OMG its has been….6 years since I looked at this last. I decided to overhaul it and maybe I even get a little farther this time.
PROLOGUE
My First memories are of a blinding green light and a flying motorcycle. The first I never mentioned to anyone. The second, though I often dreamt of it, I was assured could not exist.
My life as I knew it was humble enough. I lived in an unexceptional house on an unexceptional street in the town of Little Whinging, Surrey. I was a solitary child but not by choice. My cousin, Dudley ruled the schoolyard and had deemed I should not have friends and no one dared defy him. At home Dudley ruled as well. He got the first choice and best of everything while I, the burden left on their doorstep, was granted only his castoffs. If I knew what a house-elf was at that young age I would have thought myself one. For the sole difference between my lot in life and that of a lowly house-elf was the privilege to wear clothes and receive a state-provided education.
I had a distinctive scar on my forehead that my aunt told me I acquired in the automobile accident that took the lives of my parents. There begins and ends the knowledge of my life before the Dursleys. Beyond an insult scattered here or there my parents were not spoken of. If you look at the pictures in my family home you would think there was nothing worth remembering before Dudley was born. There wasn't even a photograph of Aunt Petunia's Parents, who did not live to see, Dudley and I, their only grandchildren born.
I would lie in bed at night and wonder what my parents looked like. Who gave me the green eyes? Which of them had black hair? Did I inherit my bad eyesight from one of them or was that simply a result of my less than exemplary environment.
Chapter 1: When Magic Came Home to Roost
If this were a muggle book the name of this chapter would have been "You've got mail!" But alas it is not and my meager muggle pop culture knowledge will be wasted on the pureblood isolationist majority.
Many of you may be thoroughly depressed by the sad beginning of this book but I assure you my life did get better and as you will see as I relate the comedy surrounding my Hogwarts letter.
Any child is excited to get mail. They don't care if it's a shampoo sample or a birthday card from grandma. If it's addressed to them, its special. It's theirs.
One morning I went to retrieve the post and was quite surprised to find a letter addressed to me.
HARRY POTTER
THE CUPBOARD UNDER THE STAIRS
4 PRIVET DRIVE
LITTLE WHINGING, SURREY
If I were not so shocked to get a letter of any sort, I would have noticed that it did not have a postal code, a stamp or any of the other indicators that it was delivered by our local postman.
Stunned I handed the remainder of the post to my Uncle Vernon and begun to open the envelope. The seal was barely broken when it was snatched from my hand by Dudley who passed it on to his father crowing, "Harry got a letter!"
Despite no longer having it in my possession the sentence sounded wonderful. Harry got a letter.
I waited patiently for Uncle Vernon to read it so I might have my letter back. I planned to read it and lovingly store it away in with my treasures even if it was only offering a quote for new windows.
As Uncle Vernon read the letter I noticed all the color drain from his face. I didn't know what to make of it. When he turns red he is frustrated or had overexerted himself. When he turn purple he is angry, but this complete lack of color was a mystery. So I made myself still to learn what it meant.
To my horror he began to tear up my letter and tossed it in the rubbish bin. Before I could stop myself I shouted, "That was mine!" and was promptly punished for talking back.
The next day there was a new rule in the house. Harry was not allowed to touch the post.
Everyday a new letter was delivered with the morning post and everyday it was tossed in the bin or in the fire. Sometimes a letter was slipped into the evening paper and yet another was found in the milk delivery. We ended up receiving upwards of ten identical letters a day all addressed to me.
The inundation of letters was starting to drive my uncle quite batty. He would scream incomprehensibly at the owls camped out in our front garden. He even boarded up the mail slot. He was jittery and over the clattering of his cup and saucer he started to gush about the wonders of Sunday. The best thing about Sunday he said was there was no postal delivery. As if they were waiting that cue owls started to pour in the open window behind him each with a letter addressed to me. Then the board on the mail slot popped off the door and more letters came in the house. Finally a deluge of letters came soaring down the chimney until we could almost swim in them.
"PETUNIA!" Uncle shouted. "Pack our bags. We're leaving." He turned to me turning that familiar shade of purple. "Get your things, you're coming too. I don't trust you with a child minder this time."
I was going on vacation!
Chapter 2
Some of you may be wondering what the drama surrounding my Hogwarts letter was all about. Why the persistent multiple deliveries for one and why my Aunt and Uncle were so determined to avoid them?
