Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

Chapter 2

The car ride back to 4 Privet Drive was completely silent. Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be driving more aggressively than usual, was practically fuming on the spot and looked like he was about ready to explode from anger. Everyone else, Aunt Petunia included, sat quietly in their seats and eyed Uncle Vernon cautiously, just waiting for him to blow up.

When the car was put into park, everyone scrambled out of the car. Harry and I quickly walked to the door, but we hardly made it though before we were being pulled backward by our clothing by Uncle Vernon. He allowed the rest of the company to go through to the sitting room while he pulled us to the side and glared at us for a moment, trying to find the words that he was going to use.

"I know this was your fault," he breathed. "And don't think for a minute that you're just going to get away with this - "

"We didn't do anything, Uncle Vernon!" I said.

"We weren't even near the glass!" Harry added.

"It doesn't matter!" Uncle Vernon shouted. "I know that you two were behind this! Now go to your cupboards - no meals for the week!"

Harry and I glanced at each other in horror. We were going to be stuck in the darkness for a week for something that we didn't even cause. It was hardly fair to do that when we misbehaved, but this was unthinkable.

"That isn't fair!" I shouted. "We didn't - "

Uncle Vernon picked me up and threw me over his shoulder as he grabbed onto my brother's collar and threw him into the cupboard under the stairs. Harry pounded on the locked door as Uncle Vernon carried me, kicking and screaming, toward the linen closet to lock me into it.

"Let us out!" Harry shouted. "We didn't do it - we swear!"

Uncle Vernon didn't listen to any of our protests. Instead, he went into the kitchen and slammed the door behind him so he wouldn't have to listen to another word we had to say. Instead of wasting our breath and energy, we both fell silent and prepared ourselves for the week ahead.

This sort of punishment wasn't unusual for Uncle Vernon to give us. When he said that we would be in the cupboards for a week, he meant every word of it. The only time that we were aloud outside of them was to use the bathroom, and the only other time that our doors were opened was to throw in the leftovers that Dudley couldn't shove down his throat (which meant that we hardly got anything each day). Although she never said it, I had noticed the sorrowed look on Aunt Petunia's face each morning when she fed it. Maybe it was just my wishful thinking, but I could have sworn that she was feeling guilty for doing this to us. But it wasn't like she was putting a stop to it, so she wasn't any better than her husband.

However, when the night came around and the Dursleys went to sleep, Harry and I would find a way out. When we began to hear their snoring, Harry would pick through the lock on his door and then come to open my door up. We would quickly and quietly walk into the kitchen to get something substantial to eat and drink. We had never been caught doing this before, and we had no intention of being caught in the future. We were careful enough to pass through unnoticed.

When our time finally finished, and my muscles were just about cramped up from having been stuck in that small space for so long, Harry and I both agreed that we had to do our best to stay on the better side of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. Even though we had the suspicion that our aunt wouldn't request the same punishment, we still took the precautions necessary.

The first morning we were out, I practically ran to get ready to make sure I didn't anger anyone, and I found that Harry had moved much faster and was already at the front door getting the mail.

"Has he done any yelling?" I whispered to Harry, making sure that we weren't heard.

"Not yet," Harry whispered back. "He seems like he's in a better mood today."

We began walking toward the kitchen when Harry stopped suddenly. I continued walking for a second before I turned to look at my brother in confusion. Harry's eyes were wide open in shock as he stared down at one of the envelopes in his hands.

"What's wrong?" I asked him as I walked over next to him.

"I-it's for you," Harry stammered.

"What?" I asked as I ripped it from his hands.

"There's one for me as well," Harry held up the letter.

I stared in astonishment at the envelope that I held in my hand. It seemed like an older piece of stationary, but very clean and professional looking. On the front, in green, very neat handwriting read:

Miss E. Potter

The Old Linen Closet

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

The only difference between my letter and Harry's appeared to be the name and the location, his reading The Cupboard under the Stairs. Both of us, stunned in complete disbelief, just stared at the envelope for a moment.

"Where's the mail, boy!" Uncle Vernon shouted from the other room.

"Coming, Uncle Vernon!" Harry shouted back.

Harry looked at me in wonder and I already knew what he was thinking. Where could these letters be coming from? No one ever wrote to us! And how could they possibly have known where we slept at night?

"Who do you think it is?" Harry asked me as we approached the kitchen door.

