"Do something with that hair, boy!" Vernon Dursley, a large, purple faced man with hardly any neck, bellowed to Harry Potter one morning at breakfast. Harry paid no heed to his words, his hair was unmanageable no matter what he did to it.
It was a normal morning at Privet Drive; as normal as it could get with three relatives that treated the underage wizard like dirt, that it. Coming back from the ride home, Harry had made the resolution not to let the Dursleys push him around this summer, and he stuck with it. He no longer had to do any chores, but he got very tiny portions of food. "If you don't work your keep around here," Vernon had snarled at him, "you don't get to eat as much as we hard-working people do." Hiding his anger, Harry distantly remembered wondering: Does sitting around playing on your computer and PlayStation while stuffing yourself silly count as work? Because that's all Dudley did.
Yes, Dudley was now off his diet. Vernon and Petunia had discovered some tailor out there that made clothes especially for people who couldn't find clothes in their own sizes. They had immediately rushed out to him and paid him a large sum of money to make Dudley's knickerbockers, and once Harry saw them, he choked back his laughter. They were so big that he reckoned they could have fit Hagrid.
Speaking of Hagrid...the last time Harry had spoke to him was a very short letter a couple of weeks ago. It was cheerful and made him long to get back to Hogwarts and his friends even more, and consisted mainly of telling him to be careful and stay out of trouble, like all of his letters. Now that Voldemort had risen, Dumbledore had sent him a letter delivered by Fawkes (his phoenix) telling him that owls could and probably would be intercepted. Therefore, he had to keep his letters short and use initials instead of names, as well as not sending Hedwig out too often.
This discouraged Harry a bit, but he obeyed the instructions of his Headmaster. There was no telling what Voldemort would do, what his next plans were, who he was going to kill next...so far, a few Muggles were killed and the Dark Mark had been in the sky, but Fudge insisted that it was only the Death Eaters "rallying together to scare us now that rumors about You-Know-Who are being spread."
This was a quote from Fudge himself, the headline of the Daily Prophet one day. He still denied Voldemort's return and had even gone as far to say that Harry Potter may be "mentally unstable for the society". After this, the words "Harry Potter" were on almost every headline for weeks, usually followed by, "Sane or Insane?" or "Needs Treatment". They had even interviewed a doctor from St. Mungo's, and he spent the whole interview saying that either Harry really was mentally unstable or he was just doing it for attention.
One minute, everyone would be praising him, and the next they would
be questioning his mind! Both actions made Harry feel sick to his stomach,
any fame to him was awful. More than once, he wished that he was a normal
kid with regular parents instead of the Boy Who Lived.
Harry pulled himself back to the present, Vernon was rambling on about
something and he thought he heard a word that caught his attention.
"Ms. Figg will be coming over this afternoon, boy, and I want none of your--funny business--or I'll flay you within an inch of your life. You'll be sticking with your story about St. Brutus's or there'll be trouble--"
Ms. Figg? Could she possibly be Arabella Figg, the one Dumbledore sent Sirius out to recruit? After a moment of thought, Harry pushed this possibility out of his mind. No way this could be true. His life had taken on too many unexpected twists, this couldn't be one of them. Then again, unexpected twists could be predicted, this was his fifth year in the wizarding world, after all. Throw in the fact that he's the Harry Potter, and he'll never get a break.
"Are you listening to me?" Vernon roared.
Harry groaned slightly before mummering, "Yes."
Vernon glanced at him suspiciously before continuing, "If she finds out about your--abnormality--I will personally--"
Like Harry thought earlier, it was a normal day at Privet Drive.
***
Later that afternoon, Harry was in his bedroom working on his Potions essay. Snape had made it ridiculously hard, 3 rolls of parchment on a topic that, at most, filled up 1 and ½. As he was dipping his quill in the ink bottle, Petunia's shrill voice came from downstairs. "Boy, get down here and greet Ms. Figg, you ungrateful creature!"
