Time passed, and finally the day to remove the orphanage from the modified Fidelious charm that had kept it hidden from the magical world had come. Tomorrow would be Harry's eleventh birthday, the day he was supposed to get his Hogwarts letter. Tom arose shortly before dawn and began to remove the wardstones from the four corners of the orphanage property. Once the wardstones had been removed, he carefully set them down in the middle of the small playground at the back of the orphanage. He had to bring the extremely heavy wardstones together by hand, since the only other option would've involved overloading the specially made wards, severely draining himself , and creating an unexplainable iridescent blue dome over the entire property that would've drawn the Ministry to him in an instant in the process. He looked up, the kids had already started coming out back to play away more of their summer holidays. He groaned. So much for privacy. Fortunately, the kids had seen him and Harry "Playing wizard" so many times that they had become inured to the sight.
He pulled out the wand he had swiped from Grimwauld Place years before though it was highly unnecessary for what he was doing, and began chanting nonsensical words while concentrating on not channeling his magic through the wand and praying that he wouldn't create some horrific new spell or accidentally summon Godzilla like that kid who had been messing around during a trip to Japan. Bringing the four wardstones together had caused the overload that was necessary to bring down the protections without the spectacular results. With the stones together, what would've become a giant blue dome that encompassed the entire grounds of the orphanage was merely a blinding blue glow that just surrounded the stones themselves. The children who had come out to play, seeing that nothing interesting and noteworthy was happening, swiftly became bored and went back to whatever they had been doing before he had overloaded the wardstones. With a final sputtering pop, the wards overloaded and vanished.
An hour later, a pair of Hogwarts owls arrived bearing the long awaited letters.
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After sending their replies to the letters, Thomas turned to Harry.
"Are you ready to see Diagon Alley?" He said with a smile.
The excited look on Harry's face was answer enough. Harry had been hearing tales of the famous alley since the day he and his cousin were dropped off at the orphanage by Aunt Petunia. Thomas had told him many tales of the wizarding world, some good some bad. The tales of Diagon Alley had almost always been good.
After putting on one of the baseball caps that an American cousin of Mrs. Nesbitt's had donated to the orphanage last year, Harry was ready to go and couldn't wait until they snuck out after lunch.
On the way to Charing Cross Road, Tom turned to Harry.
"Remember the owl, I told you about?" Tom said.
"Yes, Hedwig the smartest owl in the world." Harry replied, remembering stories about the brilliant owl that carried mail.
"We're going to get her today, but we have to hide her at Grimwauld place until school starts." Tom said. "I'm going to have to send a letter with her first though."
"To who?" Harry asked.
"To Professor Snape. We need someone to explain to Mrs. Nesbitt where we're going." Tom replied. "Since he doesn't know about the time travel I told you about, I'm going to tell him that I got his name out of the journal that Aunt Petunia gave us."
Harry didn't know what to think of that. He didn't always know what to think of his cousin. His cousin told him many stories about the future, and proved a bunch of them to be true. There was something he was holding back though. Something that brought a strange pain to his eyes when he thought Harry wasn't looking. But now was not the time to think of such things, as they had reached the place that he had heard many stories of, Diagon Alley.