Chapter 2

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 Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1.

We await your owl by no later than August 14th.

Yours Sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

Harry stared at the letter in disbelief and not a small amount of disappointment. He wasn't sure what he was expecting really, but a letter addressed to him was such a foreign concept that he's ashamed to say his imagination ran a little wild, he even had the thought that maybe an estranged relative was trying to reach out. His imagination, however, was obviously not as wild as whoever was playing this trick on him. Wizarding school? Who the bloody hell come up with that? After spending all day slaving away and looking forward to this letter he finds its a load of bollocks. Harry started to get rather pissed actually, addressing it to the cupboard under the stairs seems like someone taking the mick now that he thinks about it.

Harry sat in the cupboard staring at the letter in his hand whilst his anger grew. It even includes a bloody ridiculous list of items to get with book names and everything!

After a time, though if asked Harry couldn't say how long, another emotion began to fight for dominance with his anger, pure bloody confusion. It makes no sense, he knew nobody capable of this level of imagination or penchant for pranking and as pranks go… what did they get out of this? Maybe someone expects him to go chasing after owls, though where he'd find one of those he hasn't a clue considering he doesn't think he's ever seen one. Harry decides to give up on his musings and just ignore it, whatever someone wants from this, they won't be getting it that's for sure.

Harry woke the next morning just like every other, and if there was a little bit more bitterness to his usual morning crankiness Harry wasn't going to give the letter hoax the satisfaction of admitting it. Seeing the letter on the cupboard floor he contemplated how to get rid of it, maybe even burning the blasted thing, but in the end, he decided to shove it where he used to keep his stash of chocolate, though he couldn't say why that was and choose not to think about it further.

Breakfast was an extra trial that morning, Harry managed to run his mouth a little to his uncle and thus was sent out of the kitchen after preparing breakfast with not so much as a piece of toast. At least the order of 'get out of my sight!' meant he could escape for the rest of the day.

Harry might have stomped his way to the park if it wasn't for the fact that he'd look like a pillock, as it was he walked with a dark scowl on his face to match his ever darkening mood. He was halfway there when he noticed it. An Owl. There was an owl on the tree. There was an owl. on the tree. not 10 yards in front of him. Harry stopped and stared. Then he stared some more. The owl stared back. That was a suspicious coincidence. Maybe he just hadn't taken note of an owl before, but now that the letter mentioned it he noticed it. That didn't sound really right to Harry but he shrugged and made his way to the park anyway. This time with less of a scowling expression and more of a suspicious confused one, which also reflected his new mood. He was sat on the swings when he heard it. Flapping. As in wings flapping. Harry slowly swiveled his head around and spotted the Owl staring at him from his new perch on the top of the slide. Freaky. Harry decided he was being silly and he was just going to ignore it and sit on the swing. He wasn't going to think of the beady eyes on his back. Harry casually looked around and just by accident he swears, notices that the bird is still there. Staring. Harry then decided that the park is particularly boring that day and maybe he will take a walk.

Harry made his way further up the street, but he hadn't gotten all that far when he heard the flapping again. He picked up his pace to a fast walk and peeked over his shoulder to see the owl perched on a tree not far back behind him. Picking up his pace again which put him in a slight jog, Harry was just starting to get confident that the owl had given up when he heard the dreaded bloody flapping again. At this point, Harry promptly freaked the fuck out and started running like his life depended on it. He ran across the road and started to quickly make his way back to the park. He was just passing the park again when he chanced another look and saw the owl flying after him, Harry let out a screech and somehow managed to pick up the pace even further and thus made it back to the Dursleys in record time. He shut the front door behind him and ran into his cupboard and shut that door for good measure too.

Harry sat on his sleeping pallet for a few minutes catching his breath with his eyes wide and hands shaking. "What the bloody fuck was wrong with that bird." Harry had almost fully calmed down after a few more moments of contemplating the roof of his cupboard when he snorted. Then he started to giggle. He had just ran up and down the street like a banshee because of a bloody owl! Imagine what that must have looked like to the neighbors, him running as fast as he could screeching, while a pretty little brown owl flew calmly behind him. The Dursleys would have a field day with the freaky taunts if this story got back to them.

