The Dursleys aren't shown in a good light here, but from what's in canon, I don't think they can be.
Refer chapter one for disclaimers.
Dudley's crude attempts to wind him up on the ride back to Little Whinging by telling Harry that he had to set him and his mates up with the other girls in his little group, because some of them looked quite bangable got Harry in trouble… Because the promise of pain and mayhem in his eye when he turned to hiss at the pig in a wig that if he or his mates ever went anywhere near any of the girls, they would die, made Dudley realise that he wasn't sharing the back seat with the pathetic little Freak he'd had so much fun abusing and beating up for the last eleven and a half years any more... Somehow the tables had turned and now he was the prey, trapped in a space that was suddenly far too small with something that may look like the Freak on the outside, but was obviously violent and dangerous, and he'd just bloody well poked it and made it angry! That was enough to make 'Big D' shit himself and try and get as far as possible away from whatever it was that was sitting behind his father… And he stayed scrunched up in the corner, whimpering and stinking the motor out the rest of the way to Little Whinging. As soon as the car pulled into the drive he bolted into the house, but he only spared a minute or so to get himself cleaned up before he ran off to hide in his room.
Of course Vernon went for Harry as soon as they got inside the house, determined to exact punishment for whatever he did to Dudders, but he stopped cold when he was met with the same promise of pain and worse in Harry's eye as Dudley had been… It's effect on Vernon was far worse than just shitting himself though, because he immediately fell to the floor in agony, clutching at his chest as it felt like someone was trying to rip his heart out… (This was just the result of his anger, terror, high blood pressure and morbid obesity combining to trigger the almost inevitable and unfortunately minor heart attack, but Vernon was convinced that the Freak had somehow managed to reach into his chest and almost kill him by tearing his heart out… And Harry was happy to foster that idea after he picked it up from his thoughts with the Legilimency he'd learned hand in hand with Occlumency, because it would make the fat pig much easier to deal with.)
Just catching the edge of that look had been enough to make Petunia almost faint, so she was currently clinging to the door frame into the living room to hold herself up, but at least she was keeping her mouth shut…
Harry didn't raise his voice, but you could have heard a pin drop on the carpet at that point…
"Let's try something new while I'm here this summer, shall we?… You lot try to act like decent human beings and pretend that I'm not here, and in return I'll consider putting off exacting proper retribution for everything you've done to me and mine until next year, I'll even try to put aside the way you murdered Hedwig last summer… Oh for the love of... Pay attention you idiots!... Your gormless expressions are saying that I need to use smaller words or something, so I'll try to put it in terms you can understand, but bloody well pay attention, because this is quite literally a life and death discussion... For you!... I've chalked up all the times you abused, beat and throttled me, broke my bones, sicked dogs on me, starved me, locked me in a cupboard, worked me to the bone, made me wear disgusting rags and generally treated me like utter shite from the moment I arrived here as a toddler up until the end of last summer as a really shitty childhood, because my magic managed to heal the injuries you inflicted on me… Except for the times you'd starved me so much that I couldn't generate enough magic to heal myself… But last summer you murdered my familiar right in front of me Uncle Vernon, and you fucking well laughed when you did it you sick bastard! I'm well aware that you don't want to hear anything about magic but you will hear this and take it in if you want to live!"
"Familiars are not pets, they are sentient magical entities who share mental and magical links with their human companions, so that they in effect become joined as two parts of the same entity… So when you gleefully murdered Hedwig last summer, it felt like half of me was being ripped out. The only reason I didn't kill you then and there was the fact that I couldn't move after the beating you'd just given me… It took me nearly a week to recover enough to come after you, but by the time I was up to it I'd come to the conclusion that a quick death would be too easy on you, because if I'm going to be left with a hole in my heart that can't be filled, it's only fair that you are too, isn't it? So I started making plans to get retribution for Hedwig, and working on gaining the skills I'd need to pull off those plans… One of the key things I needed to learn was how to do magic without using a wand, because getting another warning like I did last summer when Dobby was making a misguided attempt to keep me away from Hogwarts, or even worse, a visit from the Aurors, could ruin everything… And in case you you haven't worked it out yet, I did!"
He clicked his fingers and Petunia shrieked, because the coffee table behind her had just turned into a pig. Harry clicked his fingers again to turn it back, because Petunia's shrieks had set it off and its squeals were even louder than hers. An impatient glare at Petunia made her blanch and shut up, so he continued…
"Where was I before I was so rudely interrupted? Oh yes, so now that I can do magic without a wand, I can take away everything that matters to you, just like you did me, without having to worry about the Aurors interrupting me… But the thing is, that would make a mess I'd have take time away from other things to clean up, and I have quite a bit I want to get done this summer… So if we can come to an agreement and you all hold up your parts of that agreement, I'm prepared to grant you a twelve month stay of execution… And if you do a really good job of holding up your parts of the agreement, I may even be willing to see my way clear to granting you another twelve month reprieve next year if I'm forced to come back here again…"
"Of course, there are a number of things that would be deal breakers, which we'll be going over now… First and foremost, if any of you ever try to treat me anything like you did before, the deal's off and my other plans will have to wait until after I've finished with you and cleaned up the mess, which will probably take all summer… And that applies to your fat bitch of a sister and Diddikins' little mates too Uncle Vernon… Just to be clear, when I say you pretend that I'm not here, that means I won't be doing any chores for you at all, you lot will be doing all your own cooking, cleaning, yard work and everything else. I won't eat or sit and watch telly with you, but you will give me money to go out and get myself whatever food I want, and some decent clothes and other necessities… You will also put a normal door on my room so that it's a room rather than a prison cell and buy me some decent furniture… And a TV and computer with an internet connection too for that matter…"
"You know what? I'll make it easy for you, I'll just swap rooms with Diddikins for the summer, though you'll still need to replace the door on that room, because my being reminded of how you've treated me will not go well for you… And you'll need to get him another bed too, because there's no way he'd ever fit on that broken down kids bed you made me sleep on… You'll have to box up most of his clothes, games and dirty magazines and put them in the garage, because there's no way they will fit in his new room…"
Of course, Vernon didn't have enough sense to keep his mouth shut…"Now see here…"
"How can you manage to hold down a fucking job when you can't remember what you were told not five minutes ago? As I've already told you, there are only two options here Uncle Vernon, compliance or retribution… I'm quite happy to go with retribution, the only reason I offered you the compliance option was that I have other things I want to get done this summer, but seeing the end of you lot will make up for having to put them off for a while... So you choosing retribution is fine with me, I'll start with Dudders to free up my new room. I desperately wanted to make him pay for what he said about the girls anyway, so now I won't have to put it off."
