Harry Potter
and
The Privet Drive Escape
Part One: Number Four
This summer at the small house on Privet Drive had been far quieter than any summer before it. It had been rather strange, though, as Vernon Dursley, a large man with very little neck, a round purple face and a bushy black mustache, had begun to ask his nephew strange questions like, "Have you sent them word today?" and Petunia Dursley, Vernon's skinny, horse- faced wife, had begun to do odd things like checking on the comfort of her nephew while their son, Dudley Dursley, had begun to ignore his cousin completely.
Harry Potter found all this very funny.
Harry was the nephew of Vernon and Petunia Dursley and, up until this summer, they had been quite horrible to live with. Now, however, they had become quite cordial to him, though it was all very forced. Uncle Vernon's polite questions were always asked through a strained face that turned redder by the second and Aunt Petunia's constant comfort checks were all very tight lipped. All in all, Harry almost wished they'd take Dudley's lead and just ignore him.
Harry Potter, as ought to be pointed out, was not a normal boy. Harry was a wizard and he had been left on the doorstep of number four Privet Drive sixteen years before. He had been left with a note and a cut on his forehead shaped like a bolt of lightning. That cut was now a scar and that scar was what made him famous. He received the scar when Lord Voldemort, the most powerful Dark wizard of the age, had tried to kill him on Halloween night sixteen years before. Voldemort had heard of a prophecy that Harry Potter would be his downfall and had set out to kill the boy. He'd made short work of Harry's parents but the moment he tried to kill the child, his curse backfired and the Dark Lord lost his powers.
Sixteen years later and now Lord Voldemort had returned. Ever since that return to power Harry's summers at Privet Drive had been worse than ever. Not only did he have to put up with the Dursleys but he also had the added threat of Voldemort turning up one night. His mind had been eased of this, however, at the end of last year when Dumbledore had revealed that, so long as he was with his Aunt and Uncle at Privet Drive, he was safe from the Dark Lord. Since then, Harry had tried not to think of Voldemort.
His Aunt and Uncle more than kept his mind off it.
The Dursleys were about as far apart from Harry as it was possible to be. They were what wizards called Muggles, non-magic folk, and they considered having a wizard in the family a disgrace of the highest order, in fact, it was their biggest fear that one day someone would discover their secret. Or, at least, that had been their biggest fear. Their biggest fear now was that someone from the wizarding world would turn up on their doorstep and turn them all into toads, for, at the end of last term, they had met quite a few of Harry's friends.
It had been at King's Cross train station a few months before, when they'd come to pick Harry up at the end of the school year and found themselves face to face with a group of adult wizards. These wizards had stated, in no uncertain terms, that if they didn't hear from Harry for three days in a row or if they got any word that he was being mistreated, one of them would along to speak with the Dursleys. Since then the Dursleys, not wanting a wizard at their door for the neighbors to see, had made sure that Harry was treated cordially and wrote to them often. In fact, Uncle Vernon insisted on Harry writing to them everyday, though this really didn't bother Harry too much.
Today, however, everything that the Dursleys had done over the summer to ensure his comfort was taken to an absolutely new level. Today was Harry's birthday and, when he walked down to breakfast that morning, he found the entire Dursley family waiting around the table with a wrapped present and a cupcake with a candle in it in the center.
"Happy Birthday." Aunt Petunia said with what looked like an incredibly painful smile and she nudged Uncle Vernon in the ribs who grunted and said, "Yes, yes, Happy Birthday," and poked Dudley in the shoulder who stared at the table as if he was trying to see straight through it and muttered something that sounded very much like "Heady Burfdy."
The Dursleys had never celebrated Harry's birthday. Sometimes they given him pairs of Uncle Vernon's old socks, a tissue or even a toothpick and on more than one occasion they had ignored it completely. And now here they were, forcing smiles and saying happy birthday with a tiny cake and a wrapped present that looked bigger than Uncle Vernon's old socks. Harry wasn't entirely sure whether or not to feel touched by the gesture but at that moment he was very aware that his mouth was open very wide.
There was a tense silence in which Harry's eyes were about the size of gold Galleons. After a few seconds he felt he should say something and managed a, "Thanks."
And with that, the Dursleys all went about their daily life as if nothing had just happened. Harry, however, was still thrown for a loop. He sat down at the table and pulled the present and the cupcake toward him, noting with a certain malicious satisfaction the greedy gleam in Dudley's eyes as he watched the frosting covered cake. Harry read the label on the present and had to stifle a laugh.
"To Harry
Happy Birthday
Love, Aunt Petunia,
Uncle Vernon and Dudley."
Love? Wow, they really were going all out on this, weren't they? Without opening the present, Harry got up from the table and started back up stairs to his room, enjoying the gleam in Dudley's beady eyes as they followed the cupcake all the way out. On his way up the stairs, Harry wasn't entirely sure what to do with all of this. He found it hard to feel touched the by the Dursleys forced attempts at being nice to him, but he also thought he should be grateful for their at least saying Happy Birthday to him for the first time. In the end, Harry decided it felt a bit creepy and left it at that.