He didn't know how long he had been lying there in amusement before he heard the Dursleys leave the house for some reason or another. They must not have known he had come back and thus Harry had the place to himself and his cupboard was unlocked. The day was looking up. He decided he'd grab something to eat from the kitchen and then watch some tv. He was even tempted to have a go at Dudley's new computer, but was scared he didn't know enough about them to hide his use so he decided it wouldn't be worth the fuss of his aunt and uncle finding out about that.

He had just settled down with a sandwich and some lousy daytime tv when an urge came over him. He put the sandwich down and took a peek out of the front window. The owl was perched on the small tree in the front garden. He sat back down on the settee, sandwich forgotten for the moment. Harry was a rather practical boy, but what if...there had been some rather odd occurrences in his life, or as his aunt and uncle called them his freakish episodes. If being a freak meant having magic Harry would be well up for that. It's stupid contemplating this, magic and wizardry can't be real, and surely if it was and there was a whole bloody school for it he would have heard of it. But what if. In the end what decided it for Harry was the simple fact that he was fed up with thinking about it. Without further thought, he went to his cupboard and pulled the letter out and made a trip to the kitchen for some paper and a pen. He then wrote a simple, short letter that accidentally ended up slightly passive aggressive.

Dear whoever this is

If magic is real, send proof.

Thanks,

Harry Potter

Harry then took a rubber band he had found in a kitchen drawer and made his way outside. It was when he was looking at the Owl perched on the tree that he had some second thoughts because of the absolute ridiculousness of what he was doing, but he powered on anyway. He strolled up to the rather pretty looking owl that not that long ago had scared the shit out of him and was just thinking about climbing the tree when it flew down to a lower branch and held out its leg. "huh...smart and pretty aren't you, I'm sorry I ran away from you screaming, at the time you seemed rather terrifying" Harry could swear the Owl was silently judging him with his eyes so he quickly attached his letter to the owls leg with the band and almost as fast as he could blink the owl was flying off. Giving both a figurative and an actual shrug, Harry went back inside to finish his sandwich determined not to spend any more time thinking about it.

A few days later and Harry had been almost entirely successful in not thinking about what he was now calling the letter incident. The exception being when his Aunt had a bit of a go at him for being freaky after she had gossiped with the neighbor and heard about his minor escapade with the chasing owl. She seemed rather adamant he should stay away from owls, which seemed like an odd thing to concentrate her lecture on since the story she had heard was of him running away from the owl after all.

It was early afternoon and Harry was wondering if he could get away with getting out of the house and meeting up with boys for a second day running when there was a knock on the door. Harry didn't know what it was about that knock that grabbed his attention, but it did. It was hardly a strange occurrence to have someone at the door and the chances of it being anything to do with him was slim to none as far as Harry was concerned, however, for some explicable reason Harry found his whole being and attention captivated by that knock. He found himself moving from his place by the kitchen sink to the kitchen doorway without a conscious thought, and he then proceeded to watch his aunt answer the front door with great interest.

At first Harry couldn't see much of anything due to his aunt and the door, however, he did notice a flash of green above his aunts head as if someone was wearing a pointed green hat. Before Harry had a chance to do anything but blink at the weirdness of that, his aunt let out a horrified wail and moved quickly, pulling whoever was beyond the door into the room with a hand on the arm and slamming the front door closed.

"NO! No, no, your kind is not welcome here! We don't want anything to do with your ...your...freakishness, look at you! What will the neighbors think!" Harry wasn't really paying attention to his aunts angry stuttering, he was too busy gaping at the woman in the hallway in pure bewilderment. She was rather tall and relatively old looking, but it wasn't her face that had captured Harry's attention but what she was wearing. Firstly it was green, moss green, and a lot of it. Draped around what looked like a very old-fashioned green dress was a lined darker green fabric cloak, like something that little red riding hood would wear, but you know...green. Harry's eyes soon traveled back to the hat, the pointed green hat…like something a wiz- Harry let out an involuntary gasp, and the woman who had been looking at his aunt with a regal but rather outraged look on her face, turned her attention to him.

She seemed to size him up a little as his aunt carried on her raving. Harry knew what she would see, too small, too skinny, too big clothes, too much wild hair, and too much round glasses behind which his eyes were as wide as saucers, and come to think of it his mouth was wide and gaping as well. In other circumstances, Harry might have been worried about what impression she was getting from him, but as it stood he was too busy dealing with the realization and hope that was building inside him. He was starting to think that maybe the letter wasn't a hoax after all. It was a ridiculous notion, but if magic was real and Harry could do it, he was going to shit a brick in happiness.