With that, he turned and started heading for the stairs, but the broken "No! Wait! Please…" from Petunia made him stop and turn back with a raised eyebrow.
"We'll do everything you said, just please don't hurt Dudley!"
He looked at them for a while as if considering the request and then begrudgingly nodded. "Alright, you've got until I get back from getting myself something to eat and some decent clothes to get him and his shit out of my room, clean it and air it out and replace the bedding… And in case you've forgotten again, 'his shit' doesn't include the furniture, TV, VCR, stereo, computer and associated equipment he has in there…"
"But they aren't…" Harry looked a question at Petunia and she sighed. "Vernon recently decided to make Dudley's room into a study while Dudley's away at school as he was very impressed with his manager's new office, so we've completely redone the room… It now has a new office set and a nice sofa bed that turns into a comfortable bed for when Dudley comes home for the holidays, and Vernon bought a new television, computer, stereo and everything else for in there, but when he looked in the boxes for them, he realised that he had no idea how to set any of it up, so as he knew that you were coming back for the holidays in a month, he decided that setting up all the equipment in there would be added to your other jobs…"
She was thinking about what was in the room as she was telling him this, so Harry could see that she was being honest… And it looked like some high end kit… But he looked at his dear uncle's thoughts to double check the story. Vernon's impotent fury at being talked about as if he was incompetent was expected, but how much he'd spent on the kit certainly wasn't… Wasting nearly twenty thousand Pounds on creating an exact copy of his boss's new office at home in some stupid attempt to get himself promoted to regional sales manager for the group of companies that Grunnings was part of by trying to make the decision makers believe that he was a hard working tech savvy executive like him? Even if it was 'free' money because it had all come out of what he'd been paid to keep Harry in line, that was incredibly bloody stupid!
He was actually a little miffed to see that they wouldn't need to buy new furniture for his old room after all, because while he loved to act like a big man and be seen to be throwing money around, Vernon was too tight to throw away anything that still had value… So Dudley's old bed, desk, TV, VCR, boombox, computer etc were all sitting in the garage. Which meant that all they needed to do was throw out the broken junk they'd made Harry use and replace it with what was in the garage… Of course, that meant that he didn't need to leave them with any money to get the job done...
Harry shook his head in exasperation. "Alright, just leave everything in the boxes there and I'll set it up as I need it. That doesn't change the rest of it though, I expect Dudley and his things to be out of there and the room cleaned and ready for me by the time I come back… Now how much money do you have on you?
Vernon just said. "What?"
"Are you deaf, or stupid? Money, cash, how much have you got? You've forced me to give you tens of thousands of hours of unpaid labour since I was four, so you can consider this the initial payment for my work."
"A… A few hundred Quid I think?"
"That isn't anywhere near enough, how much do you have stashed away in your betting jar and purse Aunt Petunia?"
"How do you?" He gave her a look. "Um.. Five hundred Pounds?"
"Get it, all of it! Trust me, I'll know if you try to hold anything back! And the same goes for you Uncle, hand over everything you have. I need to get myself some decent clothes and other necessities while I'm out getting something to eat."
A pointed look up the stairs was enough to make Petunia scurry off the the kitchen and Vernon shut his mouth and make haste to pull out his wallet and shakily hand it over. Harry smirked at him as he threw the empty wallet on the floor, because he'd seen that both of them were lying about how much they had. There was nearly nine hundred Quid in Vernon's wallet, and with his Aunt's money added, he headed out the door with well over fifteen hundred Quid in his pocket…
By the time Harry returned a few hours later with his shopping (which his bottomless school bag had no trouble swallowing), there was a pile of broken furniture from his old room sitting out at the curb next to the bins. He let himself into the house with the key he'd taken off Petunia (after making sure that no-one was waiting to ambush him) and headed upstairs, noting that his trunk was gone from the entry. The fact that his old room already had a new door surprised him at first, but then he realised that they would have made sure that they replaced it before they got the new furniture delivered, to ensure that the family was seen as normal, but the frightened intake of breath from behind the door as he walked past amused him. His Aunt hadn't had much to clean up in the room because Dudley had only arrived that afternoon, but while she'd sprayed copious amounts of air freshener around, an air freshening charm was needed to clear away the lingering evidence of Dudley's 'accident'.
After he dropped his school bag on the bed, he gathered up all of Dudley's old clothes he'd been made to wear, along with the large container of lighter fluid he'd bought, and headed back downstairs, going through the kitchen and laundry into the back yard… Where he dumped the clothes in a pile, emptied the container of lighter fluid over them and then set the pile alight with a wave of his hand, cheerfully singing 'burn baby burn' rather loudly and off key as he watched it go up in flames. He smirked at the fearful looks Petunia was sending at the surrounding houses, because it was obvious that the show he was putting on was attracting attention.
