Hey my readers, sorry I haven't updated in almost two weeks, but it took me that long to finish the chapter. This chapter basically has a lot of angst through the beginning, and middle, but it does lighten up somewhat towards the end. In this chapter you'll find out more about Dudley and Aunt Petunia, but of course not nearly everything (especially dealing with Aunt Petunia). Anyway, please read and review my story, it would mean everything to me! Okay I'm done babbling. Enjoy! Bye!

Chapter Two
"Deception and Reality"
"Innocent" Uncle Vernon said the night they returned from the trial, "he was found innocent! We only had to pay a fee, but that's all right! As long as hardly anyone found out about the...the incident" He slapped his hands together and looked around the hallway avidly. "So what's for dinner?" he asked looking expectantly at his wife.

"Dinner is at the supermarket Vernon" Aunt Petunia told him as she headed up the stairs, the next second they heard the slam of a door. Uncle Vernon automatically rounded on Harry. "What did you do to her?" he growled.

"I didn't do anything" Harry argued, "Your wife is upset about other things" "The hell she is...I'll find out what in the ruddy name of hell is going on" Uncle Vernon snarled heading up the stairs the fastest his short, and stubby legs could ever manage.

Harry watched him disappear up the steps before he turned around and faced Dudley. "So, hiding anything lately?" he asked his cousin crossing his arms and looking at him with a slight smirk. "Why would you think I'm hiding anything?" Dudley snapped starting for the kitchen out of hunger. "I know you are" Harry told him, "I think I've finally figured out what your worst memory in your life was Dudley"

"What are you rambling about?" Dudley shouted. "I'm talking about last summer! When we encountered the Dementors! You're worst memory was the day you couldn't go to Hogwarts!" Harry roared before he could control himself, "You wanted to go! ALL THIS TIME YOU WERE JEALOUS!"

"I didn't want to go," argued Dudley, "who told you that?" "It came out the mouth of your own mother" Harry countered, "and I believe it! You didn't want to be normal, did you Dudley? You wanted to be different from your parents! I never knew you were so deep Dudley" "LEAVE ME ALONE!" Dudley yelled at the top of his lungs before he broke in a run toward Harry's direction.

Harry thought he was going to try and fight him, but he was incorrect. Instead, Dudley bounded straight for the door, wrenched it open, and disappeared into the darkness outside.

"Dudley! DUDLEY!" Harry called after him predicting that this could only lead to trouble for him, "COME BACK!"

But it seemed that Dudley had long gone from the road of Privet Drive. It even seemed he was going to be leaving Little Whinging; to where, Harry had no idea.

Harry looked over his shoulder quickly debating whether or not he wanted to go after him. He knew that Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would blame everything on him if they found out that their son had disappeared shortly after a wrangle between he, and Harry. They would probably kick him out for this one.

Sighing, Harry tore off into the dark after him. The air was still warm and humid as if it were still the scorching, hot summer afternoons, only minus the light from the sun. Harry stopped at the end of the Dursley driveway and listened carefully with his ears as if he were some kind of a watchdog.

He didn't hear any indistinct footsteps meaning Dudley was still nearby somewhere. Dudley must have left the whole block completely; Harry had no idea his cousin could run so swiftly. The only light other than the one coming from the Dursley step was the kitchen light coming from the York's window; he figured the whole street was going to bed by now.

Harry decided that he had to search for Dudley anywhere before the Dursley's noticed he was missing. He decided to go in the direction that led to the park; Dudley always liked to go to the park with his friends.

"Dudley!" Harry called as he started promptly down the sidewalks still keeping his ears on the alert and his eyes as well. "Dudley come back! I didn't mean anything I said" he whispered more to himself than to anyone; the fact of the matter was he didn't know why he had said anything so cruel to Dudley, he had just let his temper get the best of him he supposed.

It was at that moment that he was almost knocked off his feet with such a powerful epiphany; Dudley and him weren't enemies. They were alike in a sense. Both of them had had things kept from them for they're whole life and both of them were feeling anger towards the one person that had kept it from them, Aunt Petunia.

