Chapter 1 – Letters

Harry Potter had lived with his aunt, Petunia, her husband, Vernon Dursley, and their son, Dudley for as long as he could remember. Harry's parents had died in an accident when he was only a year old, and with no other living relatives, Harry had been sent to live with his aunt. Life at Number Four, Privet Drive hadn't been so bad, although Harry did think sometimes in his moodier moments that was only because he had nothing to compare it to.

Harry and Dudley had attended the same primary school, and although Dudley had never been especially nasty to Harry, the other boy had always been a bit of a bully, which meant that Harry had lacked close friends through fear of his cousin. It had improved massively after the end of primary school when Dudley went to Smeltings—a stuffy public school which the Dursleys could only afford due to special legacy discounts from Vernon's own attendance as a schoolboy—and Harry went to the local comprehensive school, Stonewall High.

At first, Harry had been a little bit jealous of Dudley, and more than a bit afraid of going to Stonewall High where everyone said the older students flushed incoming year sevens' heads in the toilets on the first day. Even so, he had relished the opportunity to be known as someone other than Dudley Dursley's weird cousin, and at least the school uniform didn't have a stupid hat or stick attached to it.

In the end he hadn't needed to worry at all, as he made fast friends with several students from some of the other primary schools in Stonewall's catchment area on the very first day, and he'd stuck with them ever since. The rumours about the older students turned out to be completely false—most of them were totally uninterested in the year sevens. Harry's first year passed into his second in almost the blink of an eye, and then his second was already almost over.

It was the last day of term of year eight—the very last day of school before the summer holidays. Thankfully the teachers had long since given up on trying to teach, and the last week of term had been spent drawing, watching films, and generally chilling out after the end of exams.

Harry lounged in his chair and pushed the piece of paper with his hangman on it to Stevie, his best friend at school—and in general.

"Okay, try this one."

Stevie ignored him, and instead stared at the TV, where Miss Jones had put on a taped compilation of Mr Bean episodes.

"Oi, Stevie! It's your turn."

Stevie turned to look down at the paper.

"Oh, um… um… A," he said.

"Yes," said Harry. He took the paper back and marked As down where they were in his hangman word.

"Okay, what about V?"

"No!" said Harry. "Try again."

"Ugh! Stop being boring, you two!" said Olivia, leaning over from the table she shared with Sophia Thomas, interrupting. "Let me tell your future! C'mon, it's really fun!" She waggled her paper fortune teller at the two boys.

Stevie gave an exaggerated sigh.

"Go on then," he said.

"Harry, you should go first," said Olivia. "Ask me anything!" She paused. "Well, not anything… you know what I mean."

Harry considered what he could ask. Girls usually wanted boys to ask things like 'Does so-and-so fancy me?' or 'Will I get married?' or even 'How many kids will I have?', but Harry didn't feel like asking for anything like that. For one, he didn't care about the answer to any of those questions, and for two, he didn't want to give Olivia the opportunity to ambush him with something awful like 'Sophia Thomas fancies you and you're going to marry her and have ten kids'.

Instead, he thought of a completely neutral—from Olivia's perspective, anyway—question.

"Will my cousin Dudley finally have lost the weight when he comes home from Smeltings this year?"

Olivia's face fell, but she recovered really quickly.

"Alright. Pick a number."

"Erm… Five?"

"No, it has to be from one to four." She rolled her eyes, as if Harry had said something especially stupid.

"Oh, sorry. Three?"

Olivia moved the paper fortune teller through the motions and then stopped.

"Pick one of these colours." She pointed down towards the inside of the fortune teller.

Harry decided at random.

"Blue."

Olivia moved the fortune teller four times to match the number of letters in the word blue, and then gave her next instruction.

"Pick another number!"

"Alright, two."

Olivia moved the paper fortune teller two more steps and then revealed the answer to Harry's question.

"Yes!" she said, and giggled. "Well, we know this doesn't work then, since that's never going to happen." She handed Harry the fortune teller. "Okay, now it's your turn to do my fortune!"

"Do you fancy Sophia Thomas?" asked Olivia through a series of giggles. Next to her, Sophia turned bright red, but didn't say anything.

