On the day Harry Potter turned eleven, or more accurately the early morning of the day he turned eleven, or even more accurately the very minute the new day dawned of his new birthday when Dudley's watch beeped for midnight, a very odd man knocked at the door.

Normally, the Dursleys practiced safe habits and likely wouldn't answer a knock from a stranger at midnight, particularly such a wild looking stranger. Under the current circumstances, however, they had very little choice in the matter as the door being knocked upon broke and the man doing the knocking wasted no time in entering on his own accord. He was, however, kind enough to pick the door back up and rest it in place. This was of particular importance as it was teeming down outside and gusts of heavy rain had been following him inside through the open door.

"I'm warning you!" Mr. Dursley screamed, waving a gun in the stranger's direction. Harry did not blame him, the intruder was very wild looking indeed, but he didn't think this was the best response. For one, he didn't think his uncle had come by the gun through legal means, and for another he didn't think his uncle to be of sound mind, which is the sort of mind one hopes that a gun wielding citizen should be in.

The giant stranger didn't seem to care in any case, talking instead about wanting tea while Dudley took refuge behind his parents. Harry wondered if he shouldn't be doing the same. Then the stranger called him by name.

"Thank you," Harry said politely but also sincerely when he was presented with a squished birthday cake. He had thought that, thanks to their unplanned holiday to a shack in the middle of nowhere, his birthday would pass without any notice that year. Not that his relatives ever made a big fuss, but normally Harry got to bake his favorite cake and cook his favorite foods and he would be gifted with new yarn for knitting and perhaps something new to cook with in the kitchen or a new gardening tool. Not that getting to go on a holiday to a shack in the middle of a lake wasn't present enough, but there weren't many ingredients to work with towards baked goods.

"I'm sorry," Harry said then, after admiring the effort the giant had put into his birthday cake, "But I don't know who you are?"

"Rubeus Hagrid," the stranger answered, "Gamekeeper and keeper of the keys at Hogwarts."

This, of course, required further explanation to be understood, interspersed with the Dursleys' protests and threats of violence, though luckily Hagrid managed to break the gun before Harry's uncle could manage anything that might result in a prison sentence. The new information all boiled down to one important fact:

"You're a wizard, Harry."

This man, Harry realized, was quite sadly one of those sort who are mentally incapacitated. He apparently lived in some exciting fantasy world.

"Of course I am," Harry told him while giving him a consoling pat to his arm. "We're all wizards."

"Yes…" Hagrid answered, giving Harry a puzzled look but not breaking into new bouts of violence or shouting so Harry supposed he was handling the situation well. Then Hagrid looked at the Dursleys again. "Well, not that lot. The most muggle sort of muggles I've ever met."

"Of course they are," Harry said, though normally he'd object to someone calling his family names. His uncle and his cousin might be a bit simple but there was no need to make fun of them for it.

"Yes…well," said Hagrid, "I have your letter here."

The envelope was heavy, as though it were made out of some medieval parchment. It, like all its predecessors which had started this mad journey out to the middle of nowhere in the first place, was addressed to Harry, to his exact location in the shack. Harry accepted it, but did not tear it open. He was curious, of course, as to what was in it, but he was even more curious about how and why this large, sadly delusional man had chased him down to deliver it. How had he trained all those owls? How had he always known just where Harry was staying? And if the man was stalking Harry, why couldn't his aunt and uncle simply have gone to the police? They certainly seemed to have some idea what this was about, considering how hard they protested Hagrid telling Harry anything.

"Well, go on, read it!" the man said, and Harry felt it might have been dangerous to disobey.

It was a letter inviting him to be a student at Hogwarts. The school which, according to Hagrid, his parents had attended. A magic school which taught magic, and not in the sense of sleight of hand but actual magic.

"How lovely of them to invite me," Harry said, after looking at the letter, "But I'm afraid I already attend a school. It will be my second year at Stonewall this September."

"There, you see!" his uncle managed to say, "He says he won't be going!"

"Nonsense!" Hagrid answered, becoming agitated once more, his large hands clutching at an old umbrella, "Lily and James son, not going?"

"There, there," said Harry quickly, "I didn't see how much it meant to you. Of course I'll go to your magic school. Let's just tell an owl like it says and then maybe, since it's so late, we might be going back to bed and talk it over properly in the morning." Then he smiled at Hagrid and hoped Hagrid wouldn't turn violent.