Stopping next to them on the way back into the house Harry said. "Let it burn, I will be quite upset if you make any attempt to put the fire out… The best way to handle this, and explain the old furniture out the front, will be to tell everyone that I was signed off as being completely rehabilitated and released at the end of the year and won't be going back to Saint Brutus's, so you've gotten me new clothes and furniture to start over, and this is the ceremonial funeral pyre for the old me… And I'd suggest that you make sure everyone hears and accepts that story quick smart, because as I said earlier, the deal's off if anyone tries to treat me the way you used to!"
Vernon and Petunia looked at each other nervously, and Petunia made Vernon man up and tell him.
"Ah… We may have a problem there, you see I tried to get Marge to cancel her visit next month on the basis that we're trying to get along as a family now and need time to sort things out, but she refused to cancel… Saying that a leopard doesn't change its spots and that we obviously needed her to provide the firm hand you need to get you into line…"
He almost wet himself at the look Harry gave him, and Harry's words did nothing to relieve the tension.
"That's your problem, but I'm telling you right now that if she and that vicious animal of hers start in on me, my response will be epic... However, in recognition of the effort you've made so far to comply with my requirements, I'll give you one more chance to avoid joining her… If you lot ensure that you all stick to the letter of our agreement from this moment on, I may be able to see my way clear to leave you out of the retribution her actions bring down on her… And while you're at it, make sure that Dudley and his gang don't get up to their usual tricks of stealing and vandalising whatever they can, beating up little kids and molesting girls this summer, because if I get blamed for what they've done again, I'll be going after them, and you!"
"Dudley would never…"
"Wake up and open your bloody eyes Aunt Petunia! You two have made your son into a vicious, self centred thug with no sense of right or wrong, just like Uncle Vernon and the rest of his family. I expect that's where Dudley got his taste for thievery from as well, because from what I've heard about Mum and my grandparents, the Evans family weren't thieves…."
"How dare you call me and my family thugs and thieves?"
Vernon desperately wished that he hadn't opened his mouth when the boy gave him that look again… Why couldn't he stop himself provoking him? He'd made it clear that he meant what he said about wanting payback, and he'd already shown that he was quite capable of getting it when he chose.
"How dare I? Let's see, you and your sister have taken every chance you got to harm me since I was fifteen months old, and you often left injuries that should have seen me hospitalised, in my book that qualifies you as both thugs, and scum… And as far as being a thief goes, aside from not paying me a brass farthing for all the work I've been forced to do for you and others since I was four, some of which I happen to know you were paid quite well for, what have you done with the two hundred and eighty thousand Pounds you've been paid for my care since I was left here? I'd be very surprised if even a thousand pounds of that has been spent on me in the last eleven and half years, so by my definition you stole the rest of it!"
His Aunt piped up at that. "What are you talking about? We've never been able to get child support for you and the support payments certainly aren't anywhere near that much anyway!"
"Oh didn't he tell you? Two thousand Pounds has been deposited into Uncle Vernon's account every month since I was left on your doorstep. Gringotts uncovered the payments to him when they were tracing the money that was stolen from me."
That made her turn to her husband. "Is that true Vernon? Were all those so called sales bonuses money we were being paid to keep him?"
"What? No. Surely you don't believe..."
Harry decided to cut off their bullshit, because she had no right to try and take the moral high ground either.
"Now that we've established that the Dursleys are thugs and thieves, I wasn't finished!... The point is that everyone in the neighbourhood has been all too happy to blame me for everything Diddikins and his gang did ever since we were little kids because of all your lies about me being a juvenile delinquent, liar and thief… Well that stops right now, if I get blamed for anything else they do, they will pay, and so will you!"
With that, he went inside and up to his new room to set up the TV, VCR, computer and everything else (with Hermione stepping him through the process over their link, because she'd had to work out what went where for her father whenever he got a new VCR, computer etc) and get settled in.
The angry shout of "Dudley, get down here!" a little later made him laugh.
When he headed out the next day, Harry was amused to see that Dudley seemed almost as afraid of his father as he was was him, so Vernon had probably put the fear of death into him about what would happen if Dudley and his mates' actions brought Harry's vengeance down on him… And Aunt Petunia looked angry with both of them for making her look like a fool.
Through July, Harry worked with the girls, the Tonks and the Goblins to start taking their plans to the next level, though they had a hitch when Harry got his memories unblocked because it took all of them to stop him going to the Burrow and killing Ronald Bilius Weasley for what what he did and tried to do to Hermione. As their plans started to pan out, Hermione and some of the others finally saw where they were going with it and stopped objecting to the other thing they'd been getting the Elves to do… Clearing gold, valuable and useful things and incriminating evidence out of their former masters' vaults and manors. The type of Pure-Bloods who abused their Elves and gave them clothes just because they didn't think they were subservient enough expected and wanted them to die when they were freed, so they never thought to waste the effort of removing their access from their vaults and mansions… And as they were the ones who tended to use their wealth and power to ensure that anyone they considered to be 'below' them had no rights and had the most ill-gotten gains and secrets they wanted to hide, Harry and the girls were quite happy to give the Elves a chance to get a bit of pay back on their former masters.
