Bit by bit, tiny trickles of consciousness began to seep back into Harry's brain. As the first semblances of coherent thought began to pool together, he pried open his eyes, fully expecting to see the same dreary scene he did every morning--faded wallpaper, dusty, second hand furniture, and a single curtainless, drafty window. Instead the sight that greeted him was a rather upside-down view of the familiar avocado decor of the kitchen corridor. How extraordinarily strange. He was about to raise himself in a standing position to further investigate this phenomena until he came to the startling discovery that he couldn't. Any attempt at motion was met with a sort if numbing twinge that Harry supposed would be more painful if he could actually feel his limbs. He did, however, manage to twist his face into a rueful grin--he may be lying immobile on the hall floor, but the irony of the situation was inescapable. The great Harry Potter! The marvelous, magnificent young boy who single-handedly conquered Lord Voldemort! Was there anything he couldn't do? Thank shrieking socks and golden Galleons Malfoy couldn't see him here. This last thought brought up an interesting question to Harry's mind. Why exactly was he stretched out on his back at the bottom of the staircase? He searched through his memories of the day for an answer: got up, mopped floor, collided with Uncle Vernon, got thrown into cupboard, yanked out of cupboard, carried his heavy cousin's equally heavy luggage...ah yes. There is was, in the dim back recesses of his mind, the image of he and Dudley tangled together, hurtling through the air, and then the rather abruptly cut off picture of the floor rising up to smack him in the face. If that was what really happened, through, where was Dudley now? Where were Vernon and Petunia, for that matter? Shouldn't they be screaming at him right now for whatever atrocity they wanted to blame on him at the moment? For disappointing them and not being totally crushed into oblivion by the fall?
As if in response, at that moment the front door was banged open as the entire Dursley family squeezed inside at once. The peaceful silence that had settled over Number Four Privet Drive in their absence had been mauled into an unrecognizable pulp by the acoustical marvel that is Mrs. Petunia Dursley in a snit. As Harry wasn't exactly in the position to leap up and see what all the commotion was about, he was resigned to stay where he was and listen to his aunt's cries.
"Oh, my POOR POOR baby Dudderdoo! Oh, my little baby angel! Oh why did this have to happen to such a wonderful boy??!!? Why do such HORRIBLE things have to happen to the best people!?! Now don't you dare worry a bit, my widdle Dudley-wudley, Mummy's going to make sure that you get everything you could ever possibly need to be comfortable during your convalescence--you need to rest and get better as soon as you can! Oh, my poor darling injured cherub!"
"There now, my boy, I'm amazed at how well you've held up through this whole mess," Vernon's basso growls offset his wife's falsetto yelping, "why you're a regular trooper, you are. You see that Petunia? Our Dudley can take a few hits with the best of 'em! High tolerance for pain, that is, the mark of the toughest rugby players in the nation--I told you he's destined for greatness! Look at him! A sprained ankle and none the worse for the wear! Why barely a peep out of him!" Dudley, in the meantime, had begun to wail and scream for candy and a soda and his new big screen TV because his eighth favorite show was coming on soon. This set Petunia all into a flutter, for her fantastically brave little injured soldier was not completely content, and she couldn't have that. She bolted into the kitchen to fetch some of the remnants of the morning's feast, when out of the corner of her eye she caught sight of Harry, lying right in the middle of the hallway. Dudley's food momentarily forgotten, she spun to stare straight at her nephew straight on with the sort of expression that one might assume having just consumed a whopping mouthful of the indefinable grime underneath the refrigerator.
"What the hell do you think you're still doing here!? HOW DARE YOU SHOW YOUR FACE IN THIS HOUSEHOLD AFTER WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO MY DUDLEY YOU MONSTER!"
Harry was completely taken aback. What he did to Dudley? If he was not entirely mistaken, he was the one who had just recently reemerged into the conscious world and who was just beginning to remember the proper use of his legs. Before he could do or say anything, however, Petunia had grabbed him by the arm, pulled him up beside her, and began dragging him, unsteady and stumbling, though miraculously not seriously harmed, into the living room. There he saw Uncle Vernon and Dudley, the former still happily spewing on about the merits of his son, the future rugby star of the Earth; the latter donning a temporary ankle brace and leaning most of his weight onto two crutches that looked as though they could snap under the load at any second. Petunia marched straight past them and up to the front door, where she turned to fire another tirade at Harry.
