Disclaimer : I don't own anything in the world of Harry Potter, that's J.K.Rowling's job. The plot is mine though.

Background : The story starts after OoTP, so there could be spoilers up to that point.

CHAPTER 1 - THE ESCAPE

As darkness ended what was another baking hot summers day, a small owl wobbled through Harry's window. It bounced off the far wall, and landed down with a soft flop on his bed. The owl looked up at him in a slightly confused way and held out the letter it had been carrying. Harry really needed some good news.

Admittedly there had been some small improvement from the Dursleys for the first few weeks of the summer holidays, but he found himself spending every day trapped upstairs in his little room with nothing more to do than to read some of his school books and stare out of the window longingly. He was constantly reminded by an increasingly edgy Uncle Vernon to write to 'those people' and that he didn't want any of 'them' coming round and destroying his home. He glanced over at the letter and recognised the usual scribbling of his best friend Ron. Hermione, Ron and Remus had been writing to him regularly to try to cheer him up and make sure he was all right, but it rarely did. He had even got a small letter off Ginny which brought a smile to his face, and even one off Mad-Eye, who seemed all too keen to find a reason to come over to the Dursleys and 'hex the lot of em'.

Harry reached over to pick up the letter and thanked Pig with a quick pat on the head and a few owl treats. As Harry began reading the letter, his first proper smile in a long time began to emerge.

Hi Harry, I know your family will have been giving you a hard time there despite what you keep saying in your letters. Dumbledore came round this morning and told us that it would be all right for you to leave there next week and come and live with us for the rest of the summer. Isn't that good news? Fred and George will be coming round with me to pick you up Monday morning so I hope Pig doesn't take too long about getting there. There should be another letter here as well, which might interest you. Dumbledore has already told us what it's about, but I won't spoil it for you.

See you soon, Ron

"Won't spoil it for me?" he thought "I wonder what that means."

Sure enough there was another letter inside the envelope, slightly smaller than the first. He looked up and saw Hedwig taking care of Pig, making sure he had enough water and tucking him under her wing. They preferred using Pig to pass letters to each other as he was small and would be much harder to spot by muggles. It wasn't normal behaviour for owls to be flying around during the day, especially ones carrying letters. Harry unfolded the second letter and started reading. It was written far more neatly than the first.

Good evening Harry. I have been able to persuade the Ministry to allow you to perform limited magic outside of Hogwarts. It is my belief that you are sensible enough to show restraint, and it would be beneficial for you to practise some of the more important spells before school starts again. You must take extra care to not be spotted by muggles, as you have not been shown how to perform the memory charm. Your Aunt and Uncle already know about your magic so it shouldn't be a problem if they see you.

Dumbledore.

Harry grinned. It would have been nice to have gotten this letter just a few weeks earlier so he could finally get some payback for years of being mistreated, but that did nothing to ruin his good mood. "This is certainly a letter to show Uncle Vernon", he thought, and after putting his wand in his back pocket, bounded down the stairs.

His uncle looked less than happy at being disturbed while watching one of his favourite programs, but took the letter off Harry and began reading. As his eyes moved across the page his face gradually started losing its colour.

"Well… erm… yeh… just stay up in your room! I will not have you using that thing dow-"

Harry pulled his wand out of his pocket and with a quick flick, there were a dozen small blue butterflies fluttering randomly about the room. His aunt screamed as if large wasps and not harmless butterflies were attacking her, and ran into the kitchen, closely followed by a wobbling Dudley. His uncle meanwhile was waving his arms about madly as if trying to tread water. He stood up and took a few steps towards Harry, before obviously changing his mind and joining his family in the kitchen.

Harry chuckled to himself, removed the butterflies, and went back upstairs to his room. Next summer would be different he vowed, no more being locked up inside his room. He could do whatever he liked and they wouldn't be able to punish him for it. He crammed most of the things he would need into his trunk, and then settled down for an early night.

On Saturday morning Harry bounded downstairs to start cooking breakfast. Normally he would have hated getting up early on a Sunday just to make everyone else breakfast, but now he had his wand. With the small swish and flick, taught to him again and again by Professor Flitwick, the eggs leapt onto the frying pan and began to sizzle away nicely. The pan occasionally twitched to make sure it was cooking properly. The Dursleys were now not only ignoring him completely, but also actively doing there very best to avoid being in the same room as him. They had taken to going out in the evenings and not coming back till late at night, in the hope by that time Harry would have gone upstairs to his room. As Harry watched the orange juice pouring itself into glasses, he smiled, remembering how much fun he had had over the last week.

