Hello and welcome to chapter eight of The Memento! We're nearly on our way to Hogwarts - so exciting! :D

As always, I wanted to give a big thank you to everyone who's stuck with me this far. And a big thank you to CaseLC, Cat Beats, Almonda, In the Darkest of Nights, Trougue, Mask of Melpomene, xXxblacklilyxXx, and Iesh for your amazing reviews! It was a lot of fun to hear about your wands or patroni.

This chapter took me a ridiculously long time to edit, close to three weeks if you can believe it. And I only finished last night because I started at midnight for Camp NaNoWriMo. But I'm happy with how it turned out and I hope you all enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter


~Chapter Eight: Monkswood~


Harry made it back to Privet drive in record time.

After receiving numerous assurances from Stan Shunpike that muggles wouldn't notice the Knight Bus, Harry asked to be dropped off right outside his aunt and uncle's house. He paid for a ticket, declining the curious offer of complimentary hot chocolate, and made his way toward the back of the first floor.

Unlike its muggle counterparts, the inside of the Knight Bus resembled a fancy restaurant. Ornate chairs and heavy wooden tables set with floral centrepieces lurched across the floor like drunken sailors as the bus made death defying turns through packed motorways. Overhead a cheap chandelier swung on the end of its chain, glass crystals crashing together with the sound of a hundred miniature windows shattering. Occasionally a crystal would come loose and ricochet around the bus until it became jammed in a corner or Stan managed to trap it beneath the sole of his boot.

It took less than a minute for Harry to decide that he didn't much care for magical buses. He'd already lost count of the number of red lights they'd blasted through, and despite having learned that his parents hadn't died in a motor accident, watching the Knight Bus skid onto sidewalks and into parking spaces left him trembling and nauseated. After they squeezed between two speeding semis he tore his eyes from the window and started paying attention to the hazards inside the bus, just in time to avoid having his knees pinched between his chair and the leg of a dangerously mobile table.

"This is not as bad as the tunnel-car," Basil remarked. She was still tucked out of view under his kerchief, as Stan had positioned himself against the divider behind the driver's compartment and was watching Harry intently. Fortunately, even if he saw Harry's lips moving, he was too far away to hear anything over the roar of the engine.

"Glad you think so," Harry muttered as he clung to the sides of his chair. He wished the Knight Bus had taken a leaf from Gringott's book and installed the same sticky seats the bank used on their carts. If they had, he wouldn't need to worry about being catapulted towards the windshield every time it slammed to a stop.

"When we get back to your den will you tell me why you were happy, and sad, and scared?" she asked when the bus paused beside what appeared to be an abandoned farmhouse and Stan rushed upstairs to help an elderly gentleman disembark.

"I will," he promised.

When the Knight Bus screeched to a stop in front of his relatives' house Harry bounded out the door, relieved to be free of the death-trap on wheels.

Grunting from the effort, Stan lugged his trunk back down the stairs and set it on the curb. He pushed back his cap and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. "Is this your home, then?" he asked, his head on a swivel as he stared at the nearly identical houses up and down the block in disbelief.

"I live here," Harry replied.

"Well yeah, that's what I asked innit?"

It wasn't, but Harry didn't care to explain the difference. He shrugged and waited for Stan to leave, but the lanky young wizard had become distracted by the neighbour's garden gnomes and was peering at them with a look of morbid fascination on his face.

"Um, aren't you supposed to be working?" Harry asked just as the driver hollered for Stan to quit his lallygagging and get on board.

"Sheesh, Ernie! Gimme a sec, would you," he yelled back before turning on Harry and seizing his hand between sweaty palms. Harry recoiled, but managed not to pull away as Stan shook his hand vigorously. "I jus' wanted to say that it's an honour having met you—"

"Stan!" bellowed the driver, his patience wearing thin.

"—And that if you're ever in a pinch you can rely on the ol' Knight Bus to get you out of it. We owe it to you, after all."

"Right," Harry said, desperately wishing Stan would let go.

After a final vigorous shake he did, and then the Knight Bus vanished with a bang, leaving nothing but skid marks and startled cats behind. Harry grimaced and wiped his hand on the leg of his pants.

Curtains fluttered in the windows across the street as nosy neighbours peered outside, keen to learn which of their rivals was having car trouble. With no ailing automobile in sight, they turned their scrutiny on Harry and the large, old fashioned trunk at his feet. Before they could decide the sight of him in decent clothes was strange enough to warrant ringing his aunt on the phone, he hauled the trunk into the walkway beside the house.