When he got into his bedroom he dropped the present on the bed and sat down next to it. This summer had been, at the very least, more tolerable than any of the other summers with the Dursleys, but Harry couldn't bring himself to feel grateful for it. Instead there were two things that kept putting a damper on the holidays. One was the constant thought of leaving the Dursleys and going to stay with his best friend Ron Weasley. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger had said they would see him very soon and Ron's mother, Mrs. Weasley, had promised to get him away from Privet Drive as soon as possible. Over the past few weeks however, not one person had asked him to stay. Harry was beginning to wonder if they ever would.
The second thing that put a damper on Harry's spirits had gotten much worse today. The previous year, not long before the end of term, Harry's godfather, Sirius, had been killed in a Death Eater attack at the Ministry of Magic. Harry found himself waking in the night with horrible visions of his godfather's body falling through the thin black veil. Sometimes in these dreams he would hear screams and cries from the other side and a pair of burning red eyes would appear behind it. Harry hadn't told the Dursleys about Sirius, he didn't need Dudley taunting him about it or Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia saying Sirius had gotten what he deserved. He had spent most of this summer trying not to think about his godfather, because remembering had become quite painful. Today, however, it seemed there was no stopping it. Today, Harry felt utterly sick. He had just turned sixteen and his godfather wasn't around to wish him a Happy Birthday nor would he ever wish him a Happy Birthday again.
Harry looked down at the cupcake in his hands, at the unlit candle on top and closed his eyes. He blew on the unlit candle as if trying to put out an invisible flame and wished like hell that Sirius were still around. He put the cupcake down next the present and wiped his streaming eyes.
Trying not to think of the empty feeling in his chest, Harry picked up the Dursleys present and unwrapped it. Inside, was a soccer ball, a brand new soccer ball. Harry didn't play soccer, wasn't even very interested in soccer--he played the wizard sport of Quidditch-but he was surprised at the fact that the Dursleys had bought him something new. He took the soccer ball out of its cardboard holder and rolled it lightly across the floor of his bedroom. He wasn't a soccer fan but he supposed it was that thought that counted.
He stood up and took the cupcake from the bed over to his writing desk where the cage of his snowy owl, Hedwig, sat. Hedwig was gone at the moment but Harry tore off part of the cake and dropped it into her food tray for when she got back, which, to his surprise, was at just that moment.
With a great fluttering of wings, Hedwig burst into the room with three other very large owls and one very small one. They all landed at different points across his desk and for a moment Harry was quite sure that Hedwig had brought the entire zoo with her until he noticed that every owl, including Hedwig and the small one that was flying in circles above his head and twittering loudly, was holding a package in their beaks. The owls all dropped their parcels onto the desk, the smaller one onto Harry's head, and each took turns drinking from Hedwig's water dish before taking off back through the window again.
Harry gathered up the presents and, for the first time in a long time, allowed himself a very genuine smile. He could see a parcel marked with Hagrid's untidy scrawl, one in Hermione's loopy writing; one in Ron's messy scribbles; and two that he didn't recognize at all. He dumped them onto the bed spread and grinned at Hedwig.
"Busy night?" he asked.
The snowy owl hooted sleepily and nipped at her bit of birthday cake.
Harry turned back to his pile of presents with a growing sense of pride. It was times like this he wondered just what he would be without these friends around him. He picked up the first package from Ron and opened it. Inside was a box of Chocolate Frogs and another box made of cedar that was marked on the top with the word, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes: Skiving Snack Box--and under that-Never See The Inside Of Class Again! Harry grinned and picked up the birthday card on top of the two boxes. It read:
Dear Harry,
Happy birthday! Hope you like the Chocolate Frogs and the
Snack Box; Fred and George thought you should have the first
one.
Harry grinned. It looked like Fred and George had finally perfected their Skiving Snack Boxes, which were full of candies that could get you out of class. There were ones to make you vomit, ones to give a fever and ones to give nosebleeds-not to mention their antidotes as well.
You'll never believe it but Mum's actually quite proud of
them for their joke shop. She says she wishes they'd consider
finishing school but she seems happy for them anyway. So far she
seems not to want to know where the money came from.
Harry felt himself blush. It was he who had given the Weasley twins the money for their joke shop. It had been a thousand galleons in prize money that he had won over a year before in the Triwizard Tournament.
Anyway, Mum says you can come and stay with us soon. We're
at the Burrow rather than the other place now so I'm going to
ask Hermione to come and stay, too. Dad says he can come and
pick you up on Monday so we'll see you then.
Ron
P.S.-Percy's back but the great git is acting like nothing
happened. Fred and George are ready to kill him.
