Disclaimer: I do not own anything in this story. Feel free to abscond with what I have rightfully pilfered.

AN: I actually finished this one early, but decided to post on the one week mark in an effort to maintain regularity of posting. Chapter three should be out a week from today.

Chapter Two

The Letters From No One

By the time that you are no longer grounded for the escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor, the summer holidays have started, and Dudley has already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.

You are glad that school is over, but you still have to put up with the people that Dudley chooses to associate himself with. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon are all big and stupid, but as Dudley is the leader, they at least leave you alone.

To encourage this trend, you spend as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, that are causing you an unfortunate amount of apprehension. When September comes, you will be going off to secondary school, and, for the first time in your life, you won't have Dudley to protect you. Dudley has been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. Piers is going there too. You, on the other hand, are going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thinks this is funny, but he can be a jerk like that sometimes. You wish that your family would pay to send you there too, but you know that it is expensive enough for them to send their own son, and that they would have a hard time paying for twice the tuition. You will have to be content with the public school.

One day in July, Aunt Petunia takes Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving you with Mrs. Figg. You don't really like spending time with Mrs. Figg; she spends her time showing you pictures of every cat she's ever owned, and her house smells of cabbage. She is not that bad this time. Turns out that the reason she was on crutches when Dudley hit her on his racing bike was that she broke her leg tripping over one of her cats, and she doesn't seem quite as fond of them as before. She lets you watch TV and gives you a bit of chocolate cake. The cake tastes as though she's had it for several years, but it is still chocolate.

That evening, Dudley parades around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings' boys wear maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carry knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers aren't looking. This is supposed to be good training for later life.

Maybe it is a good thing that you are going to Stonewall. Not that you are worried about being hit, Dudley would protect you, and you know that he is big and tough. That is also good training for latter life, get someone bigger and tougher then you to stick up for you. It's best if you help them with their homework. No, the reason that you are glad you are not going, is because that uniform looks freakish. If there is one thing you never want to be, it is a freak.

Your Aunt and Uncle don't seem to agree. As he looks at Dudley in his new orange knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon says gruffly that it is the proudest moment of his life. Aunt bursts into tears. You think for moment that this might be because she has finally realized what going to Smeltings entails, but no, she says she can't believe her Ickle Dudleykins looks so handsome and grown-up. You don't trust yourself to say anything, but the tears running down your face are from suppressed laughter, not pride in your cousin's appearance.

There is a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when you go in for breakfast. You think that this must be the result of having a lie-in and letting Aunt Petunia start breakfast without you. Alas, she is the one who taught you to cook, so the smell comes from a large metal tub in the sink. You go to have a look, and the tub is full of what looks like dirty rags swimming in gray water.

You stare at it questioningly, knowing better then to ask your aunt a question. She doesn't like those.

"This is your new school uniform," she says.

You look in the bowl again.

"I'm dyeing a second hand school uniform that I picked up yesterday gray for you. The white was half the price of the gray, and it's white, so it'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished." You find this hard to believe, but if anyone knows how to make something seem normal, it's Aunt Petunia. Perhaps everyone who actually goes to public school has to get a second hand uniform and then dyes them because white is cheaper.

Dudley and Uncle Vernon come in then, both wrinkling their noses because of the smell form your new uniform. Uncle Vernon opens his newspaper as usual and Dudley bangs his Smelting stick, which he carries with him everywhere, on the table.

You hear the click of the mail slot and the flop of letters in the doormat.

"Get the mail, Dudley," says Uncle Vernon form behind his paper.

"Make Harry get it."

"Get the mail, Harry."

"I'm on it." You go to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge, who is vacationing on the Isle of Wright, a brown envelope that looks like a bill, and a letter for you.

You pick it up and stare at it. You can't remember the last time someone wrote to you. Who would? You have no friends due to your tendency to tattle, no relatives that aren't more closely related to the rest of your family, and you don't pay bills or even belong to the library, so you never even get rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it is, a letter, addressed so plainly there can be no mistake: Mr. H. Potter

The Cupboard Under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging, Surrey

The envelope is thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address is written in emerald-green ink. There is no stamp.

You turn the envelope over, your hand trembling, and see a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, and eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.

"Hurry up!" Uncle Vernon shouts from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckles at his own joke.

You jump up, and hurry back to the kitchen, still staring at your letter. You hand Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard, sit down, and slowly begin to peal the wax seal from the envelope.

