Uncertainty
Harry was never hated by his family, but he was raised to know that unnaturalness was wrong. So when a letter arrives, he has a decision to make ... Warning: Decent Dursleys.
I'm not JK Rowling.
-.-
The Dursley family prided themselves on being perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were a model family to the community, even though Vernon and Dudley could benefit from going on a diet and losing a few pounds. Even their nephew, Harry, was a normal boy.
Sure, he wasn't their son, but they had to raise him. He was the son of Petunia's sister Lily, who had been killed alongside her husband when Harry was one year old. The Dursleys took him in, begrudgingly, and raised him properly. He knew right from wrong, he knew what was natural and unnatural, and he always told the truth.
Harry had a longer list of chores than Dudley, but it wasn't like his cousin did nothing. Both boys helped to cook and clean, and Harry liked to help his aunt do the gardening in the summer months. Harry's green thumb was the reason that the Dursleys' house was considered the nicest-looking house on Privet Drive, and the families that lived there knew it.
On the morning this story begins, Harry had woken earlier than normal. As was his wont, he chose to go downstairs and start to cook breakfast for his family. Soon, the smell of sizzling bacon began to waft through the house, drawing Vernon and Dudley from their rooms. Petunia was feeling unwell, so Dudley offered to take Petunia's plate up to her.
Vernon and Harry were sitting at the table, talking about the possibility of Harry getting a summer internship next year at Vernon's company, Grunnings, when the sound of post falling through the letterbox came from the hallway. Smiling at Vernon's joke, Harry got up and walked into the hallway, leafing through the letters as he picked them up. A postcard from Majorca, some bills for Uncle Vernon, and ... a letter for Harry.
He looked at the letter, turning it over in his hands. The address (Harry Potter, The Second Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive) was written in green ink, in rather fancy calligraphy. It was written on funny paper, unusually thick, and there was a wax seal with a strange coat-of-arms. But the strangest thing was, that there was no stamp. The postman wouldn't have delivered it, as they didn't accept letters without stamps or postcodes.
Not knowing what to do with the letter, he took it to his uncle Vernon. He looked at the address, felt the paper, and ran a finger over the wax seal.
"Do you know what this is, my boy?" Vernon asked, a frown on his face.
"No, Uncle Vernon." Harry replied.
"There's something we never told you about your mother, Harry." Vernon said. "A week before her eleventh birthday, a letter like this one arrived. It was from a school called Hogwarts, a school that claimed to be a magical school. They claimed that she was magical, and she went to their school for seven years, choosing to separate herself from her own family. By her fifth year, she didn't even return to see them over the summers, choosing to stay with her friends.
"It broke your aunt's heart, to have her sister reject her. I only met your mother once, when Petunia's parents – your grandparents – died. I met Lily and her husband there, and I hated your father. He was arrogant, looking at us like we were inferior to him, because he had magic and we didn't. He spoke condescendingly, as though we were animals that had been trained to walk and talk.
"Magic was the reason they were killed. Your parents joined a cult in their world, and it caused them to be attacked by a magical terrorist." Vernon concluded. "That Hogwarts letter for Lily brought nothing but death and misery to your aunt's family."
"I don't want to go to their school, Uncle Vernon." Harry said. "I have plans for my life, and I don't want to die like my mum and dad did, and I don't want to be separated from you and Dudley and Aunt Petunia."
"I'm sure that there's a way to contact them in this letter, and we can tell them that you don't want to go to their school." Vernon suggested, waving the letter. Harry nodded, and they opened the envelope together, skipping down to the part that said 'we await your owl.'
Looking out of the window to the back garden, the two of them saw an owl watching them from in the tree. Both shuddered at the unnatural behaviour, before Harry started looking for a paper and pen, so he could send a reply.
-.-
Minerva McGonagall looked up from her desk to see one of the Hogwarts post-owls rapping on the window. Standing up, she opened the window to let the bird in, taking the note from its talons. She recognised the owl as one of the ones used to deliver the acceptance letters to the first-years, and took the letter, reading through it.