He put the card on the bed and smiled even wider. He was finally going to stay with Ron and Hermione. It seemed this day was picking up, though he knew that by "the other place" Ron meant Sirius's old house, which was the current headquarters to the Order of the Phoenix. Harry pushed thoughts of the old house on Grimmauld Place out of his head and picked up Hermione's present, which he knew without opening, was a book.
This book however, was something that Harry greatly appreciated. It was a large volume covered in black leather with the words: 1001 MORE Spells For Defense Against The Dark Arts in silver letters. Harry grinned broadly and ran his fingers over the cover. "Wow, Hermione," he whispered, remembering the secret Defense Against The Dark Arts league they had created last year. They had called it "Dumbledore's Army" after the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore.
The next present was from the shaggy, half-giant Hogwarts gamekeeper, Hagrid, who sent him a box of stoat cakes. The next one, addressed in a hand that Harry didn't recognize was, surprisingly, from Mad-Eye Moody and Nymphadora Tonks. Harry remembered the old, grizzled ex-Auror, Moody, who had one normal eye and one large, blue, magical eye, a scared face and wild gray hair. Nymphadora Tonks was an Auror as well but, quite apart from Moody, she was a sweet but clumsy witch who could change her appearance at will.
Moody had sent Harry what looked remarkably like a Rememberall. Harry had seen a Rememberall, which lights red when the holder has forgotten something, in his first year when Neville Longbottom, a particularly forget boy in Harry's year, had gotten on from his gran. This, however, was larger than a Rememberall, being about the size of a billiard ball, pitch-black and shiny sitting atop a small gold stand. Harry, who had no idea what this was, read the note hoping for an answer.
Dear Potter,
Thought I'd send you something useful. This is a Seeing
Sphere, a bit like a crystal ball for folks who can't use a
crystal ball. You use it by laying your hand on it and asking it
a question. Its usually just a parlor trick but it can be quite
useful.
P.S. Happy Birthday.
Moody
It would be just like Moody to send Harry something from his collection of Auror tools but this was too interesting a tool not to try out. He lay his hand over the shiny black ball and said the first thing that came to his mind:
"What's my name?"
The polished black surface suddenly turned very milky and begun to swirl when the words HARRY POTTER suddenly appeared in electric blue letters.
"Cool," Harry grinned and set it carefully in its holder on the nightstand and picked up a second envelope, this one from Tonks. He opened the note and something hard and shiny dropped onto his bed, it looked like a ring. Harry picked it up and read the note:
Dear Harry,
I thought you might want this. We found it in Kreacher's
collection. It was Sirius's so I figured you would be the best
person to keep it for him. Come visit soon.
Love, Tonks
He felt a strange numbing sensation welling up inside him. It felt as if all the feeling had suddenly gone away, as if he were full of cotton. He picked up the ring and turned it over. It was silver with its flat, round face in black. Silver letters spelled out the monogram of S.B.M. Sirius M. Black. Harry wiped a hand over his eyes and smiled. He had suddenly realized that he didn't know what the M stood for. He smiled and slipped the ring on his finger; it fit perfectly.
Still drying his eyes, Harry picked up the last present, which turned out to be from Remus Lupin. Harry had met Lupin in his third year when Lupin had become Defense Against the Dart Arts teacher at Hogwarts; it wasn't until later that he found out that both Sirius and Lupin had been good friends with his parents. He picked up the letter from on top of the small box and read:
Dear Harry,
This has been in my possession for some time, but it was
originally your father's. James nicked this from the Quidditch
locker at Hogwarts, used to play with it all the time. Thought
you might like it. Maybe it will give you some good practice for
next year.
Happy Birthday, Remus
This present had Harry absolutely baffled. He looked at the small box and couldn't, for the life of him, figure out what it was. When he opened it up, however, a gold glint caught his eye and he was suddenly reminded of all those times he'd seen the same glint on the green stretch of grass that was the Quidditch Pitch. Inside the box, about the size of a walnut, was a golden ball with long silver wings.
The ball, sensing its freedom leapt suddenly from the box and began to zoom around the room. Harry, however, was more than ready. As it bounced off two of the walls, Harry reached up deftly and caught it. Not for the first time, the youngest seeker in a century had caught the Golden Snitch.
Harry grinned at the ball. He'd seen his father play with this very Snitch once before. He had been looking into a pensieve in the office of the potions master, Prof. Snape. He had watched a memory from years before wherein his father had pulled the small gold ball from his pocket and let it fly, only to snatch it back before it got too far away. That gold ball was a bit faded now, but it was still just as active as it wriggled in Harry's grasp. He gazed at it for another few seconds and then, like his father before him, slipped the Snitch into the pocket of his jeans.
