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// Chapter 21:  Back to Diagon Alley 
// Story: The Accidental Invasion 
// by computerneek 
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Hailey froze when Draco made eye contact with her through the crack in the cabinet.  She, and the Weasleys, had used Floo Powder to get to Diagon Alley- and she had, she was fairly sure, ended up in the wrong grate.  She hadn’t recognized the shop, and the street outside looked…  less than friendly.
Then Draco Malfoy and his father had appeared, and she’d hidden inside this cabinet.  Lucius had started haggling with Mr. Borgin, the apparent shop proprietor, while Draco explored the shop idly.
Draco reached forwards, and pulled the door open just a crack- and Hailey didn’t move.  What was he going to do?
Then Draco, recognition flashing across his eyes, leaned close.  “Floo powder?” he muttered, quickly and quietly.
She stared, and nodded mutely.
“When you leave, turn left and go until you reach Diagon Alley.  Be careful, Knockturn Alley isn’t safe.”
“Come, Draco,” Lucius called, and Draco turned without a backward glance to obey his father.
Hailey let out a small, relieved breath, and waited until the shop was empty once again- Mr. Borgin disappeared back into the back room- before she emerged.
Finally, she stepped out onto the street, glad that she didn’t have to worry about shoving her glasses up her sweaty nose.
She looked both ways.  Draco wasn’t wrong.  A sign across the street told her she was in Knockturn Alley- and the whole street gave her the creeps.
So, praying Draco hadn’t been trying to get her even more lost, she turned left, and started walking.
Very suddenly, an aged witch got in front of her, with a tray.  “Not lost, are you?”
She took one quick glance at the tray- which seemed to be full of whole, human fingernails- before ducking under it and breaking into a run.
She was fast.  She knew she was very fast; Dudley, for all his size, wasn’t exactly slow, and she’d had plenty of practice avoiding his blows.  Then of course, when she’d experimented at Hogwarts, she’d found that she was actually slightly faster as Hailey than as Harry.  Was it because she was lighter or something?  She didn’t know.
And, at the moment at least, she didn’t care.  All she cared was that she was faster than the two- no, three- people that were chasing her.  She ducked under someone’s outstretched arm, jumped over someone that had crouched low in her path to catch her.  She shot down the alley like a little black bullet.
“Hailey!  What’dya think you’re doin’ down there?”
She didn’t even hesitate when she heard Hagrid’s voice, dodging around a random black-robed shopgoer and continuing her rush.  He was in front of her.
She saw him glance up the street, then at her pursuers- and, finally, he stepped in behind her with an almighty crash before he hurried after her.
She knew she was going in the right direction when Hagrid caught up, put his hand to her back, and started parting the crowd like only he could.
Finally, Hailey burst out onto a much more familiar cobbled street and looked both ways as she drew to a halt.
Gringotts Bank was visible in the distance.  She’d made it back to Diagon Alley.
She took a deep breath, and turned to Hagrid.  “Thanks,” she told him.  “I, er, got lost.  Floo powder.”
Hagrid rolled his eyes.  “At least yeh know when ter run,” he grumbled, looking down at her wand, which was in her hand.
She put it away, not having used it at all.  “And when to fight,” she nodded.
“Hailey?”
Hailey looked up.  It was Bonbon.  “Hmm?”
“What were you doing in there?”
“Got lost,” she answered promptly.  “Floo powder.”
“Floo powder?”
She blinked.  “Uh…  traveling by fireplace, I guess.  Ended up in the wrong one.”
“Okay,” Bonbon stated simply, though Hailey got the distinct impression she still didn’t understand at all.  “Anyways, we need you.”  She filled her lungs to go on.
“Sure,” Hailey interrupted.  “I was traveling with the Weasleys- can they be made aware, or…?”
She tilted her head, and nodded.  “We’ll take care of that.  Lyra’s waiting at Fortescue’s.”





“Hey Lyra,” Hailey said, approaching the table.  “Where’s Twilight?”
“Busy,” Lyra answered promptly, an edge of hard finality in her tone.  She took a deep breath.  “And speaking of, Hailey.  Over the summer so far, Twilight has purchased one copy of every book found in Flourish and Blotts and attacked them with a quill, highlighter, and bookmarks- lots of bookmarks.  What I have here,” she tapped a stack of somewhat worn but shiny books on the table in front of her, which showed an astounding number of bookmarks sticking from the pages.  She chuckled at Hailey’s expression.  “What I have here is Twilight’s annotated copies of our Defense Against the Dark Arts textbooks for this year, which are the same for both years.  She said they’re worse than useless, but it’s your call.”
She scowled.  Lyra wasn’t wrong- back when she had accepted the position as Head Student Instructor for Defense Against the Dark Arts, she had also- as she had known at the time- been accepting a uniquely powerful, yet similarly responsible, position on their management team.
Specifically, any major change to the curriculum presented by the Professors simply had to be approved by her.  And if she decided some major change to the same was necessary on her own, only a unanimous vote by the rest of the management team could override her.
