Harry Potter and the Dragon of Magic
Chapter 1- The Cleaner
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A/N-Ok now we get into Harry's world, but don't forget about the prologue! It's important. Well anyway, hope you like it and please review!
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Harry Potter sighed from where he lay prone on his bed in the darkness. One more sleepless night. He looked up at the ceiling, noticing for the first time a long crack running from above his window on one side of his room, to above his door on the opposite side. Probably got there during the summer before his second year when the Weasleys had pulled out his window with their father's flying car to save him from his Uncle, who had locked him up in the first place. He had lived with his Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and his cousin Dudley since he was one years old, when his parents, James and Lily Potter, were killed by the Evil Lord Voldemort. The same Voldemort who wanted to kill him at this very moment. He sighed and shook away the thought. His head rolled to the side so he could see Hedwig's empty cage. He sighed again and rolled his head over to the other side where the time 2:15 stared defiantly back at him. He winced at the late, or maybe early, time and looked back up at the ceiling.
He let his mind wander, back to those first 10 years living with the Dursleys, to his first meeting with Hagrid when he had first found out that he was, in fact, a wizard, to his first year at Hogwarts, then to his second and third years, and finally that last horrifying year.
He squeezed his eyes tight, trying to shut out the images flashing before him. Clear as day, he could remember the shock of seeing his name fly out of the goblet at the beginning of the Triwizard Tournament. He could still feel the pain of Ron's reaction, the pride of getting past the dragon, the frustration of trying to figure out that stupid golden egg.
A silent tear started to roll down his cheek at the memory of Cedric and the maze, the third and final task in the tournament. He could remember Cedric's defiance at the end of that maze, the surprise when they both took hold of the cup and it teleported them to the cemetery, the horror of seeing Cedric fall dead at the end of Voldemort's minion, Wormtail's wand.
Why had he made Cedric take the cup with him? How could he have been so blind as to not see the trap?
Then again, he thought, how could I have seen it?
The rest of the night passed pretty quickly, aside from waking up a few times from nightmares, the night was all right.
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Harry woke up before the Dursleys that morning, he had gotten into a routine of waking up around 6:00, to make breakfast for himself and the Dursleys, then off to chores. This morning he trudged sleepily down the stairs and into the kitchen, he walked over to the fridge and opened the heavy door. Then he just stared into it, blinking a few times to make sure that he was seeing right.
There was nothing in it. It was totally empty. Harry shook his head and went around to all the cupboards, but again, there was nothing. Suddenly, from behind him, the stairs creaked. Harry closed the cupboard he was looking in and turned around to see Uncle Vernon walking into the kitchen. Harry stared at him; surprised he had gotten up so early.
"Er- Uncle Vernon?" he asked quietly. Uncle Vernon jumped, just noticing Harry.
"What?" He grumbled at Harry.
"Well, umm, did you notice that we have no food?" Harry questioned tentatively.
Uncle Vernon blinked as though confused, then growled. "Of course, boy! We are having cleaners coming by and we don't want the food to get bad from the fumes and things do we?"
Harry looked at him in a confused manner, as though he thought the man had gone crazy. He thought to himself: Since when does cleaning cause fumes?
Instead, he said, "Ok, so what do we eat?"
Uncle Vernon glared at him, "If you had gotten down here earlier, you would have eaten before we took out the food. As for now, you'll go up to your room and stay there until the cleaners leave! You can clean your own room!"
Harry, seeing Uncle Vernon's face flushing red, decided to leave and went up to his room. He shook his head, muttering about crazy relatives. From across the room, there came a small hooting noise, Harry looked up and smiles when he saw Hedwig sitting in her cage watching him. He strolled across the room and held out his arm for Hedwig to perch on. The white owl fluttered out of her cage and onto his arm. Harry flattened the feathers on her back that had fluffed up while flying.
"Have a good flight?" He whispered to Hedwig, who gave a quiet hoot in reply. Harry grinned, "Good, well get some rest cause you may be going out later."
He placed Hedwig back into her cage and walked across the room to his desk and got out a quill, a bottle of navy blue ink, and a scroll of parchment. Aware Hedwig was watching him intently, Harry began writing.
How has the summer been for you? It hasn't been all that bad here; mostly the Dursleys just leave me in my room to fend for myself. Something strange is happening today though. Uncle Vernon is having the cleaners come in and because of that, he cleared out all of the food saying fumes would ruin it! It is a lot easier to clean with magic, don't you agree? Well, I had better send Hedwig out before she starts making noise. I don't want Uncle Vernon to lock her up again!
