A/N : Thanks so much to the (very few) people that bothered to review the first chapter… I was expecting none at all! Thanks so much Elluxion, and J.R. Ross…you really encouraged me to work on this next chapter. It's a pretty long chapter, and hopefully I didn't rant so much that you'll be bored to death. I was planning to make it even longer, but later decided to turn the second part into another chapter on its own. Hope you'll enjoy reading this!
Chapter 2 : No. 4 Privet DriveHarry quickly stopped himself, and glanced at the alarm clock on his bedside table. 6:34 AM. Uncle Vernon would roast him alive if he woke the Dursleys at the crack of dawn. Still breathing hard, he kept very quiet and listened for any sound. Dudley's steady snoring could be heard, and Harry heaved a sigh of relief. If Dudley, who slept at the bedroom next to Harry's, hadn't been woken up by his scream, his aunt and uncle certainly hadn't.
He turned his attention back to his dream instead, recalling all the details. It wasn't hard – he had, in a way, seen it several times before, though in a form of short visions, for the past few years. In fact, it was just a memory of what had happened that night about fourteen years ago – Lord Voldemort, a very powerful Dark wizard, had slain both Harry's parents who happened to be standing in his way to murder Harry himself. Then he had turned his wand upon Harry, a little one-year-old infant then, cast the killing curse, only to have it rebounded upon Voldemort himself. Harry had survived with nothing more than a lightning-shaped scar, Voldemort had been turned into something barely alive, and Harry had become well-known in the wizard world as 'the Dark Lord's downfall'.
But that wasn't exactly the happy ending of a whimsical fairy tale. Lord Voldemort had returned, a few months ago, regaining his old body, powers and followers – the Death Eaters. Harry barely escaped Lord Voldemort's wrath then, although the little incident certainly left an unseen mark deeper than even a curse scar can possibly go. One of Harry's schoolmates had been murdered that same night – and Harry was left with an inevitable twinge of guilt. Somehow, he had the feeling that if he had just surrendered himself to Voldemort, no one else would have been hurt…
Harry shook the thought out of his mind, trying to forget what had happened, to look ahead instead. But it isn't easy to think properly when someone close to you has just died, and just to make things worse, you feel guilty for it. So he scrambled out of bed, walked the length of the room in two strides towards the window, and looked outside.
It was still dark; the moon could be seen shining faintly and several stars were still twinkling. The orange streetlights cast strange shadows on the pavement and the narrow road in front of the neat row of identical houses. There was no one to be seen – apparently, no one else had been woken up by a strange dream or a twinge on their forehead.
Crack. A tree branch snapped. Harry felt a sudden sense of insecurity, and looked more carefully. He wasn't the only one that was awake at that time – there was definitely a dark figure moving around the small clump of trees in front of old Mrs Figg's house. Harry grabbed his glasses from the desk next to him where he had left them last night, put them on and looked out once more.
The figure had walked into the driveway of No. 4 Privet Drive, looking around rather nervously. With the help of a streetlight nearby, Harry could see that it was a man. There was a soft clunk with his every other step, and his long mane of grey grizzled hair shook every time he turned about. Harry could tell who it was immediately, before even seeing his mutilated nose and magical eye – Mad-Eye Moody. There was no mistaking of that bent figure with the wooden leg and grey hair.
As Moody turned to look up in Harry's way, Harry smiled and waved at him. Harry never knew Moody personally, but he felt that it was good to acknowledge someone of 'Harry's kind', an ex-Auror (Dark-wizard catcher) in fact.
For Harry was a wizard, he had found out so on his fateful eleventh birthday, when he got a letter of acceptance from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had kept the secret from him for eleven years, but there was no point telling Harry now that his parents had died in a car crash, or that his scar was simply a minor injury he had gotten from the accident. He felt closer to the wizarding world than ever now; it was where he had friends, where he belonged, and more importantly, where he had a place of acceptance. Thanks to Aunt Petunia's vicious gossiping and Dudley's bullying, practically all the Muggles (non-magic people) in the area didn't like Harry, or at least, wanted nothing to do with him; they all seemed to think that he was a disturbed child, or a weirdo.