To Whom It May Concern,
I must respectfully decline the invitation to study at Hogwarts. I am already enrolled in Smeltings School, a prestigious secondary school that my uncle attended and I will attend with my cousin. Moreover, I have no interest in abandoning my family to join the same cult that is responsible for the death of my parents.
Respectfully,
Harry Potter
I do not want my nephew, a boy I consider to be a second son, to attend your school. He is going to Smeltings, a fine school, where he will learn useful skills to help him to get the job he wants so he can provide for his future.
Vernon Dursley
Minerva raced for the gargoyle on the floor above, to head to the Headmaster's office.
"Albus!" She yelled as she walked in, startling the old man as he looked across from where he was feeding his phoenix, Fawkes. "Harry Potter has chosen not to attend Hogwarts!"
-.-
The next day, Harry was distracted from the video game he was playing with Dudley by the ringing of the front door. Shrugging, he got up and opened the door, to see two of the strangest-looking people he'd ever seen on his doorstep.
An old man, who looked like Merlin from the cartoon The Sword in the Stone, right down to the pointy hat and the long purple robes, was standing there with old woman wearing a tartan dress and a classic witch's hat.
"Is this the home of Harry Potter?" The old man asked, smiling kindly.
"I'm Harry." Harry said. "Can I help you?"
"My name is Albus Dumbledore, and I am the headmaster of Hogwarts School. This is Minerva McGonagall, my deputy. I have come to invite you to attend, for your name has been down in our rolls since you were born."
Harry sighed. "I guess my letter didn't make it. I suppose that's what happens when you send letters with birds, instead of using the Post Office like normal people. I'm sorry, but I don't want to go to your school and learn magic. I've already got a school. Is that everything?"
He went to close the door, but Dumbledore held it open. "May we see your aunt and uncle?"
"Uncle Vernon's at work today, Mr Dumbledore. Maybe you should come back at the weekend?" Harry suggested.
"Is your aunt in?" Dumbledore asked.
"She's ill." Harry replied. "Please leave, before I'm forced to call the police."
Dumbledore exchanged looks with McGonagall, before nodding. "Very well, Mr Potter. We will return on Saturday."
"I'd rather you didn't, since I have no interest in going to your school." Harry replied. "But if you must, I'll tell Uncle Vernon to expect you on Saturday, at five o' clock."
As Dumbledore and McGonagall walked away, McGonagall spoke. "What have the Dursleys done to him, Albus? What kind of boy doesn't want to learn magic?"
Dumbledore had no answer for that.
-.-
On Saturday at 5pm sharp, there was a rap on the door. Harry sighed as he answered the door, letting Dumbledore and McGonagall into the front room. Vernon was waiting in his comfortable recliner, while Petunia and Dudley sat on the sofa, Petunia wrapped in blankets. Harry sat down on Petunia's other side, leaving two wooden chairs for Dumbledore and McGonagall to sit on.
McGonagall sat down without a complaint, while Dumbledore drew his wand and cast a spell on his chair, turning it into a squishy armchair.
"What's wrong with the chair we set out for you?" Vernon scowled. "Do you refuse our hospitality?" It was a calculated gamble, setting out the two uncomfortable chairs for their guests. They'd been hoping one of the wizards would do that, so they could complain about it.
"I apologise, my good man." Dumbledore replied. "I am an old man, and the hard back of those chairs would be bad for my bones. I will return it to its former state when we are done with our conversation."
"You'd better." Vernon growled at him. "Now, you're disrupting our time as a family, so say what you need to and go."
"Very well." Dumbledore said, leaning back in his chair. "Mr Potter, I would like to invite you to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It is the school your parents went to, and your name was put on our rolls at birth by your father. They would have wanted nothing more than for you to come to Hogwarts and learn to use magic properly."
