Chapter 2: A Landing and a Ride

I woke up to the feeling of someone taping me on the shoulder.

It was the lady besides me, again.

“Are you not going to eat anything?” she asked, “You have been asleep for more than five hours! The flight attendant has passed by with the food cart too many times for me to count. I finally decided to wake you as she came around again. Come on, you have to eat something.”

She pointed to the food cart that was besides her, “What do you want? Peanuts? Some chips? Maybe one of these fruit bowls?”

Though I did wanted to eat something, I has a little taken back at the way she was persuading me to eat; for a brief moment she reminded me of the evil witch from Hansel and Gretel, trying to feed me so I could get fat enough for her to eat me.

Realizing that she was waiting for my answer, and following my taste buds, I told the flight attendant, “I’ll have the fruit bowl.” She handed it to me, and left after I had said, “Thank-you.” Opening up the bowl and placing the lid underneath it, I picked up the fork inside and started eating.

“See,” the lady said, “I knew you must have been hungry. One can only go without food for a certain amount of time. You know, my son once went to the Egyptian desert and didn’t eat for a whole week. A whole week! Can you imagine, I was so worried…”

There she went, rambling on and on about how much she feared for her son’s safety, while I was trying to enjoy my delicious fruit bowl. Don’t get me wrong, I was thankful that she woke me up so I wouldn’t go all hungry like her son, but her rapid, loud, annoying voice was giving me a headache. I could have put on my earphones on and pretend to have fallen asleep, but at that moment I wasn’t in the mood for hearing music nor closing my eyes. So, I sat there listening and nodding to everything the woman was saying. From time to time, I would just gaze out the window and look at the different shapes the clouds were forming over time; they were comforting.

Somehow, maybe from boredom, I fell asleep again.

Later, for the second time that day, I was woken up by a tap on my shoulder. It was her, again.

“Wake up girl,” she said, “You need to put on your seatbelt because we are about to descend. We are about to arrive in London!”

I looked out the window, and sure enough, there was the big city of London.

I started to get nervous. Throughout most of the flight those nerves had almost disappeared, but knowing that I would soon arriveat my destination had brought them back.

I fastened my seatbelt as the plane started to descend.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” said the flight attendant over the speaker, “Once the seat belt sign is off, please make sure to gather your belongings before exiting the plane. Please stay seated until the doors open. Thank-you and have a great evening.”

I got my backpack from the overhead bin, placed my CD player inside, and, like the good American that I am, I threw the empty fruit bowl in a nearby trash. A little after the plane had landed and stopped on the ground, the doors opened and all of us passengers stood up and made our way to them.

A little after, as I walked through the gate that led to the terminal, I checked the back pocket of my jeans to make sure the piece of parchment that Dumbledore had sent me, containing the description of the people escorting me, was still there. It was, but I decided not to take it out until after I had gathered my luggage.

As I approached the carousel of luggage, I began to look for my pair of green suitcases. It took me about 3 minutes to gather them; it could have taken less time if each suitcase was not under a pile of other suitcases.

It was then that I took out the piece of parchment and scanned over the information written on it:

Remus Lupin - Tall; mousy-brown hair; light, brown eyes; shabby, patched up robes/clothes.

Nymphadora Tonks - Average height; petite; spiky, pink hair; dark eyes; Muggle clothes (T-shirt and jeans).

Kingsley Shacklebolt - Tall; bald; of black skin; dark robes/clothes; golden hoop in right ear.

I lifted my head up from the parchment to survey the airport.

‘Nope,’ I thought to myself, ‘No one around who matches this.’

I scanned the parchment one last time, smiling questionably at the name ‘Nymphadora’ (who would name their kid that way?), before folding it up and placing it back in the back pocket of my jeans.

As I slightly bent down to pick up my suitcases, I got the natural human urge to go to the bathroom.

Damn! To go or not to go, that was my current dilemma.

‘What if I go and they come?’ I thought, ‘They are going to be looking all over for me!…Oh hell, I’ll have to risk it.” I really couldn’t hold it; after being on a plane for almost 11 hours, I don’t think no one could.

