Harry awoke the following morning filled with a sense of uncertainty. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's conversation the night beforehand had provided him valuable information, but he had no idea what to do with it. He would need to confront them at some point, but the timing needed to be perfect. This, Harry concluded, would be tricky.

The day passed relatively uneventfully. Dudley's usual cheerfulness in antagonising Harry had been soured by the atmosphere of the house, as Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia glided about absent-mindedly and ghost-like. After nearly eleven years of barely getting by with the Dursleys, Harry had more life than anyone in the house.

That reminded him that his eleventh birthday was fast approaching; the day after tomorrow, he would have yet another birthday ignored by his guardians and insufferable cousin. To take his mind off of the inevitable disappointment, Harry decided that a brisk afternoon walk was in order.

He stepped out of the house and smiled as he took the air in, the joy being ripped from his face when he looked across the street and, once again, took in the damage of the storm. Harry walked down the footpath and began his circuit around the neighbourhood, or what was left of it.

The houses had been completely demolished. Harry initially compared it to properties he'd see get bulldozed on the television, or dismantled roughly with a wrecking ball. But surveying the damage to Little Whinging, Harry admitted that even what he'd seen on the television didn't come close to this. The destruction looked far from man-made, it looked almost...animalistic.

There was a savagery to it that Harry couldn't quite pinpoint. It was as if the storm had taken the form of a giant bear that mauled the houses as if they were tiny foxes threatening its cubs. The damage looked less like the product of nature, and more like the result of a temper tantrum, like God had been filled with anger and taken it out on Little Whinging.

As Harry walked, he wondered what Hogwarts could have been. A government institution? A school? A company his parents had worked for? Perhaps they owed a debt to his parents, and had recently discovered the conditions Harry had been living in. Now they were rushing to his aid, refusing to let the son of James and Lily Potter live with Vernon and Petunia Dursley.

Harry kicked a rock glumly, knowing he was being silly. He knew he needed to quit fantasising about it all, as the reality was going to be painfully mundane in contrast to what his young mind could conjure up. But he couldn't let go of the hope that once, just once, in his life he would have some good fortune and find a way to escape the Dursleys for good.

By now, he was halfway through his usual walking circuit, and the sun was setting far quicker than Harry was anticipating. He needed to get a move on if he wanted to avoid any more incidents, although the streets had been far less populated since Cyclone Surrey visited.

He nearly tripped as he sped up, looking down to see a picket fence encroaching onto the edge of the road. Harry recognised it as being from the home of the Burns family, who had mostly been hospitalised, their elder daughter Montana being spared in Paris on a school trip. The only thing was, the Burns house had been on the other side of the neighbourhood, across from the Dursleys, nearly three-hundred metres in the opposite direction.

This was one hell of a storm.

That was when the voices started.

"...unlike anything I've seen before."

"How about you, Sprewett? You're the History geek, you ever read of something like this?"

"I mean, of course, all sorts of things. But nothing that makes sense in this day and age, especially not in Surrey."

The voices were coming from further within the wreckage. Harry, too scared to move further in, crouched down and quickly crab-walked to a car several metres further down the road. Glancing over the bonnet, he couldn't believe his eyes.

Looking through what remained of a sideway and through to an overturned backyard, Harry saw what he believed to be three men standing around a spat-and-chewed-out trampoline. Now, that isn't particularly odd, but there were two things that really caught Harry's attention.

Firstly, the men were dressed funny. And not the kind of funny he had ever seen before. Uncle Vernon often complained about the men who dressed up in makeup and lipstick, and the woman who dressed in nearly nothing, but this was different. The man on the left wore a fancy top hat, with a golden overcoat hiding a lilac vest and a purple tie. On the right, a face hid behind a grand, rather impressive mistake that came down to the owner's chest, which sported a regal black coat buttoned up in response to the Surrey night. There were times, Uncle Vernon once said, that Little Whinging forgot it was summer.

The second thing that caught Harry's attention was the man in the middle. Not his clothing, or his facial hair. In fact, Harry hadn't registered either of those things on him (and if he had, he'd have noticed that it was, in fact, a woman). No, what caught Harry's attention was the stick she held over the trampoline.

This wasn't any ordinary stick, however. The stick was, you see, glowing.

Curious, Harry stood up from the car and inched closer, stopping at the edge of the footpath. He was clearly visible, but far too caught up in what he was seeing to notice. A glowing stick!

"There's only so many things that could've caused this amount of damage. A Hippogriff?"

The man on the left shook his head. "Not without being seen by one of the muggles."

Muggles?

"A Thunderbird then? I know it's just as visible as a Hippogriff, but it could've stayed higher up and done all of this through the storm. They're the storm ones, aren't they?"

The History geek, Sprewett, nodded. "They are, but there hasn't been a Thunderbird this far south in centuries. If there was one around here, we'd know about it."

"You'd hope we'd know about it" the woman said in a mocking tone.

Suddenly, the man on the left noticed Harry watching them. Harry froze.

"There's someone watching us. A muggle, I think."

"Didn't you put the Anti-Muggle Charm up?"

"Of course I did! What do you think I am, an idiot?"

"Then what is he staring at?!"

Realising that these people didn't think Harry could see him, he began looking at other areas, as if surveying the destruction.

They know, they know. How the hell couldn't they? They're in the open, they know I can see them!

"See, I put the charm up. He's just looking at the wreckage."