"Only one way to find out," I said excitably as we walked into the kitchen.

I slowly tore open the envelope as I made my way to my seat. Since we were having cereal that morning, there was no need for me to rush around to cook something for my aunt, uncle, and cousin. This only meant that I could focus my full attention on the letter.

"What on Earth are you doing?" Uncle Vernon demanded when he saw me pulling a piece of parchment out of the envelope.

"I'm opening my letter," I told him.

"Your letter?" my uncle questioned. "No one writes to you!"

When Uncle Vernon saw that Harry had one as well, he snatched them both from our hands and I felt my heart sink in my chest. I should have known better than to have let him see that we got something in the mail - he spoils every little piece of hope that we had in our days.

"Those are our letter!" Harry told him as Dudley walked through the door.

"What do you mean you have a letter?" Dudley scoffed as he stepped behind his father. "People have to like you to send you letters."

I was about to make a retort, but my attention was drawn away from my cousin when I saw the blood drain from Uncle Vernon's face as his eyes became wider with every word that he read. He quickly closed the letter and turned to our aunt.

"Petunia - come look," Uncle Vernon said in a panic.

"What is it, dear?" Aunt Petunia asked as she walked over with a cup of tea in hand.

"Dudley, step away!" our uncle shouted at his son.

Dudley stomped over to his chair and mumbled about how unfair it was. I wanted to hit him in the head for thinking that he had the right to read what was ours without us even knowing what it was ourselves.

I watched as Aunt Petunia read the first sentence. Within seconds, she let out a gasp of horror and let her cup of tea fall to the floor and shatter. She quickly found her chair and fell into it as she stared at her husband in shock.

"How did they find us?" Uncle Vernon asked.

"Who?" Harry and I asked at once.

Both of them looked at the three of us, somehow looking like they forgot that we were even in the room. Moving faster than I had ever seen him move, Uncle Vernon jumped out of his chair and pointed toward the door.

"Out!" he shouted. "Everyone out of the room!"

"Not without our letters!" Harry shouted.

"NOW!" Uncle Vernon demanded.

He pushed each one of us out of the kitchen, Dudley included. All of us protested, but we were no match for an angry Uncle Vernon was determined to get us away from the room and our letters.

"What are they about?" Dudley demanded once the kitchen door was shut behind us.

"How should we know?" I asked him. "Your father took them from us before we could look at them!"

The two of us argued for a moment before I noticed what Harry was doing. He had his ear pressed up to the door, listening in to the conversation that our aunt and uncle having. Dudley and I seemed to have the same idea as we both wrestled to get to the best spot. Of course, being as he was at least three times my size, he won the better and I was stuck listening in through the bottom of the door.

"I thought you said that we could get it out of them," whispered Uncle Vernon angrily from the other side.

"We did everything we could, Vernon," Aunt Petunia said hopelessly. "We should have known that this would happen eventually - just look who their parents were."

"We should have never let them into this house," he grunted. "Just imagine what they could have done to Dudley."

"It's too late now," his wife sighed. "No one will take them...what are we going to do?"

"There is no way that we are sending them to that place," Uncle Vernon insisted. "They won't get a dime out of us to get this nonsense into their heads."

"So we just ignore them?" Aunt Petunia asked.

"They can't bother us forever," he said. "We just won't respond."

"Vernon, I know these kinds of people," she said skeptically. "They aren't like us at all - they may never stop."

"They have to," he insisted. "We will put an end to this Petunia. They cannot force us to do anything that we don't want to."

The conversation seemed to be over at that moment and, when we heard footsteps, we all raced as far away from the door as we could. Of course, Dudley didn't make it that far, but Harry and I sat in the sitting room acting like we hadn't heard a thing.

The letters didn't stop coming after Uncle Vernon burnt the first two. Days and days went by that they came by the dozen. Whoever it was that was trying to contact us seemed to be persistent each day of the week.

The next morning, after another letter came in the mail, Uncle Vernon walked up to us seeming more twitchy than I had ever seen him before. Although he was trying to keep a calm look on his face, he looked like he was struggling to not have a raging fit.

"I've been thinking," Uncle Vernon said to Harry and me. "Maybe those room of yours are getting a little small for you two."

My eyes flickered over to Harry in surprise. Even though what Uncle Vernon said was true, I hardly doubted that this was something that he had just realized. We were two ten year old children that had been squeezing into closets to sleep since the night that we arrived on their doorstep and I hardly thought that he had just come to discover that this was unnecessary.

