A/N: Yay I finally got around to updating! This note is kinda pointless so you may as well go on to the actual chapter. Enjoy xxx

I was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley's gang of goons. They visited the house almost every day, to assist Dudley in his favourite past-time: Harriet Hunting.

This was why I spent as much time out of the house and as far away from Privet Drive as possible. I ended up spending lots of time with or around this one cat that followed me around everywhere, every summer since I could remember. Come to think of it, at Christmas and Easter as well. I spent lots of time talking to – or at – it, about anything, really. I promise you, I was not going mad. I followed me around, anyway. I might as well have made use of the company.

Apart from my conversations with the cat, the summer holidays were basically miserable. However, there was still one small ray of hope – when September came around, I would be going to secondary school, and for the first time in my life that would be away from Dudley. He would be going to Uncle Vernon's old school, Smeltings, while I would be off to Stonewalls, the local comprehensive. Dudley thought this was very funny.

"They stuff people's heads down the toilet their first day at Stonewalls," he told me, "Want to come practise?"

"No thanks," I said, "The poor toilet's never had anything as nasty as your head down it – it might be sick, and we don't want that, do we?" Then I ran off before he could work out what I'd said.

About a week into the holidays, Aunt Petunia took Dudley and I to London to buy his new uniform. Smeltings boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers and flat straw hats called 'boaters'. They also carried canes, supposedly used for hitting other boys when the teachers weren't looking. This was apparently good training for later life, though how I couldn't understand.

While we were out, a few people dressed funnily waved at me or shook my hand. When we went into WHSmith's (A/N: in the UK there's this shop that people normally call Smith's that sells stationary and books and other things like that) a tiny old man in a purple top hat approached me and shook my hand. After demanding whether I knew the man, Aunt hurried us both out of the shop without buying anything. "We'll go somewhere else," she had muttered.

Things like that happened to me quite a lot, actually. It was if they all knew me, or my name at least. One time, a wild-looking old woman waved at me on a bus, and another time, just outside school, a bald man actually bowed to me, much to the confusion of mine and everyone else's. This other time, a little boy ran up to me and said, "Hi, Harriet," and then ran back to his parents, who had both been watching me, more discreetly than their son. Weird.

Anyway, that evening, as Dudley paraded around the living room in his new uniform, Uncle Vernon claimed how it was the proudest moment of his life, and Aunt Petunia burst into tears again (she'd cried at the till of the uniform shop earlier) and said how she couldn't believe how her – and I quote – "Ickle Dudleykins" looked so handsome and was all grown up. I didn't trust myself to speak. I thought two of my ribs had already cracked from trying not to laugh, though I murmured my "approval".

For my uniform, Aunt Petunia had "branched out" and had bought it from a charity shop. It didn't fit very well – it was quite big – but I wasn't fussed. At least it wasn't four times bigger than me, as my uniform in previous years had been. I was allowed a skirt for school for the first time, and I walked into the living room one morning to find her stitching up the waistline so it fitted me better, which I thought was very nice of her. Uncle Vernon walked in a few minutes later, and moaned a bit about how much they had spent on me this summer (which was about three times what they normally did, and even then it was all on uniform). Dudley came down after that, carrying his Smeltings cane, which he carried around everywhere. He banged it down on the table, just as the letter box clicked.

"Get the post, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon, without looking up from his paper.

"Make Harriet get it."

"Get the post, Harriet."

"Make Dudley get it."

"Poke Harriet with your stick, Dudley."

"Fine!" I said, getting up and dodging Dudley's stick, "How many times do I have to tell you it's Harri, anyway?" I called as I walked to the front door.

"How many times do I have to tell you nobody cares?" shouted Dudley, and then laughed at his own joke.

Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge; a brown envelope that looked like a bill; and, and a letter for me.

I picked it up and stared at it. No one had ever written me a letter before. And yet, in my hands there was a letter addressed so clearly there could be no mistake. (A/N: This was supposed to be in fancy, curly font but this site only has one font, ergo italics will have to do 0.0)

Miss H. Potter

The Cupboard under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of creamy yellow parchment, and the address was written in a beautiful shade of emerald green ink. There was no stamp, though when I turned the letter over, there was a red wax seal that bared a coat of arms: a lion, a snake, an eagle and a badger surrounded a large 'H'.

"What's taking you so long?" I heard Dudley say as he walked towards me. I had to hide the letter. I had to –

"What's that you've got there? Pass it over," he said, snatching it out of my hand.

There goes that.

He read the words a couple of times, his face a picture of disbelief. Then he yelled out, "Mum! Dad! Harriet's got a letter!"

He ran back to the living room and passed his father the letter.

"That's mine!" I said, running back into the room.

"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, turning the letter over. He saw the writing, because a second later he was red, then green and then the grey-ish white of old porridge. Ick.

"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped, his hand shaking as he handed the letter to her. She took it curiously, removing the letter. She scanned the first line, before looking up her face white.

"Oh no. Oh no. I hoped she wasn't… that she wasn't…" she trailed off, her face white.

"That I wasn't what?" I piped up.

Dudley, meanwhile, was attempting to snatch the letter out of his mother's hand, but she held it too high up for him to reach. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia stared at each other for a moment, as if they'd forgotten that Dudley and I were still in the room.

"Give me my letter," I said.

They didn't respond.

"I said: Give me my letter," I repeated, raising my voice. This seemed to snap them out of whatever they had going on.

"Right, the two of you, out!" shouted Uncle Vernon. He grabbed Dudley by his collar, and shoved me into the hall, slamming the living room door behind us. Dudley and I glared at each other for a moment, before he floored me and therefore got the right to peek through the keyhole. I was forced to lie down on the floor if I wanted to listen at all.

"Vernon," Aunt was saying, her voice shaking, "look at the address – how could they know where she sleeps? You don't think they're watching us, do you?"

"Watching – spying – might be following us," Uncle Vernon muttered.

"But what should we do? I don't want to send her. Do we write back, tell them we don't want her to go?"

"No. No, we'll ignore it. If they don't get a response… 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 her in that we'd stamp out all that dangerous nonsense?"

Wait, what?

'Ergo' means 'therefore' for those of you who don't know. My thing with Aunt Petunia is that she has a soft spot for Harriet because she reminds her so much of growing up with Lily, and that she was always hoping Harriet's magical incidents were completely ordinary and that Harriet wasn't a witch. So basically she was holding her breath for the last ten years until Harriet got her letter. If she did get her letter, she would distance herself from her niece, whereas if Harriet didn't get her letter she would treat her better, as she's 'normal' and non-magical.