He didn't know how long he had been walking down the shadowy streets as the street lamps flickered in a rowed pattern as if it were some kind of show routine. He didn't realize it at first, but his eyes were burning with tears of anger. He was feeling revolted odium at his Aunt for what she had done, and kept. How could she live with herself knowing the lies and secrets about his mother, Dudley, and himself? He supposed he shouldn't blame her solely, but also Uncle Vernon.

"He doesn't know better...he's just a hypocritical Muggle" Harry muttered under his breath in anger. It had been over two-dozen minutes since he had begun his quest to find Dudley and he discovered that he was nowhere closer to discovering his whereabouts than to discovering what else Aunt Petunia was concealing.

A few more minutes passed, and in return Harry passed a few more blocks. Finally he figured out where his cousin had taken refuge to; it was just outside the YMCA where his 'supposed' crime had been committed.

Harry stopped just next to him and dunked his hands into his pockets casually; he didn't know if he should come off too strongly at first, he didn't want to have to get into another fight with Dudley, who was acting overly sensitive for a bloke his size.

"What are you doing here?" Dudley finally asked. Harry sighed and answered, "you know I didn't think it would be such a good thing if you disappeared just after we had an argument...you know your dear mum and dad might seriously chuck me out if you disappeared...normally I wouldn't mind, but under these circumstances I'm afraid I do"

"Cut the sardonic wit" Dudley whispered just barely audible as he got a good gaze at his feet. "Sardonic? Wow, big word for someone like you. I didn't think you knew any words past the letter C" Harry teased, but a second later he reminded himself that he wasn't supposed to be driving away the person he had just spent the pass forty minutes questing for.

"Very funny! That's what everyone thinks of me, isn't it? That I'm just some kind of blubbering bully, right?" Dudley mumbled, "that I'm not good for anything else, but shaking people upside down for their money or looting around with my gang...I'm just someone everyone's scared of...that's why they all follow me, because they're scared of me. Not because they respect me"

"Wow, it took you that long to notice?" Harry murmured quietly; once again he almost kicked himself for his derisive comments. "What good is power if fear only condemned it?" he asked aloud; Harry didn't say anything, he quite frankly couldn't think of a word to say, even mocking comments seem to have wafted from his mind.

"So she told you about the secret they've been keeping from me?" Dudley questioned suddenly looking over at Harry for the first time. Harry nodded, as he replied, "not by choice I had to almost corner her"

"Of course it wasn't by choice! Nothing's ever by choice from that woman! NOTHING!" he roared, "I could have been something different! I...I could have done something better...better than just pocketing money from poor little blokes at the play yard. What a productive life I've been living? I train nine months of a year to go through a three month tournament where I senselessly pound the snot out of any git who steps in the ring with me...its meaningless"

"Wait, let me get this straight" Harry interposed pointedly, "are you trying to say...say that you're jealous of..." "YOU SHUT UP!" Dudley barked abruptly turning away again, "Just because you were lucky enough to..."

"TO WHAT?" Harry shouted back just as angrily, "A PLACE WHERE DOZENS OF WIZARDS WANT YOU DEAD?" He couldn't help, but shout; he unexpectedly felt the need to express himself as well, explain just how lucky Dudley Dursley had it. "What the hell did I ever do to them? Oh I remember, I survived some incident when I was an infant, too young to know or even care! I survived while accidentally murdering killing the dark lord! And now, because I have a scar on my forehead and some fraud Seer make a Prophecy with my name on it I have to face something alone! And whether or not I win determines the fate of the whole world! Oh yeah Dudley I am the luckiest boy on this earth! I feel so lucky I sometimes pinch myself to see if this is all some magical dream!"

Dudley remained silent; Harry wasn't sure if he was even listening. He had his head bowed and was staring into the moist grass as the lawn sprinklers from the YMCA did its nightly routine spray.

It was then that Harry noticed something. His eyes traveled upward and downward across the YMCA wall and he discovered there was no spray painting that Dudley and his gang had vandalized; he wondered if possibly public services had already done away with the mess.

"What happened to you're graffiti?" he inquired pointing at the wall, which was a plain painted white; the color shone well even for the darkness of the nocturnal night.