Uncle Vernon rips open the bill, snorts in disgust, and flips over the postcard.

"Marge's ill," he informs Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk."

You are on the point of unfolding your letter, which is written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope. You start reading:

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,

Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Mr. Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witch...

It is at this point that Uncle Vernon interrupts your reading.

"What do you have there?"

You look up. "I got a letter from some school excepting me."

Aunt Petunia's face pales, and she turns to you. "What school? Vernon, let me see that letter!"

Uncle Vernon grabs the letter, and you let him take it, you haven't seen your aunt look so scared before. He looks at the letter curiously before handing it over, and his face turns green. Aunt Petunia reads the first line over his shoulder, and she makes a choking noise.

"Vernon! Oh my goodness. Vernon!" They stare at each other, seeming to have forgotten that you and Dudley are still in the room Dudley tries to grab the letter, but Uncle Vernon holds it up over his head.

Dudley gives his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick. "I want to read that letter," he says loudly.

You look at them all incredulously. "I want to read it, as it's mine."

Uncle Vernon croaks, "Get out, both of you" as he stuffs the letter back inside its envelope.

For once, you don't move quickly to obey. "I want my letter," you say in a calm voice.

"Let me see it!" demands Dudley.

"OUT!" roars Uncle Vernon, and he takes both you and Dudley by the scruffs of your necks, and throws you both into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind you. Dudley moves to listen at the keyhole, so you lay flat on your stomach to listen at the crack between the door and the floor.

"Vernon," Aunt Petunia says in a quivering voice, "look at the address; how could they possible know where he sleeps. You don't think they're watching the house?"

"Watching, spying, might be following us," mutters Uncle Vernon wildly.

"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want..." You can see your uncle's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.

"No," he finally says. "No, we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer... Yes, that's best... we won't do anything"

"But..."

"I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense. He was acting so normal, I thought we had succeeded."

"I thought so too. My sister was never that normal."

That evening, when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon visited you in your cupboard. You can tell that neither of you is really comfortable with him here.

"Might I have my letter?" you ask the moment he has squeezed through the door.

"I have burned it." Is his short reply. "It would be best if you put it out of your mind, it was just a cruel trick."

"What about that school. Did I get a scholarship?"

He sighs. "Enough questions. Your aunt didn't raise you to ask questions. The school isn't real, it is just a cruel lie, devised by some people who don't like me. Your aunt and I think that they were pointing out to us that they know you live in a cupboard. Wouldn't be good if they spread it around. I know that you like it in here, but it really isn't normal to live in a cupboard. We think it is time for you to move into Dudley's second bedroom."

That is so unfair. "Can't we just make them think that I moved?"

"No more questions," he snaps. "Take this stuff upstairs, now."

It only takes you three trips to move all your stuff from your cupboard to the bedroom where Dudley kept all the toys and things that don't fit into his bedroom. You sit down on your bed and look around at your new home. Nearly everything is broken, and everything is an appalling mess. You have been there less than five minutes, and you already miss your nice orderly cupboard. The month-old video camera is lying on top of a small, working tank Dudley once drove over the next door neighbor's dog; in the corner is Dudley's first-ever TV, which he put his foot through when hes favorite program was cancelled; there is a large birdcage, which once held a parrot that Dudley swapped at school for a real air rifle, which is up on a shelf with the end all bent because Dudley sat on it. Other shelves show a semblance of order, as they overflow with books that look as though they've never been touched. The whole room is cluttered and uncomfortably open. How are you supposed to sleep with all this clutter and open space?

From downstairs comes the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother. "I don't want him in there. I need that room. Let him move back into his cupboard!" You sigh and stretch out on the bed. Sometimes life sucks for everyone. You decide that you really don't like whoever sent that letter; they disrupted your nice, neat life.

Everyone is rather quiet the next morning at breakfast. Dudley is still in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, whacked you with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still doesn't have his room back. Come to think of it, you can't remember him ever not getting something he wanted that badly before. You are thinking about this time yesterday, and wishing that you had opened the letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia keep looking at each other darkly. You suppose that comes from being blackmailed.

When the mail arrives, Uncle Vernon makes Dudley go get it. You hear him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then you hear him shout, "There's another one! 'Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive." With a strange cry, Uncle Vernon leaps from his seat and runs down the hall, you run right behind him. He has to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him. After a minute of confused fighting, Uncle Vernon straightens up, grasping for breath, with your letter clutched in his hand.