"Owl, right, of course," Hagrid answered, before pulling a live owl out of one of his pockets. Harry watched with great fascination as the man wrote out a quick message using an actual quill and inkpot. He felt a bit sorry when the owl was thrown into the storm. He hoped it made it.

"Now," said Hagrid, "Who wants some sausages?" He pulled them from another pocket, along with a small saucepan. He also poked at the remains of the fire Harry had managed to build earlier using crisps bags and the clothes they had changed out of when they arrived at the shack, said clothes being largely ruined anyway. The embers apparently still had some life after all because almost immediately a cheerful fire had blazed up.

"I'm still full from the fish we ate earlier," Harry answered. Who knew that fish would go for bananas as bait? "But perhaps the others are hungry? They're bigger than me so they often need more food."

"Don't you touch anything that man offers," Harry's aunt answered sharply. Harry had to admit that was probably sensible, though he did look at his birthday cake with some regret.

While Hagrid had his meal, Harry managed to sidle up to his aunt's side to whisper with her.

"Aunt Petunia," he said, "Do you know who he is? Why he's obsessed with me and this magic school? Do you think he knew my parents?"

"It's a cult, that's what it is," his aunt hissed back. "My sister was drawn into it, went to that horrid school, then was killed for it."

"You mean the school is real?" asked Harry, rather surprised. He had thought Hagrid must have dreamed up everything himself, but apparently it was much larger than that.

"Oh yes," his aunt answered, "And you'll have to go too, now. They'll see to that!"

That was very alarming news.

"But I don't want to join a magic cult," Harry whispered, "Can't we go to the police? How can I get proper schooling at a fantasy school?"

"Are you sure you won't have some sausages, Harry?" Hagrid called.

"Mum…" Dudley said, looking at the sausages with drool on the edge of his mouth.

"You stay away from that freak!" his mum answered shrilly.

"Hey!" Hagrid said, becoming angry once more as he reached for his umbrella, and with a squeak of alarm, all three Dursleys ran into the other room of the shack and closed the door, leaving Harry to deal with Hagrid. Harry felt proud that they trusted him to be able to handle things, though he also wished a bit that he could hide with them. It wasn't that he found Hagrid scary so much as that he found him a bit sad but alarming and dangerous, like the snake at the zoo that had somehow gotten free.

"Good riddance," Hagrid muttered once they were alone. "I was quite ready to turn the fat one into a pig."

Harry thought that rather rude, but carefully didn't say anything of the kind. Instead, he took another look at his school letter. Now that he knew it wasn't a complete fabrication, he decided he might as well learn more about it.

"This school sounds quite expensive," said Harry after looking at the invitation and at the school list, "I don't think my family can afford it."

"Don't you worry about that," said Hagrid, "Your parents left you quite a sum, I believe."

"I don't know of any store that sells these items," Harry tried again, hoping against hope that perhaps Hagrid might admit it was all one giant game of make believe.

"There are shops, if you know where to look," said Hagrid. "Now, perhaps we should get a bit of sleep. Big day tomorrow."

Hagrid was quite right about that.

They left early without even saying goodbye to Harry's relatives. That was, Harry supposed, probably for the best. The only worry that Harry had was that they had taken the only boat and he wasn't entirely certain how his family was meant to get back. This vague worry plagued him all the way to London, though he was a bit distracted by Hagrid's stories once Harry got him to talk. Harry found it quite enjoyable once he got it in his head to look upon his own family history as a sort of storybook instead of a mad cultist's delusions.

"So my parents went to a magic school, and there was a secret war and a madman wanted to kill me so they hid, but he found them anyway, and then he killed him, but he didn't kill me, and he died instead, and he's so scary you can't tell me his name, and that's why I have no parents and a scar?"

"That about sums it up," Hagrid agreed, sounding a bit puzzled himself. "You're taking this awfully well, Harry."

"I just like learning new things. I never knew stories about my own parents before. My aunt doesn't like to talk about them."

Arriving at the Leaky Cauldron was odd. It seemed the story about the school being real was starting to add up; Harry even met one of his future professors. It was also the first time Harry really began to understand what Hagrid meant when he said Harry was famous. Everyone in the pub was very friendly.

Diagon Alley laid to rest the fear that this was all some bizarre prank or mass fantasy play; there were far too many people and shops involved for it to be anything other than real. Then there was the bank.

