidding on the frozen mud below. Finn himself was slightly floppy and kept sneezing. Zachary’s head felt woolly and slower and he knew that he must be ill.
When they stopped outside the local pub, Zachary knocked on the door as Jessie slumped onto the cold gravel. She didn’t even care that it was digging into her skin. Finn leant on the wooden fence, his heart ringing in his ears, deafening him to all other sounds.
Zachary managed to knock on the door again. As it opened, the barmaid called out, “What do you want?”
When she saw three children there, she was about to slam the door on them again when she saw how grubby they were.
Zachary tried to smile at her. “Hi, I-I’m Zachary. My Uncle Mack drinks here sometimes.”
The barmaid cried, “What in God’s name has happened to you bairns? You look like Death warmed up.”
Jessie could only mumble one word, but it was loud enough. “Hoppital.”
“Hoppital?” the barmaid asked, then her eyes widened. “You mean hospital? I shouldn’t do this, but – you look awful. Come in.”
Soon the three children were sitting down by the unlit fireplace, holding mugs of coffee – the only warm drink in the pub – as the barmaid gabbled on the landline.
“Yes, they just turned up out of nowhere. I know one of the kids, he’s a regular’s nephew. Haven’t seen the other two before. Thank you.”
She placed the phone back on the speaker and glanced at the three of them over the counter. “The village doctor’s on the way. What have you been doing?”
Zachary gabbled about being in a stranger’s car when they fell off of the train to school and had to walk over the Cairnsmore of Carsphrain.
“You poor bairns,” the barmaid sighed, “and you were out all night?”
Zachary nodded. Finn and Jessie were too numb to talk or do anything except sip coffee.
The barmaid then questioned why they hadn’t asked the stranger to drive them to a telephone box. Zachary looked down at the floor as he said that he had been a ‘bad man’ who had tried to hurt Jessie.
The barmaid swore under her breath and went to make another phone call.
The village doctor, a portly, kind man with thinning red hair, said that Jessie and Finn were suffering from hypothermia and needed medical attention immediately. Zachary seemed to be reasonably better off than either of them, but had to go to the hospital anyway.
When the three of them were lying in their hospital beds, their parents were contacted. Zachary’s horrified parents rushed immediately to his bedside. Finn and Jessie’s parents took the next train up from Essex. When Jessie was able to sit up properly, about two days later, a policewoman came around to talk to her about ‘the bad man’.
Jessie didn’t want any nasty witches or wizards to come after them, so she said – truthfully – that she didn’t know what type of car it was or the licence plate. Only that the man had a London accent and was named Stanley.
The policewoman filed a report and left Jessie in her room, as the girl cuddled close to her teddy. She promised then that she would never go back to that school.
The next day, both Finn’s and Jessie’s parents went south with them. They privately asked their children why they hadn’t gone to the magic school and what happened to their wands and cases?
Both Finn and Jessie replied that there had been a mistake and they couldn’t go. Their parents kept asking why, because it was obvious that they were a witch and wizard.
But both of them said that it wasn’t worth going back. Their parents wondered if something was amiss, since they didn’t talk about the school, or the magical world. But they didn’t pursue it any further.
Zachary went straight home after his parents took him from the hospital.
“Zachary, darling,” his mother knelt down in front of him when they entered the front room and looked into his eyes, “we should try and contact the school and say what happened to you. You lost your brand new trunk and all of your school supplies.”
Zachary shook his head. “No, I don’t want to go back.”
“But you were so talented, Zachary.” She stood up and sighed.
Zachary felt torn inside. He desperately wanted to go, but if he tried then next time he might not make it out alive.
After a week, he eventually confided in his mother about what had really happened at the train station. She was horrified and held him close, calling him her ‘poor baby’. She didn’t let him out of her sight for weeks after that and he felt more isolated than ever.
He still sent letters to Finn and Jessie’s houses, though. It wasn’t their fault they ended up like this.
Jessie’s letters came with stickers on them and she had signed her name in green gel. Finn’s came with stick-figure drawings of him playing football.
Zachary kept them in his dresser. He didn’t want his mother to see them.
When Minerva McGonagall visited Zachary’s house to tell him and his parents that it was now safe for him to return to Hogwarts in the new year, his mother had stood up from her sofa and barked.
“My son was tortured! How could you even think of sending him to that school?”
“I assure you, Mrs Small-Bone,” McGonagall tried her best to calm her, “that any mistreatment will be severely dealt with.”
“I can’t trust you,” Mrs Small-Bone shrieked, “I’m sorry, you seem like a good person, but I can’t send my son there.”
“I want to go,” a small voice piped up from the doorway.
“Zachary, are you sure?” his father asked.
Zachary nodded. “I don’t care what they say about people who weren’t brought up in the magic world. I’m going.”
McGonagall thanked him before leaving. As she did, she wondered about the boy’s surname. Was it possible that he was somehow related to Susan Bones? If he was, and if they could prove it, there may be a chance that Zachary could go through Hogwarts unscathed.
But even if he was related to the Bones family, she doubted that he would be left alone by purebloods’ angry glares.