The evidence they collected was quietly passed to Amelia Bones (or the Goblins if they were better placed to act on it), but the rest was used to set up housing, education and work facilities for the ones the 'Traditional' Pure-Bloods were pushing out of Magical Britain when they had no further use for them… Muggle-Born and Raised Witches and Wizards, Squibs, Werewolves and Freed Elves. It was an uphill battle for these people (Elves are people too), because most of them had no place in the Magical or Mundane worlds. Most of the Witches, Wizards had no record of what they had been doing since they turned eleven, and no education or usable skills in the Mundane world. The Werewolves who were turned as adults were in the same boat (or had no record of their existence in the Mundane world at all), and most of them had trouble finishing their education and holding down jobs because they couldn't explain why they were always off sick for a few days around the full moon. The Squibs generally managed the best of the Disposed, if they could get past having no record or memory of their existence before they were dumped in the Mundane world as children, usually with nothing more than the clothes on their backs… While the Elves couldn't allow themselves to be seen in the Mundane world at all, because there was no way of explaining their appearance.
The Freed Elves were bound to the families as vassals, which freed them from the slave curse and gave them the magic and independence they needed to thrive, it also unblocked their natural ability to draw ambient magic from the surrounding environment, so they weren't dependent on their 'masters' Magic to survive… And most of them were quite happy to exact retribution on their former masters by cleaning them out too…
With hundreds of Elves to look after them, the houses to get people off the streets, schools and businesses were quickly established and well maintained, which left the Disposed free to get the education and work skills they needed to make lives for themselves.
What they offered the Werewolves was far more than that though, because they had tracked down and acquired the services of a couple who could turn them into Lycans, which gave them a chance at something like a normal life. Some of the Werewolves objected to the detailed oath of fealty that they were required to give before they would be turned into Lycans… But most agreed that it was only reasonable that they vow to not turn anyone, serve the Disposed community and not misuse their Lycan abilities for their own ends, and accepted the risk of losing their magic and dying (like Elves, Lycans were magical beings who couldn't survive without their magic) if they went against their vows. While some went into other fields, most of the Lycans joined the Yeoman Security Company, to make the best use of their Lycan abilities, and Amelia was cackling like the Wicked Witch of the West when the Ministry was forced to sign a contract for Yeoman Security to provide guards and manage the security of Azkaban for them after Harry and the girls eradicated the Dementor Horde…
And the best part was that the contract had to be funded by the Minister's office, rather than the DMLE, because a century ago the Minister for Magic had demanded that Azkaban be put under his direct control so that he could use it to get rid of anyone who opposed him. In fact the DMLE would be regaining the services of all the MLE Officers who were serving as guards in Azkaban due to the contract specifying that only Yeoman Security personnel would be involved in securing Azkaban. This meant that the only Ministry representative in Azkaban was the Warden, whose only function was to serve as an interface between the Minister's Office, DMLE and the person leading Yeoman Security's team in Azkaban. Failing to grasp the connotations of Yeoman Security being officially registered as an international security body with the ICW and therefore required to comply with the ICW's Laws until after the magically binding contracts were signed was quite upsetting for the Minister and his cronies, because that meant that no-one could be incarcerated, given special treatment or released unless everything was done in accordance with the ICW's rules.
So between working on their plans, catching up on his non-magical subjects and esoteric lore, spending time with the girls and being studiously ignored or deferred to by the Dursleys (because their animosity towards him had been largely subsumed into their fear of what he might do to them if they upset him), Harry actually had a good time in July… Finishing on a high note on his birthday with magically accepting his Most Ancient titles, signing betrothal contracts with Hermione and having the first birthday party he'd ever had with all the people he loved… Of course, being Harry, that meant that everything was about to come crashing down around his ears and it did, in the form of Marge the Barge and her special friend Ripper arriving at the Dursleys a few days later.
July had been beneficial for Dudley too for different reasons, because between his mother cutting down on the amount of food she was preparing because all the money they were giving Harry was coming out of her household budget, and fear of Harry's retribution stopping him eating more than a fraction of what he usually did… Constant nerves and putting a serious effort into showing that he was doing his fair share of the work around the house and yard, he'd shed around three stone (along with a bit of his over-entitled attitude), and was much healthier. While he hadn't stopped to think about why yet, he was feeling better than he had in ages…
When Marge the Barge waddled into the house with her 'little friend' Ripper the Rabid Mutt at her heels, Harry stepped back out of sight, so that he could hear what was going on without being involved until he was ready. Vernon, Petunia and Dudley were all terrified of what he would do to them if they didn't keep Marge in line, and Vernon had supposedly been psyching himself up to stand up to his sister... Petunia said that she had never liked the fat, overbearing bitch anyway and that stupid mutt of hers wouldn't stop making messes all over the house... While Dudley had told her that he wasn't going to take the risk of making Harry angry over some sweets and pocket money (it's amazing what you hear when the other people in the room don't know you're there), so it would be interesting to see how they handled the situation… But he was expecting to be disappointed, so he had been practising the illusion he wanted to use on Aunt Marge for the last month to make sure he could give it the full effect, it would be interesting to see what she thought of coming face to face with Salazar's basilisk.
Marge made her agenda clear with her first words. "Where is that ungrateful little bastard? Tell him to bring my bags in and take them up to my room immediately!"
Vernon's claimed intention to stand up to her flew out the window immediately, because like most bullies he buckled the moment he went up against anyone who wasn't helpless. All he said was.
"Now Marge, I told you… We're trying to change things here to get past the issues we were having…"
"You're weak Vernon, that's why it was necessary for me to come down here and put the little bastard in his place! Get down here right now boy!"
None of them responded, so Vernon's sentence was obviously going to be the sum total of their so-called 'standing up to her'. Harry had been expecting this, and was actually looking forward to getting some payback by scaring the living shite out of the bitch, so he stepped out to stand at the top of the stairs.
"How dare you question my parentage you bitch? Your own brother attended my parents' wedding two years before I was conceived so you know full well that I'm no bastard! And for that matter, what am I supposed to be grateful for? The care that I wasn't getting because you and your brother were splitting the money sent to pay for it instead of spending it on me? I don't think so! And neither did the people who were tracking where my money went, so as it was my money that paid for your cottage, I now own it… You'll be served with your eviction notice by the end of the week."