"There was no graffiti," Dudley snarled simply before he broke into a quick stride across the grass; Harry followed. "What do you mean there is no graffiti? You went to court for it, didn't you?" he asked keeping up with his cousin. "You don't know what happened" Dudley told him shortly.

"Are you telling me the whole thing was just some kind of hoax?" Harry asked in incredulity, "you all lied to me...again?"

It all seemed to make sense. Of course, why would Arnold Finnigan suddenly be patrolling the streets of Privet Drive, and just so happen to catch Dudley and his gang in a 'supposed' graffiti tagging of the YMCA building? There was something else going on that Harry totally didn't know about.

"Okay, so besides everything else there's something else being kept from me?" Harry said loudly into the night as he and his cousin made they're way across the mushy sod.

"None of the school children around here ever have to worry again" Dudley muttered, "never ever again"

"Why? What's going on?"

A smirk could be seen spreading across Dudley's face through the beams of the moonlight; it looked a bit uncanny. He stopped walking and paused for a moment. The silence of the night was really starting to infuriate Harry.

"Because I don't have people left to help me bully them" Dudley said simply cackling a bit, "they've all abandoned me" "But why? That's just what I don't understand. Why did they abandon you?" Harry questioned feeling as if everything was taking an eternity to get answered.

"Just because" he answered, "it was all a cover up. No one ever vandalized that wall...and I never went to court...at least not the court you thought I went to" "So, you went to another court? Hang on, did you go to a wizarding court?" Harry queried.

"It started that afternoon as I set out across the YMCA field...this field to be exact...my gang and I were just looking for more gits like Mark Evans to torment, but then...something happened" he trailed off.

"What exactly happened?"

"I couldn't control myself. I accidentally...I set Pier on fire by mistake" he said. "How did that happen?" Harry asked frowning, "how'd you set him on fire and what does this have to do with appearing in wizarding court?" "I set him on fire involuntarily...without even stepping close to him...I didn't even have any matches near me" he explained, "we put it out, but...but my friends...they knew something was abnormal about me. You're lots wizarding council knew about it so they sent the two nearest wizards of Little Whinging. One was that Muggle bloke, I dunno why he came, and the other was some witch lady...I think it was his wife..."

"Mr. and Mrs. Finnigan" Harry whispered, "They came...Mrs. Finnigan probably charmed every Muggle nearby to not remember a thing and Mr. Finnigan took you back to number four"

Dudley nodded slightly.

"But then how come you had to go to court?" Harry questioned, "They considered that illegal magic? You didn't mean to, right?" Dudley didn't answer for a moment; he seemed to be thinking over something. "Right?" Harry repeated.

"I don't know what I wanted to do at that moment" Dudley confessed, "I was angry...they...they were telling me I had to stop trying to act different from them if I wanted to be leader...they said I had to act tougher, they told me I had been acting weird lately...I was upset"

"So you set him on fire?" Harry said in utter shock, "wait, does this mean you're...you're a wizard?"

"I'm not a wizard! I wasn't magic enough for them to invite me to you're school...I'm stuck between. I'm more talented than a Muggle, and a Squib, but I can't...I can't perform anything voluntarily" Dudley explicated.

"But surely they could have only taught you basic classes?" Harry told him, "Maybe they'll still accept you"

"ARE YOU THICK OR WHAT?" Dudley barked, "My parents would never let me go to a place like that...they'd disown me" "Who cares what they'd do?" Harry said, "it doesn't matter what they think, it doesn't..."

"IT DOES TO ME! IT ALWAYS HAS! You don't know how much pressure my father puts on me!" he yelled his face obscured with red from anger and frustration. He changed his face to a scrunched up expression, exactly like the one Uncle Vernon wore whenever he showed his competitiveness. "You got to do it Dudley! You have to bring praise to the Dursley name! MAKE ME PROUD! You can do it son! You better son! I won't accept failures in this family! YOU HAVE TO DO IT!" he howled in an astonishingly similar voice to what Mr. Vernon Dursley used.

Harry didn't know what to say. At the moment he was still confused greatly, but on the other hand he understood things more clearly. He understood partly why his cousin was the way he was. All these years his father had been pushing so much pressure onto him, finally it seemed Dudley was about to explode from it.