"Go to your cupboard, I mean, your room," he wheezes at you. "Dudley, go, just go."

You walk round and round your new room. Someone knows you have moved out of your cupboard, and either they know that you haven't received your first letter, or they have some new blackmail for your uncle. That means that they will likely try again, and this time you'll make sure that you get to at least read that letter. You generally trust your family, but something seems off about this whole thing. Who accepts someone to a school that obviously doesn't exist as part of a blackmail plot? Tomorrow you will have a plan.

You wake up before everyone else, like normal, the next morning, and dress silently. You know that you can't wake your family. Then you steel downstairs without turning on any of the lights, probably a good thing to get used to anyway if you are going to be sleeping upstairs now.

You are going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. Your heart hammers as you creep across the dark hall toward the front door – you leap into the air; you've steped on something big and squashy on the doormat, something alive. Lights click on upstairs, and to your horror, you realize that the big squashy something is your uncle's face. Uncle Vernon was lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that you don't do exactly what you had been planning to do. Well, that sucks.

He shouts at you for about half an hour, and then tells you to go make a cup of tea. You shuffle miserable off into the kitchen, and by the time you get back, the mail has arrived, right into Uncle Vernon's lap. You can see three letters addressed in green ink.

You watch as Uncle Vernon tears the letters into pieces before your eyes. He doesn't go to work, instead he stays home and nails up the mail slot.

"See," he explains to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."

"I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon."

"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," he says as he tries to knock in a nail with a piece of fruitcake that aunt Petunia had just brought him.

It seems to you that Uncle Vernon is expecting them to think like him, but far be it from you to question his wisdom.

Times proves you right, as on Friday, no less then twelve letters arrive for you. As they couldn't go through the mail slot, they were pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom. How this was accomplished, you have no clue.

Your uncle stays home again. After burning all the letters, he gets out a hammer and nails and boards up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one can go out. This seems rather short sighted to you, as he will surely need to go out come Monday, but your uncle is a smart man, perhaps he has already thought of something. He certainly outsmarted you yesterday.

On Saturday, things begin to really get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to you find their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that a very confused milk man handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon makes furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shreds the letters in her food processor. You can't help but think that if someone is trying to destroy the reputation of your family, they seem to be winning. It seems like it would be smarter to simply ignore the letters at this point.

"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asks you in amazement. You can only shrug in reply. As unlikely as the blackmail story seems, the school story that they announced in the first line seems even more unlikely.

On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sits down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy. He's probably excited that there is no post on Sundays, but it seems to you that he will be lucky to get through another week of these letters without doing something really crazy, possibly what whoever is sending the letters wants.

"No post on Sundays," he reminds everyone cheerfully as he spreads marmalade on his newspapers. You are starting to think that he might actually need help. Newspapers are very different from the toast that you made for him. "No cursed letters today." Something comes whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he speaks and catches him sharply on the back of the head. The next moment, thirty or forty letters come pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys duck, but you show rare bravery, and leap out of your chair into the air to catch one. It is beyond curiosity at this point. You bet that if you read the letters in their entirety, Uncle Vernon would stop freaking out about whatever horrible secret they contain. Then maybe he could deal with them in a healthier, and more reasonable manner.

"Out! Out!" Uncle Vernon seizes you around the waist and throws you into the hall.

When Aunt Petunia and Dudley have run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slams the door shut. You can still hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

"That does it," says Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly, but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!" He looks so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dares to argue. Ten minutes later you have wrenched your way through the boarded-up doors, and are in the car, speeding toward the highway.

Dudley is sniffing in the back seat; his father hit him round the head for holding you up while he tried to pack his TV, VCR, and computer in his sports bag.

You drive. And drive. Even Aunt Petunia doesn't dare ask where you are going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon takes a sharp turn and drives in the opposite direction for a while. "Shake'em off... shake 'em off," he mutters whenever he does this.

You don't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley is howling. He's never had such a bad day in his life. He is hungry, he's missed five TV programs he wanted to see, and he's never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

Uncle Vernon finally stops outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. You'd be more vague, but you're not really sure how. You and Dudley share a room with damp, musty shets. Dudley snores, but you stay awake, unable to sleep in the unfamiliar room. Instead you stay awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering...

