What if Harry Had Received his Hogwarts Letter?
by Healer Pomfrey
All recognizable characters from Harry Potter belong to J. K. Rowling, and I am not earning anything by writing this story.
I am not a native speaker of English. Please excuse my mistakes.
In the Dursleys' garden
Harry stared at the back door in disbelief. It was closed. His uncle had instructed him to not come back into the house before he had not completed his tasks in the garden. Only now had Harry finished everything from the long list, which he had received from his aunt in the morning.
'They've already gone to bed,' Harry realised, letting out a long sigh. Feeling exhausted after a whole day of garden work, he just lay down where he was, in the grass near the kitchen door. A few minutes later, he already drifted off to a much needed slumber, not even noticing the heavy thunderstorm that approached in a quick speed. Only when he woke up at the first light that came through the trees surrounding the Dursleys' garden did he realise two things. First of all, he was completely wet, just like the grass around him, and secondly, an owl was sitting in front of him holding out a letter.
"Thank you," Harry replied in surprise and hesitantly took the letter from the bird.
He read the letter in confusion. 'Hogwarts... school... September... Please send your owl...' He looked up, noticing gratefully that the owl was still sitting in front of himself, apparently waiting for his reply.
"Will you please wait a moment?" he asked the owl that nodded, gracefully.
A small smile played on the boy's lips, when he pulled out his biggest treasure from his jeans pocket. It was a red, broken crayon that he had picked out of the garbage bin at school a few days before the beginning of the summer holidays. Ever since then, he had carried it around in his pocket, afraid that otherwise his aunt would detect it and throw it away. He sat on the terrace and began to write his response on the back of one of the parchments that he had received.
'Hello Professor McGongall,
thank you very much for your invitation to Hogwarts, and I would love to come, but there must be a mistake. I cant be a wizard. I'm only Harry, a good for nothing freak and a burden to all the good people. I wished I could attend your school so I didnt have to write all my tests worse than Dudley, and maybe there would be someone who liked me.
I'm sorry if my letter is difficult to read, but I had to sleep in the rain and my crayon became wet, so it doesnt write well.
Yours sincerely
Harry.'
He quickly folded the letter and handed it to the owl. "Please take this to Professor McGonagall," he instructed the bird that nodded and took off into the air as if she knew that his reply would be awaited eagerly.
At Hogwarts
"Good morning, Minerva. How are you on this fine morning?" Dumbledore asked his deputy, who arrived in the Great Hall, just when he and his other colleagues had begun to wonder where she was.
"I'm fine," she replied in what seemed to be a bad mood. "I'm just worried, because Harry has still not replied to his Hogwarts letter."
"Ah but it's still three days before the thirty-first of July, so I'm sure he'll reply soon," Dumbledore said, soothingly, as he poured his colleague a cup of tea.
"If he received his letter at all," McGonagall contradicted. "His relatives are the worst Muggles that I've ever met. Maybe they don't even want him to know about the magical world."
"Well, Petunia always hated magic," Snape threw in, smirking. "However, knowing that Potter is famous in the magical world, she and her husband surely want to bathe in the pampered brat's fame."
Pomfrey let out a snort of disbelief, just when the post owls swept into the hall.
McGonagall excitedly opened the letter that to her surprise was scribbled on the back of the parchment with the list of the first-years' school supplies.
"It's from Harry," she blurted out, before she read what the boy had written in bewilderment. "I'm sorry," she spoke up again, "please listen to this. She read the letter to her colleagues.
"Show me," the headmaster instructed her in a grave voice. "Severus and Minerva," he spoke up after a few minutes of quiet. "Please go and check on the boy. If everything is as it seems, I need you to bring him to Hogwarts right away and become his guardians - but only then."
HP
Thirty minutes later, the two professors stepped out of Arabella Figg's fireplace and, after quickly greeting the old Squib, headed towards the Dursleys' residence.
"Maybe it would be wise if we went in our Animagus forms and observed the house for a while first," Snape suggested in a soft voice, causing his older colleague to agree immediately.
"Let's do that," she concurred, changing into her tabby cat form as she went.
Smirking, her colleague transformed into a beautiful black garden snake with a green, all-over Celtic pattern. Together, the two animals made their way into the Dursleys' garden, where the cat chose a dry spot under a tree, and the snake slithered into the grass.
