Chapter 2: Coming of Age

Harry Potter woke up, more alert than he normally was in the middle of the night. He had been dreaming and his mind was reeling, his memory rushing through the fresh images and sounds he had just seen and heard, yet no matter how hard he tried he couldn't make any real sense or connection of them. He felt thoroughly frustrated. Harry had been having dreams the same or similar ever since he had got back to the Dursleys, number four Privet Drive, at the beginning of the summer.

The dreams always began in the graveyard: the graveyard where Harry had seen Voldemort rise, regenerated, from Wormtail's cauldron. Voldemort would approach Harry, his red eyes gleaming; his wand poised, and he would say, a spiteful smile curling his lipless mouth: "you see, I think, how foolish it was to suppose that this boy could have ever been stronger than me." Then light. Light and song. The light was so pure and the song so beautiful that Harry felt an overwhelming sense of peace and comfort ... and moments later he would see it ... a golden key shimmering feet away, just out of reach. The next thing he knew he would be sitting in Dumbledore's office, staring across the desk at his old headmaster, who would lean forward, his blue eyes twinkling, and say: "There is a room in the Department of Mysteries that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all." Then more brilliant, bright light and beautiful song would envelope Harry, and feet from him he would see a knife-hilt but with no blade and would hear a voice he was sure he recognised; a voice shouting over and over again: "Alohomora! Alohomora!" Harry would proceed to wake with a start.

Harry pushed away his covers and got to his feet, wearing pyjamas, and he took a look at his watch, lying next to the lamp on his bedside desk. It was twenty to eleven. His room was fairly cluttered, what with bags of owl treats littering the floor, an owl cage on his windowsill with a wide-eyed snowy owl inside, piles of books lying around here there and everywhere and other curious magical artefacts dotted about - Harry thought it strange that this could be the last time he'd ever be here again, yet he had said his goodbyes to the Dursleys that evening – not that they had returned his manners. He was set to go.

"Harry," said a quiet voice. Harry whipped around; it was Dudley Dursley, sporting checked pyjamas that seemed to be stretching in front of Harry's very eyes.

Harry had called Dudley many names throughout his life, from "big D" to "pig in a wig" to "Dino the Rhino", but he had recently began to referring to him as "the canary and the blowfish's secret love-child", which was now by far his preferred choice. However, before he could utter his slightly unkind greeting, Dudley spoke again:

"It was him I saw."

"What?" asked Harry, non-plussed.

"When ... those things got me two years ago. The Dementors. I saw him ... the one who killed your parents."

"Voldemort?" exclaimed Harry, taking a step towards his cousin. Dudley nodded. "But how, Dudley, you've never seen him before?"

"I have," said Dudley. "I've dreamt about him before. More than once. The first time was years and years ago, in fact. He talked about how he killed your parents. About how he tried to kill you."

Harry stared at his cousin. This had to be joke - all Dudley had ever been to him was a bully and a nuisance.

"This isn't funny!" said Harry angrily. "What did he look like then?"

"H - h - horrible. Like a snake. Big red eyes ..." Dudley trailed off. "I saw him ... I know it ..."

Dudley, oddly, looked close to tears. Real tears, Harry noted with surprise, remembering Dudley's talent for melodramatic crocodile tears during Harry's hellish childhood with the Dursleys.

"Wow ..." replied Harry slowly, after a pause. "I - just - well, I never had any idea ..."

"Any idea of what?" asked Dudley anxiously.

"You had a vision. A magical one." Dudley was speechless. He looked half-horrified. "It's not important, Dudley, I won't tell anyone," said Harry heavily. "And I'm afraid I've got a bus to catch ... but, well, put it here Dudley."

He held out his hand. There was a long pause as the cousins stared at each other, both perhaps realizing the complete strangeness of their predicaments. Dudley looked uncertain, almost wary, but he took it, if slowly.