Harry rolled his eyes and quickly stuffed his parchment, quill, and books into the loose floorboard under his bed, in case Dudley decided to sneak in his room like he used to. Then he miserably headed downstairs to listen to Ms. Figg drone on and on about her cats while Dudley shot him sneering looks and Vernon and Petunia glared at him as though it was his own fault that he was born into this world under their care.
But when he got to the bottom of the stairs, something was sitting down near Ms. Figg at her feet. Petunia was wincing whenever he moved, and Dudley looked afraid of him. This something was a great, shaggy black dog.
It was Sirius, wagging his tail to Harry and quickly bounding over to jump all over him (much to Harry's protests).
"I see you've met Snuffles, Harry," Ms. Figg said pleasantly. "I've taken a liking to dogs rather than cats after Tibbles and Muffy almost clawed each other to death." Harry managed, miraculously, to get Sirius down and off of him and then stared at Ms. Figg in awe. So she was a witch--and she knew Sirius was innocent!
"Yeah..." Harry said, still amazed. "Yeah, he's a great dog." He suddenly grinned and scratched Sirius behind the ears. "Isn't that right, Snuffles?" Sirius growled playfully.
"Boy, don't get him feisty! If one single thing gets ruined, you're cleaning it up!" Vernon boomed from his spot on the couch. Sirius seemed kind of shocked at Harry's treatment, but Harry merely shrugged and settled himself into an armchair.
For the few minutes, Ms. Figg and the Dursleys talked about drills and equally boring things. Harry was going out of his mind with boredom. Ms. Figg asked him a few questions about school, and he replied, making stories up about St. Brutus's on the spot; but they were always short lived, as Petunia or Vernon would interrupt. Dudley just sat there and watched his family and neighbors talk, occasionally walking into the kitchen and returning with some greasy, fattening food. Just as Harry thought he might give the whole wizarding world a shock and actually go mad from boredom, Sirius jumped up and scratched on the back door.
"Get him off of my precious glass!" Petunia shrieked.
Harry rolled his eyes and walked over to him, taking his paws off of the glass door. "He wants to go out," Harry explained. "Can I take him? I won't make any trouble," he added hastily when he saw his aunt and uncle exchange glances.
Dudley whispered (not so softly), "Dad, get him out of here." After hearing his son's demand, Vernon had no choice but to obey. After all, this was his precious little roughster. He grunted and Harry happily opened the back door and let Sirius run out. He sat down under the shade of a tree and Sirius walked over to the garage, expertly opened the door with his paws, and disappeared inside. A minute later, a new man was walking out.
Sirius's change in appearance also startled Harry. He was even cleaner than the time when Harry saw him after the Third Task, with his hair neatly washed and combed and his used-to-be thin, skeletal figure was now filled out. Most importantly, he was smiling broadly. "Hey Harry," he said warmly, taking a spot beside him on the ground. "How are you?"
"Okay, I guess," Harry said, lying slightly. He was fine, except for the nightmares that plagued his dreams every night. He considered himself to get a good night's sleep if he got four hours, he could never sleep after seeing Voldemort, Cedric, his parents' echoes...
"You don't look okay," Sirius said, frowning slightly. Harry looked up at him into his eyes and found that the deadened, haunted look of Azkaban had almost left them..it would never leave, a painful reminder of what he went through, but it would decrease dramatically as time wore on. "Have you been sleeping okay?"
He hit the nail right on the head. "Yeah," Harry said a little more firmly. He couldn't let Sirius think anything was wrong, or he might try to help him by visiting and get caught. Even though he desperately wanted him to, he reminded himself that he was being very selfish and forgot all about it at once.
Sirius didn't look convinced, but he didn't persue the subject. "Okay then. But really--" he jerked his head slightly towards the door of Number Four, Privet Drive, "how can you live with them? They're horrible!"
Harry smiled and said, "Practice, Sirius, practice."