"This is FINALLY IT, boy, now you've done it...never should have taken you in in the first place, no, I should have been smarter than that and just dropped you off at some orphanage in India where no one's ever hear of you and left you there without another thought--should've learned my lesson after years with that dratted sister of mine...well NO MORE! Never again will you be a menace to the Dursley family, no, not when I'm though with you, you ungrateful abomination! I was kind enough to let you into my home, to feed you, to clothe you, to keep a roof over my head, and get not one word of thanks in return--and then you go and viciously attack my only baby boy! I knew something was wrong with you the day your parents got themselves killed and you appeared on our doorstep! Well that's all over now, thank god! You are to never, ever, ever again set so much as ONE FOOT over our threshold, do you understand me?!? Not you, or any of the weirdoes like you, are to come anywhere near my family with your spells or your robes or any more of your idiotic nonsense!" She tore the door open with near hysterical rage, Harry half-standing, half dangling from her clutches. He, on the other hand, was not frightened or angered by Petunia's words, but actually happier than he had been all summer. No more life on privet Drive suited him just fine. He could just gather up his things that Vernon was already tossing unceremoniously onto the lawn, catch a ride on the Knight Bus, and be sleeping soundly on a guest bed in the Weasely's house long before midnight. He was just contemplating whether he should show up at the Weasely's door or perhaps owl them first when it hit him that Petunia still hadn't let go of his arm. She was completely motionless, with a decidedly evil and vindictive air about her, which Harry believed didn't bode well for his leave-this-place-and-go-live-with-his-best-friend-for-the-summer plans. Without even turning her head, she once again addressed her nephew-turned-captive, her voice now having taken on a soft, ominous pitch.
"I've actually just had a better idea...you're going to pay for what you've done, boy. You're going to make up to Dudley all of the years that you've pestered him and tormented him...and for right now you'll start by helping him to be as happy and at ease as possible. You are to carry out his every instruction to the letter, do you hear? I want no complaints or you will be out in the streets and your things will be burned. Now move."
***
"HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRYYYYYYY! HARRRRRYYYYYYY! I'M HUNGRY AND I HAVEN'T GOT ALL DAY! HAAAAARRRRRY WHAT'S TAKING YOOOOOOOUUU?!?!?"
Harry inwardly screamed for what seemed to be far too many times for just one morning. It had been nearly three weeks since Petunia had delegated him as Dudley's personal slave, and throughout that time Harry had managed to catch about five hours of sleep in all. Overworked and exhausted, he had to nearly forgo bathing and was developing a tic under his right eye. If he wasn't cooking breakfast for his cousin, he was plumping his pillow, changing the television station, fetching the phone, or performing a variety of odd little tricks for his amusement. By all rights, after three whole weeks of complete rest, Dudley's sprained ankle should have been long forgotten, but no, Petunia didn't want him to move and upset his already "delicate condition" and so had set up her pet with an elaborate and grossly overdone "second bedroom" in the living room: the foldout bed was remade with brand new sheets biweekly, the refrigerator had been moved in from the kitchen, Uncle Vernon brought his company laptop home from work so his son could play computer games to pass the time, and Dudley's five televisions and new DVD players had been set up around him so that he wouldn't have to move his head more than an inch to see what was on. He had even received a get well package from his aunt Marge the day before that had contained, among at least forty pounds of assorted sugary foods, a tiny silver bell, so that now every bellowed order to Harry the valet was accompanied by a mad tinkling sound.
"Here you are, master Dudley, your lunch." Harry winced as he forced the words out as he had perhaps hundreds of times before. Ever since Dudley had first been given complete totalitarian power over the life of his relative, he had forced Harry to refer to him only as "Master Dudley" or "Sire" or "My Liege", more to infuriate and demean the poor boy than anything else. His girth had expanded with his ego, as well; three weeks of nothing to do but lie down and eat had brought his weight to an alarming extreme. The foldaway bed had begun to sag dangerously low, and the very largest pair of pajamas that Petunia could find in all of England threatened to tear into a thousand pieces, stretched tightly across his skin. Harry, in the meantime, had dropped nearly fifteen pounds due to the stress, and now trembled under the weight of Dudley's "Lunchtime Platter": a tray piled high with three grilled cheese sandwiches, two pounds of bacon, five sodas, three pieces of double chocolate cake, four chocolate bars, and an orange for good measure, all so that Dudley could "keep up his strength, the poor dear" as Petunia crooned. Harry set his cargo down onto a coffee table and turned to return to the kitchen to hunt for a scrap or two he could wolf down with this modicum of free time.