"I could've sworn he was looking straight at me..." the man on the left said eerily.

There was an awkward silence, broken cheerfully by the woman.

"Come on, then. We've found all we're going to find, best head off to the Leaky Cauldron for a cheeky drink before we meet with Fudge."

"Aye aye!" Sprewett declared gleefully.

The woman pointed her glowing stick behind her and said "Accio, notebook", and Harry watched in awe out of the corner of his eye as a pen and paper went flying straight into her hands. It was just like he'd seen on the television when Uncle Vernon was watching one of his favourite movies, where the people fought each other with laser-swords and the hero could make objects levitate towards him.

"Fun fact," Sprewett began loudly as they began gathering their possessions. "The Leaky Cauldron appears to muggles as a broken-down old shop on Charing Cross Road. They have no idea that it's actually a wizarding pub! Priceless."

Wizarding pub? Do these people think they are wizards?

The three of them shared a laugh, just as a hand came down forcefully on Harry's shoulder and filled his entire body with fear. He was whipped around sharply, and found himself eye-to-eye with a shining emblem; it read 'Surrey County Police'.

"What're you doin' 'round 'ere?"

"There are people in the ruins."

"Huh?"

Harry, relieved at the presence of the authorities, turned and pointed directly at the three people in the backyard. "There, they've been skulking around for ages."

The police officer stared blankly into the ruins, before alternating between that and Harry's expectant face.

"Aren't you going to arrest them?"

"Arrest who? There's no one there?"

Harry turned to make sure they were still there. They were.

"The people! What's wrong, can't you see that far?"

It was meant as a genuine question, but the officer took it as cheek from a young troublemaker.

"Listen 'ere, lad. I'm in no mood for games. What's ya name and where do ya live?"

Harry turned and looked into the ruins once again, and saw that he gotten the attention of the three strange people.

"I told you he could see us!" the man on the left said.

"We need to do something about this" the woman said, gazing at Harry with interest. "Shall we take him and wipe the muggle's memory?"

"There's too many houses nearby that weren't wiped away by the storm, we can't risk being seen."

"It's either this or a cell for the night" the police officer threatened after Harry hadn't replied.

Knowing the strange trio would be listening in for Harry's details, he did the first thing he thought to do.

"My, er, my name is Dudley Dursley. I live at Number Four, Privet Drive."

"Privet Drive? That ain't too far from here. I'll drive you over, and I'll have to have a stern chat with your parents."

"They're not my parents" Harry grumbled, too low for the officer to hear, as he got in the back of the police car he hadn't heard pull up.

As they drove away, he watched the trio walk onto the street behind them and stare as the police car turned a corner and disappeared from site.

The Dursleys were far from impressed with Harry's late-night escapades.

"Deeply sorry, officer. Our nephew he's deeply disturbed. We usually don't let him go out for walks at night, he must've slipped out the back door."

"Well, we can't learn from our mistakes unless we make them" the officer said, flashing was Harry could only assume was his best attempt at a charming smile.

"Thank you" Uncle Vernon said with finality, and the officer took the hint. He was away, and all attention returned to Harry.

"WHAT IN THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, BOY?!"

"I didn't do anything!" Harry protested earnestly. "There were people in the ruins, but he couldn't see them! I swear!"

"And why couldn't he see them hmm?" Aunt Petunia chimed in, immediately returning to her tight-lipped scowl as soon as the final syllable had been uttered.

"I don't know, but one of them had this stick, and it was glowing. And they were calling people muggles, and they...they thought they were wizards. I think they did something so that normal people couldn't see them, but I could, I don't know why. It was strange, it was...it was like magic."

The final word sent Uncle Vernon over the edge. His large, beefy face when a deep red, as Harry momentarily had serious concerns for his Uncle's health.

"There is NO such thing as MAGIC!" he roared, before pointing his wafer-like finger at the stairs. "Into your room, now!"

"But-"

"NOW, BOY, BEFORE I KICK YOU BACK INTO THE CUPBOARD."

The threat of losing his new room was too much to bear, and so Harry slumped his shoulders and walked, defeated, to the stairs.

"And I don't want to hear that M word ever again!" Uncle Vernon yelled after him as he closed the door to his bedroom and collapsed onto his bed.

This, more than any other night in recent memory, had been the hardest to stomach. Harry could not deny what he had seen; although it sounded ridiculous that these people believed they were doing magic, she did have light coming from her stick (was it a wand?), and she did make the notebook fly towards her. Not to mention, the Anti-Muggle Charm he had heard them discuss clearly worked on the police officer, as he definitely could not see what Harry was seeing.

While most nights he slowly drifted off into sleep, this one was sleepless. His gut told him that the people in the ruins were somehow related to all he had discovered lately. Hogwarts, the storm, his parents, the wizards. It all came together somehow.

Harry thought back to the way Uncle Vernon had referred to Harry and his parents as "their kind", and the way Uncle Vernon had freaked out the moment he heard Harry utter the word 'magic'.

There's no such thing as magic.

Is there?

As sleep slowly drew closer and closer, and Harry's thoughts blurred more and more, two things stood out to him.

One; the people in the ruins didn't know who he was, but they knew where he lived. If they wanted to find him, they knew that Number Four, Privet Drive was the place to search.

Two; Harry needed to confront Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia about what he knew, and it needed to happen sooner rather than later.
Something told Harry that time was running out, and fast.