Once he was out of sight, Harry changed back into his cousin's castoffs.

He left his new glasses on. Apart from the joy being able to see the world clearly brought him, the wizard from Occuvision had confiscated his old pair with the pomp and solemnity of a pallbearer. He hadn't dared ask for them back, though he now wished he'd been a little braver. His aunt had a keen eye for expensive accessories, and the glasses had cost him over twenty of his shining golden galleons. He didn't know the conversion rate between wizarding money and British pounds, but if he'd melted the galleons down they would have formed a nugget larger than his aunt's prized collection of gold earrings and necklaces, some of which had cost his uncle a week's worth of salary.

This, he concluded, meant his glasses were expensive. Fortunately, they were also unbreakable. When he'd asked about their durability, he'd received a demonstration involving a cinder block and a falling anvil that put all his fears to rest.

Harry stashed his trunk behind the garden shed, ensuring it wouldn't be visible from the dining room window. Then, bracing himself for the worst, he slunk inside.

His relatives weren't pleased with his sudden reappearance.

They were sitting around the dining room table, their plates half-empty and the carcass of a roasted chicken cooling on the kitchen counter behind them. His aunt and uncle broke off a heated debate about what Mr and Mrs So-and-So next door were doing with their garden to scowl at him as he pulled the door closed and slipped off his shoes.

Dudley didn't look up from the table. His head was bent low over his plate as he shovelled food down his throat, barely pausing to chew. He was a noisy eater; his lip-smacking, grunting, and snorting — punctuated by the clack of his fork against his mother's fine china — was a conversation wholly unto itself. He was also, it seemed, completely indifferent to Harry's return.

Harry took this as a sign of having successfully erased his cousin's memories and breathed a sigh of relief. From the look on his aunt and uncle's faces his reception promised to be bad enough without additional accusations of thievery.

They started yelling at the same time, their outraged accusations melding until they became indistinguishable. Harry, having heard it all before, tuned them out. He stood patiently on the door mat, staring down at his feet as though ashamed he'd dared take a day off and skip out on his chores, as he – lazy, ungrateful child that he was – clearly hadn't earned such a privilege.

It won't always be like this, he reminded himself as his aunt launched into her favourite rant about his no-good-dirty-rotten-parents. Someday he'd have his own house. A big one, with a lounge that would turn his aunt green with envy and enough bedrooms to ensure no one would ever need to sleep in a cupboard. In his house, Basil wouldn't need to hide all the time, and he'd have entire days off where he could lounge in the sunshine and not lift a finger to cook or clean. He couldn't help but smile at the thought. Perhaps he could even rescue the snakes from the zoo and they could all live together, like a real family.

His daydream was interrupted when Dudley made a gagging sound and dropped his fork. Harry looked up and blinked in surprise as his cousin clasped a hand over his mouth and lurched forward, nose almost buried in his mashed potatoes as his shoulders heaved.

"Diddikins?" Petunia asked, forgetting Harry momentarily.

Vernon stopped ranting as well and leaned over to slap his son on the back. "Easy there Champ," he said. "There's plenty to go around. No sense making yourself sick."

Dudley's face was ashen pale and slick with sweat as he nodded. Swallowing thickly he scooped his fork up off the table and stabbed it into a slice of chicken.

Harry was used to his cousin eating as though each meal would be his last, but the utter desperation with which Dudley shoved the chicken in his mouth was bizarre even for him. As he raised his head to chug down a glass of milk, Harry caught sight of his eyes for the first time since his return. They were red-rimmed and swollen, as though he'd been crying. Though what Dudley had to cry about Harry couldn't fathom. His parents gave him everything he wanted with or without his crocodile tears.

His aunt took offence at his curiosity. "What are you staring at Boy?" she snapped, resting her hand on Dudley's shoulder as though it would hide her massive son from his scrutiny.

He dropped his gaze back to his feet. "Nothing."

Her eyes narrowed, as though she sensed there was something different about him but was unable to put her finger on it. He relaxed as she started to look away, only to be caught off guard when her head snapped back around.

"Where did you get those glasses?" she demanded, rising part way from her chair, her fingers twitching towards his face. Harry's hand flew up to grip his glasse's monel frame, holding on tight.

"I— I found them," he lied.