Harry
Harry looked over the letter and then, satisfied, called Hedwig over. She stood on his desk and held out her leg, trying to look professional. After tying the letter to her leg, he stroked her back and carried her over to the window. He watched her fly away, then turned back to his room.
Downstairs, he heard the doorbell ring and Uncle Vernon greet someone. Harry sighed and sat down on his bed, looking around his room for something to do. He looked over into the only corner he didn't use, which was piled with broken junk Dudly had thrown away. Curious, he got up with a creak and strolled over to the corner. On the top of the junk was a pewter colored thing that Dudly had called a CD player. He picked it up carefully, but didn't notice the cord hanging down from it. The cord caught on a small plastic joystick that went to one of Dudley's racing games, that was busted up as much as the other things in the pile.
Harry caught his breath and watched as the joystick miraculously balanced on the curved plastic connecting the two tiny speakers. He tried to hold his right hand, which was holding the CD player, steady while reaching slowly for the joystick with his left. He had almost grabbed a hold of the joystick when his right hand gave an involuntary jerk and the joystick went crashing to the floor with a loud thud.
Harry froze, and in a few seconds, heard footsteps coming up the stairs. He turned toward the door as it opens and Uncle Vernon's flushed head popped in.
"What are you doing in here?" He asked in a strangled voice. Then he spotted the CD player in my hand and growled, "You leave Dudley's things alone! You hear?"
Harry nodded silently, knowing that if he spoke, Uncle Vernon would get even madder. He watched as Uncle Vernon's eyes narrowed dangerously, then pull back. The door shut behind him. Harry heard the footsteps going back downstairs then Uncle Vernon's voice reassuring the cleaner that there was nothing wrong.
Harry sighed and turned back to the pile. He decided wisely to leave the Joystick where it lay and took the CD player over to his bed. He studied it with more interest than he had before, not in amazement, for he had seen it before and knew it played muggle music. But he had not been able to use one before. As he looked at it, all he could see broken was the curved plastic that had caught hold of the joystick.
He saw a little switch thing that you could push to the side, he did that and the top of the CD player slowly opened. He noticed that the cover was also cracked. Once it opened, he grinned. There was a CD sitting placidly inside the CD player. Creed was written in scraggly writing across the top of the CD, then below that was written Human Clay.
Harry raised an eyebrow, he had never heard of Creed before, or Human Clay for that matter! He grinned as he suddenly imagined the entire Dursleys' incased in clay. On a second thought, he decided to throw Malfoy, who had constantly tortured him at school, in too.
Chuckling softly, Harry turned back to the CD. He put on the headphones as he had seen Dudly do, then adjusted them, for Dudly's head had been a lot bigger than his. Not expecting it to work, he started pressing buttons. Without realizing it, he pressed the play, then mute, and then, in the middle of the song, he pressed the mute again. Music, or more a screeching sound, blasted in his ears. He jumped about a foot and the CD player fell onto the edge of his bed, luckily not falling off onto the floor. He tore off the headphones and started pressing more buttons until the music stopped. Then Harry took deep breaths to calm down. Soon, he was laughing at himself. At this rate, I'll be jumping when I see my shadow! He scolded at himself.
He shook his head and decided to leave the CD player alone. He took it across the room and set it gently on the top of the pile of junk. He walked over to his open window, and heard the sound of an engine starting up. He looked down towards the driveway and saw a car pulling out.
He squinted to see the passengers and snorted in fury as he realized the Dursleys had left him here once again. He rolled his eyes and, while looking upward, caught a flash of white against the slate gray of the sky. Soon after, he could distinguish the shape of a bird soaring towards him. He grinned, not having expected an answer this soon. He stood aside as Hedwig swooped through the window.
Harry followed her over to his bed, where she had landed and untied the letter from her leg after a gentle pat on her back. She fluttered over to her cage as he unrolled the letter.
Harry,
The summer has been ok. Not much has been going on. Well, not for me at least, I'm sure the twins will want to show you something though! I would tell you, but that would ruin the surprise!
Harry winced, any surprise coming from the Fred and George deserves some warning to the victim.
Oh, Happy Birthday! I know it's a day early, but oh well. I didn't have time to get you a present, sorry! Don't worry though, I'll be sure to get you something!