And as he'd intended, it was on like Donkey Kong.
She bellowed "Get him Ripper!" and started heaving herself up the stairs behind the mutt as fast as she could… But with all the excess weight she was carrying, it was no surprise that she hadn't even made it half way before Ripper reached the top of the stairs. If she, or any of them, had any sense, the malice in the grim smile on Harry's face and the way he just stood there waiting for them to reach him would have made them stop and reconsider their actions… But they were the Muggle equivalents of Pureblood bigots, morons blinded by delusions of adequacy, so that thought never crossed their minds.
By the time Ripper reached the top of the stairs, huffing and snarling and eager to get his teeth into the one he was trained to attack, the sight of the mutt slavering at the thought of biting him again had made Harry recall all the times he had been mauled by the little bastard with the Dursleys cheering him on… That triggered his fight or flight response in 'fight' mode, so he kicked the mutt in the face hard enough to send him shooting right over Marge as she struggled up the stairs… And from the loud crunch as he hit the front door, he wouldn't be getting up again after he hit the floor.
The Dursleys stared at Ripper's dead body in shock as Harry turned to head down the hallway (turning back to get ready for the bitch's arrival once he was out of sight, but they didn't know that). He heard Marge scream "You bastard!" before she redoubled her efforts to get up the stairs.
When she reached the top of the stairs, Harry pushed as much magic as he could into creating as complete an illusion as possible of the basilisk at the moment where it was striking at him, just before he killed it. What he didn't realise was that pushing that much magic into it actually generated a physical form that knocked things off the wall.
Like her brother, Marge Dursley's temper, blood pressure and morbid obesity had her primed and ready for a heart attack, and with her rage at being taunted and her 'poor little Ripper' being killed like that, when she came face to face with the gaping maw and humongous fangs of a monstrous snake that was real enough to touch striking at her… Her heart all but burst, so she was effectively dead as she fell back and tumbled down the stairs.
Harry hadn't intended for her to die, he'd just wanted scare the living shite out of the bitch and maybe give her a minor heart attack like Vernon's as payback for everything she'd done to him over the years, but he'd been planning on leaving right after this confrontation anyway, so he was dressed in his old school clothes in case he was seen leaving by any of Dumbledore's watchers… And had cast a featherweight charm on his school trunk, which held everything he'd brought back from Hogwarts, so he just had to grab the trunk and carry it downstairs.
He'd also had everything in the house that he wanted to take with him shrunk, packed and magically sent to his Townhouse. (Unfortunately for the Dursleys, that included the contents of the safe in Vernon and Petunia's room, nearly everything in Dudley's room and the rest of the expensive kit in the house, as it had all been paid for with Harry's money and he wasn't prepared to let the Dursleys have any thing of his… But while Vernon spending nearly twenty thousand Pounds trying to impress the decision makers in the group that Grunnings was part of by copying his boss's new office at home had been a monumental exercise in stupidity and a massive waste of money, it had been worth every penny for the purpose it was originally designed for… The Managing Director of Grunnings was a driven workaholic who pretty much lived in his office, and had a dedicated wife and son who had put a lot of time and effort into creating an office environment specifically designed to meet his needs. The stylish and elegant desk and credenza had enough real estate to carry dual 16" monitors, keyboard etc and still have room to keep all the necessary paperwork at hand, while projecting the proper image for someone in his position, because how you are perceived is important in business dealings, and the office chairs provided comfortable seating for hours on end. The sofa bed provided comfortable and stylish overflow seating, as well as a comfortable bed for the many nights he slept in his office. The TV, LaserDisc player, stereo VCR and integrated stereo sound system provided entertainment for the times he needed to take a break and relax and allowed him to keep up with the news, as well as being useful for watching and presenting videos for business purposes… And the self contained hot and cold food and beverage bar was a compact and tidy little unit created to fit into the office decor and provide food and drink when he needed them, as well as serving his guests.)
When he got downstairs, Vernon was screaming that he was going to see him hang for murdering his sister, but he shut up and wet himself when he saw the palpable rage in Harry's eyes. Petunia and Dudley were still shocked speechless by what had happened, so Harry's quiet response was easily heard.
"I didn't do anything to her you stupid prick. I had no intention of her dying, I just wanted to put her in her place to make her back down and leave me the hell alone, because I've had it with you bastards treating me like your punching bag… And for that matter, you could have easily prevented this happening by growing a backbone and stopping her coming here, or even stopping her going up the stairs, but you just stood there and let her wind herself up to the point where she gave herself a heart attack, so don't blame me for you and your sister's failings! It was high blood pressure caused by her massive anger issues and obesity that triggered a heart attack when she came around the corner and got a shock from seeing me waiting to confront her, and if she was that close to going, the heart attack could have just as easily been triggered by someone sounding their horn at her because she stepped out in front of them in the street…"
"Don't bother trying to lie about what happened here either, because my kind can get the truth right out of your head, but I don't feel like dealing with them at the moment, so I'll find somewhere else to stay for the rest of the summer… And before any of you decide to go back to telling the neighbours and the police all those lies about me, the old meddler will almost certainly force me to come back here next summer, so remember what I told you the night I arrived, because I still owe you lot for everything you've done to me."
With that, he got going before the Aurors could arrive, because the amount of magic he'd pushed into that illusion had to have registered on their sensors. Once he was away from Privet Drive, he called the Knight Bus to take him to the Leaky Cauldron, where as expected, a representative of the Ministry was waiting for him… The fact that that that representative was the Minister for Magic himself was a surprise though, as was the way he just waved off he fact that the 'accidental magic' that he generated when he was attacked had actually killed his Muggle relative.
