Chapter 10
(Female speaking)-Snake - Demeter
(Younger Male Speaking)-Dragon - Dionysus
(Older Male Speaking)-Phoenix - Areas

New body… little chance…survives…pray…touch…of… power…Touch…Power…Die!

Harry sat up in his bed so fast that it made him dizzy. He was covered in sweat, despite the near-freezing room temperature, and his breathing was irregular. Shivering, he wrapped his thin, worn blanket around his body and tried to remember the dream that had woken him up; all that he could recall from the dream was that there was a blinding light, everywhere, and the feeling that he was drowning.

OOOOOOOOOOOOO

Harry looked out his barred window to the still-darkened night sky. In four hours, the sun would be up, and in two more, his 'family' would wake up, expecting their breakfast to be ready and waiting for them. To his side, Harry could see the outline of Demeter, Dionysus, and Ares curled up into a ball. Since their last 'talk', they had toned down their guarding. He could now go to the loo without them following him.

Harry didn't know how long he had been staring out his window; to him it seemed as if it was only minutes, when in reality it was two hours.

Harry watched the sky slowly turn from its night black to the pale silver gray. He watched as the snow drifted softly by his window. Three weeks earlier, after a week of the torture that was Marge, the weather had started to act rather strange.

Three weeks before-

Harry was doing a little dance of joy. It had been one week, two days, and seven god awful hours since Marge and her little dog had come, and now they were leaving. Harry threw Marge's baggage by the door and heard something shatter. He didn't know what it was, and, frankly, he didn't care. Grinning, he grabbed another bag. This one was white with multi-colored dog bones decorating it and a bone-shaped handle; he could easily guess that this was Ripper's bag. Harry smirked, remembering Ripper's fate after meeting his new guardians face to face.

Harry had been hiding under the rose bushes from Ripper, who had taken a sudden fancy to him. Actually, it was his pants and shoes that Ripper fancied; he was sure Petunia was adding something to his clothes when she washed them. Lying down, he had watched as the clouds passed by. It had been a nice day, and through his connection he had been able to feel his guardians as they explored the area. Everything had been new to them. The last time they had hatched, the only means of transportation had been a horse-drawn carriage. It was both fascinating and oddly disturbing to know they had lived more than one life. So caught up in his thoughts, Harry hadn't realized that Ripper had found him until he had heard a threatening growl fill the air around him. His left eye had twitched, and, slowly, Harry had sat up and stared in frozen horror as Ripper had slowly advanced on him. A sudden, irrational fear had rushed over his body, paralyzing him where he laid. This was it, this was the end; he wouldn't be done in during an honorable battle between Voldemort and himself, or even while he was saving his friends. No, he was going to be killed by a dog an eighth of his size. Oh, the irony. Harry had closed his eyes and waited for his untimely demise. One minute passed, then two...when five minutes had passed and he still wasn't dead, he had opened his eyes to a sight that he would have never dreamed that he would see in a million years, in front of him stood one frozen dog and three glowing guardians. He hadn't been able to help himself; Harry had fallen backward and started to laugh, and then he hadn't been able to stop.

His guardians had stopped glowing and surrounded Harry during his laughing fit, and he had been able to feel their worry. They had been wondering if he had finally gone mad. To tell the truth, Harry had wondered if he had gone mad. After all, he had seized up in fear of a midget dog. What kind of wizard was he?

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

Throwing Rippers bag by the door, Harry wondered if his family was ever going to find the frozen statue of the dog.

"What are you so happy about, freak?" Dudley was leaning against the stairway, which, surprisingly enough didn't break under his forced weight. Harry was surprised he hadn't hears Dudley walk in.

"Nothing, its just such a beautiful day and all I though that I might spend it outside today doing aunt Petunia's garden." Harry gave Dudley an obviously fake smile and went back to moving Marge's luggage to the door. He was halfway through her bags when he heard Vernon and Marge walking toward him and talking.

"I just don't understand, where could have Ripper gone to? He would never ever leave my side!" Marge's voice sounded like a mouse on drugs: really, really high and winy.

"Don't worry Marge." Vernon tried to soothe her by rubbing her massive back. "If we find him I'll call you immediately. Just you wait and see he will probably show up two hours after you leave!"

Harry snickered under his breath. He was trying really hard to not to laugh.