"So I've been thinking that maybe it's about time for the two of you to move into the extra bedroom upstairs," he continued. "I think that ought to do. Now get to it, there isn't a moment to waste."

It only took a single trip for Harry and me to gather our stuff out of our closets and into the smallest bedroom upstairs. Harry made it up there first and set his stuff on the first bed that he came to. Only feet away, just across from a large pile of Dudley's old and broken toys was the bed that I was to sleep on.

"This isn't fair!" Dudley shouted at his mother across the hall from us. "That is my room! I need it for my things!"

"I'm sorry, Dudley-dear," Aunt Petunia sighed. "But they need to be in that room. They're much too big to be in those closets."

Harry sighed and sat down on his bed with a look of defeat. All our lives we wanted to be in a proper bedroom, but this isn't how we wanted it to be.

"They're just doing this because of those letters," Harry complained.

"Do you think so?" I asked.

"Why else would they move us?" he sighed. "It had our rooms on the envelopes."

"How do you think they knew where we slept anyway?" I asked. "Do you think that it's someone that we know?"

"I don't know," Harry murmured. "I just wish that we would have read those letters when we got the chance."

Each day that the letters came, our uncle began to grow angrier and more desperate to stop them from arriving. On the third day, Uncle Vernon boarded up the mail slot to stop them from getting into the house. That seemed to work out just fine until they began arriving through the windows. Once they were nailed shut, they began arriving in the most peculiar ways. Through milk cartons, through the eggs, and they would even appear by bags that would surround the house. By the end of the week, our uncle grew mad and began talking nonsense. It wasn't until Sunday that he seemed to be somewhat calm.

"Excellent," Uncle Vernon chuckled to himself. "Sunday is the best day of the week, wouldn't you agree, Harry?"

"If you say so," Harry muttered absentmindedly.

Vernon had been going on for hours saying how wonderful it was on that day. He couldn't be more pleased that the postman wouldn't be delivering that day, but Harry and I couldn't have been more miserable.

Through all of Uncle Vernon's attempts, we had always tried to grab a hold of them. The Dursleys, however, seemed determined that we wouldn't be able to read them. Even Dudley, who wanted to know more than ever what they said was prohibited to be close to the envelopes.

"What do they say?" I asked for the millionth time that week.

"Keep your mouth shut," Vernon snapped.

Knowing that I wouldn't get another word out of him about the message that we received, I simply sat down on the couch next to Harry. Not unlike myself, Harry look completely defeated and without any sign of hope. Never before in our lives had anyone tried to reach out to us like this mysterious person that was sending us these letters, and it only saddened us more that we would never know why they wanted to talk to us.

Aunt Petunia brought in a cup of tea for her husband and couldn't have looked more pleased that he wasn't losing his mind over what would come in the post that day. Our uncle happily sipped the tea that his wife gave to him and sighed in delight as he looked around at the silent room.

What happened next was so sudden and unimaginable that I nearly thought that it was a dream of mine. The ground underneath us seemed to rumble, but the source of it appeared to come from the fireplace that sat on the side of the room. Every one of us looked over at it in astonishment and it wasn't until Dudley came running into the sitting room that we discovered what it was that was causing this.

"What is going on?" Dudley shouted.

Then, all at once, an enormous stream of letters burst through the fireplace and into the room. It never seemed like it was going to end, and before we knew it, the entire room was filling with the letters. Our letters.

"Get one!" Harry said to me suddenly.

We both looked at each other and a smile spread across our faces. We jumped to the ground and I grabbed the first one that I could get my hands on. As soon as I did, I tried to make an escape and only realized that I was being followed when I heard Uncle Vernon's shouts of protest behind me.

"Don't you dare open those!" Uncle Vernon yelled loudly over the smashing of the letters against the walls.

There was a great thud behind me, but I only stopped a moment to see what it was. With wide eyes, I watched as Harry was tackled to the ground by our uncle and the letter that was in his hand was wrestled from his grip. Harry put up a good fight, but he was no match for the mass that was Vernon Dursley.

"Emily, run!" Harry shouted.

Uncle Vernon's eyes darted to me instantly and he waddled to a stand as I took off toward the door. Unfortunately, I was tripped on the way out by Dudley who was instructed to stop me by his father. It was only seconds later that I felt the girth of my uncle fall upon me.