The rest of that day was spent writing Thank You letters to everyone. Hedwig would have to take them that night, as she spent most of the day with her head under her wing, asleep. When he'd finished with the letters, Harry spent the rest of his Birthday asking questions to the Seeing Sphere, which reminded him a lot of the Magic Eight Ball toy that Muggle children sometimes played with. He'd read through some of the book Hermione had bought him and ate some of Ron's Chocolate Frogs-deciding not to try the Skiving Snack Box right away-kicked the Dursley's soccer ball absently and took to staring at his ring for quite a long time.
That night, Harry put his Snitch in a small leather pouch and laid it with the rest of his things on the nightstand. He lay back in bed, Hedwig gone to deliver the Thank You's, and thought that this honestly had to be the best birthday he could ever remember. He closed his eyes and still wished that Sirius could've been with him, but in three days he would be back with the people who really loved him, far away from Number Four and far away from Privet Drive.
Harry Potter didn't know it yet, but coming up the street was something that would make those three days on Privet Drive the longest and hardest of his life.
It started with the click of a lock, the soft steps of a many boots and the whispers of more than a few voices. Harry didn't hear anything at first, until doors began to open downstairs. He pulled himself up in bed and gazed around stupidly. He picked up his glasses and put them on, trying to figure out what had woken him.
Downstairs, doors were opening, then closing as if someone were looking for something. His alarm clock read 12:30 am. Harry couldn't imagine what in the world the Dursleys would be doing downstairs at this time. Could Dudley possibly be looking for food at this hour? Yes, but this didn't sound like Dudley raiding the fridge.
Then soft footsteps started up the stairs and Harry was suddenly very sure that this wasn't the any of the Dursleys. Moving as quickly and quietly as possible, he slipped out of bed and bent his ear down to the cat door Uncle Vernon had installed in his bedroom door years earlier. He listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs, when, suddenly, there were whispers.
"Find the Muggles," a man said. "Find them first, we'll deal with them after we've gotten Potter."
"Let me find the boy," whispered a woman's voice and Harry had to clap a hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming. It was the voice of Bellatrix Lestrange, cousin to, and the woman who had killed, Sirius. She was a Death Eater; that must mean that the others with her were Death Eaters as well. But what were they doing on Privet Drive? Dumbledore had said-
"Muggles first," the man said. "We can't risk anything until they are under control."
Harry leapt off the floor and scrambled as quietly as he could back to the bed. Moving quietly, he began pulling on his jeans and t-shirt, dressing in a hurry. He began grabbing things off the nightstand and shoving them into his pockets, the Snitch, his wand, the Seeing Sphere. He'd slipped on Sirius's ring when he heard Aunt Petunia scream.
The shriek stopped Harry cold but he was quite sure there was nothing he could do to help the Dursleys now. Outside his door, there was a sudden flurry of activity, he could hear shouts and screams and scuffling sounds. Harry had leapt for his closet and his Firebolt broom when his bedroom door was suddenly blown off its hinges in a blaze of red.
There was a terrified moment when Harry was quite certain that Lord Voldemort, his towering pale figure and cold red eyes, would appear in the doorway but it wasn't Voldemort it was the one person he hated above all else.
Bellatrix Lestrange, or what had once been Bellatrix Lestrange, stood in the doorway. Azkaban Prison had worn her pale, sharp features gaunt but now there was something even more terrifying about her appearance. One of her eyes was larger than the other and Harry as reminded of Mad-Eye Moody, but Lestrange's eye was bleach white and the skin around it was shiny and twisted in a nasty looking scar.
In a flash, she was on top of him, bony hands wrapped around his throat, banging his head against the floor.
There was a dazzling flash of pain as his head slammed against the floorboards and his scar lit up. Harry was only dimly aware of trying to pull her hands off his neck, when She suddenly stopped, her grip relaxing. Harry stared up dumbly as the Death Eater's eyes fixed on his hands. Lestrange took one look at the silver ring on Harry's hand and was then throttling him harder than ever.
"Where did you get that!" she snarled, slamming him against the floor again. "Where the hell did you get that ring!"
Before he was even aware of what he had done, Harry's hand had pulled back and smashed Sirius's ring once into her glaring white eye and once more into her nose, which gave a sickening crack. Bellatrix screamed, blood spraying in a macabre fan from her broken nose, and suddenly she was off Harry and rolling on the floor.
Three men in long black cloaks stormed into the bedroom but it was far too late, Harry Potter was already halfway to the ground. He'd leapt out the open second floor window and landed awkwardly in the grass. The world seemed to tilt and tumble sickeningly as he bounced across the ground but he soon pulled himself to his feet and was tearing across the backyard.
There came two sharp blasts and two explosions in the hedge in front of him and then a male voice yelling for the blasts to stop. To Harry's amazement, they were letting him get away. He wasn't about to argue with them, though, and in another second he had vaulted the hedge and was tearing through the neighbor's backyard.