Harry groaned, and pushed the fortune teller back at Olivia, who refused to take it. Harry had known this was what Olivia had wanted from the get-go, and he wasn't having any of it.

"You can't, you've got to do it, it's your turn!" Olivia said. "It's only a game, and it's the last day of school…" She sighed and started to pout, and Harry knew it was better to just give in.

"Ugh, fine, I'll do it," said Harry, although he wasn't happy. "Pick a number."

"Four!"

Harry moved through the motions as quickly as he could, then asked the overly-eager girl to pick a colour. She chose yellow, and after Harry went through the motions for that, he asked for her final number. She chose three. After finishing, a strange feeling shot up right up the back of Harry's neck, then back down his arm and through his hand—like what happened sometimes when he got especially angry or upset and something strange happened. He shook it off and then peeled open the inner page and read off the answer.

"It says, 'No, never. Stop asking.'"

"No it doesn't!" said Olivia. "I didn't write that in there. What does it really say?"

Harry shrugged.

"It does say that. Look, Stevie, see?" Harry showed Stevie the fortune teller, then showed it to Olivia.

"But… It can't say that," said Olivia. She peeled open all four pages of the inside of the fortune teller. "I put 'yes' for every one, just as a joke, but… now they all say 'No, never. Stop asking'!" She frowned. "You must have swapped it for a different one!" she said.

Harry turned red at the accusation. He hadn't swapped them—he hadn't had the time, nor the foreknowledge, to do so—but strange things did often happen around him, things that he couldn't usually control and couldn't ever explain. At his cousin's eleventh birthday trip to the zoo Harry had spoken to a snake, and it had spoken back, which was admittedly rather strange in and of itself – but then the glass screen keeping the snake inside its exhibit had inexplicably disappeared, frightening his cousin and causing his uncle to nearly have a stroke as the snake slithered away hissing its farewell to Harry.

Several years before that, he'd ended up on the roof of his primary school when he could have sworn all he'd done was jump normally during a game of hopscotch. And not even two months ago Mr Piper had scheduled a mock maths exam for all of 8N and Harry hadn't done any revision at all; he'd spent all day worrying about it until when the lesson came in the afternoon, every time Mr Piper tried handing out the exam sheet to Harry the window blew open and a freak gust of wind scattered every last one all over the room. Eventually Mr Piper had gotten so frustrated he stormed out of the room and the test hadn't gone ahead.

So although he felt like he couldn't have knowingly done anything to change the pouting girl's fortune teller, he couldn't strictly speaking insist that he hadn't done anything truthfully. Not that he could say that to Stevie or Olivia, or anyone really—if he started to talk about what could only be described as psychic powers or magic or anything like that people would think he was a weirdo, and he'd had enough of that at primary school. He definitely didn't want to become known as 'that Potter boy who thinks he's a wizard'. Harry knew it was sometimes better to lie than to tell the truth.

"Well, I bloody didn't!" Harry said eventually. "How could I have? You both saw me! I just took the stupid thing off you and did exactly what I was supposed to." He shrugged. "I don't know what you want me to say."

"But it doesn't even say 'yes' once, and it said that when you asked your question," said Olivia. She had unfolded the entire fortune teller to look at what it said on each part. "Look. I know I didn't write that…" She shook her head. "I wouldn't have." Ske kept staring down at the paper fortune teller, turning it over and over in her hands.

"Well, I didn't do anything," said Harry. "So you must have." He did feel a little bit uneasy at telling her that, since he thought maybe he had done something unusual, but what else could he have done? Better to lie than come off like a loon.

Thankfully, the school bell rang to signal the end of the lesson – and the school year with it – giving Harry the chance to change the subject and if necessary, escape.

"Alright, guys!" shouted Miss Jones over the cacophony of thirty children all suddenly packing away their things and getting excited at the end of the school year. "Have a great summer holiday and I'll see you all again next year! Remember you don't need to run, you can all just walk out the door slowly!"