The multiple delivery question is easy. It would be unthinkable for the Boy-Who-Lived to not go to Hogwarts. So when my relatives did not respond to the letter or it was determined that the previous letter had been destroyed, replacements were sent. I'm confidant that if my relatives had done the rational thing and sat down to write a refusal Albus Dumbledore would have arrived on their doorstep within moments to talk them around to his way of thinking. On second thought, maybe they did know that would have happened and ran away to avoid a confrontation with our late headmaster.
I know for most of you the arrival of your Hogwarts letter was an occasion for celebration. So why they were avoiding my Hogwarts letter is a more complicated question. In the house I grew up in children didn't ask questions so I never asked them at the time and at the writing of this memoir we are no longer in communication so I can't ask them now that I am an adult. Through the maturity of years, the study of people and talking with some contemporaries, I have a few theories.
My Mother, as you all know, was muggleborn. Just like me, she received a letter out of the blue inviting her to enter a world where magic was not only real but commonplace. I imagine my grandparents reacted the way most parents of muggleborn children do, with a great deal of skepticism followed by awe and fascination when the Professor visit inevitably follows. Now what would the reaction of a sibling in that household be? A generous child would be happy for their sister but most children would be understandably jealous if the same invitation was not extended to them as well. So my theory is that my Aunt suffered with jealousy from being excluded from the magical world and as result began to resent my mother and her new life among Wizardkind. She especially resented the attention her parents lavished on my mother while they learned about this fascinating new world together.
As a defense she declared magic and anything associated with magic abnormal and wrong and sought out to make her life as boring as possible. When she moved out of her parent's home she cut off communication with her sister hoping to never have contact with anything magical again. That plan was overturned one cold November morning when she found a baby in a basket on her doorstep.
Petunia Dursley had to explain to her husband about wizards, wands and who this Dumbledore person was who left a child next to the milk bottles. You can be sure Vernon heard a very biased version of events and I wager it scared him silly. So they devised a plan to keep their home normal and magic-free despite having a young wizard in the house.
Magic would be a taboo word. It would not be spoken in their house. No Fairy Tales allowed, no fantasy movies, no muggle illusionists who pretend to have magic, accidental magic will be punished instead of rewarded to avoid future occurrences and absolutely no going to Hogwarts. When children go to Hogwarts they come home with snakes and toads in their pockets, stinky potions in their trunks and talk about impossible freakish things.
The arrival of my Hogwarts letter was a day they were dreading for ten years and when it arrived they reacted irrationally which leaves us in a ramshackle cabin on a small island in the Irish Sea.
It is in this small one bedroom cabin when I heard a clock chime midnight and I wished myself happy 11th birthday. My cousin Dudley and I were lying in the lounge room when there was a thumping on the front door followed by the same door falling into the room. The doorway was filed with a body so huge we didn't even see a head until he ducked to enter the room. He was tall, wide and hairy. He was also smiling which made him seem less scary when he greeted me by name. He gave me a squashed birthday cake and sat down to cook a few sausages by the fire. He explained he was a hungry after running all over Britain all day to make sure I got my letter. He handed me my letter and I finally got to read that familiar invitation to the premier wizarding school in Europe.
"So what do you think so far?" Harry asked as Hermione lowered the pages.
"Despite the big font, this is one chapter not two chapters and prologue." She smiled.
"Yeah, yeah and I'm sure the spelling is atrocious too. But what do you think? Is it worth pursuing?" He pressed. "Did I just waste a week of my hard earned retirement?"
"It's a very good effort. Writing in first person is appropriate as this is a memoir. The style is natural but erudite. I mean you a certainly pulling out the Galleon words but you aren't overdoing it." She paused. "Wasn't there more of a confrontation between Hagrid and the Dursleys"
"There was but I wasn't sure if I should put it in….I thought it was funny at the time but Hagrid could get in trouble for muggle-baiting. He intended to turn Dudley into a pig! That pig tail of his had to be surgically removed." Harry confessed shaking his head.
"It was never reversed? I didn't realize that." Hermione sat back in the comfy chair and took a sip of her tea. "I'll do a little research and see if he could still be charged. Perhaps it's outside the statute of limitations (if there is such a thing in the wizarding world)."
Harry took a biscuit from the plate in front of him and offered the plate to his friend.
"I'm thinking of starting the next chapter ...Did you know I am a parselmouth. Shocking! I know." He chuckled.
"You are determined to make it cheeky then?" She grinned.
"Absolutely." He smirked.