"I can't let him down" Dudley croaked, his voice clearly full of hurt emotion, "I'm the only son he's got"

"You shouldn't be forced to do something you don't want to do just, because you're afraid to disappoint your father. Its you're choice" Harry stated. He exhaled a deep breath and looked up at the sky. "So, what now? Now that we've had the longest and closest talk we've ever had, what do we do now? Are you back to our usual loathing of one another or are we civil?"

"No one can know about this talk" Dudley snarled waving a finger warningly at Harry, "no one can ever know about what happened and what I think...my father doesn't want me to think...he wants me to fight...to box...to bring admiration to our family"

Harry nodded slowly and turned around toward the opposite direction of his cousin. He wasn't going to feel any pity for him if he continued to try and impress his father so badly. "Its you're choice" he said simply shrugging as he disappeared from the view of Dudley, "its you're life..."

Dudley returned to Privet Drive that evening to discover his parents had already dozed off into sleep. Harry arrived a few minutes after him, cautiously stepping inside just in case the Dursley's were waiting to barrage him with shouts and hails as to why he, and Dudley had disappeared at the dawn of night.

Harry shut the door to his bedroom, not full of an ounce of fatigue. In fact, he felt as if he had drained a sack of sugar down in three gulps; he almost grinned at the memory of when Fred and George had done so out of dare from Ron, and a bet placed from Mundungus Fletcher, last summer.

"Okay" he breathed under his breath, "in order to at least understand this I have to start from the beginning. My mum and her sister were mistaken by my grandfather...well he's not my real grandfather now...my mum's mum never told anyone until Petunia...but why did she tell Petunia? And what's so significant about this?"

For a few minutes he considered every possibility until he decided it wasn't worth pondering over. Instead he moved onto the mystery growing around Dudley. Part of him was still stunned at the news about Dudley.

He didn't have much more of an opportunity to say anything more, because he could hear a sudden screeching coming from the outside of his bedroom window. Harry pulled back the curtain and glanced out the window for the source of the noise; he definitely knew it was an owl, but it couldn't be Hedwig, she was in her cage asleep. Sure enough, it was an owl, but whose owl, Harry did not know.

The owl was husky and had dozens of small, frilly feathers outlined around its outlined body. The eyes of the owl peered at Harry for a brief moment before it took flight toward another window, clearly deciding it had the wrong addressee.

"Wait a moment!" Harry exclaimed, "I'm the only one that accepts letters by owl post in this house! Aren't I?" He broke into a fast run toward his door, and took off speedily down the hall. The owl had started in the direction for the family room window.

He entered the room determined to read the letter. For all he knew the letter contained important information. He reached the window just as the owl came into view, dropped the letter, and flew off into the night sky. Harry caught the letter in mid-air, before it could hit the carpet.

"Uh huh" he murmured, "caught you"

"Now, who is this from?" he asked.

"What are you doing?" came a voice from the doorway of the family room.

Harry looked up in alarm to see it was Aunt Petunia, herself. She was clearly taking a mid-night stroll around the house for she still had her pastel bathrobe on and her hair was pinned back with rollers.

"It's n-nothing. It's for me," Harry answered standing up and hiding the letter behind his back. He knew he must look a bit obvious, especially since his eyes couldn't look straight into her brown ones.

"Uh huh...if that's so then why didn't the damn owl deliver it to your room?"

"Because...because it didn't know, which room was my bedroom...you see this owl has never delivered here so it doesn't know any better...you know how silly owls can be sometimes, especially ones that aren't trained up to quality" he rambled.

"Let me see that letter" she said suddenly, "now"

"It's my letter..."

"NOW!"

"No" Harry replied defiantly, "Why should I have to have my mail read as if I'm a common criminal? I have a right to privacy and if I don't want you to see who my letter is from I shouldn't have to"

"Are you flouting me?" Aunt Petunia questioned, her jaw slightly dropped, "are you refusing?"

"Yes, I am"

"I have had enough," she growled, suddenly shaking with rage, "I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOUR ATTITUDE! YOU'RE DISRESPECT! YOU'RE DEFIANCE! Either you give me that letter now, or you are packing your bags!"