Almost none of the children listened, Harry among them. He stuffed his things back into his backpack and shot up out of his chair, leaving a bewildered Olivia still sat in her chair staring at the fortune teller. Harry joined the melee at the classroom door and eventually found his way out. He sped off down the corridor and joined the mass of students on their way out of the school.

Once out of the school gates most of the students headed off towards the bus stops, but Harry lived close enough to the school that he didn't need to bother. He didn't mind walking, and in any case Olivia would have caught the same bus as him, since she lived on Wisteria Walk which was only a street over from Privet Drive, and Harry didn't feel like an interrogation that afternoon.

After a while Stevie caught up to him, and fell into the place beside him.

"You alright, mate?"

Harry nodded.

"Good," said Stevie. "Fancy going to hang out by the park for a bit?"

Harry nodded eagerly. Both his aunt and uncle would be gone until much later in the evening, as they had to collect Dudley from Smeltings and drive him home, so he had nowhere to be. Stevie's parents both worked long hours and the other boy often had to let himself in, so he didn't have anyone expecting him home for a few hours at least either. The park was close to Harry's house and usually empty just after school, so Harry didn't mind going there at all.

The pair made their way to the park, chatting amiably about all sorts of essentially unimportant things such as which teachers they could have the next year, and whether the headmaster would finally retire, to gossip about people at school.

When they reached the ramshackle, somewhat neglected park, they headed right for the lone pair of swings, dumped their backpacks against the posts, and leaned against the swing seats to chat. Eventually their conversation turned to Harry's upcoming birthday.

"You're still coming to my birthday, right?" asked Harry. "My aunt booked us a table at the Pizza Express in town, and I was thinking we should go and see Jurassic Park, as well."

"Yeah, definitely!" said Stevie. "I wanted to go see it when it first came out but Mum said I had to do well in the exams! Who else is going?"

Harry shrugged.

"I was going to ask Olivia and Jessica, but then I would have had to invite Sophia as well, so I didn't," said Harry. "But I did ask Rishi and Johnny, and they said yes too. So my aunt just booked for four."

Stevie stopped swinging.

"Which Johnny? Johnny B or Johnny F?"

"Don't worry, Johnny B obviously!" Harry said, and laughed. He stopped swinging and took a look at his watch. "Oh, bugger! How is it five o'clock already? They'll be back with Dudley soon… I'd better go and make sure I'm there before they are. You know how my aunt gets when she doesn't know where I am…"

Stevie grimaced and nodded.

"No worries. I'll see you at the weekend, or next week, anyway," said the other boy. "And then on your birthday definitely!"

"See you later!" said Harry. He slid off the swing, picked up his backpack, and set off for home. The park was just on Wisteria Walk, so he didn't have far to go to reach Privet Drive anyway. He passed a series of identical detached houses, distinguished only by the colours of the doors and the flowers in the small front gardens, until he reached Number 4, the house he shared with his aunt, uncle, and in the school holidays, his cousin.

Harry fished in his trouser pocket for his key, then unlocked the door to let himself in. He dumped his bag at the bottom of the stairs and switched on the television before heading into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. Last year they'd got home with Dudley at quarter to six, and hadn't had anything for dinner until gone seven.

He took his sandwich into the living room and flopped down into his uncle's chair to watch television while he waited.


Harry spent the next fortnight alternating between lounging about the house taking turns with Dudley to control the television, and spending time around Little Whinging with those of his friends who lived near.

Harry woke to the sound of Mr Jones's lawnmower as it battled the menace of unkempt grass. He stayed in bed for several minutes after that, hoping to get back to sleep, but it was a non-starter.

Harry sighed and got up off his bed. It was still early enough that soon, his aunt Petunia would be knocking on his door and screeching for him to attend breakfast—although quite why she wanted him and Dudley there every day when it clearly made the experience of eating worse for all involved was beyond Harry—so he pre-empted her and slunk downstairs to help lay the table.

Harry ignored Vernon's muttering at the television as he walked past the living room and entered the kitchen where his aunt stood at the stove appearing to cook, but Harry knew she was actually peering out the window to see what the neighbours were up to. Harry thought she looked like a bony giraffe, always craning her neck to see just what Mrs Jones, one door down, or Mr Parker, one door up, were doing in their gardens. God forbid Mr Gupta, one up opposite, had family visiting—once, Harry thought his aunt's head would pop clean off as she tried to get a good view of his guests.