Part One: Number Four
This summer at the small house on Privet Drive had been far quieter than any summer before it. It had been rather strange, though, as Vernon Dursley, a large man with very little neck, a round purple face and a bushy black mustache, had begun to ask his nephew strange questions like, "Have you sent them word today?" and Petunia Dursley, Vernon's skinny, horse- faced wife, had begun to do odd things like checking on the comfort of her nephew while their son, Dudley Dursley, had begun to ignore his cousin completely.
Harry Potter found all this very funny.
Harry was the nephew of Vernon and Petunia Dursley and, up until this summer, they had been quite horrible to live with. Now, however, they had become quite cordial to him, though it was all very forced. Uncle Vernon's polite questions were always asked through a strained face that turned redder by the second and Aunt Petunia's constant comfort checks were all very tight lipped. All in all, Harry almost wished they'd take Dudley's lead and just ignore him.
Harry Potter, as ought to be pointed out, was not a normal boy. Harry was a wizard and he had been left on the doorstep of number four Privet Drive sixteen years before. He had been left with a note and a cut on his forehead shaped like a bolt of lightning. That cut was now a scar and that scar was what made him famous. He received the scar when Lord Voldemort, the most powerful Dark wizard of the age, had tried to kill him on Halloween night sixteen years before. Voldemort had heard of a prophecy that Harry Potter would be his downfall and had set out to kill the boy. He'd made short work of Harry's parents but the moment he tried to kill the child, his curse backfired and the Dark Lord lost his powers.
Sixteen years later and now Lord Voldemort had returned. Ever since that return to power Harry's summers at Privet Drive had been worse than ever. Not only did he have to put up with the Dursleys but he also had the added threat of Voldemort turning up one night. His mind had been eased of this, however, at the end of last year when Dumbledore had revealed that, so long as he was with his Aunt and Uncle at Privet Drive, he was safe from the Dark Lord. Since then, Harry had tried not to think of Voldemort.
His Aunt and Uncle more than kept his mind off it.
The Dursleys were about as far apart from Harry as it was possible to be. They were what wizards called Muggles, non-magic folk, and they considered having a wizard in the family a disgrace of the highest order, in fact, it was their biggest fear that one day someone would discover their secret. Or, at least, that had been their biggest fear. Their biggest fear now was that someone from the wizarding world would turn up on their doorstep and turn them all into toads, for, at the end of last term, they had met quite a few of Harry's friends.
It had been at King's Cross train station a few months before, when they'd come to pick Harry up at the end of the school year and found themselves face to face with a group of adult wizards. These wizards had stated, in no uncertain terms, that if they didn't hear from Harry for three days in a row or if they got any word that he was being mistreated, one of them would along to speak with the Dursleys. Since then the Dursleys, not wanting a wizard at their door for the neighbors to see, had made sure that Harry was treated cordially and wrote to them often. In fact, Uncle Vernon insisted on Harry writing to them everyday, though this really didn't bother Harry too much.
Today, however, everything that the Dursleys had done over the summer to ensure his comfort was taken to an absolutely new level. Today was Harry's birthday and, when he walked down to breakfast that morning, he found the entire Dursley family waiting around the table with a wrapped present and a cupcake with a candle in it in the center.
"Happy Birthday." Aunt Petunia said with what looked like an incredibly painful smile and she nudged Uncle Vernon in the ribs who grunted and said, "Yes, yes, Happy Birthday," and poked Dudley in the shoulder who stared at the table as if he was trying to see straight through it and muttered something that sounded very much like "Heady Burfdy."
The Dursleys had never celebrated Harry's birthday. Sometimes they given him pairs of Uncle Vernon's old socks, a tissue or even a toothpick and on more than one occasion they had ignored it completely. And now here they were, forcing smiles and saying happy birthday with a tiny cake and a wrapped present that looked bigger than Uncle Vernon's old socks. Harry wasn't entirely sure whether or not to feel touched by the gesture but at that moment he was very aware that his mouth was open very wide.
There was a tense silence in which Harry's eyes were about the size of gold Galleons. After a few seconds he felt he should say something and managed a, "Thanks."
And with that, the Dursleys all went about their daily life as if nothing had just happened. Harry, however, was still thrown for a loop. He sat down at the table and pulled the present and the cupcake toward him, noting with a certain malicious satisfaction the greedy gleam in Dudley's eyes as he watched the frosting covered cake. Harry read the label on the present and had to stifle a laugh.
"To Harry
Happy Birthday
Love, Aunt Petunia,
Uncle Vernon and Dudley."
Love? Wow, they really were going all out on this, weren't they? Without opening the present, Harry got up from the table and started back up stairs to his room, enjoying the gleam in Dudley's beady eyes as they followed the cupcake all the way out. On his way up the stairs, Harry wasn't entirely sure what to do with all of this. He found it hard to feel touched the by the Dursleys forced attempts at being nice to him, but he also thought he should be grateful for their at least saying Happy Birthday to him for the first time. In the end, Harry decided it felt a bit creepy and left it at that.