His uncle snorted into his brandy. "Stole them more like."

Harry stood his ground as his aunt sunk back into her chair and sent him a venomous look. "If I find the police knocking at the door…"

"You won't," he said quickly, shaking his head. "I really did find them."

She frowned, but then Dudley reclaimed her attention by sniffing loudly and blowing his nose into his napkin. "Make yourself useful then," she said before turning back to comfort her son.

"Yes, aunt Petunia." With a final puzzled glance at his cousin, he hurried into the kitchen before she could change her mind.

There were no leftovers, but he managed to snag a few chicken bones that hadn't been scraped clean and sucked on them as he scrubbed the roasting pan. By the time his relatives were finished eating he was ready for their plates; silently washing, drying, and putting them away. Then his aunt gave him a list of chores half a page long and sent him on his way with a promise of retribution if he turned in for the night before completing them.

The mantle clock in the lounge was striking eleven by the time he was finally allowed to retire to his cupboard. Feet dragging, he collapsed on his squeaky cot and pulled the door closed. Settling down on his back he let out a sigh of relief at being back in his little corner of the world.

"Now will you tell me everything?" Basil asked as she uncoiled from his shoulders and stretched out along his chest and stomach.

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to speak. He told her all the strange and wonderful things he'd learned about the wizarding world from Neville: about bloodlines, classes, and how his parents had been magical, just like him.

"That does not explain why you were sad and angry," Basil chided once he'd finished. Harry hesitated, but she continued to hector him and in the end he had no choice but to give in. Haltingly, he told her about his wand, its brother, and the prophecy that led to his parents' deaths. And he told her about parseltongue. How it was the mark of a dark wizard. Something evil. Twisted.

As he drew to the end his voice trailed off in a choked whisper, the enormity of his plight bearing down on him with the weight of a mountain. Basil's head rose off his chest and started swaying, as though she were a cobra rather than a harmless grass snake.

"How dare the Bird-Woman say such things about Speakers!" she hissed, irate. "Speaking does not make someone bad. That is like saying dogs are bad because they bark, or birds because they sing."

"I don't like dogs," he said. It was an understatement; dogs terrified him. Ripper had seen to that.

Basil's head bobbed in a serpentine version of a huff. "Yes, well, that still does not mean they are bad."

He wanted to feel relief, but Mrs Longbottom's words continued to haunt him. She'd made the ability to speak parseltongue sound like a symptom of a larger problem. "Can magic be evil?" he asked Basil.

She tilted her head, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Like... can it choose to cause harm?"

"Magic is like a thunderstorm," she replied. "It does not choose to cause harm because it is not alive. It is a force – a part of nature that existed long before our bodies were born. We can shape it through our desires, but it does not shape us."

"A thunderstorm..." He liked the comparison even though he didn't know if it was true. He wanted to believe her, the thought of his magic turning him into a monster sent his stomach plummeting deep into his gut, but she was only one snake speaking against the opinion of hundreds of human witches and wizards.

"If it wasn't their magic that made them evil, then why do you think parselmouths always turn into dark wizards? It can't be a coincidence. They— we must have something in common."

Basil hesitated, her amber eyes studying him. "You believe evil people exist?" she asked.

His brow furrowed in confusion and he raised his head off the pillow. "Of course they do. Good people exist too, but there are fewer of them about." She hissed skeptically, and he got the sense she disagreed. "You don't think they're real?"

"Many moons ago I found a burrow of mouse pups whose mother had gone scavenging," she said. "There were five of them curled up together and I swallowed them down quick, every last one. They filled my belly so I would not go hungry that moon, but as I was leaving their mother returned to the burrow. She was very angry, all squeaking and biting. For her I was a bad thing come to steal away her young. But I would not call myself bad."

"So... something that's good for me might be bad for someone else?"

"Yes!" She swayed in excitement. "And what is good for someone else might be bad for you, but that does not make them a bad person because they are doing good. You see?"

It seemed impossible. "How do you decide?" he asked. "If you can be good and bad at the same time, how do you know which you really are?"

"You are both, and you are neither." She paused and studied his dismayed expression. "Is it very important to think you are always good?"

Harry pressed his hands over his eyes in frustration. "I don't know! I don't, it's just… does that mean it's okay for my aunt and uncle to lock me up? Or for Dudley to hit me because it's fun?" Or that he could kill someone without being a murderer. He ran his hands back, tangling them in his hair. "Who decides whether you're a hero or a monster?"