"Shall I set the table, Aunt Petunia?" he asked. Petunia shook her head.

"Watch the bacon and eggs," she said, stuffing a kitchen towel in her front pocket. "It's time for Dudders to get up; he can't stay in bed all morning although Lord knows he would!"

Harry just nodded and turned towards the bacon and eggs. They were on too low, since his aunt spent more time looking out the window than cooking, so he turned them up a bit and got himself a glass of water as his aunt rushed out of the room. He peered out the window himself, and grinned when he saw that the Joneses were doing something in the street with their car and some suitcases.

Going on holiday probably, he thought, which meant his aunt had gone upstairs to look out the window at them. No doubt breakfast would be sprinkled with comments about tacky suitcases or whatever perfectly normal thing Mrs Jones had been wearing.

After only a few minutes Petunia reappeared in the kitchen followed by a sleepy and frown-faced Dudley holding his Smeltings stick, even though school was over for the year. The tall, almost too-thin, woman immediately got out a glass and some orange juice for Dudley, and then took over the eggs and bacon with a mumbled 'thank you, Harry'.

"Both of you out! Duddy, darling, be a popsy and say good morning to Daddy; Harry, don't be a nuisance, you know how your uncle gets in the mornings."

Harry moved out of the kitchen quickly to avoid Dudley's stick, which he had been using to poke Harry on and off since receiving it. He slipped into the living room quietly in the hope that Dudley's entrance would make him invisible to his uncle, but no such luck.

"What was that your aunt said about you being a nuisance, boy?" he said, peering over the paper.

"She said not to be one, not that I was being one," Harry said quickly. If not appeased, Vernon was apt to hand out pointless tasks like they were sweets.

"Hmmm." Vernon put the paper down and looked over Harry and Dudley. "The both of you going to spend the whole day indoors again? When I was your age…"

"Dad, there's cartoons on," said Dudley in reply, reaching forward with a fat hand to grab at the television remote on Vernon's side-table. He sat down on the sofa and threw its many lacy cushions onto the floor, and started pushing buttons to locate his favourite channel.

Harry didn't wait long before he sat down, too, although as far away from Dudley as he could manage. During the summers they had to take turns deciding which channel to watch, although Dudley always seemed to 'forget' when it was Harry's turn. Mercifully the main channels really only ever seemed to show things aimed at children Harry and Dudley's age in the summer, so it wasn't so bad really.

After only a few minutes the letterbox clanged, and Vernon looked up briefly from his paper.

"Dudley, get the post, there's a good lad," he said.

Dudley grunted.

"Make Harry do it."

"Harry, get the post."

"Make Dudley do it," said Harry, "he could do with the exercise."

"Harry, just go get the post. There's a good lad," said Vernon.

Harry, not having to be told again, shot up from his footstool and went to collect the post. It wasn't fair, of course, since he never got any letters addressed to him anyway, except from school, but Vernon never liked to get the post at the weekend.

He picked up the stack of letters and sorted through them idly. One was a postcard from Petunia's friend Yvonne on holiday somewhere warm and nice, another some kind of circular for his uncle, a magazine for his aunt, and a strange-looking letter on something Harry was sure wasn't paper addressed, inexplicably, to him.

Harry stared at the letter – his letter, his first letter – and traced the ornate wax seal with his finger. It's definitely a fancy letter, he thought, but he had trouble imagining what sort of person would send a wax-sealed letter on fancy paper to Harry Potter. Nevertheless someone had done so, and they had even gotten his bedroom right.

Mr Harry Potter

Number 4 Privet Drive,

The Smallest Bedroom,

Little Whinging, Surrey

Harry hadn't ever heard of people getting letters addressed down to the bedroom, but then he hadn't ever seen a letter quite like the one he held in his hands, either.

"Got lost on the way, did you?" shouted Vernon from the living room. Harry ignored him. Instead he took one more look at the letter – noting again the collection of animals on some sort of crest pressed into the wax seal – and then tucked his letter under his t-shirt before returning to give his uncle the letters.

