Author's Note:

Well, here's the a new chapter. Remember, I'd love to hear what you think. Give me a review!

Chapter 5

In the following month after Professor Dumbledore's visit, Harry and Brandon tried to send several more letters, but Hedwig kept coming back without a letter, neither a reply, nor the one they'd given her. Knowing that Hedwig was far to reliable to be losing letters, let alone this many, the cousins concluded that the only possible explanation was that the letters were being intercepted. No letters had come from the Weasleys, Dumbledore, or anyone else for that matter.

Finally, they decided to try sending Hedwig without a letter, after which she disappeared for three days before coming back, no letter tied to her leg, but appearing more frustrated than ever.

Brandon and Harry were unsure what to do. They could try to go to the Leaky Cauldron to find help—Harry knew the way from when he went with Hagrid—or they could wait it out until someone came to see them, wondering why they hadn't been responding to their mail.

"Unless whoever it is, is responding to our mail, using our names," Brandon had suggested when he and Harry had been discussing it. That thought hadn't set well with either of them. It would help if they knew whether Hedwig had gotten through all the way to the Weasleys when they had sent her without a letter. If the owl had showed up at their house with nothing, that would surely let them know that something was up.

They hadn't informed Vernon and Petunia about this little hiccup with the mail yet, but they didn't seem inclined to ask, anyways. The elder Dursleys had continued ignoring the situation for the most part since Professor Dumbledore's visit, and it was likely that they hoped that any letter would simply never show up. Dudley had been at a friend's house at the time of Dumbledore's visit, but apparently, his parents had told them about it at some point, because now he was giving Brandon the same wide berth he had been giving Harry.

When Harry's birthday came, the boys were as tense about the situation as ever. Vernon had a dinner party coming up that night, hoping to receive a massive order of drills for his company from a big time builder. He and his wife would be showing up at around eight o'clock, and Vernon had the whole house in a tizzy getting ready for it, going over his ridiculous schedule over and over again.

That morning, over breakfast, Vernon had cleared his throat importantly before beginning, "Now we all know, today is a very important day."

Brandon of course knew that his father was talking about the dinner party, but he watched in amusement as Harry's eyebrows raised momentarily in disbelief, thinking that his Uncle had remembered his birthday.

"Today may well be the day I make the biggest deal of my career," Vernon said, to which Harry rolled his eyes and went back to his toast. "I think we should run through the schedule one more time . . ."

Brandon had had about enough of this stupid schedule. His father wanted them all to behave like simpering fools and fawn over the Masons when they arrived, and even had a schedule for when they would make compliments and tell jokes. It was pathetic.

He was completely jealous of Harry, who would get to stay up in their bedroom and 'pretend he's not there' the entire night.

Vernon even took he and Dudley out to pick up dinner jackets. It was a nightmare as far as he was concerned, but he supposed that his father did stand to make a lot of money if the night went the way he hoped. Still, he didn't like the idea of having to suck up to these rich stuck-ups in his own home.

While his parents were busy preparing for this stupid dinner, Brandon decided that since it was his cousin's birthday, he would do something nice for him, so he broke into the cupboard under the stairs and pulled a couple of books out of the trunk. He found a couple of unopened chocolate frogs and grabbed them too, bringing them upstairs to he and Harry's room.

They would most certainly get in trouble if Vernon or Petunia found out, but Brandon was hoping that if this deal went through, they'd be in such a good mood that they wouldn't mind so much. If the deal didn't go through—well, Brandon chose not to think too much about that. Besides, chances were good that they wouldn't find out, and his dad seemed pretty confident that the deal would go through.

"Happy birthday, Harry!" Brandon had said when he opened the door and brought in the books and frogs.

"You didn't!" Harry said with a huge smile on his face.

"But I did!" Brandon replied, giving his cousin a hug.

"They really didn't notice you breaking into the cupboard?" Harry asked, hardly believing it.

"Please!" the younger cousin scoffed. "They're so busy worrying about this dinner that they wouldn't have noticed if I'd done it right in front of their faces!"