Harry exchanged glances with Vernon, before answering. "Didn't you listen to me when you knocked on the door the other day? I don't want to go to your school, cut myself off from my family, and get myself killed. I have plans for my life, and they don't involve magic."
"What do you mean, cut yourself off and get yourself killed?" McGonagall exclaimed, alarmed.
"My mother abandoned her family, and ended up getting killed. Would the magical terrorist that killed them have targeted her if she'd chosen not to learn magic?" Harry countered coldly. "Your school got her killed."
Dumbledore looked taken aback, and McGonagall gasped. "What do you mean?"
"Exactly what he said." Petunia said. "You took my sister, tricked her with your pretty spells, and tore our family apart. She stopped loving her own parents, only showing up to the funeral for appearance's sake. While I wept at my mother's gravestone, my sister was running around with her fancy magical boyfriend, without a care that the woman who birthed her lay dead in the ground."
"Your nephew is a hero in our world." Dumbledore said. "He must go to Hogwarts, it is his destiny."
Vernon snorted at the suggestion of destiny, but Harry frowned. "What do you mean, I'm a hero?"
"You are known as the Boy-Who-Lived in our world. When the Dark Lord Voldemort" – McGonagall shivered at the name – "killed your parents at Godric's Hollow, he also tried to kill you. He fired the Killing Curse at you, and the curse was reflected, hitting him instead and leaving the scar on your forehead. Since that day, you have been hailed as the hero who defeated the Dark Lord."
Harry snorted at the story. "Really? Your society is that stupid, they hail a baby as a hero who killed a man? Isn't it more likely that one of my parents managed to hit him with a deadly spell before he got them?" He sighed. "And that's not exactly a reason for me to join your magical society. Give me a reason."
"You are the last Potter." McGonagall said. "The Potters were an ancient family in our society, and you are the last of them."
"So?" Harry replied. "I still don't want to be a magician. What can your school offer me?"
"We teach Transfiguration, Potions, Charms, Astronomy, Defence Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic, and Herbology to all years. At third year, you can take two or more elective classes." Dumbledore told him.
"What about English, or Maths, or Science? When do you take your GSCEs?" Harry asked.
"Why would we teach English, or Maths?" Dumbledore asked. "You already know how to read, write and count, do you not? And I do not know what these GCSEs are that you speak of."
"O-Levels? GCSEs? They're important exams, and you need the grades from them to get a job." Harry told them.
"Not for a job in the Wizarding World." Dumbledore said. "You need your OWLs – Ordinary Wizarding Levels – for a job there."
"Did you decide to call them owls before you worked out what they actually were?" Harry laughed. "And I don't want a job in the Wizarding World."
"What do you want to do then, Mr Potter?" McGonagall asked.
"I want to be an astronaut." Harry said. Both of the wizards looked blankly at him, as though they didn't know the word. "You know, someone who goes to space? I want to walk on the moon."
Dumbledore sighed. "Some things are impossible, even for wizards. I'm afraid, Mr Potter, that it is impossible to travel to the moon."
The Dursleys and Harry all started laughing at that statement, and Dumbledore's frown grew deeper. McGonagall spoke. "Don't laugh at the Headmaster! He is right, it is impossible!" They laughed even harder at that.
Eventually, Harry calmed himself enough to speak. "Neil Armstrong. Buzz Aldrin. 'One small step for man. One giant leap for mankind'. Any of these ringing a bell?" Dumbledore and McGonagall shook their heads. "On the 20th of July, 1969, the Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, the first two humans to do so. Do wizards not keep up with current affairs in the real world?"
Dumbledore and McGonagall were both speechless, so Harry continued. "I'll need to get very good grades in both my GCSEs and A-Levels to have a chance at becoming an astronaut, and your OWLs won't help me with that. I don't want to be involved in the society that killed my parents, and I don't want to learn to use magic and give up my dream."