Harry just went along with him and agreed to stay in Diagon Alley for the rest of the holidays, making a point of being seen going to Gringotts and going shopping with the girls a few days later to buy a new trunk, robes, books etc before sending Robby to Tom at the Leaky Cauldron with his room key, letter and a week's payment for the room (to save him the wasted effort of trying in vain to get the promised payment out of the Ministry). He spent the rest of the holidays in the Black Townhouse in the London Borough of Islington.
While he couldn't be accepted to the Black titles until he turned thirteen, he was called to Gringotts for the reading of Sirius' will after the Black Family Magic confirmed that Sirius had died. His inheritance included the Black Townhouse in London, because it was now his as Heir Apparent to the House of Black. The Townhouse was a literal house of horrors when they arrived, because its only inhabitants for the last fourteen years had been a demented House Elf by the name of Kreacher and his equally demented mistress, Sirius' mother Walburga Black. Walburga died in 1985, but Kreacher kept treating her magical portrait as his mistress and obeying its commands, so the Townhouse had gone to rack and ruin and when they went to see what state it was in, he attacked them so they had to kill him in self defence.
After they got rid of Kreacher's corpse and Walburga's portrait, they got to work cleaning out the Townhouse and making it fit to live in… Having a bevy of Elves at their disposal made this a much easier task, and the warped little buggers were delighted to be given such a nasty job to do… But the point was, by the time Harry left Diagon Alley, the Black Townhouse was as bright and welcoming as a Georgian noble's townhouse could be, and they'd turned a sitting room on the first floor into 'the Office', which was warded against magic so that he could get phone lines, power and external antennas connected and set up the very upmarket office set, sofa bed and the latest widescreen TV, LaserDisc player, stereo VCR, integrated stereo, specced up IBM PS/2 Model 295 computer with dual 16" hi-res colour monitors and 14,400 Faxmodem that he brought from Dudley's room, along with the other kit he repossessed from the Dursleys and the chargers for the Nokia 1011 mobile phones he bought for Hermione and himself (to provide a non-magical explanation for how they were communicating) the first night back… The almost impregnable Black family wards, which were now under Harry's control as Lord Black, were set to allow only grant those explicitly named by him access (be they Human, Elf, Goblin or magical creature) and it was under a Fidelius charm using Harry as the secret keeper… So there was no safer or more comfortable place for Harry to spend the remainder of his holiday than the Townhouse, especially with the girls spending most of their time there (well, Hermione spent a lot of time playing with the computer and entertainment system in the Office, because the equipment he had there was far better than anything her father could afford).
August went much the same way as July, working on moving their plans forward, studying their Magical and Mundane subjects, and plotting the Dursleys' downfall… Well mainly Vernon Dursley's…
As soon as it was confirmed that the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes had successfully covered up any connection between Marge's death and Privet Drive, Harry had Vernon's 1974 Morris Marina 1.8 TC Saloon and 1981 Princess 2 2000 HL, his 1983 Rover SD1 Vitesse, 1986 SD1 Vitesse Twin Plenum, 1990 832 Vitesse Executive and 1993 830 Vitesse Sterling 'company vehicles', Petunia's 1968 Austin '1300 GT Countryman' and Marge's 1970 Triumph 2.5 PI Mk2 Estate 'repossessed'... Because all but the Marina, 1300 Countryman and Triumph Estate had been bought with his money, and those three were claimed to recover more of the stolen money. They, along with his Mum's 1960 Austin 'Mini 1275 GT Countryman', 1972 Austin Maxi HL and 1974 'Vanden Plas Princess 2.6L Shooting Brake', became the first motors in Harry's collection, as he'd learned by then that Potter men had a habit of collecting motors… And he wanted to have the 1275 GT Countryman, 1300 GT Countryman, Maxi HL and Shooting Brake as links to his Mum and Granddad.
(Telling Petunia and the neighbours that his string of blue luxury fastbacks were company vehicles and the people at work that Petunia had inherited a bit of money was how Vernon got around having to explain where he got the money to keep upgrading to new upmarket motors every few years on a salesman's salary… The idea for this came to Vernon two weeks before Christmas 1981, when he decided that things were finally starting to go his way because he saw a notice on his boss's secretary's desk from British Leyland offering hefty discounts to businesses up until the end of the year on motors that had been sitting in their dealers' showrooms for too long... And while a Rover SD1 Vanden Plas like the Managing Director's was unfortunately well beyond his means, something caught his eye that he could afford. They had a 1981 Princess 2 2000 HL with alloy wheels at a local dealership that was listed for an all up price of just over thirty seven hundred Quid, and four thousand Quid had been deposited into his account since that Freak was dumped on their doorstep, so he could cover that easily... So he had his girlfriend Rita (one of the secretaries at Grunnings he was doing on the side) type up a purchase order for him on Grunnings letterhead and then drive him to the the bank to get a bankcheque on the way to the dealership in Petunia's tarted up 1300 Countryman. Luckily Petunia had needed to use his Marina that day to take Dudley and the Freak to the doctor so Dudley could get his shots, because that made it easy for him to give Rita the 1300 Countryman to use until he wanted it back and tell Petunia that he'd traded it in on the Princess to explain where he'd gotten the rest of the money from... He couldn't understand why she got her knickers such in a twist when he told her that he'd traded the Countryman in though, it may have been hers before they were married... He'd heard the story often enough, her father bought one of the small batch of '68 MY Austin 1100 MK2 Vans with