"Run by goblins," Hagrid explained in what was probably meant as a whisper. The goblins were, quite honestly, the moment when Harry began to reevaluate his first assumptions that the 'magical' world was one mass fantasy upheld by a very widespread underground cult. It was hardly the first non-human humanoid beings that Harry had met, but they were the first that struck Harry as particularly magical or odd. Bug people in the garden made sense because bugs live in gardens, and just because some had proper faces and could sing didn't mean they didn't belong in gardens. Besides, he had known the garden bug people for as long as he could remember. Goblins, on the other hand, were most certainly not bugs and most definitely were not humans. They were, in fact, a novelty.

"Hagrid," Harry whispered, and then repeated a bit louder because Harry was quite good at whispering quietly but Hagrid had quite a lot of hair over his ears. "Can I see some real magic?"

"I'm not really allowed, on account of having been expelled," Hagrid answered, "But keep your eyes open."

Harry kept his eyes open. What he saw next was a bit like magic but mostly not.

"That's a lot of money, isn't it? Is this magic money? Do magic people not use paper money or credit cards? Is all this money mine, from my parents? Why didn't I know it was here before?"

Hagrid, unfortunately, was looking a bit green and the goblin who had opened the vault for them did little more than grudgingly explain the different types of coins. Neither told him how many pounds made a galleon. Hagrid did manage to collect some coins for Harry in a bag so Harry didn't have to guess out how many he should get out.

"Mr. Goblin, sir," said Harry, "Do you do bank statements or inventories of vaults or things like that?"

"It's none of our business, what people keep in their vaults," the goblin answered with a sneer. Then he took them to another, mostly empty vault so that Hagrid could pull out a small mysterious item.

"Do you think my aunt and uncle and cousin made it off the rock all right?" Harry asked while Hagrid was being proud and secretive with his package.

After the bank, Hagrid sent Harry to be fitted for his new school robes while he went to recover from the ride in the bank. Actually buying new clothes was a new experience for Harry. Normally he made his own clothes, either by knitting or by altering Dudley's old things. If it were up to his aunt and uncle, Harry would probably currently be swamped in oversized, stained hand-me-downs that had once fit Dudley when he was eight while sporting a pair of broken-framed glasses. Instead, he was wearing a perfectly fitted shirt and jeans with a colorful patchwork style and the broken frames of his glasses were hidden behind a carefully applied paper façade in the same color as his shirt so it wasn't at all obvious that they had ever been broken in the first place. The only part of his wardrobe that ever gave him trouble was his shoes; it was nearly impossible to improve upon used shoes, though painting them had gone a long way towards rejuvenating their appearance.

Being fitted for robes was fascinating. For one thing, it was the first solid evidence Harry had seen that magic might exist, in the form of a floating measuring tape. For another, Harry got to meet another boy who would be going to his new school. The boy even reminded Harry a bit of Dudley, which made Harry feel companionable towards him. He had the same way of asking questions only because he wanted to tell Harry his own answers in the first place, rather than wanting to learn anything from Harry. He also had that same air of expecting everything to be done for him.

"Where are your parents?" the boy finally asked after going on about brooms and school houses and other things Harry couldn't have contributed to even if the boy had given him a chance.

"The last time I saw my guardians, they were on left stranded on a rock," Harry answered, because generally when people asked questions about 'parents' what they meant was 'the adults who look after you'.

"What?" the boy asked, turning to look at Harry properly for the first time during their entire conversation. The boy looked Harry up and down, taking in his outfit and glasses. "These guardians, they are our sort, aren't they?" he asked.

"Do you mean magic people?" Harry asked, and at the boy's confused nod, Harry answered, "No, I don't think so. Apparently my parents were before they died in some war."

"And they stuck you with muggles?" the boy demanded, sounding outraged. "Typical ministry mismanagement. They'll bring us to ruin, letting all the muggleborn in and now this, not even giving a decent born wizard to a proper family. I suppose you won't know anything about our world? What's your name, anyway?"

But at that moment Hagrid knocked at the door, holding up ice creams to show why he couldn't come in and the other boy was distracted.

"And there's another sort they let run free. What is that wild man banging at the glass for?"

"He's the Groundkeeper at the school," Harry answered. The boy was not impressed. He reminded Harry of Dudley more than ever. Harry hoped that he wouldn't turn out to have bullying tendencies, though Harry still had hopes that his cousin might grow out of it. Still, Harry wished him a good day as his fitting was finally finished and Harry was able to go to join Hagrid with his ice cream.

Now that Harry understood that magic was real, he was much more excited to be going to his new school. They continued to collect the items on Harry's school list, from a wand to potions ingredients, but it wasn't until they went into the bookstore and collected his school books that Harry's old doubts began to return.