"Hmmm...let me think that over...I'll be packing my bags then" Harry remarked tidily, "I don't have to obey you anymore either! Whatever the hell you're hiding about my mum, I don't care! I don't care about any of you three people! You all need help!"

"Ha!" she shrieked stridently.

Harry stopped on his way out of the room, and turned around to face Aunt Petunia again. "Oh and one more thing dear Auntie" he began, curling his hands into fists, "I don't believe for one second you took me into your home, because you loved me...I don't believe it for one tenths of a second even...you're an awful woman, and you're filled with jealousy and revulsion and you'll never change...NEVER!" With that he spun around and strode toward the exit.

"Oh sure!" she wailed raucously, dropping down onto her knees, "everyone hate Petunia! Everyone blame Petunia! Everyone ignore Petunia! GO ON, GO! I don't care what you think about me anyway...I don't need the opinions of you to validate the incorruptibility of my conscious! I don't want you here anyway, I don't ever want to look into those ghastly horrible emerald eyes and remember the woman that graced the same shape and color of them! And I certainly don't want to see that shaggy, black hair replicated from the boy she 'supposedly' fell in love with! NEVER do I want to see you...never..."

"Yeah, well you won't have to!"

"Story of my life! I'm always the evil one, right? I'm always the bad one, right? It's always me! Yes, I am the villain! I am the terrible soul that conceals the secrets you yearn to discover! It's all on me," she sobbed into her hands.

"Look," sighed Harry, "you're not that terrible of a person, but...I just wish you'd tell me exactly what kind of secrets you're hiding"

"Oh yes, now you'll talk to me, right? When you think I'm on the verge of spilling something great, you'll be nice and polite and proper to me, eh?" she yowled, looking up at him with puffy eyes, from her hands.

"Suit yourself, but as long as you harbor things like that to yourself, everyone's going to continue thinking the same"

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT TO KNOW FROM ME?"

"What happened the day Dudley 'allegedly' got arrested?"

"Why do you want to know about that?" she questioned, "it doesn't concern you at all. I thought you'd ask something about you're mother, or along the lines of relation to you...not about him..."

"You don't love him as much as before, do you? Now that he actually wants to be a part of the wizarding world...you're ashamed of him...what kind of mother are you?" Harry retorted, "You are truly appalling"

"Fine! If the truth is what you want me to tell you, it's what you'll get" she said, slowly standing straight, "I'm going to hurry this up before Vernon or Dudley find out we're talking...they haven't noticed anything yet, because they are both quite heavy sleepers"

"Okay"

"Ever since Dudley found out that Vernon and I have been lying to him about being a half-wizard, he's been trying to force more magic into him...he's been trying to study the books you've left over from you're first year...his father and I have been trying to prevent him doing this, but he seems to have gotten around us somehow...he began to act weirder by the day, even his friends were noticing. The morning you thought he was arrested Dudley and I had a fight..." she explained.

"Oh yeah, I remember hearing something while I was sleeping" interrupted Harry.

"He was furious when he left with his friends to do their daily pillaging. Dudley can only use his m-magic when he's in a high temper...he accidentally"

"Set Pier Polkiss on fire" finished Harry.

"Talking about me eh?" said Dudley Dursley from the doorway; his face was half shaded over from the darkness of the hall, and the only part of it that was showing looked ethereal. "Having a nice conversation about me...well don't stop at my appearance...continue mummy"

Aunt Petunia looked as if she were about to faint at that moment. Her shaking hand quickly reached for her face to wipe away the tears that had escaped her eyes. She reached into the pocket of her pastel bathrobe and pulled out a tissue to wipe her very pink nose. "Erm...Dudley dear...how about mummy fixes you breakfast right now? A platter of bacon, pitcher of orange juice, pan full of eggs...ah yes perfect idea, isn't it?" she asked in a falsely cheery voice.

"I don't want any of you're breakfast! Save it! Do you honestly think I am that stupid? That I don't know what you're talking about?" Dudley shouted at his mother in disbelief, "you honestly think I'm an idiot, don't you?"

