An Unexpected Adventure! Part-2

{4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England}

{08:07 AM, 1st Sept, 1991}

Rigel walked out of the suburbs of Little Whinging, he looked around to make sure he wasn't followed as he pulled his wand out, and a galleon from his inventory. He held the wand in his right arm and lifted it up slightly.

'1 ... 2 ... 3 ... 4 ... 5,' Rigel counted down in his head, he had to reflexively jump back in order to avoid getting pummeled by the triple-decker purple behemoth that almost appeared out of thin air.

The bell jingled as the gate opened, Stan Shunpike almost swung on the bar as he introduced himself in an excited monotone, "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 evening, a ride on the Knight Bus cost eleven Sickles, for thirteen sickles, you can get a cup of hot chocolate, and, for fifteen, a hot water bottle and a toothbrush in the color of their choice."

Rigel tossed the galleon he retrieved earlier toward Stan who caught it, "Red, Blue, or Green?" Stan asked as he stepped aside letting Rigel board the bus, he looked around and the bus was empty, there was not a single soul onboard excluding the driver and conductor.

"Just get me to the Kings Cross Station," Rigel said as he moved back to a seat and held onto the bar for dear life, the gates closed with a hiss, and in a few moments, the bus started moving. While it was quite clearly depicted in the movies that the Knight bus was a roller coaster. Rigel currently wanted to curse at Ernie to slow down, or his face might really be flattened into a pancake.

'How is it even possible to feel the air forcing my eyes closed in a completely sealed bus?'

As Rigel fought to keep his stomach in place, the bus zoomed across London. They arrived at the Kings Cross station in what felt like forever, Rigel almost threw himself off the bus, as he turned around the glare at the monstrosity of a ride, he only felt a whiff of air and the Knight bus disappeared into the distance.

'Why do I feel like those two just like to scare people to death, it's their own little game of who could make their newest prisoner puke.'

Rigel grumbled somewhat as he walked into the station, there was no strict security searching for trespassers so he easily managed to slip into the platforms. He searched for platform 9 and quickly descended the stairs. The platform 9 3/4 was supposedly hidden behind a solid wall that separates platforms 9 and 10. Rigel walked through the crowd until he came across a wall that was faintly glowing blue. He sighed in relief as he approached the barrier, he used his hands to check if he would get a notification to leave the Dungeon, his hand struck the solid wall and nothing happened.

'Wait what do you mean, I thought this was it?'

Rigel scrutinized the wall once again, sure enough, it was softly glowing blue, he glared at the wall for a bit before the first scene when he came into this alternate reality made a bit more sense.

'A ticket, I need a ticket to go through!'

While he wasn't sure that going through the platform required the ticket, right now he was pretty sure he needed a ticket, or maybe more specifically Harry's ticket to go through and complete this dungeon.

'The timer on the quest was exactly 1 hour, which meant that in another 30-40 minutes Harry would go through this barrier and my quest would automatically fail.'

As he didn't wanna think about being permanently stuck in the Dungeon, he walked away and went up the stairs again, he decided to wait for Harry here. There was quite a traffic going about on their business so he wasn't as bored as he was expecting to be, there were a number of characters going through the trains, several of them missing their stops while some unable to board their trains.

After waiting for a while he finally saw Harry, the Harry in this timeline, or canon was very different from the one he had gotten used to seeing almost every day. He was almost half a foot smaller, he was bonier with dryer hair, the glasses were horrendous, and the raw 'N' shaped scar he had attempted to hide with his curly hair just didn't work out.

Harry was looking around in confusion, Rigel turned around and let him pass by him, he looked around and sure enough, saw the bumbling clan of redheads bobbing through the overpass.

'Alright it would still take them a couple of minutes to reach here and then a couple more to help Harry, I should go to Harry and hopefully he would remember me from this morning making this a little easier.'

Harry was looking around on Platform 9, he was dragging his large trunk behind him. Rigel reached him and waved cautiously, which got Harry's attention, first, he looked around but upon finding no one he dragged his trunk and arrived in from of Rigel.

"Couldn't find the Plaform 9 and three-quarters?" Rigel gave him a knowing look.

"...W-wait ren't you...Y-Yeah, where is it?" He stuttered before asking hopefully.

"Alight follow me, I'll show you something cool," Rigel waved at him to hurry up as they arrived at the blue wall again. He patted the wall a few times and knocked on it for good measure.

"See, solid right?" He asked and Harry nodded.

"Alright, lemme show you something cool, lemme see your ticket?" Rigel asked, Harry extended the ticket he was holding and Rigel grabbed it.

"No!" A man appeared from the nearby pillar, he wasn't there a second ago but having seen Aurors roaming around Diagon Alley before, Rigel was sure that he was standing guard outside the entrance to the magical world just in case. He quickly reached out, and his hand this time went through the wall not wasting any time Rigel dived through the pillar.

It felt like going through a dark tunnel and Rigel stumbled as he almost fell, he reflexively grabbed the door, and as he got his inertia under control Rigel looked around the familiar hallway again. He was back in Privet Drive, and as a bombardment of notifications took away his vision, he heard Lily asking him, "Are you okay Rigel, you look a little shaken?"

Rigel nodded okay, he closed the door and walked with Lily towards the living room where everyone was just figuring out where they wanted to sit.

...

'...So that was an awkward first meeting?'

Rigel looked at Harry once again comparing the two versions before he shook his head.

'Yeah I think I would take that cup of tea...'

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AN- So what do you think of the Dungeon system, I want it to be more expansive than just a short trip, but this was just a test run so we'll see what chaos we can cause later! Hope you liked the chapter!

P.S.- Read 5 Chapters ahead, chapter 20 - Platform 9 3/4! at:- p.atreon.com/DesMark_ (remove the first '.' in the link).