The woman must have been done sizing him up because she interrupted his aunts still going on tirade and spoke with a rather severe Scottish accent that seemed to slice through the room and straight through Harrys body.

"Hello Mr. Potter, I am Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I believe you required some proof."

"now you stop right there...I...We d-don't won't any of this...If we have to house and feed that boy there will be no ma-...stuff going on here!" His aunt was spitting mad, each word seemed to be forced out of her rigid lips and her eyes were narrowed in anger and a surprising amount of hatred. He had been on the receiving end of his aunt ire on an almost daily basis, but he sensed something a little different about the anger he was witnessing now, and it wasn't until McGonagall turned back to his aunt to answer her that Harry realised what that was, fear, his aunt was enraged by McGonagalls presence but she was also afraid of her.

"Miss Dursley, as you well know, you can not prevent from receiving a magical education, I can ensure you that he will not be performing any magic he learns at school in your residence as according to wizarding law, again, as you well know. Now, if you don't mind, I need to have a talk with Mr. Potter as it seems that someone has been remiss in informing him of his heritage and future." With that, McGonagall strode into the living room leaving his aunt spluttering in the hallway and Harry much to his chagrin still gaping in the kitchen doorway.

"If you could join me " Harry heard her polite call from the living room, and after finally closing his now rather dry mouth he quickly made his way there without another look at his aunt.

McGonagall had seemed to make her self at home and was sitting straight-backed on the beige sofa. Harry, not entirely sure what to do in this situation, simply sat on the far end of the sofa next to her and turned to look at the woman with what he hoped was a less dumb expression than what he wore in the hallway.

"Firstly I would like to apologize, If we had known that you were unaware of magic, we would have treated you the way we treat children who have mugg- non magical parents and either I or another professor would have visited personally to deliver your acceptance letter and to explain things to you and your family" Another Professor, because there was a school for magic, because they are saying that that is an actual thing. Some of the growing skepticism must have shown on his face because McGonagall sighed.

"Alright, let's get this part done out of the way shall we" She then pulled out a stick which Harry's brain was currently refusing to call what he suspected it to be, and swished it at the coffee table which promptly turned into a bloody pig! A pig! Harry jumped off of the settee and started to gape incredulously yet again.

"Fucking hell!" That was magic. She turned the normal, boring looking wooden coffee table until a rather large ugly pig. Harry poked the pig a little. It felt like a pig as well.

"Right, well, I will ignore your crude language considering the circumstances. As you can see magic is very much real and soon you will be entrenched in a world where magic is the norm and you will learn to perform magic yourself" Harry was listening with only half an ear as the rest of him was still looking and poking the pig. She must have noticed his preoccupation as she sighed again and did another swish with her wand (wand!)and the pig turned back to a coffee table.

"Sit down, Mr. Potter, I have much to go over and not much time to do so" After a few heavy blinks, Harry sat. With a promise to himself that he could freak the hell out later when he was alone, he took a calming breath and pulled his mind back from the crazed running commentary that consisted mainly of 'Magic!'.

"I'm capable of magic?" McGonagall scrutinized him a little and seemed a little pleased to see he had calmed himself and gave him a small nod of approval.

"That's correct, you may have noticed a few instances as you were growing up, magical children are prone to accidental magic." There were a few he could think of, though he wished he had managed to turn Dudley into an actual pig, people may not have even noticed if he had.

"ye, there were a few, it explains why the Dursleys blamed me for all sorts of weird shi-crap to if they knew about magic" Her face pursed in displeasure at this.

"yes, I have heard Petunia displayed a dislike of magic from the moment your mother received her acceptance to Hogwarts"

"My mother? She had magic too?" McGonagall's face softened at this.

"Yes, I taught both your mother and father in school and they later become good friends of mine, you look very much like your father Harry," Harry didn't know what to feel about his parents. When he was younger he knew he used to imagine what they would be like and get upset at the fact that he would never really know, but it has been a while since he had thoughts like that, and it's hard to miss things you don't remember having. Even so, hearing about his parents made his eyes burn and made him extremely uncomfortable and he wanted to change topics, but his curiosity in the matter won out a little.