"It's my letter!" I shouted.

"Give me that right now!" Uncle Vernon shouted over the roar of the letters.

"Get off of her!" I heard Harry yell.

I wrestled around my uncle as Harry tackled him from the other side. We fought for a while until I realized that Dudley had taken Harry away from the fight to stop him from attacking his father. It was only a moment later that I lost hold of the letter in my hands.

"I've had enough!" my uncle shouted. "Everyone out of the house!"

Within an hour or two the five of us were packed into Uncle Vernon's car going to a place that none of us were sure of. To be honest, I was under the assumption that Uncle Vernon didn't actually plan out where we were going and was just trying to put as much distance between ourselves and the house.

No one dared speak the entire car ride in fear of Uncle Vernon losing his mind again. The only thing that I dared to do was look over at Harry and hope that we wouldn't be the ones that Uncle Vernon would take his anger out on.

The car didn't stop until we arrived at a motel that I'd never seen before. None of us knew where we were, probably not even our uncle knew exactly where we were. The first one to speak up was Dudley once Uncle Vernon went out to buy something for us to eat.

"Mum, do you think that he's okay?" Dudley asked his mother in the motel room.

"I don't know," she said miserably. "I just think that needs to get away from the house for a while."

Aunt Petunia then went around the motel and tried to set up some of the things that Uncle Vernon had snatched from the house just before we left. It was then that Dudley turned to us with an angry expression.

"This is your fault, you know?" he said to Harry and me.

"How's that?" Harry asked. "We never asked to have someone write us."

"Yeah, but they still did," Dudley retorted. "Who would want to talk to you two freaks anyway?"

By the time that Uncle Vernon got back, all discussion of the letters stopped. We quickly ate the small amount of food that we were given before we were all sent to bed. Since the room only had two beds, Harry and I were told that we would have to lie on the floor so that Dudley would get his own bed while Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would share the other one. We were given a few blankets and we tried to find the best spots in the place to sleep. Since we were so used to sleeping inside of a cramped closet, this wasn't anything that we weren't used to.

The next morning we were woken to the sound of knocking on our motel door. We all skeptically looked around at each other as Uncle Vernon scrambled out of bed and went to open the door. There, with a couple of large bags in his hands, was a motel worker with a curious look on his face.

"Are the Potters in here?" the man asked. "I've been asking around and no one seems to know who they are."

"We're right here!" I called as I jumped out of my blankets.

"Well, hello, ma'am," he tipped his hat. "It appears that someone is trying to get in contact with you. Just this morning, all of these letters appeared at the front desk - '

"NO!" Uncle Vernon shouted as he pushed me away from the door.

"Sir, I hardly think that's appropriate!" the worker said. "I was just delivering - "

"Burn it," Uncle Vernon demanded. "Burn them all. That person trying to contact the two of them is dangerous."

"Well, I apologize," he said with a concerned look. "If I would have known that then I wouldn't have come."

"Don't make that mistake again," Uncle Vernon irritably said and then slammed the door in his face.

All the Dursleys had their eyes on us and I was suddenly angry that I hadn't moved fast enough to get one of those letters away from the man at the door.

"Get your things," Uncle Vernon said to everyone. "We're leaving right now."

Another day on the road wasn't something that anyone wanted to deal with. Harry and I sat in the back of the car feeling more depressed than we had in a while over what was going on. Whoever this person was that was trying to talk about us was determined to get in contact with us. I had no idea who they were or how they figured out where we were staying, but I had a feeling that it was going to be really hard to get out of their sight since they knew where we were at that motel.

Our final stop of the day, hours after Uncle Vernon stopped to pick up some food for the night, was a spot next to the sea. The wind was blowing hard and the rain was falling heavily when we stepped out of the vehicle.

"Vernon, what are we doing?" Aunt Petunia yelled to her husband over the sound of the rain.

"Just follow me!" he yelled.

I took Harry by the hand as we walked through the rain behind the Dursleys. When we got onto a dock on the sea, we found a small boat rocking through the violent sea that was attached to a pole next to me.

"Everyone get in!" Uncle Vernon ordered.

Harry helped me down into the boat after Dudley got in and then jumped in next to me. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia got in afterwards and then we were off into the ocean. All of us were soaked and I was shivering heavily from the wind that was blowing against us and Harry scooted over close to me in attempt to get ourselves warmer.