"What about mathematics?" Harry asked while a harried shopkeeper brought him the entire year one set. "What about English? Biology, chemistry, languages? Does the school only teach magic things?"

"Hogwarts offers the finest magical education you can get," Hagrid answered. "There isn't time to fit all those other things in."

"But what if I wanted to be a doctor when I grow up?" Harry asked. "Or a lawyer?"

"Doctor?" said Hagrid, "That's one of those muggle healers, isn't it? The kind that thinks sticking a leech on the hurting bit will help? Well, if you want to be a healer then Hogwarts can give you a good foundation."

Harry gave up on that subject for the moment. Instead, he took the time to explore the bookstore.

"Does the magic world have public libraries?" he asked. "Where people can borrow books for free?"

Both Hagrid and the shopkeeper had not heard of any magical libraries, at least none open to the public. The question about books designed to help people new to the magical world was much fruitful.

"You should have mentioned you were muggleborn," the shopkeeper said, giving Hagrid a pointed look. "We have an entire packet that comes standard, no cost, the school covers it. Then there's a suggested reading list." Harry looked over the list with great interest before consulting with Hagrid.

"Do you think I can afford the extra books?" he asked. "I don't really understand wizard money." In fact, the entire idea of spending money on himself was so foreign that he could scarcely comprehend that he had money to spend at all. He was readier to accept that magic existed than he was to understand that he owned a small fortune.

"It's not like you're spending it on a broom," Hagrid answered. "It's for your schooling, after all. And it is your birthday today, don't forget!"

With this new delightful thought in Harry's head, he gathered up the entire suggested reading list, then boldly added one more: 'Magical Crafts for Around the House'. The shopkeeper even took the time to teach Harry his very first spell: how to make items lighter.

"It'll wear off in a few hours, depending on how much magic you put into it" the shopkeeper warned. "A beginner like you, you'd probably have to renew it every hour."

The only awkward bit was doing magic in front of Hagrid, when Hagrid wasn't allowed.

"I work in a magic school," Hagrid pointed out. "If I couldn't stand seeing others doing magic, I'd have gone mad years ago. Truth be told, I was never really good at it myself anyway. Now, let's see about your birthday present."

Of course, Harry pointed out that Hagrid had gotten him a cake and showed him around and that Harry already had all those new books. Hagrid wouldn't hear of it.

"You bought yourself the books," he answered, "And a cake doesn't count. Everyone should get a cake and presents for their birthday."

That was how Harry ended up owning his very own snowy white owl.

"She's beautiful," Harry said. "I hope my aunt and uncle don't mind." Then, "I hope they managed to get off the rock."

"Will you stop worrying about that?" Hagrid asked. "I sent the boat back, alright? I know I'm not supposed to do magic, but I can do a bit and I did that much."

"Oh," said Harry. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it," Hagrid replied. "Please. Ever."

The last thing Hagrid did before dropping Harry off at his house was to give him his train ticket and, in a rather offhand way, said, "Oh, you aren't really meant to practice magic outside of school."

Harry found out that his aunt and uncle and cousin had gotten home alright. They did not like the owl.

"You've been converted into their magic cult already, I see," his aunt said, her face pinched.

"I'm not sure it is a cult," Harry answered. "It turns out magic is really true."

"That doesn't make it not a cult," his aunt said while his uncle quietly turned red at the mention of the 'm' word.

"Can I have an owl?" Dudley demanded. "Why does he get to have an owl and learn magic?"

Uncle Vernon's face turned even redder.

"Just you lock away that owl and those freakish things," his aunt said.

"Go to your cupb…room, boy!" his uncle shouted. "And just…stay there!"

Harry had to admit his new room was much bigger than his cupboard, but it certainly wasn't nicer. He hadn't had a chance yet to paint any murals on the walls and his old furniture that had made his cupboard feel quite cozy looked a bit small and out of place in the larger room. With all his new things, though, it was probably for the best that it wasn't all being crammed in under the stairs, especially with an owl.

Harry arranged his new things neatly about his room, set his new owl up on her perch with some water and food, and arranged his new books alongside Dudley's on the bookcase. He had a month to prepare for his new school.

A month, he thought, might be just about enough time. But first, he went back downstairs. The garden had been awfully neglected, after all, and the entire house was looking a bit dusty and it was definitely time to get started on supper.

"Good to know you still know your place," his uncle commented gruffly as Harry set about his chores. Harry smiled. It was good to be appreciated.