You do end up getting to bed, for a few hours, early in the morning, but still beat the rest of your family up. You find that the task of preparing breakfast has been taken from you, along with your cupboard and all trace of familiarity. Did you mention that you don't like whoever sent the letters very much?

You wait for everyone else to wake up, and then you all eat stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast. Even Uncle Vernon remarks that he misses your cooking. He quickly comes to regret giving you one of his rare complements when the owner of the hotel comes over to your table.

"'Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H. Potter? Only I got about an 'undered of these at the front desk." She holds up a letter so that you can read the green ink address:

Mr. H. Potter

Room 17

Railview Hotel

Cokeworth

You make a grab for the letter, but Uncle Vernon knocks your hand out of the way. The lady stares.

"I'll take them," says Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dinning room.

"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggests timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon doesn't seem to hear her. Exactly what he is looking for, none of you know. Earlier, he drove into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off you went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspention bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asks Aunt Petunia dully as the sun inches towards the horizon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked you all inside the car, and disappeared.

It starts to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley snivels.

"It's Monday," he tells his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television." Monday. That reminds you of something. If it is Monday, and you can usually count on Dudley to know the days of the week, because of television, then tomorrow, Tuesday, which comes after Monday, that Sunday comes before, would be your eleventh birthday. Of course, your birthday isn't as big a deal as Dudleys, but you still usually get 10% of the number of presents that he had gotten for his last birthday, and dessert. Besides, you aren't eleven every day, just every day for the next year after tomorrow. Perhaps you could persuade Uncle Vernon to give you a copy of the letter instead of your usual birthday presents. He does owe you four this year.

Uncle Vernon is back, and he is smiling. He is also carrying a long, thin package, and doesn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asks what he'd bought.

"Found the perfect place!" he says. "Come on ! Everyone out!" It is very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon is pointing at what looks like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock is the most miserable little shack that you can imagine. One thing is certain, there is no television in there.

"Storm forecast for tonight!" says Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!" A toothless old man comes ambling up to you, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below you.

"I've already got us some rations," says Uncle Vernon, "so all aboard!" It is freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain creep down your necks and a chilly wind whips your faces. After what seems like hours they reach the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, leads the way to that broken-down house.

The inside is horrible; it smells strongly of seaweed, the wind whistles through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace is damp and empty. There are only two rooms.

Uncle Vernon's rations turn out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tries to start a fire; the the empty chip bags just smoke and shrivel up.

"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" He says cheerfully.

He is in a very good mood. Obviously he thinks nobody stands a chance of reaching you here in a storm to deliver mail. You privately agree, and the thought does cheer you up a little bit, though you wish that you could spend your birthday back home.

As night falls, the promised storm blows up around you. Spray from the high waves splatters the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattles the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia finds a few moldy blankets in the second room and makes up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon go off to the lumpy bed next door, and you are left to find the softest bit of floor you can with just one of the blankets to rap around yourself like a sleeping bag.

The storm rages more and more ferociously as the night goes on. Despite your short night the night before, you can't sleep. You shiver and turn over, trying to get comfortable, your stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley's snores are drowned out by the low rolls of thunder that start near midnight.

You wonder if perhaps Uncle Vernon has done something really bad, and you are going to have to live in hiding like this until you come of age. Will you have to move to a country that doesn't expedite to Britain? Will Dudley and you get to go to any secondary school? It seems to you that for Uncle Vernon to act in such a freakish manor, the situation must be very dire indeed.

The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which is dangling over the edge of the sofa in his wrist, tells you that you'll be eleven in ten minutes' time. Will you look back on the first ten years of your life as the years of happiness and freedom, sharply contrasted from the next eight of a life on the run? You lie and watch your birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys will remember at all with all the excitement, wondering where the cursed letter writer is now.

Five minutes to go. You hear something creak outside. You hope the roof isn't going to fall in, although you might be warmer if it does.

Four minutes to go. Maybe Uncle Vernon will get one up on the letter writer, and you will all be able to go back home to Privet Drive some day.

Three minutes to go. Is that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that. Two minutes to go, what is that funny crunching noise. Is that rock crumbling into the sea? Will you even live long enough to see eleven?

One minute to go and you'll be eleven. Thirty seconds, twenty, ten.

Nine, maybe you'll wake Dudley up, just to annoy him, three, two.

One.

BOOM.

The whole shack shivers and you sit bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone is outside, knocking to come in.