Chapter 3
The First Day Back

6:35 a.m., Tuesday, 23rd July, 1991
Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey

BAM-BAM-BAM. Aunt Petunia yelled, "Wake up, boy, and fix us breakfast!"

Most of Harry's day was taken up by chores, whilst fat Dudley either sat in the sitting room watching the telly, or Dudley went out to hang out with Piers and his other friends—bullying neighbourhood children in the process.

Harry did all of his chores without complaint, and worked his chores up to his aunt and uncle's high standards. Why not? The Dursleys' happy world was about to end; let them enjoy their last day with everything "normal."

Tomorrow, Harry would get a quite special letter, addressed to "The cupboard under the stairs." The last time this happened, Petunia and Vernon had felt panic, and Harry himself had been too bewildered by events to take advantage of his terrible relatives. But not so, this time.

Whilst Harry was working on chores, he made two pleasant discoveries.

The first was that with the horcrux in his scar now dead, his glasses blurred his vision till he took the glasses off. As soon as Harry discovered that his bad eyesight was gone, he "accidentally" stepped on his glasses and broke them. He was sure that the Dursleys would not offer to replace them.

Besides the fact that the glasses had made his vision worse this morning, Harry had another reason for getting rid of them. On 1st September, Wizarding Britain would be expecting a boy who wore glasses. Would they still recognise this same boy without glasses?

Harry's other happy discovery of today also related to the horcrux in his scar: For the first time that he could remember, touching his scar no longer hurt.

When Harry finished his chores, he climbed the stairs to the attic. He did not visit the attic often—the attic in winter was arctic cold, whilst the attic in late July was an oven. Aunt Petunia did not forbid Harry from visiting the attic today—perhaps she secretly hoped that her freak nephew would die of heatstroke.

What Aunt Petunia did not know was that Harry would be spending only a few minutes in the attic.

As soon as Harry shut the attic door and switched on the naked lightbulb, he said lowly, "Greyclay, Harry Potter calls you."

Pop.

Harry had never seen this house-elf before. Greyclay was a bit younger than Kreacher, and much older than Dobby. Greyclay's eyes were grey. He was wearing a shrunk-down grey tuxedo and black cummerbund, with what must be the Potter crest on his left breast.

The house-elf was looking at Harry with total hope.

Greyclay all but begged, "Master Harry Potter is ready to lead the Potter family now?"

Harry smiled. "In eight days I will be eleven, and I plan to claim my Heir ring. As soon as I can get a key to the Potter family vaults"—Harry did not tell Greyclay that this might happen when Harry was fourteen, not seventeen—"I plan to return Potter Manor to its former glory."

Greyclay was beaming. "We Potter elves are ready to serve Master Harry Potter!"

"My first order is to let me meet my other house-elves, and I want to see for myself how badly damaged Potter Manor is."

Greyclay held out a hand and Harry took it. An instant later, Potter stood in the kitchen of Potter Manor, with Greyclay and three other excited house-elves in front of him.

The house-elves were grinning, Harry noticed, but their legs were shaky. Harry recognised the symptom: his house-elves were magically weak. Harry pushed magic from his core into each of the four elves until he started to feel dizzy—but by then, the house-elves' shaky-legs problem was gone.

When Harry was given a tour of Potter Manor, he learnt that the wards all were down. A corner of the roof was gone; underneath that collapsed roof, there was a ground-to-roof slit where two sides of the house were supposed to meet. Several rooms of the manor house were exposed to rain and snow, and to small animals. But at least the library and the kitchen were undamaged.

Harry gave the house-elves his thoughts: "It will be years before I'll be given a key to the Potter family vaults; until then, the only money I can spend on home repair is what's in my trust vault. But whilst I can't fix the manor house yet, I'll gladly fix you loyal Potter elves. Anytime, if you need a magical recharge, come see me. Now, the only limit on this is that if I'm at the house of my relatives in Surrey, I ask you to come with a Notice-Me-Not spell already applied on yourself, otherwise life will quickly turn nasty for me."

Next, Harry used part of the power that Thanatos had granted him. Harry walked over to the kitchen table and said, "I summon the Potter family Invisibility Cloak, which Thanatos once gave to Ignotus Peverell."

The Invisibility Cloak appeared, folded, on the kitchen table. When not worn, the Cloak appeared to be made of silver-coloured satin.

Harry said, "Elves, hurry! Sewn into this Cloak is a cotton thread that is the same colour of silver, but which has tracking charms and maybe other spells on it. Find that thread, get it away from the Cloak without damaging the Cloak, then cancel all the charms and spells on the thread!"

It took only seconds for four house-elves, working together, to do this.

When Greyclay told Harry that the cloak was completely spell-free, Harry said, "Let's test it out."

Harry unfolded the Invisibility Cloak and laid it atop his head. The three youngest house-elves gasped.

Stepping as quietly as he could, Harry walked away from the kitchen table. None of the house-elves turned to watch him move; they all were staring at the spot by the table where he had been—

—until one of his trainers scuffed against the floor. Then all four elves turned to face him.

When Harry pulled the Cloak off his head, he was laughing. "Elves, I am so pleased! Now, let's make the test harder. Greyclay, please put silencing charms on my trainers."

