DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter, but I really wish I did. [Cries] Okay, 'nuffa that. By the way, MAJOR spoilers if you haven't read past book one. So watch out.

Harry Potter and the Flame of Darkness

1 Chapter 1

Number 4, Privet Drive was a perfectly normal house, on a perfectly normal street. The people who lived in that house were perfectly normal… well, three of them were. However, Harry Potter—one of the residents of Number 4, Privet Drive—was not perfectly normal. In fact, he was perfectly abnormal.

He seemed ordinary. He was a skinny boy of 15 with unruly jet-black hair. His eyes were a startling bright green color and he wore thick black glasses, and on his forehead was a thin, lightning-shaped scar. It was, perhaps, this scar that made him so different. But another thing that made him different was the fact that he was a wizard, just out of his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

But he was different, even by a wizard's standards. The reason that he had the scar on his forehead was because he had survived an attack from the most evil Dark Lord of all time—Lord Voldemort. People in the wizarding world were still terrified of him, so he was usually referred to as "You- Know-Who."

When Harry had been an infant, Voldemort had killed his parents and destroyed their home. Then he had turned on Harry, and a miraculous thing happened. The curse had re-bounded upon its creator, and Voldemort had fled from the scene. Harry had survived, and had defeated Voldemort.

But last year, there had been a competition at Hogwarts that was called "The Triwizard Tournament." There were four people competing: Fleur Delacour from Beauxbatons, Viktor Krum from Durmstrang, Cedric Diggory from Hogwarts, and then there was Harry. In a nasty turn of events, Peter Pettigrew, one of Voldemort's servants, had killed Cedric. And then, using Harry's blood, some of the bone of Voldemort's dead father, and Pettigrew's flesh, Voldemort had returned.

~

As Harry reflected on last year's events, while lying in his bed in the smallest bedroom, he wished that he could bring Cedric back. He remembered seeing how sad Cho Chang had looked when she found out that Cedric was dead. Just thinking about Cho…

He sat up, and got out of his bed. He looked at the clock. 8:00 AM… He stretched and yawned. He had been up late studying, as well as writing letters to his best friends, Ron and Hermione. He pulled on a pair of clean clothes, and walked down to the kitchen, where Aunt Petunia was making breakfast.

She didn't say good morning, nor did she look at Harry. She never did. Harry was quite used to it by now. She was probably looking out the window, craning her long neck to spy on the neighbors—something she did quite often.

Uncle Vernon and Dudley Dursley were sitting at the dining room table. Uncle Vernon was a large, beefy man who seemed to have no neck. He was reading a newspaper. Vernon and Petunia's son, Dudley, was also quite large. Harry guessed that he would crash through the floor someday.

Harry took a seat at the table, and watched as Aunt Petunia served Vernon and Dudley a huge breakfast. Harry barely got more than a thin, burnt strip of bacon and a foul-smelling egg. He wrinkled his nose in disgust. Not much of a breakfast, he thought. But he ate it anyway. He didn't want to starve.

After "breakfast," Vernon cleared his throat as though he were about to make an important announcement. "I'm going to go and pick up Aunt Marge from the train station…"

Harry's eyes went wide, and he felt his heart stop. "Aunt… Aunt Marge is coming?" he asked, dread creeping into his veins.

"Yes. So we've arranged for you to go and stay with Mrs. Figg for a while… you'd better get moving, boy, and no funny stuff!" said Uncle Vernon in a nasty voice. Harry sighed, and thought of Mrs. Figg. She was an old lady who took care of Harry whenever the Dursley's went away, and she always made Harry look at pictures of her old cats.

Oh well, he thought. At least now I won't have to deal with Aunt Marge. So he stood up, brought his plate to the sink, and walked out the door. I'll go for a walk before I head over to Mrs. Figgs, he decided, and walked down the street, away from Mrs. Figg's house.

He saw nothing that really interested him while he was on his short walk. There were other houses on the street that were exactly like the Dursley's, with neat gardens and children playing tag in the front yard. "Boring," he said to himself.

But as he turned back towards Mrs. Figg's house, walking towards it with a feeling of dread growing in his mind, he didn't realize just how interesting things were about to get.