Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter its J.K.R. work and I'm just making non-profit stories for fun as writing practice.
Author's Note: I will like to personally thank you Shini Kurogane for helping me profread this chapter! And hopefully we could work closely on the rest of the story.
The Dragonborn
- Year One -
Welcome to the Magical World
of
Harry Potter
And
The Slytherin Princess
Chapter 1:
The Boy Who Lived
The sun shined on the front yard of the Dursleys' house, slipping through the front door and crept into their living room. It was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls years ago. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed.
Ten years ago, there had been a lot of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball, wearing different-colored bonnets, but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and so the next photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle.
In a photo he was on a carousel at the fair, and another one showed him playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign of another boy living in the house, not one at all.
Yet the famous Harry Potter lived there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. His aunt, Petunia Dursley, was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.
"Up! Get up! Now!" Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again. "Up!" she screeched. Harry heard her walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove.
He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before. His aunt was back outside the door. "Are you up yet?" she demanded.
"Yeah, I'm up," Harry said.
"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday." Harry groaned.
"What did you say?" his aunt snapped through the door.
"That it is an important day. . ." He hadn't forgotten Dudley's birthday, Harry just didn't care.
Harry slowly got out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders as the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept. Most of the time, he found two or three on his books next to the bed.
Yes, the books were his only friends. Harry slowly began to learn from them about the world, the different cultures, math, science, history, and a lot of other things a boy shouldn't at his age.
When he was dressed, he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley's birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike.
Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as he was very fat and so hated exercise, unless of course, it involved punching somebody. Dudley's favorite punching bag was Harry, but he couldn't often catch him. Harry didn't look like it, but he was very fast.
He broke from the daydream he was having and continued on with his chores. That was if you could call them chores, as he was more like a slave in the Dursleys' house. Harry was frying eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Harry put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was quite difficult as there wasn't much room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. And then his face fell once he was done.
"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. "That's two less than last year."
"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present. See, it's right here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy."
"All right, thirty-seven then," Dudley said, going red in the face. Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over.
Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that, Popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?" Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work.
Finally, he said slowly, "So I'll have thirty... thirty..."
"Thirty-nine, sweetens," Aunt Petunia said.
"Er," Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel.
"All right then," Uncle Vernon chuckled.
Seeing the spoiled and ungrateful little twerk, Harry started to become angry, clenching hit his fist on the table.
"What? Have something to say, four eyes?" Dudley taunted as he noticed Harry's reaction, spitting bacon over the table and in Harry's plate. Harry lifted himself from his chair and slapped the table with his hands.
"Yes, I have. You're just a selfish fat pig wearing a wig and you should know that!" Harry yelled at the top of his lungs. He left Dudley surprised, and before his uncle could scold him, ran to his room under the stairs and locked the door.
He heard his uncle all the way through the hallway cursing, and Dudley crying. But he just rolled his eyes and continue reading his "Art of War" book which he had borrowed from the library. At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrapped his presents. Besides the racing bike, he also got a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR.
Dudley who was still crying ripped the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone with an angry and worried expression.
"Bad news, Vernon," she said. "Mrs. Figg's broken her leg. She can't take him," she jerked her head to Harry's room.
Dudley's mouth fell open in horror. Every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents would take a friend with him for the day to the theme-parks, to some of his favorite restaurants, or even to the theater to watch a movie. And every year, Harry would be left behind with Mrs. Figg, a mad old lady that lived two streets away. Harry hated it there. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs. Figg made him looked at the photographs of all the cats she'd ever owned.
"Now what?" Aunt Petunia asked, looking furiously at Harry's room once again.
"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.
"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy."
The Dursleys often spoke about Harry like this, as though he wasn't even there, or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug.
"What about what's-her-name, your friend, Yvonne?"
"On vacation in Majorca," Aunt Petunia snapped.
"We could just leave him here for what he did. Yeah, lock him up in his room," Dudley suggested with a smirk, though Aunt Petunia looked as though it was a bad idea.
"I'll handle it," Vernon snarled.
"Come on, darling," Petunia said to Dudley, leaving the matter to her husband.
"I hope you enjoy that because you're gonna stay in there until we return tonight," said Uncle Vernon while looking for small wooden boards to put on Harry's door.
Half an hour passed, and Harry couldn't believe his luck, he was still locked in the small room under the stairs while the Dursleys were in the car ready to leave to the Zoo. Apparently, they were not fooling around.
'I wish the house catches fire and some firefighters take me out in time to see the Dursleys' faces as they arrive home,' Harry thought before closing the book and put it aside. He then closed his eyes, turned around and went to sleep, hoping he could catch a glance at the dream he had this morning.
Thunder
... lightning
... dark and cloudy
... a rasping sound
... like nails raking across a chalkboard
... an old house
... Avada Kedavra
... a green flash
... a woman screamed ...!
Harry woke up overwhelmed by the dream. He'd never had that dream before in his life. He could almost taste the salty water over his chin and feel his wet hair on his pillow. Harry rolled over to face the door, as sunlight hit his eyes and then realized that the door was half open. Did he really sleep for an entire day?