I looked around for the bathroom sign, and when I had found it, it was next to the phone-booths, I marched straight to it.

When I had finished, and had neatly washed my hands, I started to walk about the airport to see if I could find my escorts.

After looking for only minutes, I spotted two people who matched, more or less, two of the three written descriptions. By the looks of it, they also seemed to be looking for me.

As I began walking towards them, I started to get a bit nervous again.

‘What should I say?’ I thought.

“Hi,” was all I managed to get out.

“Are you Andra?” asked the woman, who I instantly knew to be the one with the funny name.

“Um, yes,” I responded.

“Nice to meet you,” she said, while stretching a hand for me to shake, which I did, “I’m Tonks.”

I smiled at her.

“I’m Remus Lupin,” said the tall man with mousy-brown hair.

I shook his hand; “Nice to meet you, “ I told him.

“Kingsley sends his apologies,” he informed me, “he had an urgent call to investigate an Auror case, so he couldn’t accompany us.”

I nodded.

“Don’t worry, though,” said Tonks, “the two of us will take good care of you. Now, lets go get your luggage so we can be on our way.”

Looking down at my two, small, suitcases, I said, “This is all the luggage I have.”
“Oh,” she said, sounding a bit surprised, “Well, we can leave right now. Come on.” She motioned us to follow her.

“Let me help you with those,” said Remus, taking my suitcases.

“Thanks,” I responded.

“Here Remus,” Tonks told him, as we walked towards the airport exit, “Let me take one.”

“Its okay, Tonks, I got it,” he told her.

“Nonsense,” she said, taking one of the suitcases from him, “You know you can’t stress yourself like that.”

He didn’t say anything, he just rolled his eyes and kept on walking.

Once outside, Tonks called for a taxi.

“You know, I don’t know how Muggles can travel in cars,” she said before we got in, “these things take forever to get you to your desired destination, and that’s not to mention when there is traffic.”

“Amen, for that,” said the taxi driver, who ‘over heard’ her while putting my luggage in the trunk, “but unfortunately this is what pays the bills.”

We all laughed at that; Tonks was blushing.

The taxi driver stepped on the pedal and began to drive. A he was turning on his car radio, I turned towards Remus, and asked, “Why didn’t we just Apparate to where we are going?”

“Well, Tonks suggested we do it this way, assuming you didn’t know how to Apparate,” he answered, then asked, “Do you know how to Apparate?”

“Uh, yes,” I responded, “I’ve known how to do it since I was nine, but I don’t often do it. I find that I don’t need to, I enjoy much more to use Muggle transportation.”

“Wait,” said Tonks, “You could Apparate since you where nine? Doesn’t the American Ministry require its Wizarding folk to be 18 years old to be able to Apparate?”

“Well, I don’t really know,” I said truthfully, “I’ve never really been associated with the American Ministry. My grandmother said that it was best for me to live like Muggles do, for my safety and her calmness. She has this big issue with law enforcement from the Wizardry community, I don’t know why but I guess it has to do with…” I broke off.

Why was I confessing these things to these people? I didn’t know them!

“To do with…what?” Tonks asked.

“Um, nothing,” I answered her, “So, uh, where are we going?”

“Uh, here,” said Lupin, taking out a small piece of parchment from his pants’ pocket and placing it in my hand, “Read this and memorize it.”

I began to read, “The headquarters of ... ”

“No!” Lupin cut me off, “Read it to yourself. This is something that only the members of the Order should know, and no one else, understood?”

“Yes,” I responded.

I continued to read what was in the parchment to myself:

The headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix may be found

at number twelve, Grimmauld Place, London.

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So there it is, number two. It took me quite a while to post it because I'm working on this essay assigment for my AP English class next year; I'm doing it on Homer's Iliad! Oh, andI would like to mention that I've only beenon a plane once, and I was only like 7, so I had to basicallytake the knowledge of being a passanger from the various movies I've seen.Anyway, I want to thank those people who reviewed the first chapter, and I hope you all liked this one as well. It'll get more interesting from now on, I promise.

And please, don't forget to REVIEW! REVIEW! REVIEW!