"How is it that my mom had magic but Aunt Petunia doesn't?"

"Ah, your mother was muggle-born, meaning that neither her parents or anyone else in the family had magic, no one knows how muggle-borns get their magic, though there is much debate on the matter"

"Was my dad a muggle-thingi to?"

"Muggleborn, and no, your dad was part of a prominent pure-blood family" she hesitated and seemed uncomfortable about the topic "you will learn more on that in time." She then pulled out a small thin book from her pocket, that Harry suspected should not have fitted in there without the aid of some cool as shit magic. "Here, this gives you some information on the magical world and will help you to acclimatize a little for when you arrive at Hogwarts. I suggest you read the chapter on pure-blood hereditary affinities thoroughly as it does pertain to you, you will be given special classes on this once you arrive at Hogwarts so don't worry if you don't understand some aspects of that" He briefly studied the book she had handed to him, it seemed awfully thin to be thought to give enough information on a whole new world if you asked Harry, but he was excited to read it regardless.

"Where is Hogwarts exactly?" It would be very helpful to know where the hell he was supposed to be showing up come September.

"Ah, yes, Hogwarts is a very prestigious boarding school in Scotland you will catch a train from London to get there which I will give details to you about at a later time. At Hogwarts itself you will be taught a range of branches of magic, I have little doubt that you will enjoy your time there greatly." He has little doubt about that too, he gets to live away from the Dursleys in a school where the work you have to do is magic! "please be aware that until you are of age you will not be permitted to do any magic outside of school" Bummer. "Now, I have found it easier in these cases for you to simply ask any urgent questions that have come to mind, you will have a chance to learn more when we meet for your shopping trip at a later date"

"When can I get a wand?" Harry stared a little hungrily at the wand he could see peeking out of McGonagall's side pocket. McGonagall's lip twitched and Harry got the impression that this question was a rather popular one.

"You will get your wand along with all your other school supplies during our shopping trip, I have one scheduled for this coming Wednesday or I have one the following wee-"

"Wednesday is fine." The sooner the better as far as Harry was concerned.

"Very well, any other questions?"

"What's with the owls?"

"Owls are the way we communicate via letters" So they will be a common thing then, Harry seriously hopes that no one finds out about his first interaction with one.

"Wouldn't phones be quicker?"

"There is no electricity in the wizarding world, it tends to not react well with magic" What. He couldn't imagine that. Harry sat quietly for a few moments trying to imagine what the wizarding world could be like. He was sure that there were a million things he needed and wanted to know, but for the life of him, he couldn't think of any at the moment, much to his great annoyance.

"You need not learn everything right now Mr. Potter, I find that experiencing the wizarding world is the best way to learn about it than any other" Harry would rather know what he was getting into if he was honest, but experiencing magic sounded pretty darn epic to him so he pushed away his worries and concentrated on the excited feelings he had. McGonagall stood up from the settee. "I will arrive here at half past nine Wednesday morning to take you to Diagon Alley for your supplies." And with that, she made her way to the hall and to the door. Harry was going to leave it there when something inside him forced him to run after her.

"Miss McGonagall?"

"Professor McGonagall Mr. Potter" She corrected a little sternly though not unkindly.

"If my parents were wizards, how did they really die?" McGonagall didn't really react much to his query unless you counted a moment of frigidness. She seemed to weigh her words carefully before answering and Harry got the impression that there was a lot she was leaving out.

"Around the time you were born, the wizarding world was in the height of a civil war, your parents fought in that war and died during one of the final battles. They are considered heroes for their efforts, your father especially." She seemed to hesitate again before she moved away from the door and back to where Harry was standing by the living room doorway "Harry...no matter what you may hear about the decisions your parents made" At this Harry was sure her eyes flicked down to his scruffy hand-me-down clothes " know that they had their reasons, and above all else, they loved you very much" She then quickly turned and made her exit which Harry was grateful for, since he didn't want to think about the expression that was on his face at that moment, never mind have anyone else see it. Part of him wished McGonagall had never said that, so he could have avoided the complicated emotions he was now feeling, but a bigger part was glad, glad to know that at one point he was loved by family.