Sniffing, Marge looked at her younger brother with hope glinting in her piggy eyes. "Do you really think so?"

"I'm positive. Why, that dog is as loyal to you as Petunia is to me!" Vernon threw his hand up in the air as if he had a brilliant idea, "In fact, I will have the boy go and search for him as soon as I can!"

A malevolent look replaced the hope in her eyes, "You will make sure that he is punished if he doesn't find poor Ripper?"

The same look that was in Marge's eyes filled Vernon's, "Oh most definitely."

Harry's face turned from amusement to outright disbelief. Oh, his family was cruel. He kept his face passive when Marge and Vernon came into the room. Marge had a look of disgust and hatred in her face when she stared at Harry, and as she grabbed one of the bags, she 'accidentally' smacked Harry in the back of the head with it.

"HEY!" Harry grabbed the back of his head and glared at her.

Marge glared back at Harry, "Hey, what boy!"

Grumbling under his breath, Harry went back to work moving the luggage. He really couldn't wait for her to leave. "Nothing," he said in a monotone voice.

Giving Harry one last glare, Marge went to the door opened it and let out a rather noisy and raspy gasp. Harry didn't bother to look up; she probably got hit by a bug or something.

"Oh my GOD, it's SNOWING!"

Or not. Harry dropped the bag he was holding and ran to the door to confirm her claim, just to see fluffy whiteness pass by his nose. All the while, these thoughts were running through his mind:
"No. Oh, God, no. Please let this be a figment of my imagination. How the heck can it be snowing? In the middle of SUMMER?"

Harry didn't even notice when Dudley pushed him outside to stand next to his aunt. All he could hear was Vernon when he said, "Well, this is really bad; you will never be able to travel in this Marge. You can stay until this blows over. BOY! Take your aunt's bags back up to her room!"

Silently, Harry nodded; still screaming a single word in his mind. "NOOOOOOOO!"

End flashback-

Harry watched as the sun slowly rose, he really didn't want to get up. It would mean he would lose all the warmth he had collected under his covers. Sighing, he prepared himself for the cold-air assault he knew was coming before pushing back his covers. Vernon had decided that he was unworthy of the heater. Stretching, Harry got ready to fix the expected breakfast banquet for his family when the whole foundation of the house shook.

Grabbing onto his bed frame, Harry watched as everything in his room jumped and shook. Adrenaline surged through him as Demeter, Dionysus, and Areas quickly took a protective stance around him and watched his bedroom shake. In the hallway they could clearly hear THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, with a CRASH closely following. Then everything stopped.

Harry could hear Dudley and Petunia screaming in the silence that once filled the house after what he assumed to be an earthquake. Harry was shaking from the inside out. He didn't know what happened, and, quite frankly, he wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

Harry jumped up when his bedroom door was thrown open; Vernon stood there, his eyes bulging and red. "BOY! WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO!" His bellow brought down the remaining pictures, that hadn't already fallen off of the hallway wall.

"NOTHING!" Harry held his hands up defensively to emphasize his point. "I really don't know what happened! I was just asleep when the shaking started! I swear! You know I can't do magic out of school!"

Glaring at him, Vernon was about to yell some more when Petunias voice came screeching down the hall.

"AAAAH! Vernon, Marge is DEAD!"

Harry and Vernon shared a rare surprised glance before running out of the room and down the hall. The sight that met their eyes was more horrific then anything they had ever seen, and that was saying something in Harry's case.

At the bottom of the stairs was Marge, her legs dangling in the air with her head through Harry's old bedroom, the cupboard, the smell of blood and alcohol filling the air, and the body of Ripper peeking through the rubble.

Marge was indeed dead.

Two hours ago-

After everyone had gone to bed, Marge had snuck out of her room to get the bottle of rum Vernon had hidden. Marge knew that he always had one good bottle of some alcohol hidden in the house.
She found it between the roast beef and a slab of pork. Taking a look at the date, she read that it was over two hundred years old.

"Ahh, Vernon you always had good taste, except when it came to that blasted nephew of yours."

Taking a glass from the cupboard, she planted herself on the sofa and got thoroughly smashed.

One hour and thirty minutes later would find her in a drunken depression. "Ripper, oh Ripper, how I wish you was here!" Marge had been crying over her lost dog for almost two hours, and the rum bottle only had two to three inches or rum left in it.