"I think it'd be best if you left." Vernon suggested, gesturing to the door. Dumbledore rose and wordlessly reversed the transfiguration, and the two professors walked out of the front door, still stunned at the revelation.
-.-Epilogue-.-
Harry Potter went on to become a successful astronaut, and the first person to walk on Mars, at the age of thirty-five. He used the money from his vault at Gringotts (Aunt Petunia helped him find Diagon Alley) to help provide for the Dursley family and to pay for a good university for himself. He married a doctor called Sally-Anne Perks, who like him had been offered a place at Hogwarts. She dropped out after her first year, when she was injured by a troll that was set loose in the castle, and became a doctor to try and repair the damage the troll had dealt to her left leg.
Vernon Dursley became CEO of Grunnings, after a successful business deal with the Masons. They had been impressed by Dudley's ambition to become a professional boxer, and Harry's dream of becoming an astronaut, as well as the devotion they'd seen throughout the family. His proudest moment were his two speeches, as the father of the groom at Harry's and Dudley's weddings.
Petunia Dursley began teaching at the local primary school after Harry and Dudley went to Smeltings, and retired after two years as the deputy head of the school.
Dudley Dursley became a professional boxer, and later an actor after an injury stopped him from being able to fight. He stood as Harry's best man at his wedding, and Harry was his best man when he married a supermodel.
Albus Dumbledore fired the Muggle Studies teacher of Hogwarts the same day Harry rejected his place,after discovering that he had no idea about the modern Muggle world. Ted Tonks, a Muggleborn wizard, took the job, in an attempt to bring the Wizarding World into the present day. It didn't work, as very few purebloods took the course. Ted Tonks also noticed that Professor Quirrell, one of his friends, was acting strangely, and helped Dumbledore to discover that he was possessed by the remnants of Voldemort. Dumbledore used an ancient Sumerian spell to banish the spirit of Voldemort, and Voldemort learned of the mistakes he made with his Horcruxes. The diadem was never discovered in the mess of the Room of Hidden Things, and the Lestrange Vault was never opened for the cup to be used, as all three of the Lestranges died in Azkaban. Sirius Black also never escaped Azkaban, and Grimmauld Place remained closed after the house-elf Kreacher committed suicide. The ring in the Gaunt House was never found, as Dumbledore had no knowledge of the Horcruxes, and the diary was discovered and destroyed by Unspeakables in a raid on Malfoy Manor. Harry Potter was never a Horcrux, as the blood wards powered by love destroyed the soul fragment in his head when he was thirteen. Since none of his followers knew that they could revive Voldemort, none of them looked for the Horcruxes.
-.-End-.-
AN: Why are the Dursleys decent? Because I wrote them as real people. If they really wanted to come across as normal, they wouldn't lock a kid in a cupboard until he was eleven. Harry reminds Petunia of Lily before she went to Hogwarts, and she doesn't want to lose the last reminder who her sister used to be.
Why is it a common belief among fanon that the Hogwarts letters arrive on the eleventh birthday of the kid? Harry's start arriving a week or so before his, it's only on his birthday that Hagrid catches up to them and he can open his. In my stories, the letters arrive a week before, and they continued to be sent in canon because they have no response.
Is Vernon's story true? It's biased, certainly, but it's from his viewpoint. He doesn't want Harry – who he sees as a second son – to leave them and become a stranger. The idea that Hogwarts makes the kids separate from the families is based on Hermione's behaviour in canon: she stays with the Weasleys every summer after her fourth year, and doesn't seem to care about not seeing her parents. And she claims to love them ...
And as a side-note: originally in this story, Harry was going to go to Hogwarts reluctantly, and leave after a week due to Snape's hatred, Binns' and Quirrell's uselessness, and the fact that it didn't help him at all. But as I wrote it, I just couldn't see this Harry, one who had been told straight-out that magic was the reason his mum was dead, agreeing to go to Hogwarts.