Harry frowned, not that he expected everyone to buy him presents, it was just that Ron had always gotten him something, no matter how small, it was not like him to just "not have time". He shook his head and continued with the reading.
Have you owled Snuffles yet? If you have, how's he doing? I gotta go, Mum's yelling at me, apparently it's time to degnome the garden again.
Ron
P.S. I've got bad news. You can't stay here for the rest of the summer. Now that You-Know-Who's back, Dumbledor said it would be safer for you to stay at the Dursleys. Don't ask me why, it seems that a muggle house wouldn't be that safe… but you know, what Dumbledor says goes!
Harry smiled, remembering the first time he had helped to degnome a garden. It had been punishment for Fred, George, and Ron for stealing their dad's car to break him out of the Dursleys. Then, as Harry read the postscript, he frowned; he was definitely not looking forward to the rest of the summer with the Dursleys. In fact, that was possibly the worst thing that could happen to him, in his opinion.
Harry remembered that in his latest meeting with Voldemort, his enemy had said that the Dursleys house was the only place he could not get to him. Harry shook his head; maybe he could get Dumbledor to tell him at school, though he doubted it. Dumbledor seem to have a knack of not telling you the thing you need to know.
Looking back at the letter, he realized that he had not owled Sirius, AKA Snuffles, his godfather, also a convicted murderer and escapee from Azkaban, the wizard prison, yet.
(A/N: yes I know that was a very bad sentence)
He shrugged; he still had the rest of the summer, about 1 month, to owl him.
Downstairs, he heard some whistling, then a vacuum cleaner starting up. He decided to take the time to do some of the homework that had been assigned over the summer, he still had to do a potion's and transfiguration essay and he had to learn a charm and perform it in front of the class on the first day.
Harry opened his door and snuck out of his room, using the loud vacuum to his advantage. He went to the cupboard beneath the stairs, sneaking behind the cleaner's back, took out his wand and the trunk he had still not been able to unpack and closed the closet door. Uncle Vernon had been sure to lock up his stuff under the door to make sure he no one saw the magical things, such as his wand, right when he came back from his school, Hogwarts School of witchcraft and wizardry.
Just as he had closed the door, the vacuum died behind him, and a gruff voice called out.
"Who are you, boy?"
Harry turned around, the cleaner, eyes narrowed, was staring right at him. Harry straightened.
"My name is Harry, who are you?" He replied.
The cleaner studied him for a minute then stuck out his hand.
"The names Joe. What are you doing here? The others left a while ago."
Harry accepted the hand and nodded, "I know they left, Uncle Vernon usually doesn't let me go with them." He was being cautious, saying nothing that would make Uncle Vernon mad if Joe told him what he had said.
"Why not?" Joe asked.
Harry shrugged. "I don't know, but I gotta do my homework, so if you'll excuse me…" He pointed behind him at his trunk.
Joe just nodded, "Go ahead, don't let me stop you." With that, he turned his vacuum cleaner on and began vacuuming the living room floor. Harry turned away and, making sure the wand was well hidden, grabbed his stuff. He went back to his room. He spent the entire day doing his homework. For his charm homework, he memorized the Factum Diffingere, which can change a facial feature. Harry worked of changing his eyes from green to blue. He realized that he looked exactly like his father, who had crystal blue eyes. He smiled at his mirror image before turning them back.
Around, 7:00, the cleaner finally left, and an hour later, the Dursleys came home. Harry sighed and, around 8:30, went to sleep.
(A/N: Well, that's it for the first chapter. Nothing too big happened in it, but I'm sure it will get more interesting as it goes on. Ok, you know how I told you to read and REVIEW??? Well, only 2 people reviewed and one was my best friend!!!!! How pathetic is that!!! That is either saying that no one read it or that no one liked it enough to review!!!! That is just plain mean people!! Well, here's my thanks to the people who did review!
Tadariada- I'm sorry it took a while, but I was a little stuck, It's hard for me to start stories! Thanks for reviewing!
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Someone2- Thanks for reviewing when you could have just told me what you think! And is it a bad thing that it is detailed? I had to make it detailed otherwise it would have been really short. Sorry! ^puts up hands^ please don't shoot! I surrender! LOL, hopefully you don't use your knowledge of where I live to use like that! Lmao!
Thanks you two! You are the only two that reviewed but I hope I get more on this chapter! Hope you liked it!)