He sat back down on the footstool, this time angled away from his uncle, and started to open his letter.

"Dad, Harry's got a letter," said Dudley suddenly. "He's opening it and everything!"

"That is what you do with letters, yeah," Harry said. He shrugged. "It's addressed to me," said Harry, "so I don't see what it has to do with you."

"Who'd be writing to… you," said Vernon as he turned a worse shade of purple than usual. He got up from his chair faster than Harry had ever seen him move, though still with all the grace of a fish on land, and snatched the letter from Harry's hands.

"No, you don't!" said Vernon. "We'll be having none of this, not in this house! We swore…" He left the room just as suddenly as he'd got up and stormed into the kitchen, where he immediately slammed the door shut behind him.

Harry looked at Dudley and then ran towards the kitchen door where he stuck his ear next to the edge of the door. It didn't matter Harry had got there first, of course, since Dudley pushed him out of the way, but Harry pressed his ear to the bottom of the door to get a listen.

"Of course it's them," hissed Petunia. "Who else could it be? Look at the name, Vernon!"

"I thought so… but what should we do?" said Vernon. "We swore, we did, that when we took him in we'd put an end to all that nonsense… It's just safer is what it is, for everyone."

"Burn the letter," suggested Petunia. "Maybe if we don't answer they'll leave it alone… Those people have done enough damage already. Heaven help us, they'll have the sense to leave it be this time."

From his listening post at the bottom of the door Harry heard someone open and close the kitchen draws, although neither his aunt nor his uncle spoke again. A few moments later Vernon opened the kitchen door and ushered the two boys in.

"Where's my letter?" demanded Harry.

"What letter?" said Vernon as he sat down at the kitchen table. "You didn't get any letters."

"Breakfast is ready," said Petunia, full of cheer as she plated up three sets of breakfast – a heap of eggs and bacon with four sausages for Vernon, a 'child's portion' with only three sausages for Dudley, and a much more appropriately sized version for Harry.

Defeated, Harry sat down to breakfast and wondered about his letter.


The following morning Harry had been given twice the usual number of household tasks. It had started with a clipped, 'water the plants, please' from his aunt Petunia, followed by a 'sort out the videotapes' from his uncle Vernon, who reckoned it would take Harry until 'at least up to lunch'. Harry knew they had been trying to get his mind off the letter that had arrived for him the previous day, but it had practically been all he'd thought about that morning anyway. He thought that if letter had been something important whoever had sent it would try again. He would just have to wait and see.

Harry put another one of his aunt's fitness videos (that he had never seen her use and which he suspected never had been used) into its place in the video cabinet. The job, he decided, wouldn't have been quite so large if Dudley didn't keep putting videos back into whichever random case he found.

Harry looked at the pile of 'to-be-sorted' tapes on the floor. His uncle had taken Dudley out into the garden to supervise him using the lawnmower, and his aunt had taken the opportunity to clean upstairs without distraction, so Harry didn't have anyone watching over him or getting in the way, which meant he'd been making excellent progress. He decided to go get himself a glass of orange juice from the kitchen.

Harry took a glass out of the cupboard and then went to the fridge to get the orange juice, seizing the opportunity to grab a fat strawberry from the box, and poured himself a drink.

TAP TAP TAP!

Harry jumped in his spot and nearly dropped his glass when he saw, tapping at the kitchen window, an owl. A fairly large owl with brown feathers and talons that, if they scratched the window, would be entirely Harry's fault.

"Is that a letter?" he said, peering closely at the owl—from a safe distance, since he'd been wary of the permanence of glass ever since the Birthday Incident. He leaned over to open the window when a loud, piercing shriek accompanied by a furious stomping from upstairs distracted him.

Petunia came thundering down the stairs quicker – and harder – than Harry had ever seen her move before, followed by a nominally awake Dudley several moments later.

"Don't you dare!" Petunia said as she waved her towel at the owl. "Not today!"

The owl, to its credit, simply tapped on the window again.

"Vernon! Vernon! Do something!"