"Now I doubt that," giggled Harry. "Nice jacket, by the way." Brandon groaned at that, and Harry handed him back one of the chocolate frogs.

"I got them for you, silly."

"I want to share it with you."

Brandon took the offered frog and they each opened their respective packages. Harry's jumped right out of the package as soon as Harry opened it and landed on the dresser a couple of feet away, where Harry quickly grabbed it and shoved it in his mouth. Brandon's, on the other hand, barely managed to move an inch.

"Yours must be a little older," Harry told him. The charm seems to be wearing off."

Brandon ate it without complaint, regardless. He looked at his card and said, "I've got Ptolemy."

"I got the druidess Cliodna, again," Harry replied. What did you do with your card from the one that I sent you when I was at school?"

Brandon pulled out a copy of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, and opened it up to pull out a chocolate frog card. Seeing the look on Harry's face, he told him, "No one in this house, apart from you and me is likely to open a book unless they have to."

His cousin laughed, "Very true." He looked at the card. "I see you got Morgana. Dumbledore was the first one I ever got when I was on the train with Ron."

Vernon's voice echoed from downstairs, "Brandon, get down here! We've less than half an hour before the Masons are supposed to arrive! Harry, I suggest you get down here too if you expect to get anything to eat tonight!"

X X X

To say Brandon was bored would be an understatement, Everyone was gathered at the dining room table, eating the dinner that Petunia had been working on for most of the day. As Brandon ate another bite of the pork roast, he thought to himself that if nothing else, at least the food was good. It wasn't fair that Harry didn't get to enjoy any of it.

Vernon was in the middle of telling the Japanese golfer joke that he had been rehearsing for two weeks when suddenly everyone heard a loud yelping noise coming from upstairs. Everyone went quiet at the dinner table, and through the yelps, you could hear an odd tapping sound.

Brandon was sure of one thing, those yelps weren't coming from Harry.

"Dudley must have left his television on again, the little tyke," Vernon said with an uncomfortable expression.

"I'll go get it, Dad," Brandon immediately offered, hoping to spare Harry Vernon's wrath, and to see who or what was making that odd noise. It almost didn't sound human. Perhaps Harry had caught something that had been intercepting their letters, Brandon thought wildly.

But his father immediately stood up and replied, "No, son, it's fine. I can get it."

Petunia did her best to keep the conversation going while her husband was upstairs. He came back down a minute later with a forced smile on his face, and the evening continued.

A short while later, however, behind the Masons, Brandon noticed movement in the kitchen, but it was at an angle that Dudley, Vernon, and Petunia couldn't see it. With a quick, "May I be excused to the bathroom, Dad?" he shot into the kitchen and nearly shouted out when he saw a very short, odd little creature with bat-like ears and bulging green eyes the size of tennis balls, wearing what looked like a ragged old pillow-case. But that was only half of it, floating up near the ceiling was his mothers great pudding of whipped cream and sugared violets.

Harry was standing there, in the kitchen, arguing with the weird little thing.

"No, please!" Harry whispered. "They'll kill me!"

"Harry Potter must promise! He must say he won't go back to school," said the creature.

"Dobby, please!"

"Say it sir—"

"I can't—"

The thing gave Harry a tragic look. "Then, Dobby must do it, sir, for Harry Potter's own good."

And with that, Dobby vanished with the sound like a crack of a whip, and the pudding began falling to the floor. In that moment, time seemed to slow down as Brandon panicked and concentrated with every fiber of his being on magically saving the pudding. After a split second, the pudding was floating again, and Brandon was careful to let it slowly fall down into his waiting hands.

"Is everything okay in there," his father asked.

"Yes, fine," Brandon said as he set the pudding back on the counter and waved Harry on to go back upstairs. He walked back into the dining room, saying, "Sorry. I almost tripped on my own feet and bumped into the stove, but nothing broke so all is well." He laughed, and so did the Masons, but his parents looked a little worried.