At the Dursleys' residence
"How dare you make my floor all wet?" Petunia scolded the boy, who began to apologize immediately. "Make breakfast, and then you're going to clean the kitchen."
The two animals observed from the garden how the small boy made toast, eggs, sausages and tea for his family, only to receive a plain piece of bread and a small slice of cheese for himself after cleaning up everything. Finally, the cat dashed towards the garage, where she transformed back into her human form.
"I've seen enough," she said, angrily. "Let's go and speak with them."
Her colleague agreed, and an instant later, the two Hogwarts professors were standing in front of the front door.
Petunia opened the door, staring at the two magical people in shock. "You!" she shrieked, upon recognising Severus Snape, the former best friend of her sister.
"We wish to speak with Harry," Snape replied in a firm voice, motioning the woman to invite them into the house.
The professors followed the boy's aunt into the kitchen, where Harry was still busy cleaning the floor from the mud that he had brought in with his wet shoes earlier.
"Boy," Petunia addressed the child, "here are visitors for you."
Harry turned around, staring at the unknown people in disbelief. There was an older woman and a man of about his uncle's age, however, he could not recall having seen these people before. Realisation set in, when the woman suddenly held his letter in her hand.
"What does this mean, Harry?" she asked in a kind voice. "You are Harry Potter, and this Hogwarts letter was sent to you, not to anyone else. This is not a mistake..."
"How dare you invite the boy to Hogwarts without consulting my husband or me beforehand?" Petunia interrupted the professor. "Under no circumstances..."
"Petunia," Snape likewise interrupted her rant in an icy voice, "Harry has been registered to Hogwarts from the time of his birth, and there's nothing that you or your husband could do to prevent him from attending our school."
Turning to Harry, he explained in a much softer voice, "You're a wizard just like myself, and you're supposed to attend Hogwarts just like your parents did. Have your relatives ever told you about your parents and about magic?"
"No sir, they only told me that my parents died in a car crash and that there's no such thing as magic," Harry replied, anxiously glancing at his aunt.
"Feel free to take the stupid freak with you, but then we don't want anything to do with him anymore," Petunia hissed, glaring at the child, who chose that moment to let out a series of harsh coughs.
While his colleague pointed her wand at the letter to transfigure it into a parchment for the guardianship application, Severus knelt in front of the boy and laid a hand on his shoulder, frowning as he felt that the boy's too large clothes were soaked and that his skin felt hot to the touch. He quickly cast a drying charm at the child, before he pointed his wand at the boy's head to check his temperature.
"Petunia, how dare you let the boy run around completely soaked? He already caught a bad cold that would surely have turned into pneumonia if I hadn't dried him now," he hissed at the child's aunt, who merely shrugged in return. Behind the back of the Muggle, he unobtrusively spelled a potion into the boy's system.
Harry stared at the wizard in disbelief. 'Was that his doing?' he wondered. 'I feel much better now, but what has he done? Is that magic? If so, I really like it.' "Thank you sir," he mouthed, receiving a small smile in return.
"Here, sign this," McGonagall ordered the Muggle in a strict voice that was usually reserved for students in detention. When the woman complied, she spoke to Harry in a soft voice. "Harry, from now on, you're going to live with us. We will take you with us to Hogwarts now. Please fetch your belongings, and then we'll leave."
Harry gave the nice old lady a sharp nod and hurried to his cupboard to fetch his baby blanket along with the old gardening book, his only possessions. An instant later, he returned to the kitchen with a small smile playing on his lips.
"Are you ready, Harry?" the female professor asked and, seeing him nod eagerly, instructed him to grab her arm and not let go. "We're going to use a magical transportation method to travel to Hogwarts," she informed him in a gentle voice.
On the Hogwarts grounds
Harry could not believe his luck. 'I'm not a freak but a wizard, and I'm going to live with these people in such a large castle? A school of magic? I must be the happiest boy in the world,' he thought, as he contentedly walked towards the castle between the two professors, who had stood up for him against his aunt and had taken him with him saying that they wanted him to stay with them. 'And everything began with a letter from an owl in the garden,' he thought with a happy smile on his face.
The End