As Harry's uncle was in the garden with Dudley, his aunt's shrieking resulted in only a startled and frustrated owl, but Harry had seen enough of his aunt's hysterics to realise saying so would be unhelpful. He moved out of the way of the window just in case she decided to get proactive.

"I think the owl has a letter, Aunt Petunia," he decided to say instead.

"Vernon! Vernon!" shouted Petunia again, and after what seemed to Harry an agonisingly long time, the large man appeared in the kitchen doorway, his only slightly less large son behind him. "It's an owl! With a letter!"

At this, Harry's whale of an uncle lurched into action, brushing Harry aside as he grasped the first thing he found – a wooden spoon – which he rapped on the window in an attempt to scare the bird off. When it didn't work, Vernon grunted and swore, then opened the window to poke at the owl with his spoon.

Instead of flying away properly chastised as his uncle no doubt intended, the owl sailed past the thronged Dursleys to drop a letter into Harry's hands, left its mess on the floor and flew away. In the ensuing chaos as the Dursleys struggled to understand exactly what had happened, Harry looked down at the letter in his hands and saw that it was (again) a letter for him. A fancy letter written on a strange kind of paper and delivered by an owl, but a letter addressed to him nevertheless. It must have been the same people sending it, even if they had used an owl this time instead of the Royal Mail.

Before he could even think of opening it Harry's aunt snatched it from his hands and stuffed it into her pocket. Then, she turned to the sink and pretended to wash up the dishes and plates she had already washed that morning, as if nothing at all had happened.

"Why does Harry get a letter from an owl and I don't?" said Dudley, wringing up his face into the tell-tale sign of a feigned tantrum.

"I want my letter," said Harry firmly as he placed his glass onto the kitchen counter. "An owl delivered it right to me! It's mine and I want it, you can't keep it away from me." He stomped his foot on the floor and the glass of orange juice shattered where it sat on the counter, spilling the juice and sending glass across the room.

"Bloody, fucking, owls!" said Vernon. "Get out! Both of you! Now!"

He ushered both Harry and Dudley out of the kitchen, then slammed shut the door. Harry stood, mouth agape, since it was a rare thing indeed for his cousin to be dismissed like that. Usually Dudley's tantrums resulted in everything he'd wanted and more, which was why he kept having them.

"Who keeps writing to you?" said Dudley crossly. He thumped Harry on the arm hard as he walked past him to go to the living room, while Harry pressed his ear to the door to listen to his aunt and uncle – to no avail, as the pair had seemingly learned to communicate via telepathy, as neither Dursley said anything Harry could hear.


On Thursday morning Vernon had decided not to go to work so he could catch the Thursday post, which Harry had never known him to do but which he knew had to be because of Harry's letters, and his aunt had spent the morning packing suitcases for everyone in the family.

His best guess was that his aunt and uncle had decided to avoid the letters entirely by just leaving the house, which he had to admit was a good plan since even if the owls knew where he lived and could carry letters to him, it would be impossible for them to know where he was going to be.

Harry had been sent to his room to collect some of his things for the journey with a warning to 'be quick about it', so he pocketed his yoyo, a set of travel games in case Dudley was something approaching agreeable, grabbed a couple of his books, and then left his bedroom. He snuck a look at Dudley's room as he passed, and saw that his cousin had attempted to fit his computer, telly, and several other toys in his travel bag, and failed. He sniggered.

"Decided not to take your bike then, Duds?" he said. "Good choice – I mean, it's not like you can fit on it anyway, right?"

Harry left before Dudley worked out what he'd said, and went downstairs to sit in the living room where his uncle Vernon stood looking over a variety of maps of the UK and Ireland.

"Uncle Vernon," said Harry slowly, "where exactly are we going?"

Vernon ignored him and muttered something as he circled a few different locations on his maps with a red pen. "Yes, yes… that'll do," he said, then he frowned and opened another map – this time a roadmap that looked like France. "Can't send letters to France, can they!" he said, and chuckled to himself, still ignoring Harry.

Harry shrugged and sat on his footstool. He had never been to France or anywhere outside of Great Britain, although Harry didn't know whether he even had a passport. He found that he didn't mind all that much where they went, so long as they were back in time for his birthday. If it looked like they weren't going to be, Harry was ready to say something.