When he got into his bedroom he dropped the present on the bed and sat down next to it. This summer had been, at the very least, more tolerable than any of the other summers with the Dursleys, but Harry couldn't bring himself to feel grateful for it. Instead there were two things that kept putting a damper on the holidays. One was the constant thought of leaving the Dursleys and going to stay with his best friend Ron Weasley. Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger had said they would see him very soon and Ron's mother, Mrs. Weasley, had promised to get him away from Privet Drive as soon as possible. Over the past few weeks however, not one person had asked him to stay. Harry was beginning to wonder if they ever would.
The second thing that put a damper on Harry's spirits had gotten much worse today. The previous year, not long before the end of term, Harry's godfather, Sirius, had been killed in a Death Eater attack at the Ministry of Magic. Harry found himself waking in the night with horrible visions of his godfather's body falling through the thin black veil. Sometimes in these dreams he would hear screams and cries from the other side and a pair of burning red eyes would appear behind it. Harry hadn't told the Dursleys about Sirius, he didn't need Dudley taunting him about it or Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia saying Sirius had gotten what he deserved. He had spent most of this summer trying not to think about his godfather, because remembering had become quite painful. Today, however, it seemed there was no stopping it. Today, Harry felt utterly sick. He had just turned sixteen and his godfather wasn't around to wish him a Happy Birthday nor would he ever wish him a Happy Birthday again.
Harry looked down at the cupcake in his hands, at the unlit candle on top and closed his eyes. He blew on the unlit candle as if trying to put out an invisible flame and wished like hell that Sirius were still around. He put the cupcake down next the present and wiped his streaming eyes.
Trying not to think of the empty feeling in his chest, Harry picked up the Dursleys present and unwrapped it. Inside, was a soccer ball, a brand new soccer ball. Harry didn't play soccer, wasn't even very interested in soccer--he played the wizard sport of Quidditch-but he was surprised at the fact that the Dursleys had bought him something new. He took the soccer ball out of its cardboard holder and rolled it lightly across the floor of his bedroom. He wasn't a soccer fan but he supposed it was that thought that counted.
He stood up and took the cupcake from the bed over to his writing desk where the cage of his snowy owl, Hedwig, sat. Hedwig was gone at the moment but Harry tore off part of the cake and dropped it into her food tray for when she got back, which, to his surprise, was at just that moment.
With a great fluttering of wings, Hedwig burst into the room with three other very large owls and one very small one. They all landed at different points across his desk and for a moment Harry was quite sure that Hedwig had brought the entire zoo with her until he noticed that every owl, including Hedwig and the small one that was flying in circles above his head and twittering loudly, was holding a package in their beaks. The owls all dropped their parcels onto the desk, the smaller one onto Harry's head, and each took turns drinking from Hedwig's water dish before taking off back through the window again.
Harry gathered up the presents and, for the first time in a long time, allowed himself a very genuine smile. He could see a parcel marked with Hagrid's untidy scrawl, one in Hermione's loopy writing; one in Ron's messy scribbles; and two that he didn't recognize at all. He dumped them onto the bed spread and grinned at Hedwig.
"Busy night?" he asked.
The snowy owl hooted sleepily and nipped at her bit of birthday cake.
Harry turned back to his pile of presents with a growing sense of pride. It was times like this he wondered just what he would be without these friends around him. He picked up the first package from Ron and opened it. Inside was a box of Chocolate Frogs and another box made of cedar that was marked on the top with the word, Weasley's Wizard Wheezes: Skiving Snack Box--and under that-Never See The Inside Of Class Again! Harry grinned and picked up the birthday card on top of the two boxes. It read:
Dear Harry,
Happy birthday! Hope you like the Chocolate Frogs and the
Snack Box; Fred and George thought you should have the first
one.
Harry grinned. It looked like Fred and George had finally perfected their Skiving Snack Boxes, which were full of candies that could get you out of class. There were ones to make you vomit, ones to give a fever and ones to give nosebleeds-not to mention their antidotes as well.
You'll never believe it but Mum's actually quite proud of
them for their joke shop. She says she wishes they'd consider
finishing school but she seems happy for them anyway. So far she
seems not to want to know where the money came from.
Harry felt himself blush. It was he who had given the Weasley twins the money for their joke shop. It had been a thousand galleons in prize money that he had won over a year before in the Triwizard Tournament.
Anyway, Mum says you can come and stay with us soon. We're
at the Burrow rather than the other place now so I'm going to
ask Hermione to come and stay, too. Dad says he can come and
pick you up on Monday so we'll see you then.
Ron
P.S.-Percy's back but the great git is acting like nothing
happened. Fred and George are ready to kill him.