"There's a house just up there!" Uncle Vernon pointed ahead. "That's where we're going to stay! There is no way that anyone is going to be able to find us there!"

Sure enough, not that far away from the shore, there was a shack sitting on top of a rock that didn't connect to any part of the main land. I wondered for a moment how Uncle Vernon knew about this place, but the condition around me made that thought fly out of my head.

It didn't take too long for us to get across the water to the island with the shack, but getting there didn't raise my spirits in the slightest. Walking into the apparently abandoned house that hardly seemed like it was capable of staying up through the storm made me scared that we wouldn't live through the night.

The place looked like it may have belonged to someone years ago, but wasn't appropriate for use now and hadn't been used for a long time. The door was filled with dirt and there were cobwebs everywhere in sight. The sight of it all made me a bit weary, but I didn't seem to be the only one. Aunt Petunia and Dudley didn't seem to be all that thrilled that this was going to be where we were staying for the night.

"Let's get a fire started," Uncle Vernon demanded as he slammed the door shut. "Boy, get to it!"

He threw over some matches to Harry and I gathered some of the wood that was stocked next to the fireplace. The rain seemed to slow significantly since we had been out there once the fire started, but the same couldn't be said for the wind. The howling seemed to surround the house and I jumped every time the thunder sounded from outside thinking that the house was going to collapse on us.

"It's going to be okay," Harry said as we warmed ourselves next to the fire.

"I don't like this place," I murmured.

"Stop complaining!" Uncle Vernon shouted when he heard me. "And eat your food!"

He tossed over a bag of chips to each of us and I opened it hesitantly after the fire seemed to have gotten rid of most of the water on my clothes and body. Once we were finished, we all tossed our trash into the fire to keep it burning for a while longer and then we were instructed to go to sleep. Since there was only one bed available, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia took that one while Dudley took the only couch in the shack. That left Harry and me to grab some moldy blankets and try to find a decent place on the floor. However, we didn't have plans on going to sleep for a little while longer.

When the snores of the others sounded through the house and the Dursleys were all asleep, Harry spoke to me what we had both been thinking since the beginning of the day.

"It's our birthday tomorrow, you know?" Harry whispered.

"How could I have forgotten?" I whispered back.

"I made you a card, but it's back at Privet Drive," Harry frowned. "I guess when we go back there I'll give it to you."

"I left your in our room too," I said.

It was a tradition every year that we would make our own cards for one another since we wouldn't get anything from anyone else. It was just something that we did for each other and it always made me feel better that someone cared about me.

"Look at Dudley's watch," Harry whispered. "It's only a minute until midnight!"

Even though I was tired and could have fallen asleep right at that moment, I decided that I would stay awake long enough to say happy birthday since we didn't have our cards. It was the least that we could do for each other.

As the seconds came closer, both of us started a count down to the moment that we would turn eleven.

"Three...two...one..." we said together.

12:00

"Happy birthday!" we both smiled together.

BOOM!

Both of our heads shot up and looked at the door in surprise. We weren't experts, but there was no way that the noise could have come from the storm because it sounded as though a rock had just smashed into the door.

BOOM!

Harry and I jumped up from the ground and backed away from the door slowly. This time, we weren't the only ones that heard the noise and I noticed that Dudley had awoken from his slumber as well right as our aunt and uncle ran into the room. My eyes widened when I saw that Uncle Vernon had a gun in his hand.

"What's happening?" Dudley screamed over the roar of the wind from outside.

"I don't - " Uncle Vernon started.

BOOM - crunch!

The door in front of us collapsed onto the ground and Harry immediately pushed us both behind where the fireplace stuck out so that we wouldn't be seen by what or who was standing behind that door. I couldn't see the door, but I knew that it wasn't expected when I saw the look of shock and horror on everyone's faces.

"Who is it?" I whispered to Harry.

He shook his head and I knew that he was as oblivious to what was going on as I was. When I poked my head around the wooden fireplace, my mouth dropped when I saw the man that stood in front of us. He was the tallest and widest man that I had ever seen and he had a giant beard and mane that covered all of his face except for the two beady eyes that looked around at all of us. He wore a big coat that I suspected he had made himself and boots that looked like they belonged to an elephant.