It was a very important duty- and one that, it seemed, the rest of the management team was requesting she address.  Or at least a part of it- Twilight was the head of the management team, after all.
She sat down, and plucked the first one off the stack.  “Might as well give ‘em a look,” she mused, as she opened it to the first page to start skimming it.  Twilight was, if possible, even more of a bookworm than Hermione, so she knew she could trust the notes scrawled in the margins to be accurate, the highlighted passages to be the important ones, and so on.  She still cross-checked whenever they mentioned a different part in the text, though.





It took Hailey hardly an hour to make it through all of the books, thanks to Twilight’s notes.  “Rubbish,” she mumbled, tossing the last of the books on top of the pile.
Bonbon looked up, from where she was pouring over some charts of numbers.  Lyra had run off somewhere.  “Oh?”
“Twilight was right,” Hailey told her.  “These books will be useless.”
Hermione, walking past, stopped and looked.  “Don’t be so quick to say that,” she remanded.  “They were obviously assigned for a reason, weren’t they?”
Hailey raised an eyebrow at her, then slid the entire stack to the side of the table Hermione was on.  “Can you find for me the one place in all these books that Lockhart actually explains how to perform any of the spells he uses?”
Hermione scowled, but Bonbon raised an eyebrow.  “There is one?” she asked.
Hailey rounded on her.  “Exactly my point,” she declared.  “There is none.  These are storybooks, Hermione, not textbooks.  And they’re internally inconsistent, so I’m fairly sure they’re fiction as well.”
“They are not!” Hermione barked.
Hailey raised an eyebrow.  “Hermione, have you read Lockhart’s books?”
“No?”
“Have you read Twilight’s annotated copies of Lockhart’s books?”
“No?”  She looked even more confused.
Hailey glanced at Bonbon.  “Have you heard what Dumbledore said about our new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor?”
“No?”  She was now completely bewildered.
“He only said,” Bonbon said simply, “and I quote, ‘He’s a fraud’.”
Hailey looked at her, then back at Hermione.  “I’ve now done all three, and I say we’ll be lucky if he teaches us as much as Quirrell did.”
“Officially?” Bonbon asked.
Hailey nodded.  “Officially, only our instructors need these books, for they will be useless to us.”  She scowled.  “What’s your bet Lockhart himself is the new instructor?  It’d certainly explain the booklist.”
Bonbon tilted her head.  “Not impossible,” she said eventually.  “And I can’t think of anyone else it could be, right off.”
“Couldn’t be,” Hermione said simply.  “Look at all he’s done.”
“Where?” Hailey asked.  “Where can I find that?”
“His books.”
“His fiction,” she corrected.  “There are forty seven points, which Twilight has taken pains to point out in her annotated copies, of chronological conflict between the various books.”  She tapped a finger on the stack in front of her.
Hermione scowled at her.  “Whatever.  I’m going to Flourish and Blotts, I’ve got to get my books for this year.”
Bonbon watched her storm past.  “You won’t need the Lockhart books,” she informed her, amusedly.  Perhaps, Hailey mused, the first time she’d ever shown significant emotion in front of her.
Hermione whirled to glare at her.  “Oh?  Why not?” she demanded.
Bonbon shrugged.  “Because she said you won’t.”
Hermione snorted.  “But she can’t make that decision,” she stated.
“The Head Student Instructor for Defense Against the Dark Arts can,” Bonbon corrected her.
Hermione glared back at her.  “Then I’ll just have to go ask her then, won’t I?”
“She’s right here.”  Bonbon gestured towards Hailey, who smiled.  She’d never told any of her friends that she was a head student instructor, only that she had become a student instructor.
Hermione looked past Hailey, then at her again.  “You-!”
Hailey nodded.  “Yes.”
“You’re not-!  You can’t be!”
“She is,” Bonbon told her.
“When?”
“Last year,” Hailey told her.  “I never did tell you about that part of it, did I?”
“But the Stone,” she said.  “That-!”
“Had we known about it,” Bonbon interrupted, “we would probably have sent a larger team and lost people.  Hailey probably saved lives by keeping it to just you, herself, Ron, and Alastor.”  She smiled.  “The ones she knew she could count on.”
Hermione blushed.
Hailey folded her arms on the table.  “If you want to read Twilight’s annotated copies, go right ahead,” she said.  “And if you want to buy them for yourself, go right ahead on that as well.  But it’s only on the booklist for our DADA instructors.”
“Our?” Hermione asked, looking between her and Bonbon.  “Our?”
Hailey nodded.  “Yes.”
Bonbon shrugged.   “She’s on our team,” she told Hermione.  “All our Head Student Instructors are.”
Hermione took a deep, calming breath, and let it out.  “Okay then.”  She looked at Hailey.  “Have you gotten your shopping done?” she asked.
She shook her head.  “Been working,” she told her.  “A Head Student Instructor’s work goes beyond the school year itself.”  She scowled.  “Especially for DADA, with the ‘professors’ we’ve been getting.”