Moody focused both his normal eye and magical rolling eye on Harry, as though scrutinizing him closely. After a doubtful moment, he waved back, though rather hesitantly. Harry chuckled softly to himself – after years of hunting Dark wizards and probably not having very good experiences of doing it, Moody had grown ridiculously suspicious of any gesture from anyone, even if it was just an innocent wave or handshake. However, he still remained the most respectable Auror yet, and a lot of people who didn't mind his paranoia greatly respected him; Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts, was one of those people, and he certainly was a respectable wizard himself.
Still keeping a suspicious eye in Harry's direction, Moody walked away, his cloak swishing behind him. Harry looked away from the window, finding nothing else interesting or distracting enough to look at, and his eyes rested on a letter which he had gotten from his godfather a few days ago.
It was a rather grim letter, telling Harry to be careful and not to wander off, reminding him of a few useful hexes and counter-curses, 'in case anyone tries to harm you'. Sirius was not the only one who had been particularly edgy after Voldemort's return; Dumbledore had sent a short letter to the Dursleys a while ago, telling them briefly about Voldemort, advising them to take better care of Harry and keep an eye for anything suspicious going on. Harry was sure they would have done neither of those things, if Dumbledore had not added in a few lines below that they might be in danger as well. Since then, the Dursleys had been exceptionally civil towards Harry, and they refused to let Harry out of the house, although it was probably because they felt he was the only one in the house who could do some hocus-pocus to drive the Dark wizard away.
That was when Harry wondered whether he should tell Sirius about what had just happened. When the same thing had happened last summer, he had told Sirius about it (who had been in a journey to the south at that time), and Sirius had been so concerned that he immediately turned back to the north. Harry wondered if he should risk making Sirius delay his business – Dumbledore had undoubtedly given him something important to do after Voldemort's rise back to power.
After debating about it inside his head for a while, Harry decided that there was no point in telling anyone about his dream, or about his scar hurting. After all, the last time his scar hurt, it was because Voldemort was about to return, and feeling particularly murderous. But Voldemort had risen back to power now, so there was no need to worry about that, and after Harry escaped from him for the fourth time in a row, he probably had been feeling particularly murderous all summer, so it only made sense that Harry's scar hurt, as a little reminder perhaps.
And as for his dream – well, it had happened already after all, and it couldn't possibly happen again. Telling someone about the dream would be like telling them how Voldemort murdered his parents, which would be overly dramatic, and most of the people who were close to him already knew it down to the details anyway…so there was no point in telling.
Except for the phoenix part…now where had that come from? There had definitely been no phoenix at the scene of his parents' murder…no other living thing other than Voldemort, James and Lily Potter and Harry himself. He tried to figure out what it meant, what the vision of the phoenix meant; but it just seemed to add more confusions to his brain, so he let it go, and decided that he would tell his friend, Hermione Granger (who was exceptionally intellectual) the next time he saw her.
His attention wandered over to the trunk lying open on the floor next to the desk. It was packed with several black robes and stacks of thick books which he had been using in Hogwarts in his fourth year. Underneath the books was the Invisibility Cloak which he had inherited from his father, and his Sneakoscope – a useful device used to detect people who couldn't be trusted.
Harry decided that he was in serious need of a bit of fun, and took out the Sneakoscope from under the piles of books. The moment he set it on the floor, it began spinning and wailing loudly, and Harry had to grab it in his hands to muffle it, in fear that the Dursleys would wake up, though he was smiling to himself the whole time – he didn't need the Sneakoscope to know that the Dursleys weren't exactly the most trustworthy people in the world.
A/N : So what did you think about it? Do you like it? Do you hate it, or think it's too short/long? Please submit your comments, flames, whatever, or I won't know how to write the later chapters… I'm in serious need of some constructive criticism, and I'll try my best to respond to any of your criticism… so…pretty please?? *points to 'Submit Review'*