The rest of the dinner passed by slowly, but without incident. Vernon successfully closed the deal for the drills, though it wasn't as large of an order as he had hoped, but all that Brandon could think about was going upstairs to ask Harry what the hell all that was about. It was very likely that that creature—Dobby or whatever—was the one responsible for their missing mail.

Finally, when the Masons went home, Brandon was allowed to go upstairs to go to bed. As soon as he opened the door, Harry was in there waiting for him, looking ready to burst.

"He's the one!" his cousin cried, as loudly as he dared. "He's the one that's been stopping our mail!" Harry proceeded to tell Brandon about his evening: how Dobby, the house elf had been waiting for him in his room when he had come back upstairs and all that he had told him, how someone was plotting to make terrible things happen at Hogwarts this year.

"It could hardly be any worse than it was last year, judging from all that you told me," Brandon said. "We can't let this house elf thing stop us from getting a magical education."

Harry nodded his agreement, but asked, "What can we do about it though? Even knowing who it is, we have no way of contacting anyone in the magical world unless we try to go to the Leaky Cauldron on our own."

"I have an idea," Brandon said, cogs turning behind his eyes. "This Dobby creature doesn't sound like he's altogether very bright. Granted it might not work if he doesn't bother to look at the contents of our letters."

"What is it?" Harry asked bemusedly.

"Well, what if we wrote a letter to someone—Dumbledore, the Weasleys, whoever—saying that we didn't want to go back to Hogwarts this year," Brandon said. "If Dobby were to read that we didn't want to go back, he might actually let the letter get through."

"How would that help us?" Harry asked. "We don't want them thinking that we don't want to go to Hogwarts do we?"

"I've read a little bit about how sometimes during war, oftentimes both sides would try and encode their messages so that the enemy couldn't read them," Brandon told his cousin. "Sometimes they would send a message that said one thing, but within the message would be a code that said something else entirely. I was thinking of using spelling errors."

"Most wizards don't know much about muggle things like that," Harry said. "They'd probably just read the letter and take it as it was written."

"But they would think it was very unusual that we decided, out of the blue, that we didn't actually want to go back to Hogwarts. Especially since they think we've been ignoring them all this time. They would read it again and again," Brandon looked thoughtful again. "We'll have to make the code really obvious. Again, we'll be counting on the fact that this Dobby thing didn't seem very bright."

"Lets do it," Harry agreed. "I mean chances are that it might not reach them anyways if Dobby won't read the mail that he's stopping. We've got to do something."

And so the two of them set to work, wording the letter very carefully. After about six drafts they finally came up with a letter that they thought would work.

To wholm it may concern,

Brandon and I havee decided we don'tt wantt to go baeck to Hogwarrtss this yeair. Inndeed, itt has been agreeed between us rreally that ccoming to school isent a propper idtea. Wee hope thatd yous all understeanndd. Hhope evereyone alll has a phfantastic year without us.

Harry Potter

After removing the extra letters, a person would come up with, letters intercepted send help h.

Harry looked over at Brandon and said, "I hope Dobby is really stupid."

"All the other drafts, you said that you didn't think anyone would be able to catch on that it was encoded," Brandon said. "Besides, from what you told me about his speech, I doubt Dobby would be overly concerned with grammar and spelling."

They tied the letter to Hedwig's leg, who flew off determinedly into the night.

X X X

A few days later, they got a response from Mr. Weasley.

Dear Harry,

We completely understand if you and Brandon don't want to go to Hogwarts this year. We wish you the best of luck with whatever you do decide to do. Ron and the twins send their regards.

Arthur Weasley

PS: Happy Birthday to Brandon on August 5 at 3 o'clock.

"Happy Birthday on August fifth at three?" Harry read the postscript confusedly. "Why at three? And your birthday's on the seventh."

Brandon smiled at his cousin. "That's his way of letting us know when he's coming. I'd better go tell Mum and Dad we're leaving tomorrow."