He put the card on the bed and smiled even wider. He was finally going to stay with Ron and Hermione. It seemed this day was picking up, though he knew that by "the other place" Ron meant Sirius's old house, which was the current headquarters to the Order of the Phoenix. Harry pushed thoughts of the old house on Grimmauld Place out of his head and picked up Hermione's present, which he knew without opening, was a book.
This book however, was something that Harry greatly appreciated. It was a large volume covered in black leather with the words: 1001 MORE Spells For Defense Against The Dark Arts in silver letters. Harry grinned broadly and ran his fingers over the cover. "Wow, Hermione," he whispered, remembering the secret Defense Against The Dark Arts league they had created last year. They had called it "Dumbledore's Army" after the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Albus Dumbledore.
The next present was from the shaggy, half-giant Hogwarts gamekeeper, Hagrid, who sent him a box of stoat cakes. The next one, addressed in a hand that Harry didn't recognize was, surprisingly, from Mad-Eye Moody and Nymphadora Tonks. Harry remembered the old, grizzled ex-Auror, Moody, who had one normal eye and one large, blue, magical eye, a scared face and wild gray hair. Nymphadora Tonks was an Auror as well but, quite apart from Moody, she was a sweet but clumsy witch who could change her appearance at will.
Moody had sent Harry what looked remarkably like a Rememberall. Harry had seen a Rememberall, which lights red when the holder has forgotten something, in his first year when Neville Longbottom, a particularly forget boy in Harry's year, had gotten on from his gran. This, however, was larger than a Rememberall, being about the size of a billiard ball, pitch-black and shiny sitting atop a small gold stand. Harry, who had no idea what this was, read the note hoping for an answer.
Dear Potter,
Thought I'd send you something useful. This is a Seeing
Sphere, a bit like a crystal ball for folks who can't use a
crystal ball. You use it by laying your hand on it and asking it
a question. Its usually just a parlor trick but it can be quite
useful.
P.S. Happy Birthday.
Moody
It would be just like Moody to send Harry something from his collection of Auror tools but this was too interesting a tool not to try out. He lay his hand over the shiny black ball and said the first thing that came to his mind:
"What's my name?"
The polished black surface suddenly turned very milky and begun to swirl when the words HARRY POTTER suddenly appeared in electric blue letters.
"Cool," Harry grinned and set it carefully in its holder on the nightstand and picked up a second envelope, this one from Tonks. He opened the note and something hard and shiny dropped onto his bed, it looked like a ring. Harry picked it up and read the note:
Dear Harry,
I thought you might want this. We found it in Kreacher's
collection. It was Sirius's so I figured you would be the best
person to keep it for him. Come visit soon.
Love, Tonks
He felt a strange numbing sensation welling up inside him. It felt as if all the feeling had suddenly gone away, as if he were full of cotton. He picked up the ring and turned it over. It was silver with its flat, round face in black. Silver letters spelled out the monogram of S.B.M. Sirius M. Black. Harry wiped a hand over his eyes and smiled. He had suddenly realized that he didn't know what the M stood for. He smiled and slipped the ring on his finger; it fit perfectly.
Still drying his eyes, Harry picked up the last present, which turned out to be from Remus Lupin. Harry had met Lupin in his third year when Lupin had become Defense Against the Dart Arts teacher at Hogwarts; it wasn't until later that he found out that both Sirius and Lupin had been good friends with his parents. He picked up the letter from on top of the small box and read:
Dear Harry,
This has been in my possession for some time, but it was
originally your father's. James nicked this from the Quidditch
locker at Hogwarts, used to play with it all the time. Thought
you might like it. Maybe it will give you some good practice for
next year.
Happy Birthday, Remus
This present had Harry absolutely baffled. He looked at the small box and couldn't, for the life of him, figure out what it was. When he opened it up, however, a gold glint caught his eye and he was suddenly reminded of all those times he'd seen the same glint on the green stretch of grass that was the Quidditch Pitch. Inside the box, about the size of a walnut, was a golden ball with long silver wings.
The ball, sensing its freedom leapt suddenly from the box and began to zoom around the room. Harry, however, was more than ready. As it bounced off two of the walls, Harry reached up deftly and caught it. Not for the first time, the youngest seeker in a century had caught the Golden Snitch.
Harry grinned at the ball. He'd seen his father play with this very Snitch once before. He had been looking into a pensieve in the office of the potions master, Prof. Snape. He had watched a memory from years before wherein his father had pulled the small gold ball from his pocket and let it fly, only to snatch it back before it got too far away. That gold ball was a bit faded now, but it was still just as active as it wriggled in Harry's grasp. He gazed at it for another few seconds and then, like his father before him, slipped the Snitch into the pocket of his jeans.