"Oh, of course not Duddy darling! Now come, let mummy feed you," she said blissfully walking over to her son and grabbing his elbow to pull him along. She went to leave the room, but there was a problem; Dudley hadn't moved an inch, and since Aunt Petunia was holding onto his arm, she couldn't move. It was as if she was grabbing onto a metal pole planted into the ground and had just tried to pull it out of the floor.

"I said, I don't want any of you're breakfast!" Dudley growled, looking at his mother fiercely.

She let go of his arm sheepishly and decided to hide her hands behind her back better. For a brief instant she looked on the verge of some sort of apology. However, it seemed a second later she caught herself, and regained her full optimism. "Dudley dearest, please" she whispered, "please"

Dudley stared right into her hopeful brown eyes a few seconds, thinking. "No" he replied finally, "I won't". He wrenched his arm out of her grasp and left the family room without another look back.

Once again Aunt Petunia was overcome with trembles of feeling, as tears poured back down her pale, bony cheeks, and her eyes rounded on Harry. "Y- You" she stuttered greatly holding up a wobbly index finger aimed at Harry, "it's all on y-you"

"Me?" Harry repeated incredulously, "ME? Are you insane? It isn't me! It's you! This is all your fault, you and that husband you married! Everything is your fault! And now when things aren't going normal like you always want, you can't handle it! Like I said before, I'm out of here!"

"HOW DARE YOU CHILD? I took you into my home! I treated you like a son! I gave you everything I could! EVERYTHING!" she screeched wildly; strands of her hair were falling down from their rollers.

"You never gave me anything, but a life of being ignored as a child, no friends, and a miserable existence! And now you expect me to feel sorry for you! Ugh! It never ends with you, does it?" he yelled turning red with anger himself.

"Alright, alright...lie why don't you? LIE! Get out of my house...when the sunrises I expect to see you out of here you dreadful, dreadful boy! Go pack your bags and expect to never come back here! I mean it! Next summer when that freak school of yours lets out, you best not think you'll come right back here for the holiday! Oh no, you are not! I want to forget all about you! All about your father and your little mother, you're little perfect mother! GET OUT OF MY LIFE! ALL OF YOU!" she shrieked insanely leaning against the nearest wall and sliding down until she reached the carpet. Her hair had now fully fallen from the rollers and she was spitting everywhere with each word she spoke.

Harry didn't say anything, but just walk slowly to the door again passing her like nothing. He was onto the first few steps of the stairs when she poked her head out and around the wall so that it was hanging over midair in the hallway.

"You have nothing to say to me, boy? Nothing?" she cackled strangely.

Harry looked back at her coldly, his emerald eyes alive with a dull spark. "No" he answered simply and calmly, "I don't...because you are nothing to me"

Within an hour Harry had finished packing everything. Though he was quite silent throughout all his packing, he was feeling a pang of panic travel through his chest. He was very eager to leave Privet Drive, but the problem for him was where he was to go. He thought about locating the Knight Bus again to get to the Leaky Cauldron so that he could reside there, but he wanted to make contact with someone he knew first.

"The Weasley's" he whispered picking up a quill that he had left sprawled across his desk. He dipped the tip in ink and had begun his first sentence when there was a loud thump at the window. Someone had thrown a rock at it.

"What the..." drifted off Harry walking over to the window. He lifted the latch and pulled the window open to look out; the dark, night sky was turning a pale pinkish orange. He tore his eyes away from the wonderful sky and onto the front lawn of the Dursley's. He couldn't believe who was standing there, holding a handful of rocks with their neck craned upward toward his window.

"Mrs. Figg" Harry began.

"Shhh...boy! Are you mad? Pack everything and get down the street quickly! C'mon now! Chop! Chop!" she said as quietly as she could manage, while at the same time getting Harry to hear her.

Harry nodded. He shut his window and ran over to his Hogwarts trunk and Hedwig's cage. It was a bit difficult for him to lift it, but all the same he managed. Once he was at the front door of the house, setting down Hedwig's cage so that he could turn the doorknob he heard a rumbling of footsteps come crashing down the stairs.