"I'm sorry,' he said, not quite looking at Harry as he shook his hand. "I've not been the best person to live with."

Harry almost laughed - this was so unexpected. But then Dudley suddenly let go.

"Ah, I was wondering how long the nicey-nicey stuff would last!" Harry muttered, annoyed. But Dudley wasn't listening; he looked wide-eyed; terrified.

"Don't go back!" he yelled, shaking. Harry frowned deeply.

"What Dudley –" Harry began.

"Don't go back there! Where the dog died! Don't go back!"

Dudley was tripping over himself to leave the room. 'Don't go back!' he kept yelping. Dudley was running across the landing to his room.

"Dudley - what? –" Harry had half a mind to follow him, but before he could two figures apparated in front of his very eyes.

"We best get going, Harry, before 12 ideally -" said Fred Weasley.

"I heard You-Know-Who gets cranky this time of night," added his twin brother George.

Harry grinned. "Where are we going then?"

"Grimmauld Place," the twins said together. A shadow flickered over Harry's face.

"Oh," he said, trying to remain sounding cheerful. "OK, cool."

"Your birthday's not until tomorrow, so you better side-along apparate with one of us," George told Harry, however Harry's lips curled into a smile.

"You can't be serious, since when have you ever cared about the rules?" Harry said.

"Splinching's no picnic," Fred replied earnestly.

"There's not even any food involved," George added equally seriously.

"Come on, seriously guys! I'm seventeen in what? – an hour!" said Harry half-laughing. "I managed to apparate not just myself last year but D -" The smile faded instantly from his face. George and Fred looked down at their shoes fidgeting. "Anyway," said Harry briskly, his voice suddenly alarmingly cheery. "What we going to Grimmauld Place for? The burrow's alright isn't it?"

"Yeah but it doesn't have the same strength of magical protection," Fred informed.

"Well why doesn't someone cast a stronger protective spell? - "

"I don't know," said Fred abruptly, and looking slightly surly - Harry was not convinced. "Anyway," George added. "Grimmauld Place is still the Order's HQ - and come tomorrow, when you turn 17 ... why you can be inducted if you so choose."

Harry suddenly felt slightly happier. He would finally get to fight! He could finally join the society founded by Dumbledore himself, wherein he could at last join forces with fully grown wizards to fight the dark side! Harry sighed in a sarcastically exasperated way.

"Well I was originally going to get the Night bus, but alright you got me. Side-along apparition it is. I never liked the tube, though."

"Come on, Harry," said Fred, buoyantly. "If it was a choice between apparition and a bumpy bus ride what would he choose?"

Harry truthfully couldn't decide – he held no fondness for either. "Neither, ideally," he said finally, to Fred and George's laughter.

"Well, ideally I want to get home and sleep off my headache," began Fred.

"He drank a bit too much firewhisky earlier," added George grinning. "I told him not to drink and apparate, but would he listen? I look forward to having his body parts sent to me from Switzerland if he ever drinks too much again and splinches."

Fred gave a short laugh of false amusement and held out his arm, which Harry grabbed, and within moments saw the picture of number 4 Privet Drive, so meticulously neat and suburban, dissolve before his very eyes - had he just seen it for the last time? But he had no more time to think - he suddenly felt the expected but uncomfortably bizarre feeling of being sucked into a giant hoover and barely fitting inside its tight cylinder before at last he landed on his feet, still clutching Fred's sleeve though he released him quickly and steadied himself on his feet.

He looked at a place he hadn't visited since its previous owner had died, yet now Harry knew that it was his, whether reluctantly so or not. He knew tomorrow was the day he would officially come of age in the terms of Wizarding law, but it was today he had walked out of the home he had lived in since the age of one; today that he had said goodbye to the only family he knew; today that he had started drawing up the plans for his journey to hunt down Voldemort's horcruxes - Harry knew that today, although not his birthday, he had come of age. Today he had joined the big, daunting world of adulthood.