"Sorry 'bout that..." the man muttered as he turned around and picked up the door with his enormous hands to shove it back where it had been before. "I did knock..."

When he looked around at all of our shocked expressions, he couldn't have looked more amused. However, when his beady eyes met Harry's and mine, he looked as though he had just found a gold mine.

"Harry and Emily Potter," he smiled as he took a step toward us. "I 'ave been looking fer you everywhere!"

Harry and I looked at each other, the confusion clear on both of our faces. We stepped closer to the man, no longer afraid of this enormous person, and I still had no idea who this man was.

"How do you know who we are?" I asked him.

"Knew yer parents o' course," he said. "Both of you look just like 'em! Harry, ya must be the spittin' image of yer father - except them eyes, those are Lily. Emily, I feel like I'm lookin' right at yer mother!"

The Dursleys, at this point, must have been stunned into silence by this giant of a man as he stepped over to us and place his enormous hands on our shoulders. He went to pat me on the back and ended up making me fall to the ground.

"Sorry 'bout that," he said awkwardly as he picked me up with one hand and helped me stand up again.

"I'm sorry, but who are you?" Harry asked finally.

"I'm Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of the Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts," he said proudly.

"Hogwarts?" I asked him. "Where's that?"

"It's the greatest school of magic that exists!" Hagrid said. "You must know that!"

Harry and I looked at each other and I was happy that I wasn't alone in thinking that this man was completely mad. There had to be a mistake here.

"That is enough," Uncle Vernon finally spoke up and stepped over to Hagrid. "You need to get out of this house."

"What do you mean that it's a school of magic?" Harry asked.

Hagrid looked from the Dursleys to us with a look of horror. Had we said something to offend him? I couldn't imagine that it would be a good thing to make this man angry with us.

"Are you saying that they do not know, Dursley?" Hagrid asked with anger clear in his voice. "You didn't tell them?"

"Of course we didn't tell them!" Uncle Vernon said.

"Didn't tell us what?" Harry and I demanded together.

"We vowed that when we took them in that they would never know," Aunt Petunia said. "I wouldn't let that madness enter my home again. Just look at my sister, she was a freak and then she went and got herself blown up!"

"What?" I said in disbelief.

"What do you mean blown up?" Harry demanded.

"It doesn't matter!" Uncle Vernon shouted. "There isn't anything that you can do to change this - we are going to stamp this madness out of them!"

"What are you talking about?" I insisted.

"Yer wizards!" Hagrid shouted at once.

Everyone in the room went silent and I was staring at the man in complete disbelief. What was he talking about? There couldn't be such thing as wizards and witches in real life, those were only in books!

"Yer parents were as well," Hagrid explained. "But they were murdered when you two were just babies by the darkest wizard of the time - that's why you ended up with yer Muggle uncle and aunt!"

"Muggle?" I asked.

"Non-magical folk," Hagrid said.

"Our parents were murdered?" Harry asked. "Aunt Petunia said that they died in a car crash!"

"It doesn't make any difference how they were killed!" Uncle Vernon shouted. "I know what you're here for and I can tell you this: they are not going to that bloody school to be taught by some crack-pot, old fool!"

When he said it, I knew that it was going to turn out badly. Hagrid's eyes narrowed and his eyebrows furrowed as he stepped closer to my uncle that now looked like he was ready to run away in fear.

"Don't-ever-insult-Albus-Dumbledore-in-front-of-me ," Hagrid said in a deep tone.

From out of Hagrid's enormous jacket, he pulled out a small, pink umbrella that I thought he was going to hit Uncle Vernon in the head with. However, much to my surprise, the man pointed the end of it right at a shocked Dudley and sparks flew out of the end of it.

The Dursleys screamed as a small, pink tail sprouted from the butt of our cousin. As they all ran out of the room in a panic, Harry and I found ourselves laughing as Dudley did everything he could to hide his tail from view. When they slammed the door to the only bedroom in the shack, Hagrid looked down to us.

"Could ya not mention that ter anyone?" he asked.

"Not a problem," Harry smiled.

Then Hagrid reached back into one of the many pockets of his jacket and pulled out two letters that we had become so familiar with. He handed each of us the one with our name on it and gave us a smile.

"I think that yer going to want ter read them letters," Hagrid said. "I think you've waited long enough."

An excitement went through both of us as we ripped open the letters and we read through what the note said:

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Emily Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress

Thanks for reading!