"YOU JUVENILE! PUT HER BACK! NOW! WHAT IN THE BLOODY HELL DID YOU DO TO MY WIFE! I DEMAND THAT YOU...WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU ARE GOING?" Uncle Vernon roared in a ramble, stopping at the sight of Harry standing in front of the front door with his trunk, and putting on a rather perplexed expression.

"I'm leaving and I didn't do anything to your wife! She was like that since the day she was born! I think it's a birth defect" Harry teased wrenching the door open finally and dragging his trunk outside, shortly followed by Hedwig's cage.

Uncle Vernon stepped closely up to the door still staring at Harry in bemusement. He looked as if he were about to say something; at last discovering his voice again, but Harry beat him to it.

"Have a good life...porky sir" Harry said in a polite voice shutting the door in Uncle Vernon's puzzled face.

Harry walked down the sidewalk pulling his belongings with him, feeling somehow freed. For the past sixteen years of his life he had had to endure difficulty from the Dursley's, he was made to return to them every summer, and deal with their neglect, but now he was gone! No longer was he to go back to that annoyingly perfect clean home, the cruelty of his Aunt, and be excluded from the magical world.

The wind blowing gently through the air made Harry's headache drift away, and put a sort of calmness in his mood. He was getting a good glance around at the streets of Privet Drive, for he knew he would no longer have to see them, which was a happy enough thought to help him conjure a Patronus any day.

"There you are!" Mrs. Figg said once he had stopped shortly in front of her lawn. She had been peeking nervously out of her kitchen window, obviously waiting for him. "Come, come..." she beckoned, "come inside now...the doors unlocked...I've been waiting for you...I was walking dear Dominos and while passing by your house I could hear some shouts...I knew instantly what was happening. We have already arranged a quick exit for you into the magical world Harry, don't worry"

"Why were you walking Domino? I mean, cats don't need to be walked, do they?" Harry asked in curiosity.

"Oh, but Domino does...he gets gassy during the late night and sometimes he needs to walk it off...I usually walk him just before sunset...look I even bought him a little leash...it's a dog leash, but he never notices the difference, do you Domino my baby?" she explained kneeling down and petting Domino gently on the head.

Harry normally would have been a good sport and try to pet the cat, but Domino was staring straight at Harry, one of his eyes half closed, but the other seemed to be threatening Harry in some sort. He reminded himself that though Mrs. Figg thought all of her cats were absolute wonderful babies, they weren't.

"Anyway" she said standing again and clapping her hands, "you can't stay here or that would be awful suspicious...we decided to have you travel by Portkey...don't worry Harry, I'm sure where you're going you'll like...its only temporary until we can get you over to the Weasley's. Maybe about a day or two...anyway you know what to do...grab onto that old cat liter bag...no, no its not dirty now...grab firmly onto it...its leaving in exactly sixty seconds, have a safe trip Harry...oh and don't worry about your things...they'll be there by the time you get there...I've been practicing magic see from this Kwikspell Agency, great people. I know how to perform simple spells you know, impressive for a Squib, I know. Now, where is that wand of mine...aha found it! Oh no...that's a pen...my blunder haha, let me see"

Harry watched her quite unsure what to say. He wasn't positive if he trusted Mrs. Figg, especially if she had made the Portkey he was about to travel with. He was about to suggest him traveling by Floo Powder better, because then at least he would be in charge of whether or not he made it to his destination, but just then Mrs. Figg found her wand.

"I should have remembered I put it there...I also use it sometimes to stir the batter of my cakes...great stirring power, wands. Do you wand some cake?" she asked courteously.

"No! No, Mrs. Figg...the Portkey..." he said.

"Oh yes...okay now...still holding onto it? Great...ten seconds dear" she told him, "and remember don't let anything your Aunt said to you get to you...don't, remember that"

"What...why would I..." Harry asked in a sort of surprised scream, because at that moment the Portkey had reached one and he had been lifted from the floor and spun around speedily into a swirl of all the colors you'd see in a rainbow. His mind left his body for a moment, traveling slower than his body was. He was thinking all about his summer and just exactly what Mrs. Figg meant about not letting anything Aunt Petunia said get to him.