"Wait just there, now, Harry, I'm not done with you yet," commanded a reedy, whiny voice from behind him, "I see the mail truck has just came, so I want you to go get whatever it left for me. AND," continued the voice with a noticeable note of glee, "I want to you do it hopping on one foot."
It took all of Harry's self control not to simply kill Dudley on the spot as he whirled to stare into two delighted, piggish eyes. All he wanted was to leap up and strangle him, he wouldn't even have to use magic. He could even blame it on his cousin's dangerously constricting XXXXXL attire. Oh, it was just awful, he would say, feigning unknowing innocence, his shirt got too small around the collar and he choked! His hand was stayed, however, by the thought of what terrible horrors that Petunia and Vernon would visit upon him--he wouldn't see his friends, his school, or the light of day ever again--besides the fact that he really didn't want to commit murder. He sighed in utter maddening defeat.
"Yes master Dudley." You great pig, he added silently.
***
He hopped down the driveway, hoping fervently that his complaining knee wouldn't give out then and there. Finally, he reached the mailbox, yanked out a small packet of envelopes, and proceeded to rifle through them before he had to return to his housemaid/cook/entertainer/errand boy duties. Bills, advertisements, Hogwarts letter, an absurdly belated Easter-themed greeting card, more bills, pretty much standard fare. Just then he froze in place, not an easy task when his weight was balanced entirely on his right leg. A faint, wild hope had begun to dance about in the back of his mind. Was he just imagining it? Had he already degraded into a hallucinatory stage from malnourishment and lack of sleep? He nearly tore apart the pile of mail in his hand once again. There it was, there it actually was. The same familiar thick parchment, the same green ink that glistened and sparkled in its same unfathomable way, and it was probably just a figment from Harry's near-crazed imagination, but it seemed to be glowing. As one final precaution, he broke open the Hogwart's seal on the back, making sure this wasn't an illusion.
Dear Mr. Potter:
We are pleased to welcome you back to
your fifth term at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all
necessary books and equipment. Term begins Sept.1.
We await your owl by no later than Monday, August 15.
Yours Sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress
Harry felt as though new life, new energy was suddenly pumped into every vein. He could have cried or leaped for joy, perhaps both, he was just far happier than he had ever been all summer long. He held in his hands his ticket to freedom, his passport away from his aunt and uncle, Privet drive, and, above all, form Dudley. Rather than celebrating, though, he froze once more, clutching the paper as though it was a vital part of his very being, as he watched Vernon Dursley emerge from the house and amble along the front walk, intent on some Saturday gardening judging from the large pruning shears that dangled from won gloved hand. He stopped when he noticed Harry, however, still balancing like a flamingo out by the mailbox.
"What the devil are you grinning at, boy?," he roared, even though, in all actuality, Harry was no more than five yards away, "have you completely lost your mind?" Harry, at that moment, became aware of the enormous, silly smile plastered across his face. He attempted to assemble his features into a sort of nonchalant, relaxed expression, masking his excitement. He spoke, barely able to keep his voice even and desperation-free.
"Oh, hello Uncle Vernon, lovely morning! I was just checking the mail, nothing much of excitement here today, although," he tossed into the conversation offhand, a mere afterthought, "my letter did come. You know, for my school and all. It seems I'll be out of your hair come September." Now it was Uncle Vernon's turn to grin, a sight which sent Harry's heart fleeing to his toes. That wasn't the way things were supposed to happen. No, Vernon was supposed to get angry, his big, beefy neck was supposed to turn all sorts of interesting shades of purple, and then he was supposed to grumble, curse everything in sight that could be at fault for him having a-a wizard for a nephew, and finally ship Harry off to Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, generally delighted overall to have him gone for another school year. Instead he was just standing there, not even screaming at Harry for mentioning "his school" where neighbors might hear, just beaming like a young child who has been told an important secret. Doubts and fears began to assail Harry's thoughts, until Vernon opened his mouth again and confirmed them all.
"Oh, dear Harry, I completely forgot about that! Well, you see, the thing is that poor Dudley will be laid up for some time to come--we don't want that ankle taking a turn for the worst, now do we? I'm afraid that you really haven't finished your punishment, either, so you'll need to keep working hard to keep him content and comfortable. You're not going anywhere."