He had started by making sure he had completed all of his DADA homework, now actually being able to practise some of the spells he was writing about, instead of having to wait till term started. Of course, he kept the door to his room wide open. He had just finished raising and lowering a new shield charm he had read about in 101 Ways of Getting Out of Trouble – The Magical Way when he spotted Dudley standing in the doorway, gawping at him. It must have taken Harry less than a second to decide to fire a Blank spell at him, usually used to force your opponent to waste energy dodging it, even though it would have no effect on anything it hit. Dudley had no idea.

"Wh- wh- wh- waaaa…" he shouted, clutching at his behind and looking around nervously. For some reason he decided that the best thing to do would be to rush towards Harry. It didn't take much more than another second for Harry to cast a banishing charm that sent him a few feet into the air, and then back down with a loud thud just outside his room. Deciding that probably wasn't such a good idea, Dudley staggered down the stairs and out the door, not even bothering to have dinner, which was probably a first.

Then there had been the time that he had tried a tickling charm, which rebounded off him small mirror and just caught him on the arm as he tried to get out of the way. Unable to do anything about it, he burst out in hysterics, dropping his wand to the floor. Being the early hours of the morning, Uncle Vernon had stormed into the room and demanded that he stopped making all that noise. All Harry could do was sit there and laugh. Eyeing Harry's wand lying on the floor beside him, Vernon decided to take that moment to try and 'put a stop to all that nonsense'. It was about that time that the tickling charm wore off, and Uncle Vernon found himself in the same position Dudley was, sprawled out on the floor just outside his room. Harry had put a fair bit more power behind the spell this time, and couldn't help but smile when he saw his uncle limping out of the door on his way to work.

Right now as he stood there and cooking breakfast he decided that being at the Dursley's wasn't so bad any more. He took his fried egg sandwich and stepped out into the kitchen-

WHAM

Pain.

The side of Harry's head felt like it was going to explode. Stars surrounded most of his vision and it was all he could do to keep himself conscious. He looked up and saw a purple-faced uncle standing over him shouting at the top of his voice.

"I'm going to teach you a lesson boy! Worthless piece of filth! You won't be able to do any of that… that… stuff of yours again when I've finished with you. Beat it out of you I will!"

"Wh…aa…noo!" Mumbled Harry, barely able to form sensible word in his mind. Vernon pulled his leg back and prepared to give Harry a quick kick to the stomach. Unable to move away in time Harry closed his eyes and tried to roll out of the way, and the same time wishing he was back in the relative safety of his room.

Crack

There wasn't any pain this time. In fact, there wasn't even an uncle. Harry opened his eyes and found himself lying on the floor of his room. Unable to think of anything else, he put the strongest locking charm on his door that he could manage, before falling asleep still lying there. He decided not to leave his room for the rest of the weekend.

Ron wasn't certain why the twins were so eager to go with him to pick up Harry. He was certainly grateful for it, as they could all ride along in the car that they had bought recently. It was taking him a while to get used to the idea that Fred and George had a fair bit of money coming in from their shop, and they could afford to buy lots of new things.

"Hurry up, Ron. We've been ready ages! Things to do. People to see."

How could anyone have that much energy in a morning!

On his way down he heard his mom talking to the twins, "Just don't you go causing any trouble with the Dursleys, even though they totally deserve it mind. You know how much they hate magic."

"Would we ever do something like that?" they replied, putting on a most innocent expression.

The two of them laughed and raced out the door, followed by a very sleepy looking Ron, leaving Mrs Weasley standing at the doorway shaking her head but smiling.

The Weasleys' new car was definitely not the sort of car that would drive past unnoticed. It was bright pink, the colour of Tonks' hair, and looked from the outside barely big enough to hold more than one person at a time. The noise it made sounded more fitting for a motorbike than a car. Inside it was far more comfortable than it should have been, there was plenty of space for the 3 of them to stretch their legs. "Awesome", declared Ron, after the car blaring out music that could probably be heard a good few streets away.

