Title All Because of Lily / / / Rating T
Chapter 04 - A New Friend
Warnings Contains mentions of abuse and mentions of minor character death, swearing, violence. Weasley, James Potter and Dumbledore bashing.
Inspired By and Contains Text from… Broomstick Flyer's unnamed story
Contains some text from Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone…
-All Because of Lily-
Previously on All Because of Lily…
Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and a letter for Harry.
Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives - he didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink, the same colour as his eyes. There was no stamp. Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.
It was then that Harry realised that his dream had come true…and that he had needed to escape the house that he had spent his life in once and for all…
Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England
15th July 1991
"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.
Harry was tempted to make a flippant remark to the walrus like man, but he knew that if he did, he would get in trouble, a potential beating on the way. Instead he bit his tongue and went to open his cupboard when he saw his Aunt was looking at him.
Knowing that he had no chance of hiding it, he headed into the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the yellow envelope.
Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard.
"Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk. -."
"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!"
Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon.
"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the greyish white of old porridge.
"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.
Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.
"Vernon! Oh my goodness - Vernon!"
They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Harry and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.
"I want to read that letter," he said loudly.
"No, I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "Especially as it is mine."
"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope
Harry didn't move. "I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted.
"Let me see it!" demanded Dudley.
"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.
"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, "look at the address - how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don't think they're watching the house?"
"Watching - spying - might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.
"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want -"
Harry could see Uncle Vernon's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.
"No," he said finally. "No, we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer... Yes, that's best... we won't do anything...
"But -"
"I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?"
"But what about that diary of Lily's? She made me swear that if I ever had to endure the freak, I would give it him if he had the letter from the freak school."
"Screw her. We have raised the freak since she had herself blown up and now he's going to that freak school. Hell no."
That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he'd never done before; he visited Harry in his cupboard.
"Where's my letter?" said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to me?"
"No one. it was addressed to you by mistake," said Uncle Vernon shortly. "I have burned it."
It was then that he knew that he had to put his plan in place, Uncle Vernon closing the door to his cupboard, but for some reason, he had forgotten to lock it.
Eventually the Dursley family headed upstairs to bed, allowing Harry to eagerly, yet silently, pack away the very few belongings he had with him into a tatty old rucksack that he had found in the house that he knew that his Uncle Vernon would either blame it on him stealing, or would say that Dudley borrowed it..
The raven-haired boy had been lucky earlier in the day, whilst Aunt Petunia had gone out to the hairdressers and Dudley had gone to terrorise a six-year-old boy named Mark Evans, the son of Petunia and Lily Evans's half-brother, Michael Evans, Harry had headed to the attic at Number 4 Privet Drive, intent on having a look for something that he had heard his aunt talk to his uncle about, an Evans family heirloom that was meant to go to him.
Eventually, having decided that he would be able to start the first phase of his plan tonight, he left the house, having stolen some money from his aunt's purse, and headed for the nearest bus stop.
He had a fair way to travel and his belly rumbled to remind him he had not eaten in the past three days. He sat on the bus and eagerly looked forward to arriving at his destination, the journey to Alcester going to be several hours, but he knew that he had a lot to share with everyone when he got there.
Granger Residence, 4 Crooks Lane, Alcester, Warwickshire, England
15th July 1991
Minerva McGonagall was feeling rather confused, especially as never before had she visited a potential students home to find that there was some sort of mistake, not once in the thirty-five years she had been doing the job. Asking permission, she pulled out her wand to do a test for a magical core on the young girl.
She was quite shocked when the test revealed that the young lady did not contain an iota of magic in her entire body beyond what was normal for a none magical.
As the young girl watched Professor McGonagall walk off down the street, she had to laugh at how the witch had been taken for a fool with her lies.
"She's gone," the young girl's voice shouted up the stairs, her voice edged with laughter.
From the top of the stairs, a second young bushy haired girl looked down at her cousin with a huge smile on her face. "You know what Bernie? You are the best cousin ever."
"Ha ha ha. Yes you owe me 'Mione, and don't you forget it. The one thing I don't understand is why you couldn't speak to the daft old biddy." The young girl who had posed as Hermione said before she started to chuckle at the weird clothes the old woman wore. "She was such a stupid cow."
"That's simple Bernie," Sophie Granger said to her niece, "They sent Hermione a letter a few weeks ago, a letter which was similar to what I saw on the bedside table of one of my friends when I was you and Hermione's age, one which ended up with my best friend forced into a marriage with a rapist and not allowed to be with the one that she was in love. What is worst that Lily…Lily was killed by a monster."
"But why is that daft old biddy so interested in Hermione?" Bernadette said, frowning in confusion, the younger of the two 11 year olds looking at her Aunt Sophie and her cousin Hermione.
"Because we threw out Hermione's Hogwarts letter with the rest of the junk mail, had a letter from them addressed to your Uncle and I. It was a letter to inform us that the 'daft old biddy' would be here today, and they would be able to detect Hermione's special power." Sophie said, her favourite niece taking her seriously. "If I am honest, that letter sounded rather threatening and gave us the impression that we had no choice in the matter"
"But Aunt Sophie, what about Harry? Surely they would catch up with him?" Bernadette asked, worried about the scared little boy that she knew that her cousin had remembered about, not just because Bernadette knew that her Aunt had invited Lily and Harry Potter over to her house to play with Hermione as a toddler, but also the few times they had met since, each of those times being before Dumbledore had wiped their memories of him.
"It was only thanks to your great-grandfather Hector that Hermione and I managed to have our memories returned to us of Harry. Because of that, along with the diary that my best friend gave me, Harry is going to be on his way to us." Sophie said. "Plus, I know from the dreams and nightmares that Hermione has had, she does not trust the people from that school and because of it, she has no wish at all to attend that horrible school."
"Talking about Harry, I hope he was able to get away from those vile relatives of his," Hermione said, her mother noting a worried look on her face.
"Don't worry Hermione. Your Uncle Dan and Aunt Emma are going to be waiting for him at the bus station in Greater Winging, ready to escort him here."
The two girls had spent the rest of the day playing various games and reading. As time ticked by, Sophie Granger had been met by her older brother, Gawain and Gawain's wife, Amelia, who Hermione knew were police officers based in London, coming to the Granger family home for a meal as a family...
For Hermione, however, she just hoped that Harry would arrive at the Granger family home safely, as she knew that she wanted her friend with her.
- All Because of Lily-
Coming Up in… Chapter 05 – Memories are supplied as Harry arrives at the Granger Residence…
Disclaimer I don't own the Harry Potter series. Harry Potter is the property of JK Rowling, and are not my intellectual property. There is no financial gain made from this nor will any be sought. This is for entertainment purposes only. Any text used from the Harry Potter series is used under the fair use allowances of various copyright acts
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Type Multi Chapter / / / Status WIP / / / Distribution FFN, AO3 / / / Story ID 069