"Why must you decide? You humans make everything so very complicated. The fat boy is stronger than you, so he does not fear to hit you."

"You think Dudley will leave me alone if he's afraid of me?" he asked, startled.

"Of course," she replied. "Fear tells me when I should hide and when I should strike. If I did not fear the fox or cat I would die by their fangs. Right now your cousin is the fox — to drive him off you must become what the fox fears."

"And what does the fox fear?"

If snakes could grin, Basil would have been beaming. "A thunderstorm."


Over the years Harry had made several attempts at keeping Dudley off his back, none of which had worked. Ignoring his cousin only encouraged him to try harder, while fighting back gave him an excuse to get his parents involved. Harry had even tried playing along once. It was that disastrous attempt that had landed him on the roof of the school kitchens and equally high on his aunt's shitlist.

He'd never thought to frighten Dudley – until a month ago he wouldn't have dreamt it possible. Physically, Dudley had him beat on all fronts. It was hard to intimidate a person who could dangle you off an embankment one-handed while stuffing a Knickerbocker Glory in their mouth with the other. But Harry had his own advantage now, one that had bested his cousin once already.

If Dudley was a fox, Harry was determined to become the biggest, loudest, most eave-rattling thunderstorm imaginable. There was no harm in it that he could see. All he needed to do was shake his cousin up enough that he decided Harry was no longer an appealing target.

Simple, really.

Of course, to become a thunderstorm he needed to be able to use his magic for more than exploding lights or setting people on fire — as the former had happened too often to be frightening and the latter would see him flayed by his aunt and uncle if they caught him — which meant he needed his new school books.

Fighting off fatigue, he crept outside when the clock in the sitting room struck one. Under the cold gaze of the moon, he hauled his trunk through the kitchen door and over to his cupboard. Here he ran into difficulties, as the trunk was too tall to slide under his cot and any attempt to stack the two would see its tooled leather exterior mauled by the cot's rusty underbelly. In the end he had no choice but to fumble open the latches holding his bed of ten years together and stow the pieces in the crawlspace at the foot of the stairs. He put his trunk in its place and made it up with the blankets and thin mattress pad. He meant to pull out one of his new books and start reading right away, but by that point he was teetering on the edge of exhaustion and the second he settled down on the padded lid he fell straight to sleep.

The next morning he decided the trunk was even less comfortable to sleep on than the cot had been, but he'd happily put up with bruised hip bones and a cricked neck for another month if it meant he got to learn magic.

July ticked over into August.

Another letter from Hogwarts arrived the morning of August first, and he shoved it into his pant pocket before returning to the kitchen with the rest of the more mundane correspondence. It contained a formal letter of acceptance and a train ticket whose writing gleamed like liquid bronze in the sunlight. The ticket read: Hogwarts Express, 11 AM Departure From, Platform 9 ¾, King's Cross, London.

It was a funny platform number. Harry didn't recall seeing half or quarter platforms when he'd gone to London, but he'd arrived at Waterloo and had never actually set foot in King's Cross station. Perhaps, he thought, they just have a lot more trains.

August was filled with hot, heavy days and a slog of chores. His aunt decided that he was old enough to take over all the kitchen duties, so the vast majority of his days were spent cooking and washing dishes. Despite spending hours with his hands in hot, soapy water, it wasn't the worst task in the world. The Dursleys were rarely in the kitchen with him, so he could taste-test as often as he liked.

Whenever he had a free hour he grabbed one of his new books and took it outside. In a moment of rebelliousness he'd discovered that by climbing the branching magnolia tree in the backyard he could jump onto the roof of the garden shed. Ensconced on his perch he had a wonderfully Dudley-free month, for neither the tree nor the shed would survive his cousin's crushing mass if the other boy had been able to find him.

The effectiveness of his hiding place surprised Harry. The shed was only six feet tall, and anyone looking up from a distance could see him plain as day. But Dudley wasn't looking – he wasn't doing much of anything, in fact. He no longer had daily get-togethers with his pack of friends, and he'd lost interest in television and computer games, preferring to spend his time wolfing down alarming amounts of food at the dining room table. He'd grown another pant size in two weeks' time, and Petunia had been forced to buy him a whole new school uniform when the buttons popped off his first.

She believed Dudley's morose mood was a reaction to his impending departure from her bosom. Harry didn't much care why his cousin was miserable if it meant he left him alone.

