"J. K. Rowling - The Prisoner of Azbakan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rowling J. K)

shone from any of the large square houses.

He bent over his trunk again, but almost immediately stood up once more,
his hand clenched on his wand. He had sensed rather than heard it:
someone or something was standing in the narrow gap between the garage
and the fence behind him. Harry squinted at the black alleyway. If only
it would move, then he'd know whether it was just a stray cat or --
something else.

"Lumos," Harry muttered, and a light appeared at the end of his wand,
almost dazzling him. He held it high over his head, and the
pebble-dashed walls of number two suddenly sparkled; the garage door
gleamed, and between them Harry saw, quite distinctly, the hulking
outline of something very big, with wide, gleaming eyes.

Harry stepped backward. His legs hit his trunk and he tripped. His wand
flew out of his hand as he flung out an arm to break his fall, and he
landed, hard, in the gutter --

There was a deafening BANG, and Harry threw up his hands to shield his
eyes against a sudden blinding light --

With a yell, he rolled back onto the pavement, just in time. A second
later, a gigantic pair of wheels and headlights screeched to a halt
exactly where Harry had just been lying. They belonged, as Harry saw
when he raised his head, to a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which
had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelled
The Knight Bus.

For a Split second, Harry wondered if he had been knocked silly by his
fall. Then a conductor in a purple uniform leapt out of the bus and
began to speak loudly to the night.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch
or wizard. just stick out your wand hand, step on board) and we can take
you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be
your conductor this eve --"

The conductor stopped abruptly. He had just caught sight of "Harry, who
was still sitting on the ground. Harry snatched up his wand again and
scrambled to his feet. Close up, he saw that Stan Shunpike was only a
few years older than he was, eighteen or nineteen at most, with large,
protruding ears and quite a few pimples.

"What were you doin' down there?" said Stan, dropping his professional
manner.

"Fell over," said Harry.

"'Choo fall over for?" sniggered Stan.