He slyly took the television remote and switched the channel to something a bit more interesting – Vernon had it on some awful morning chat show where they were talking about some sort of escaped convict – and watched it quietly for the next hour.

In that time his uncle and had come and gone, fetching new maps and scribbling on bits and pieces of paper, and every now and again would ask Petunia (who had finished packing) something in hushed tones with furtive glances at Harry. At one point Vernon spent an awkward ten minutes on the phone to his sister to cancel her upcoming visit – something which Harry thought was the best possible outcome for all involved even if they hadn't been about to go on an impromptu holiday.

Dudley hadn't come downstairs all morning since being told to pick toys to take with him, though nobody – least of all Harry – had really paid Dudley that much thought until it was time to go.

Harry had been sent to the car already to wait on his own, which was a marvel in itself, whilst Petunia tried coaxing Dudley out of his bedroom. The problem hinged on what Dudley wanted to bring with him, which as far as Harry could tell, included almost everything in his bedroom (with the exception of his books, which were only ever used to throw at Harry anyway).

About fifteen minutes later, a white-faced Petunia came out of the house followed by a scowling Vernon leading Dudley – red-faced and rubbing his bottom – out of the house. Without anyone saying a word, although Dudley occasionally whimpered, the Dursleys and Harry left Privet Drive quickly.

After a few hours of driving – north, Harry thought, but only because Surrey was already almost as far south as you could go and still be in England – Dudley had recovered enough his of dignity to ask, loudly, where they were going and whether there would be a television there. After about an hour of Dudley asking, and being ignored, Petunia turned to the back of the car to address him.

"Duddy, darling, we're here, and we're going to stay the night near to where Mummy used to live, isn't that nice?" she said, and although she said it with a smile, Harry could see it was strained. Still, he'd learnt something he never knew about his own mum, which is that she had lived wherever 'here' was. He sat up straighter in his seat to have a look around, and saw row after row of thin terraced houses, and eventually he spotted a grimy sign that read COKEWORTH, although it looked like someone had scratched out the E. Harry spent the rest of the journey looking out at the streets and buildings, imagining that in one park, his mum had played as a little girl, or that in another, she'd met his dad. Eventually, as the summer night got darker, the car pulled up to a dingy little hotel. Flickering lights above the entrance told Harry it was called The Railview Hotel, and Harry found himself being ushered inside a grotty reception area.

Vernon stepped up to the desk and checked in – apparently having booked over the telephone, although Harry hadn't seen him do it before they'd left – and upon hearing the name 'Dursley', Harry noticed the receptionist got a bit of a funny look and set the room keys down behind the desk.

She paused, then looked under the desk for something.

"Is there a Harry Potter with you, by any chance?" she said, pulling out a wad of letters. "Only, we have all these, they're addressed to your room number, you see, and they've even got 'The Dursley Room' on them, and they arrived this afternoon not long after you made the booking…"

Harry looked on in amazement as his uncle spluttered something incomprehensible, and his aunt snatched the letters from the receptionist. He eyed the wad hungrily, and thought quite hard on whether he could manage to nick one without his aunt realising.

"Thank you very much," said Petunia with a tight smile. "May we have the keys?"

Vernon, still spluttering and muttering darkly, guided Harry and Dudley away from the reception area as Petunia got the keys from the receptionist. As the Dursleys and Harry walked upstairs, the elder Dursleys carried on a hushed conversation Harry managed to overhear in bits and pieces.

"…leave the country, France…" said Vernon.

"…hasn't got a passport," said Petunia, followed by something hissed too low for him to hear, "…not supposed to just leave, anyway."

"...interfering so-and-sos," said Vernon, "bloody freaks … ought to write a letter to the Queen," he said.

"We should…" said Petunia, "…they don't like public places," she said. "Here we are," she said eventually and loudly as she located their room. Dudley practically ran in as soon as the door opened in search of a television, whilst Harry had to be herded in by his uncle. Petunia remained outside the room for several minutes, and when she returned, Harry could see no trace of his letters.