Without his cousin dogging his steps, Harry slowly worked through his school texts.

A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot was written in dry, musty prose that bored him to tears by the time he'd reached the third chapter. He set it aside in favour of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which implied that not only were dragons real, but chimeras, and werewolves, and centaurs, and all sorts of other strange and dangerous creatures he'd never seen before, even on the news. He wondered, as he read an entry on lethifolds, how wizards managed to keep them hidden from the muggles.

Basil was as curious about his books as he was. She couldn't read them herself, but she pestered him to dictate passages as she sunned herself on the warm metal roof.

Harry didn't mind. He'd never been a proficient reader, and even with his new glasses he found he still lost his place on the page unless he used the tip of a finger to trace each line. Sometimes he'd reach the end of a paragraph and realize he'd spent so much effort deciphering each individual word that he had no clue what they meant all together. Other times the information seemed to slip in his eyes and directly out the back of his head, bypassing his brain altogether. The only thing that helped his retention was reading aloud, and he was fortunate that — unlike English — parseltongue didn't dry out his mouth until he'd been at it for several hours.

"The act of transfiguration from one form to another is first and foremost an exercise in visualization," he read from A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration. "While correct wand movements and pronunciation of the incantation fuel the transformation, without the guidance of the witch or wizard's mind their matchstick will remain a matchstick, and they will never be able to change a mouse into a snuffbox."

He wasn't sure what either of those transfigurations would be good for unless you were fond of sewing or snuff, but they seemed easy enough. Of course, the book then went into painstaking detail about exactly how one should flick one's wand and never mentioned visualization again.

"Why would you waste a perfectly good mouse by turning it into something else?" Basil wondered, a very mouse-sized bulge in her thin body. "Unless, of course, you're turning it into a frog. Or a fish! I do like fish." She looked at him expectantly, as though waiting for a cornucopia of fishy delight to flop, wet and stinking, from the palm of his hand.

Harry snorted in laughter and shook his head. Even if he was able to make fish, he didn't dare practice spells on the shed roof. Dudley might not be able to see him, but the neighbours certainly could and he didn't want word of his freakishness getting back to the Dursleys.

Practical sessions of Operation Become a Thunderstorm occurred late at night when he was sure his relatives wouldn't bumble down to investigate the thud of an overzealous paintbrush slamming against the underside of the stairs, or the neon flare of spell-light chasing spiders out the hole in the corner of the door.

With his new textbooks fuelling his imagination, his wandless experiments progressed rapidly. And while the mental gymnastics required to convince himself that his palm could glow or that gravity was a figment of his imagination left him numb with exhaustion, the sense of accomplishment he gained from each success pushed him to keep practicing. Neville had said performing magic without a wand was extremely difficult — the mark of a powerful wizard. For Harry, who had always been powerless against the Dursleys, it was a chance to prove his worth, to himself more than anyone else. He wanted to become proficient — more than proficient — so that the next time Dudley or his uncle came after him he'd be able to defend himself.

Within a month he felt comfortable casting a handful of spells from his Charms and Defence books, which was fortunate for his morale as practicing with his wand turned out to be nowhere near as satisfying.

According to his books, magic should have been easier with a wand. The spells filling their pages were formulaic, precise, and didn't require his full attention to bring about their effects. Unfortunately, they also required a basic understanding of Latin — something Harry was sorely lacking. He had no idea how to pronounce strange, foreign words like wingardium leviosa or brachiabindo, and no one had thought to add a guide.

After setting fire to his bedding for the third time in a row trying to cast a spell from his book on curses and counter-curses that was meant to make the target's hair fall out, he flopped back in a sooty, smoke-stained huff and glowered at his wand.

"Aren't you supposed to be good at this?" he growled.

The pleasant vibrations emanating up his arm from the thin piece of holly cut out, as though it were saying, "It's not my fault you can't pronounce Calvorio."

Harry pursed his lips. "Sorry," he muttered.

Basil, who had taken refuge from his pathetic attempts at magic on the topmost shelf of the cupboard, poked her head out from behind a can of rusted nails. "Sticks cannot speak," she reminded him, giving Harry a good reason to turn in for the night before he completely lost his mind.


As the end of August approached, Harry was struck with a new worry. How should he tell the Dursleys he was going away to school?