The rest of that day was spent writing Thank You letters to everyone. Hedwig would have to take them that night, as she spent most of the day with her head under her wing, asleep. When he'd finished with the letters, Harry spent the rest of his Birthday asking questions to the Seeing Sphere, which reminded him a lot of the Magic Eight Ball toy that Muggle children sometimes played with. He'd read through some of the book Hermione had bought him and ate some of Ron's Chocolate Frogs-deciding not to try the Skiving Snack Box right away-kicked the Dursley's soccer ball absently and took to staring at his ring for quite a long time.
That night, Harry put his Snitch in a small leather pouch and laid it with the rest of his things on the nightstand. He lay back in bed, Hedwig gone to deliver the Thank You's, and thought that this honestly had to be the best birthday he could ever remember. He closed his eyes and still wished that Sirius could've been with him, but in three days he would be back with the people who really loved him, far away from Number Four and far away from Privet Drive.
Harry Potter didn't know it yet, but coming up the street was something that would make those three days on Privet Drive the longest and hardest of his life.
It started with the click of a lock, the soft steps of a many boots and the whispers of more than a few voices. Harry didn't hear anything at first, until doors began to open downstairs. He pulled himself up in bed and gazed around stupidly. He picked up his glasses and put them on, trying to figure out what had woken him.
Downstairs, doors were opening, then closing as if someone were looking for something. His alarm clock read 12:30 am. Harry couldn't imagine what in the world the Dursleys would be doing downstairs at this time. Could Dudley possibly be looking for food at this hour? Yes, but this didn't sound like Dudley raiding the fridge.
Then soft footsteps started up the stairs and Harry was suddenly very sure that this wasn't the any of the Dursleys. Moving as quickly and quietly as possible, he slipped out of bed and bent his ear down to the cat door Uncle Vernon had installed in his bedroom door years earlier. He listened to the footsteps coming up the stairs, when, suddenly, there were whispers.
"Find the Muggles," a man said. "Find them first, we'll deal with them after we've gotten Potter."
"Let me find the boy," whispered a woman's voice and Harry had to clap a hand over his mouth to stop himself from screaming. It was the voice of Bellatrix Lestrange, cousin to, and the woman who had killed, Sirius. She was a Death Eater; that must mean that the others with her were Death Eaters as well. But what were they doing on Privet Drive? Dumbledore had said-
"Muggles first," the man said. "We can't risk anything until they are under control."
Harry leapt off the floor and scrambled as quietly as he could back to the bed. Moving quietly, he began pulling on his jeans and t-shirt, dressing in a hurry. He began grabbing things off the nightstand and shoving them into his pockets, the Snitch, his wand, the Seeing Sphere. He'd slipped on Sirius's ring when he heard Aunt Petunia scream.
The shriek stopped Harry cold but he was quite sure there was nothing he could do to help the Dursleys now. Outside his door, there was a sudden flurry of activity, he could hear shouts and screams and scuffling sounds. Harry had leapt for his closet and his Firebolt broom when his bedroom door was suddenly blown off its hinges in a blaze of red.
There was a terrified moment when Harry was quite certain that Lord Voldemort, his towering pale figure and cold red eyes, would appear in the doorway but it wasn't Voldemort it was the one person he hated above all else.
Bellatrix Lestrange, or what had once been Bellatrix Lestrange, stood in the doorway. Azkaban Prison had worn her pale, sharp features gaunt but now there was something even more terrifying about her appearance. One of her eyes was larger than the other and Harry as reminded of Mad-Eye Moody, but Lestrange's eye was bleach white and the skin around it was shiny and twisted in a nasty looking scar.
In a flash, she was on top of him, bony hands wrapped around his throat, banging his head against the floor.
There was a dazzling flash of pain as his head slammed against the floorboards and his scar lit up. Harry was only dimly aware of trying to pull her hands off his neck, when She suddenly stopped, her grip relaxing. Harry stared up dumbly as the Death Eater's eyes fixed on his hands. Lestrange took one look at the silver ring on Harry's hand and was then throttling him harder than ever.
"Where did you get that!" she snarled, slamming him against the floor again. "Where the hell did you get that ring!"
Before he was even aware of what he had done, Harry's hand had pulled back and smashed Sirius's ring once into her glaring white eye and once more into her nose, which gave a sickening crack. Bellatrix screamed, blood spraying in a macabre fan from her broken nose, and suddenly she was off Harry and rolling on the floor.
Three men in long black cloaks stormed into the bedroom but it was far too late, Harry Potter was already halfway to the ground. He'd leapt out the open second floor window and landed awkwardly in the grass. The world seemed to tilt and tumble sickeningly as he bounced across the ground but he soon pulled himself to his feet and was tearing across the backyard.
There came two sharp blasts and two explosions in the hedge in front of him and then a male voice yelling for the blasts to stop. To Harry's amazement, they were letting him get away. He wasn't about to argue with them, though, and in another second he had vaulted the hedge and was tearing through the neighbor's backyard.