Countryman side windows and rear seat added to replace their 1960 Austin Seven Countryman as the main family motor when they outgrew the Seven in late '67... Then after his work HL took over that role in '73, he got some mates to swap over the mechanicals, grille, interior etc from a written off 1970 1300 GT and tidy it up inside and out, making it a 1300 GT Countryman, and they gave it to Petunia in '76 when she got her driving license... But he was her husband and he made all money decisions for the family so she had no right to argue with him, and she should be bloody grateful that he was giving her a much newer and better motor to use!... While the Princess was definitely a step up from his old Marina though, it still didn't present the proper image for how he saw himself, so as he had enough money to get himself an SD1 Vanden Plas by Christmas '82, he headed to the Rover dealer to buy one... Because in his mind's eye, the Vanden Plas did fit the image of the right motor to properly show his standing as the successful young British businessman on the rise he believed himself to be... Unfortunately for him, the salesman at Rover knew a soft touch when he saw one, and he talked him into buying the more expensive Rover SD1 Vitesse high performance model in the more dignified Moonraker Blue, and then paying extra on top of that to get it delivered without the decals but with all the Vanden Plas luxury features and options added... The '83 Vitesse was replaced by a Moonraker Blue 1986 SD1 Vitesse Twin Plenum with the same luxury additions that he bought when they stopped making the SD1s in late '86… 'Vernon's salesman thought he'd dodged a bullet when the 800 Fastbacks were released in 1988 and rapidly improved through '89, because he knew that Vernon was expecting to replace the SD1 with another luxury fastback... But he discovered how dogmatic Vernon could be when the time came to upgrade again in late '89, because Vernon refused to even consider buying something that had forty HP less than the Twin Plenum and started talking about getting a Jag instead. The argument that the Jag was hundreds of kilos heavier so it needed more power to even come close to the 800's performance was just dismissed as all Vernon could see was that the Jag was listed as matching the Twin Plenum's 215HP while the 800 only had 177HP. He managed to string Vernon along for another six months with promises of a hot new model that was just around the corner, and luckily the new Rover Special Products team came along to save his bacon, because they created the Special Edition 832 Vitesse Executives to boost sales in early 1990 by adapting the upcoming Second generation Honda Legend's C32A engine to fit into the Rover 800, and finished the motor off with the top of the line Sterling's luxury interior and sports suspension, wheels etc. The C32A's 210 HP addressed Vernon's complaints about power, and the Vitesse Executive being such an exclusive motor sold it for him, so a Carribean Blue 1990 832 Vitesse Executive became Vernon's next 'company vehicle' in early 1990... And the Rover Special Products team did it again in early 1993 when they created the even more exclusive 1993 830 Vitesse Sterlings… These were a very limited run of luxury fastbacks built with the upcoming 200HP Turbo 800 Vitesse Sport's suspension, wheels and gearbox, the 270HP C30A engine from the Honda NSX and once again, the 800 Sterling's luxury interior. The Vitesse Sterlings were created to generate interest in Rover's R17 800 range, and Vernon couldn't resist getting himself one in Carribean Blue when he was told how exclusive they'd be... To get Petunia off his back (because she was still bitching about her bloody Countryman), Vernon upgraded her from the Marina to the Princess when he bought himself the Vitesse at the end of '82, telling her that management had leased the Rover for him to present a better image to their customers, because he was handling much more important customers now... And then to the '83 Vitesse when he got himself the Vitesse Twin Plenum in '86… The '83 Vitesse was in turn upgraded to the Twin Plenum in 1990, which was upgraded to the Vitesse Executive in '93, because it helped keep her quiet, and having a pair of late model luxury fastbacks in the drive showed the world that he was a man of substance… When Harry got Vernon's motors repossessed, they found that the '83 Vitesse and Vitesse Twin Plenum were being stored in the double garage belonging to Vernon's flat in Kingston... Because whenever he upgraded the motor that Petunia was driving, Vernon moved her 'old' motor to the flat so that he could use one of them to drive the tarts he took there around without people recognising him by the motor, as he hadn't been driving them for years... He was also too tight to throw away money and he'd worked out from the low trade-in value he was offered for the '83 Vitesse that he wouldn't recover even half of what he'd spent on the motors if he sold them, so he hung onto them to get more use out of his 'investment'.)
Petunia's 1300 GT Countryman and Vernon's Marina 1.8 TC and Princess ... Which had all been stored at Marge's after they were progressively pushed out of the garage in Kingston by the Princess, '83 Vitesse and Vitesse Twin Plenum... And Marge's 1970 Triumph 2.5 PI Mk2 Estate (Which had been put away in the shed when Marge lost her license for drink drinking in the mid Seventies and had stayed there ever since, because she lost her job and started drinking even more after that so she never bothered getting her license back after her suspension expired. Vernon was pissed off when he went to stash Petunia's Countryman in the shed in '86 and found the Estate there, because he would have been presenting a much better image through the late Seventies and early Eighties if he were driving a flash Triumph Estate rather than the Marina, but it was too late to worry about that and at least the shed was big enough to take all four motors.)... Were also cleaned up, repaired and added to Harry's collection to give him cheaper alternatives to learn to drive in and park on the street, because it was Harry's money that paid for the Princess, and the 1300 Countryman, Marina and Marge's 2.5 PI Estate were claimed in repayment for some of what he couldn't recover...