They'd want to know how he was accepted. More than that, they'd want to know how he was paying for it, and Harry had no intention of ever telling them about his Gringott's vault. Magical or not, the Dursleys wouldn't turn up their noses at mounds of gold and silver coins.

He was so torn that come August thirty-first he still hadn't spoken a word to his aunt or uncle, and was running out of time.

It was just before lunch and the kitchen was swarming with pollen kicked up as his aunt clipped the stems of colourful carnations, fragrant freesias, and snarling snapdragons swiped from the neighbours' gardens. Harry had done the swiping, of course; sneaking across well-watered lawns with his aunt's kitchen scissors while she directed him from behind a barricade of gauzy curtains — a General ensconced in her fortress while he, poor foot-soldier, risked death by pruning shears should he be caught sabotaging enemy fortifications.

When he'd returned with an orchid snatched from beneath Mrs Number Eight's upturned nose his aunt let out a crow of triumph so loud that even Dudley took notice, raising his eyes from where they'd been staring apathetically at the television. At the realization that Harry had managed to please his mother, his face set into a petulant scowl. He struggled out of his armchair, snatched the scissors from Harry's hands, and marched out the front door.

Harry watched from the threshold as Dudley jiggled across the road, scanning the flowerbeds across the way for a suitable victim, not even trying to be discreet. He shook his head, sure his cousin would get a hiding he wouldn't soon forget, and wandered into the kitchen to start preparing the midday meal.

No longer faced with his impending death, the Hogwarts conundrum returned to plague him as he sliced ham to go in their sandwiches. He glanced at his aunt, trying to convince himself that it would be easy to slip in between the snip of her scissors. Nothing large or dramatic, just a simple: 'Oh, I'm going to King's Cross on the first to catch a train to school,' and then adamantly refuse to tell her anything else. It wasn't as though he needed to rely on them for a ride. He knew how to call the Knight Bus, and so long as he budgeted in enough time to work around their unpredictable route he should have no trouble catching the train. Then it would be a full, Dursley-free ten months! His heart felt like it was floating out of his chest whenever he imagined it, free as one of the birds chasing across the pale blue sky.

He had almost worked up the courage to spit it out when Dudley staggered into the kitchen with a stalk of purple flowers clutched in his hand and proceeded to be violently ill all over the floor.

His aunt shrieked loud enough to raise the dead and dropped her scissors, looking between her son and the once pristine floor in abject horror. Harry wrinkled his nose and sliced another piece of ham. The racket summoned Vernon from where he was lurking in the sitting room. It was a Friday, and while his uncle would normally be at work, he'd taken a week-long vacation to see Dudley off to Smeltings Academy. As expected, he appeared in the doorway, a plate of biscuits in hand.

"Didikins!" Petunia cried as she maneuvered around the puddle of sick and clutched his shoulder. "What's wrong? Is your tum-tum sore?"

Dudley swayed. "I wanna…" His words were slurred, and there was sweat pouring down his face and neck. "I wanna not pathe— eugh…" A burp bubbled up from his stomach, bringing along a portion of scone for the ride. Then his lips parted in a strange smile and he lifted the hand with the flowers. "I got them. They're yours, for snipping, so go ahaa!"

"What's wrong with him?" Vernon asked, dropping the plate. It shattered on the floor, chips of painted china exploding outward. The biscuits, however, remained safely in his beefy fist.

Petunia took the flowers from Dudley, who seemed to be having trouble opening his hand, and set them down on the counter. She guided him to a chair and lugged him onto it. "I don't know," she said shrilly. "Didikins? Pumpkin? Tell Mommy what's wrong." She shook his shoulder.

Harry kept his head down. This was the sort of thing his uncle loved blaming him for, and yet… he watched as Dudley was sick again, this time over the morning's paper. There was definitely something wrong with him, and those flowers looked oddly familiar, if only he could remember where he'd seen them.

He set the knife down on the cutting board and hurried to his cupboard, wiping his hands clean on his old jeans. Throwing off the bedding he opened his trunk, found his copy of One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore, and began to flip through the pages. He didn't need to go far. The flowers had a unique appearance, as though they were wearing helmets or hoods made of arching petals, and they were within the first twenty pages of the book. He returned to the kitchen, holding the book open at the right page, and found his aunt turning one of the stalks over in her hands.

"Ah," he said as her face grew pale. She dropped the flower and stared at her arm. "You don't want to touch those. They're poisonous."