They bounced and rattled down the road far too fast for what the car should have been able to handle. "There must be more magic here than car" he thought. When they reached Privet Drive they screeched to a halt outside Harry's house. The car made so much noise they could see Harry's uncle looking out of his window to see what all the fuss was about. He seemed to turn almost purple when he realised where it had stopped and then disappeared again into the back of the house. They could hear him shouting Harry even from outside.

"Come on then brothers", called George cheerfully, "lets go and sort this lot out."

Hagrid was having a good day.

He occasionally thought back to when he was at school himself, to when he had a wand, and when the rest of the wizarding world didn't think he had been the one to open the Chamber of Secrets. He wished that he still could use his wand from time to time, but eventually he had begun to accept what had happened and was almost pleased with the way things turned out. What could be better than spending his days looking after all these wonderful animals?

Picking up a large bucket of cabbages, he wondered over to where he still kept a pair of Skrewts. Both having reached full size, they were now nearly 4 meters long and ate an awful lot of cabbages. Still smiling, Hagrid reached the enclosure and looked out. Sitting there right in the middle sunning itself was a young Hungarian Horntail, which despite its age was just slightly taller than he was. Upon seeing Hagrid, the dragon roared a long funnel of fire nearly 30 feet long, smouldering the edges of his beard. Such was the half-giant's delight at seeing such a thing he rushed over to it and began talking to it in an almost motherly way, not noticing the lack of Skrewts, or even the way the dragon was licking its lips contently.

Hagrid's day just got even better.

Harry had heard the loud noise outside and had guessed it might be something to do with the Weasleys even before his uncle shouted up to him. He had already got everything all packed up so just sat there and waited for the knock at the door. None came. He was just about to go back to talking to Hedwig when there was a loud crash from downstairs. He poked his head outside his door and looked down the stairs.

"Hullo Mr Dursley", yelled George, who was now standing atop the door which was flat in the hallway, "I tried the err… door-knocking spell, and you didn't seem to reply so I thought there was trouble. I'm sure you will have no trouble fixing this door though." He seemed to be trying really hard to control his laughter.

"Just take the boy and go!" called back his uncle, who seemed to have decided to stay in the kitchen and not have anything to do with the guests.

"Okay, have it your way. Accio trunk." Fred pointed his wand up the stairs and Harry had to dodge quickly out of the way of his very heavy truck, before it went bouncing and crashing down the stairs and out the door, nearly bowling Ron over in the process.

"Sorry about that Harry old chap, didn't see you up there," he called, spotting Harry at the top of the stairs, "grab Hedwig and lets go!"

Harry grabbed Hedwig's cage off the bed and met the Weasleys at the doorway.

"Like our new car then mate?" asked Fred when he saw Harry looking at it in amazement. "Dad is well pleased with it. It can fly like the old one, but we haven't had chance to test it out yet. He won't let us fly it in the daytime though after what happened last time."

"Yeh, it's stunning" he said still staring at the bright pink car on the driveway. "Very unique."

As they left the house he conjured the butterflies back into the living room. He knew they wouldn't last long, but hopefully long enough to worry his family for a while. Walking down the path he looked from Hedwig to the car and decided that she would probably be a lot happier making her own way to The Burrow instead of being bounced along in the car.

"You want to make your own way there girl?" he asked, "You know the way to The Burrow don't you?"

She made a little hoot that seemed to mean yes, so he let her out and she quickly flew away, glad to be able to stretch her wings. Just as they were about to get into the car, George stopped them.

"Mustn't forget this" he grinned, and pulled out of his pocket what looked alarmingly like a grenade. "It's one of our new Weasleys Wizarding Graffiti Bombs. This will be the first proper test." He threw the bomb straight at the house and took a step back.

The bomb arched perfectly through the air and landed squarely in the middle of the house, causing a surprisingly strange "splat" noise, accompanied by quite a lot of smoke. As the smoke cleared they could see quite plainly the words "Miserable Sods" written in large pink letters right across the house. It matched the car perfectly.

Fred and George stood there admiring their work and beaming "Worked out quite well don't you think brother?"

"I do indeed brother. It could do with a bit more of a bang though."

"Great idea."

Fred turned to Harry "Don't worry they should be able to get it off in a few days, if not we will pop round and clear it up."

Harry was paying no attention to him at all. He and Ron were just standing there laughing, unable to speak. Trust the twins to come up with something like that to cheer him up. Fred and George soon joined in and as they drove off back to the Burrow, the sound of their laughter could almost be heard above the sound of the car.