After a tense argument with his aunt, Harry sat on his collapsible bed – Dudley had taken the standard single, which Harry supposed was fair since he wouldn't have fit on the collapsible one anyway – and eventually drifted off to sleep thinking about his upcoming birthday and owls that delivered letters.


Breakfast at the Railview turned out to be what Vernon called 'cheap and cheerful', though judging by the look on Petunia's face, Harry could tell she didn't share his enthusiasm for that fact. The long-faced woman kept looking around the somewhat cramped dining room at the Railview as if waiting for one of the neighbours to catch her in such a place, and had even at one point taken antiseptic wipes from her purse to wipe over the cutlery and table. When her breakfast had arrived – two slices of toast and a bottle of water – she had picked at it listlessly, eventually setting it to one side and staring off out of the room's solitary, netted window silently with an occasional anxious glance at her watch.

Vernon seemed entirely oblivious to his wife's displeasure at her surroundings, and instead tucked in to his 'Belly Buster Breakfast' with gusto, only pausing to make rude remarks about one thing or another, his favourite subjects being the 'European Community' and 'single teenage mothers'. Dudley, whenever his father stopped talking, nodded and filled the silence with his own comments and observations.

Everyone ignored Harry, but Harry found he didn't really mind. The dining room was empty apart from the Dursleys, Harry, and the tiniest man Harry had ever seen sitting in the corner nearest the door. Harry thought his uncle must not have noticed the little man, since he never usually missed an opportunity to comment on oddly-dressed strangers, which the man surely was. The tiny man wore a smart suit complete with overcoat with tails and a top-hat in a style that Harry assumed had last been fashionable a hundred and fifty years earlier, but which was emerald green and looked brand new, and was wholly out of place for somewhere like the Railview Hotel.

"We need to decide where we're going," said Petunia eventually in the lull between Vernon and Dudley speaking. "We can't stay here, they already know we're here," she said in a hushed tone. "I should have realised… Maybe we should have gone to Wales instead."

"I've got some ideas about that," said Vernon smugly, "don't you worry, Pet. I've had a look and found a nice little place, out-of-the-way, see. No postman and too far for any… any funny business with owls. Too far for them to fly, you'll see. It's the perfect place!"

Petunia made a non-committal noise Harry had only ever heard directed at people outside the family before, then shook her head.

"These… people," she said slowly, "don't think like we do. They aren't like normal people, Vernon. You remember the—" Petunia said, but then stopped herself. "Well, they do have rules, and I think we should stay somewhere very public. They don't like normal people seeing them go about their business. It's a small mercy but it's the one we have."

"If this is about my letter," said Harry in what he hoped was a very firm tone, "I think you should just tell me what's going on." It was his letter, after all, and both his aunt and uncle seemed to know something about the people who had sent it. Enough that Harry thought they should tell him, at least. "And then I can decide what we do."

"Shut up, Harry," said Vernon.

"Be quiet, Harry, your uncle and I are talking," said Petunia.

This brief agreement in what should be done ended as abruptly as it began, and the two grown-up Dursleys went straight back to arguing about what to do next. Harry hadn't expected his demand to actually work, but it would have been nice for it to have been considered.

Harry and even Dudley stared as the pair witnessed the first proper argument between the elder Durlseys that either boy could remember, consisting mainly of 'now see here's from Vernon and 'I do see, Vernon's from Petunia, with the occasional hushed reference to Harry and the mysterious people the family apparently, and quite suddenly, needed to hide from.

"Have you ever heard them argue like this before?" asked Harry of Dudley quietly. The other boy shook his head.

"Once, they had row about something Mum said to Mrs Jones, but that wasn't anything like this," said Dudley frowning. All three Dursleys and Harry were interrupted by a soft but authoritative cough from next to their table.

The arguing stopped and everyone looked in the direction of the voice to find the small middle-aged man in the green suit had got up and walked towards their table. He didn't cut a particularly imposing figure.

"I am terribly sorry to interrupt what is clearly a deeply personal family matter," said the tiny man, his tone surprisingly firm and not at all apologetic, "but there are arrangements to be made, and I see now that waiting until later is not an option."