'Well, the Dursleys must be home already,' Harry thought as he got up from the bed.
"What time is it-," he asked out loud, but instantly stopped the question when he felt a piercing feeling on his right foot. Apparently, he had just stepped on a nail, but fortunately Harry noticed in time due to the pain, so only the tip of the nail managed to pierce the skin. He saw other nails on the floor but chose ignore their importance and went to the kitchen to clean his wound.
His right foot was bleeding, so he left a trail of blood on the floor. After finding a few old clothes in the kitchen, he covered the wound slowly. When he was done, he approached the sink and started to clean his hands. Through the window, he saw a snake on the backyard tree staring back at him, then suddenly the scar on his forehead started to hurt. Choosing to ignore it, Harry closed the sink.
Looking at the clock, it was almost 4:00 pm and by 6:00, he had already cleaned the blood on the floor and picked up the wooden boards and nails. But there was something that still bothered Harry. But what was it?
He glanced at the fireplace. A little bit to his left on the table was a letter with a strange symbol. Picking it up and staring at it, Harry could feel his heart starting to beat like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives. And it also didn't belong to the library either since he had never received one of those rude notes asking for their books back.
Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake.
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp. Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms of a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.
"Who would write a letter to me?" he asked out loud since the Dursleys weren't around to scold him. He didn't open the envelope right now, deciding to put it inside one of his books from the library and continued doing his chores for now. Taking out the trash was no big deal for him. Except when it was time to pick it up from Dudley's room. That pig was always eating in his room and never taking out the trash, and it's been almost a week since Harry cleaned his room. He did that on purpose, of course, to see if Dudley would complain about it, but not a single word of complaint was heard over the week.
When Harry opened the door the room was a mess.
Everything was upside down and his underwear was everywhere. Harry later reentered Dudley's room with a click clotheslines on his nose. After half an hour, he finished. Closing the door to the room, he put down four black bags of garbage of what he had collected from Dudley's room. Among them was some stuff from his cousin as well, including some of Dudley's favorite shirts, which Harry didn't bother to put aside.
The garbage bags were heavy. He approached the stairs and slowly began to drag the bags downstairs. He wasn't going to fall down, not today. Almost halfway down the stairs, Harry started to hear some strange noises. It was as if someone was whispering into his ear, but no one was around. The voice had a strange curse-like feeling to it, like someone wanted to suck the life out of him by mere words.
Harry slowly glanced at his left hand which was resting over the railing of the stairs. The long, thin, legless reptile which Harry saw in the backyard tree was now crawling over his hand. The snake was calling for something.
"Death. To the boy who lived!"
Harry couldn't believe that the snake was speaking English, but in reality, it was speaking Parseltongue to him, a language Harry didn't know he could actually speak.
From his observation, the snake was neither too big nor too small, just the right size for what seemed to be a young one. It was a black-grey Rattlesnake, and so very venomous indeed. Harry knew this from his books. He did all he could to not move a single inch of his body, but the snake knew what it wanted. The snake continued to crawl, up to the back of his neck, surprising Harry and making his feet slipped as he fell forward.
The world around him was spinning as he reached the bottom of the stairs. His glasses fell from his face but he managed to find them. Unfortunately, one of his lenses was shattered. Then he noticed that the table next to the stairs had fallen down along with a hold antique figure from Petunia's family.
"Uh, no. Uncle Vernon is gonna kill me-"
Remembering the snake, he searched for the small creature. Not too far from him, the snake was pinned down by one of the garbage bags. Harry ran to his room and looked for some kind of jar. He came back and carefully captured the snake.
Closing the jar tightly, Harry stared at the little fellow for a moment, but then he heard the Dursleys' car outside in the front yard. He ran quickly to his room and placed the jar next to his bed. He thought that by returning to the door to greet them maybe they wouldn't scold him again. As if that was even possible.
Uncle Vernon was the first one to enter the house. The first thing he looked at was the disaster behind Harry before looking at him. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He grabbed Harry by the hair and managed to say, "Go, cupboard, stay, and no meals," before he collapsed into a chair. Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy because of it.
Some time later, Harry sat in his cupboard, wishing he had a watch. He didn't know the time, and he wasn't sure if the Dursleys' had fallen asleep or not. He couldn't risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food until they were asleep. He also needed to feed his guess, which Harry was keeping next to his old books.
He had left his books aside and had admired his magical friend all night. The rattlesnake had not spoken again or moved. It just lied there staring at him with its bright red eyes.
"I've been thinking about it," said Harry. He expected a reply, that would have been nice, at least someone to talk to besides Dudley, but he was probably imagining things before. The snake still didn't move.
"I will need to call you by a name while you're here. Do you have a name?" Harry asked. He moved his index finger to the glass and the snake quickly tried to attack him.
"I guess not. What about Tom? That's a cool, short, and simple name for a snake. Do you like it?" the snake finally made a non-aggressive move and raised its head looking at him. It didn't move, and instead just stared at him. Finally, Harry remembered the book where he put his letter.
"Here it's," Harry said, holding the letter that was sent to him. Harry's eyes widened as he opened the letter.