"What do you mean, poisonous?" his uncle roared. His face was the colour of an overripe plum, and Harry eyed him warily before turning back to his book and reading the entry aloud.

"Aconite, also known as monkshood, wolf's bane, or the Queen of all Poisons, is a highly toxic plant prized for its use in…" He skipped ahead, sure that the mention of potions in this situation would only incite his uncle's wrath.

"When ingested, will cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea followed by sensations of burning, tingling and numbness of the mouth and face, and burning of the abdomen. Other symptoms include sweating, dizziness, difficulty breathing, headaches, and confusion.

"Death usually occurs within two to six hours in fatal poisonings, though with large doses death may be instantaneous,

"Caution: Proper protective gear should always be worn when handling aconite leaves, as its toxin is easily absorbed through the skin. In this event—"

"Let me see that!" His uncle snatched the book from his hands. As his eyes descended the page the blood drained from his face and he made a strangled, squeaking sound.

He looked between Petunia and Dudley, eyes blown wide and sweat beading on his brow. He flung Harry's book aside, the swish and thunk of it hitting the floor ominous as an executioner's axe. Harry didn't dare retrieve it, not while it put him in arms reach of his uncle.

"Hospital!" Vernon yelled. "Car! Now!"

Petunia was still staring at her hand, an expression of horror on her long face as she wiggled her fingers, but she moved slowly towards the door.

Vernon seized a metal fruit bowl, dumped out its contents, and shoved it under Dudley's rolling double chins. "Come on, Champ," he muttered, frantic. "On your feet. That's it!"

Harry watched as his uncle led Dudley from the room. Vernon never looked back or called for him to follow, and Harry could hardly believe it when he heard the front door slam and the car roar to life in the driveway. The Dursleys never left him at home alone. Then again, so far as he knew the Dursleys had also never been poisoned before.

He edged around the outside of the dining room, avoiding Dudley's mess, and retrieved his book. Then he walked straight out the back door and took a deep breath of fresh air. Once his nose was free of the acidic stench of stomach acid and partially digested food, he settled on the garden bench and opened it back to the page on aconite.

"In the case of an accidental poisoning, take a fresh bezoar from the stomach of a goat and sear it for three heartbeats over an open flame. Place it beneath the afflicted's tongue and contact the nearest medi-witch or potions master immediately."

He flipped the page, but there was no additional treatment advice for those without immediate access to a goat or the dubious contents of its digestive tract. It made him leery of trying to clean up the mess in the kitchen, but he knew he didn't have much choice in the matter. He tipped his head back and closed his eyes, soaking up the warmth of the sun on his skin and the smell of the neighbour's freshly cut lawn, putting off the malodorous task as long a possible.

Perhaps, if he was very lucky, the Dursleys would stay at the hospital overnight.


On the morning of September first, the driveway in front of Number Four Privet Drive was still empty. Harry left a note on the kitchen counter explaining that he'd be away at a boarding school until the next summer and then stepped out the front door, locking it behind him.

He didn't look back as he dragged his trunk down to the curb.

"Are we finally going?" Basil asked sleepily from her favourite place beneath his kerchief.

"Yes," he said, and threw his hand out over the curb, wand pointed up.


~End Chapter Eight~


So Harry is off to King's Cross and the Dursleys are in the hospital! What will happen to our least favourite family? And where in the world did Dudley come across Monkswood in Little Whinging? You'll need to wait a while to find out.

I'm curious to see if any of you can pinpoint the reason for Dudley's depression. There was a reference to it in his dialogue, but I always worry that I'm a bit too oblique with some of these story threads. :)

I've done my best in this chapter to counteract one of the most bewildering traits (in my opinion) that I often see Harry possess in fanfiction - his advanced reading ability. This is especially true of Slytherin!Harry, where it seems that despite his horrible eyesight, his relatives' neglect, and the fact he's unlikely to have had access to a lot of age-appropriate reading materials, he's somehow become exceedingly literate. In reality, he'd be more likely to develop learning disabilities around reading and writing, or at least be several years behind his peers. Or at least that's how I see it.

Also, Latin is sneaky. All those 'v's that are supposed to be pronounced as 'w's can trip a wizard up. I hope you liked the contrast between Harry's wand vs. wandless practice.

Anyways, I'm off to start editing the next chapter. Thank you again for everyone who favourites, follows, or leaves a review. Seeing notifications in my inbox always brightens my day!

Stay magical,

~Theine