"Ruff!" Marge's head lifted from its drunken state and stared at the door when she heard the bark.

"Ripper!"

"Ruff!"

Giddy with both the alcohol and joy, Marge ran to the door and wrenched it open, expecting ripper to be there. "RIPPER!"

"Ruff!" Marge followed the sound of her dog through the knee deep snow. "Riper, baby, where are you? Come to mama!" She continued to follow the sound of her dog all the way to Petunias rosebushes, where, hidden amongst them, was a frozen Ripper. To Marge's drunken mind, he was alive and jumping around, happy to see her.

"Ripper, you poor baby, look how skinny you are," Marge said, grabbing the frozen Ripper and holding him against her bosom, not really knowing that she was holding a dead frozen dog. "Who did this to you Ripper, speak to me; tell me who did this!"

In Marge's drunken mind, Ripper did speak. He looked up at her and said one name: "Harry Potter."

Gasping, Marge clutched Ripper's frozen body to her hers and marched to the house, planning on giving Harry a thorough punishment. She was halfway up the stairs to Harry's room when she stopped to look at herself in the hallway mirror. The dinner from last night was stuck in her teeth. Giggling like a horse, she took a toothpick from her front pocket and proceeded to pick her teeth. In her delusional state of mind, she needed to look presentable before yelling at Harry.

She was on her last tooth when it happened. Ripper, haven been frozen, was starting to thaw out and slipped out of Marge's hands and hit the floor. Marge gasped, thereby accidentally inhaling the toothpick and starting to choke on it. She took one step forward, tripped on the slightly thawed out body of Ripper, and proceeded to fall down the stairs. The whole house shook as she fell. On the third or fourth step, her head went through the stairs and into Harry's' old bedroom, where she hit her head against the floor. She died instantly. Ripper's body slid down the stairs behind her and ran into her.

Marge had died upside down, but nobody could really tell the difference.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo

"Well, as far as we can see, she was drunk when she died. She was on the stairs, and we still don't know how this happened, but she managed to choke on a toothpick slipped on the frozen dog, and fall down the stairs and through the cupboard where she hit her head and died instantly." The forensics where explaining to the Dursleys what had happened. Two of the men where still struggling with the body of Marge, but they just couldn't move her. One of them was ordering a crane to be brought in so that they could lift her.

Meanwhile, Harry was doing a little secret dance of joy. He really couldn’t bring it in himself to feel sorry for Marge; she was cruel and evil and she was finally out of his life forever.

Half an hour later, the sun was up, the crane had arrived and Marge's body was being moved. Officer Copter started to examine the area where she died, and when he looked in the cupboard, what he found almost made him toss his dinner from the night before.
Hurrying over to his partner, he pulled him to the cupboard and showed him what he had discovered. They both stared at depressing sight.

Copter felt ill, "Oh god, who would do this!"

His partner, Officer Goodwater was shaking his head out of disappointment, but said, "I have a pretty good guess."

Both the officers looked over at the family. While the mother, father, and son were obviously well-fed and clothed, the boy who stood apart from them was skinny and his clothes oversized and tattered. Officer Copter headed for the family while Goodwater walked toward the boy.

Harry tried his best to not to smile. He knew that once everyone had cleared and he was alone again he would be blamed for this. Harry was so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn't notice that one of the officers wanted to talk to him until he felt someone tap his shoulder.
Looking over his shoulder, he saw one of the officers.

The man was a little taller then average, with brown, fuzzy hair that reminded him of Hermione, and blue eyes that reminded him of Ron and the other Weasleys.

"Yes, can I help you?"

The officer smiled at him and held out his hand, "Hello, I'm Officer Goodwater." Harry took his hand.

"I'm Harry, Harry Potter."

Goodwater's smile dimmed somewhat as he continued. "Harry, I need to talk to you, would you follow me please?" It wasn't really a question, more of a pleasant command. Sighing, Harry nodded. He was led to a cop car and put into the back seat. When the door closed, the air next to him shimmered, and there appeared next to him his guardians.

Harry leaned over to talk to them. "What's going on, what's happening?"

In his mind he heard their cryptic answer: "The beginning and the end." The car started up and Harry was driven away from number four, Privet Drive.