Aunt Andi had been looking after Harry's Mum's trunk with the shrunken Mini Countryman, Maxi HL and Shooting Brake and the rest of the things she was holding for Harry in stasis since about a month before Lily was killed, so they were in much the same state as they'd been when Lily last drove them... The background for Lily's 1275 GT Countryman was much the same as Petunia's 1300 GT Countryman, it had been purchased as an Austin Seven Van with side windows and rear seat added in 1960 and served as the family motor until the family outgrew it in late '67 and the '1100 Countryman' was purchased to take over the role. The Mini Countryman was used as the family's second motor after that, but one of Rhys' mates picked up a rear ended 1970 1275 GT with a Cooper S engine and Minilite wheels for him in '71 and his mates pitched in to swap over the mechanicals, nose, interior, wheels etc from 1275 GT to the Mini Countryman, fit Australian doors with wind-up windows and tidy it up inside and out to give it a new lease on life. It kept serving as the family's second motor up until like Petunia had been given the 1300 Countryman when she got her driving license in '76, Lily was given the Mini Countryman in '77... Harry's Granddad used the good bits from the wrecked 1970 World Cup works rally car with Minilites and a full Downton Stage 2 kit that his mate found for him, 1300 GT instruments, new paint and a retrimmed interior when he rebuilt the '72 Maxi HL he picked up with blown engine into a comfortable, capable and rugged high speed people and goods mover in '73, and the HL served as his primary transport and work vehicle up until he and Harry's Grandmother were killed in a suspicious fire in 1980... And the Shooting Brake was a rejected Vanden Plas prototype that Harry's Granddad had managed to acquire after British Leyland refused to produce it. The Vanden Plas design team had tried grafting the tail of Austin's rejected Austin 1800 estate prototype body onto their first Princess 1800 prototype in the mid Sixties in an attempt to make their design more appealing... But at that time it was deemed too controversial to be successful without something to make it grab people's attention, and the Austin 1800's anemic 1800 4 cylinder engine and cable shifted 4-speed manual gearbox wouldn't cut it... However with the mid Seventies came a strong and smooth 4-speed automatic transmission for the Austin Maxi, and a smoother and more powerful 2.6L 6 cylinder version of its 4 cylinder 'E' series engine... So the Vanden Plas design team dusted off the shooting brake design and built up a working prototype on the longer wheelbase platform of their second rejected Princess 1800 prototype with the new mechanical components, but Leyland still refused to produce it. The design team and Vanden Plas' management had been quite happy with how the shooting brake turned out, as it wasn't too dissimilar from the Princess Countryman models that had been well received previously, and superior capability and interior space should have been more important than the lack of imposing presence due to smaller physical size with a shooting brake, but with Leyland being unwilling to produce it, it was dead in the water... Harry's Granddad quite liked the idea of a luxury motor that was actually practical though, and as he knew one of the engineers who had come up with the design, he managed to buy the shooting brake prototype through him for a good price, and they used it for times when they wanted something a bit flasher, like Petunia and Lily's weddings. Petunia knew about the Maxi HL and Shooting Brake of course, but as far as she knew, they belonged to the company her father worked for, and she wasn't told that they'd gone to Lily after their parents died.
After he had Vernon's motors reposessed, Harry provided evidence of Vernon embezzling over seventy thousand Pounds from Grunnings, and receiving another two hundred and eighty thousand Pounds of undisclosed income over the past eleven and a half years on top of his salary and the amounts he'd embezzled to the Police and Inland Revenue. Once Vernon's motors, Marge's cottage, the expensive flat Vernon bought in Kingston for his trysts with secretaries and any other women he could get to sleep with him, the 'office' equipment and other expensive kit and the other seventy odd thousand Pounds they (mostly Vernon) had hidden away between them had been reclaimed, most of the money that had been taken from Harry had been accounted for (4 Privet Drive had also been largely paid off with his money, but Harry hadn't decided what to do about that yet)... But the fact remained that Vernon had spent hundreds of thousands of Pounds of Harry's money on living the good life for the last eleven and a half years while he made Harry's life Hell, so Harry wanted to make him pay. People like Vernon usually feared the Inland Revenue more than they did the Police, because while they didn't recognise what they did as crimes, they knew that the Tax Man was relentless, so Harry decided to share the joy and send both of them after him.
At the end of the holidays, Harry and the girls packed up their things and headed to Kings Cross station. Now that they'd established the story that Harry had gotten access to his money and improved his circumstances, he didn't need to wear rags any more and his school bag swallowed all of their shrunken trunks, so they didn't need to faff about with trolleys or hefting full sized trunks up onto the luggage racks any more. The girls had mapped out the optimal approach to manage peoples' perceptions of them and scripted their interactions and dialogue to make their running into each other on the platform and deciding to find a compartment to share believable. If they hadn't been concentrating on following the script, they might have noticed that they were being magically herded to a specific compartment, but they didn't…
And Harry was further distracted when they entered the compartment they'd been herded into and he recognised the figure asleep in the corner… He hastily cast a privacy ward over him to stop him hearing anything they said and explained to the girls that the man was supposedly one of his parents', or at least his father's, closest friends… But for some reason, the first he'd heard of the Werewolf who currently went by the name of Remus Lupin was when Sirius Black's will was read. To the best of his knowledge, this Wizard, who was supposedly the last of his parents' friends from Hogwarts and Fumblemore's Order of the Phoenix after they left there, had never tried to see or contact him in the last twelve years, and yet here he was on the Hogwarts Express, probably because he was going to be taking up the once again vacant position of Professor for Defence Against the Dark Arts… Right after Harry started trying to take control of his life back from Dumbledore… Now wasn't that a strange coincidence?
Hermione and the other girls laughed and told him not to give up his day job for any acting asperations, but they agreed that the timing for Lupin turning up was highly suspicious. They kept an eye on Lupin while they discussed what they were going to do about this development, but thanks to the privacy spell, he didn't hear anything and slept right through their discussion.
It was obvious that something was up when the Express stopped before it got to Hogsmeade, but they couldn't see anything outside and Dumbledore had cast some heavy masking spells along the corridor, so they had no warning before the door to the compartment suddenly opened and the Dementors started coming in...