When this was done, Harry said, "Now, I promise I won't leave the kitchen. When the Cloak makes me invisible, Potter house-elves, I want you to use every spell you can think of, to find me when you know I'm in the kitchen but invisible."

The house-elves failed totally. Even when Harry stood two feet in front of a house-elf, that house-elf had no suspicion that Harry was anywhere close to him.

Harry gave to his four house-elves, thirty minutes to find him. They did not find him. When Harry pulled off the Invisibility Cloak the second time, he was grinning like Luna Lovegood being given a gallon of pudding. As Harry walked over to the kitchen table and folded up the Cloak, he said aloud, "Oh my, Albus and Tommy, I can have such fun with you lot—but you'd never know it, would you?"

Whilst at Potter Manor, Harry went searching for an ancestral wand that was compatible with him. The wand of Haroldus Cyrus Potter turned out to be the most compatible. This made Harry happy. Not only was Harry spared the expense of paying Garrick Ollivander for a second wand, but Haroldus's wand did not have the Trace on it.

Back in Gerhardus's conference room, Lily had told Harry that her student trunk was in the attic of Potter Manor. Now Harry told Greyclay to fetch this trunk. Sure enough, just as Harry's mum had predicted, Harry only needed to touch the square at the top of the trunk, and suffer a momentary finger-prick, and the trunk unlocked for him. Inside this trunk, Harry found his mum's diaries as a first-year and second-year Hogwarts student, and laid those two diaries on the kitchen table. Then Harry locked his mother's student-trunk.

Now it was time for Harry to be returned to his relatives' house. Harry looked at his house-elves and said, "I'm leaving the Invisibility Cloak and my mum's trunk here for now, but I'll be calling for them soon. In the meantime, forget whatever is written in the Ward Ledger—don't let anyone in here except for me and anyone I directly tell you to let in. Nobody from Hogwarts is allowed in here, whether wizard, witch or house-elf. Am I clear?"

Greyclay said with determination, "We Potter elves will fight to the death to keep intruders out of Potter Manor."

Harry stared for several seconds, then made himself say "Erm, thank you."

Greyclay elf-popped Harry from the kitchen of Potter Manor to the attic of Number 4. Greyclay also brought along the wand of Haroldus Cyrus Potter and the first two of Lily Evans's Hogwarts diaries.

After Harry said goodbye to Greyclay, and before leaving the attic, Harry used his ancestor's wand to cast a Notice-Me-Not charm on himself and his mum's diaries. He walked down two flights of stairs and walked into the sitting room, where Dudley was watching the telly.

Dudley said nothing to Harry, and did not look at him.

As an experiment, Harry stood directly between Dudley and the television screen. Dudley's only response was to lean sideways till he again could see the screen.

Harry sat down in the comfortable armchair that Uncle Vernon favoured, cast a Silencing spell so that he would not be bothered by the sound of the telly, and started to read Lily's first-year diary.

About half six, Uncle Vernon walked into the sitting room. He neither sat down in "his" armchair, nor did he angrily order Harry to leave the armchair. Instead, he sat down on the couch, his face showing confusion for several seconds.

Harry found something startling in his mum's first-year diary—

.

Sev saved my bacon in Potions class today.

As usual, Slytherin Sev was partnered with Gryffindor me, even though both of our Houses hate this.

We were making the Headache Relief Potion, which if you do it right, turns a pretty lavender colour. The recipe says that after you add the chopped pumpkin seeds, you're supposed to stir the potion anticlockwise for five turns. Simple, right?

Sev was who added the pumpkin seeds, because he really has a knack for chopping, dicing, slicing, etc. I stirred the potion once, anticlockwise, like I should. But then Timothy Brown started arguing with Paulus Yaxley about—who knows? Who cares? Anyway, I stopped stirring, because I got distracted. Sev cleared his throat. I realised I'd stopped, so I resumed stirring. THE WRONG WAY. I MADE FOUR STIRS CLOCKWISE.

The potion turned a horrid green colour! I thought, "Oh no, Prof. Slughorn is going to give Sev and me each a TROLL for this potion."

But then Sev said, "I've an idea!" He took one of our extra pumpkin seeds and REALLY chopped it up. Basically he turned it into pumpkin-seed dust. Then Sev told me, "Stir the potion SIX AND A HALF turns anticlockwise, and I'll add the fine pumpkin seed after you've stirred six turns."

We did this, and the potion turned lavender! Saved!

Prof. Slughorn gave us both E's, even though the colour was perfect, because we DID mess up. But E's are a hundred times better than the T's that I THOUGHT we were going to get. Prof. Slughorn also gave twenty points to Slytherin—I think because Sev AMAZED Prof. Slughorn.

After class, I asked Sev how he knew to do what he did. He shrugged and said, "I can't explain it. I just saw it in my head, and it worked." I then called him "my friend, the grumpy Potions genius." This ALMOST made Sev smile.

When Harry got sleepy, he walked out of the sitting room, brushed his teeth, crawled into his cupboard and went to sleep.

His last thought before he fell asleep was, My Hogwarts letter comes tomorrow. Won't the Dursleys be surprised! And I have a few surprises for Dumbledore too, you bet!