Disclaimer: For those of you who didn't realise, I am not JKR, nor do I claim to be, as such I have no rights to any of the canon characters, places, events, themes, plot or anything else that you recognise, only the story line of this fic and any OCs I might include came from my tiny brain. I make no money from this no matter how much I wish I did. I hope this doesn't break any rules or anything (let me know if it does and I'll get rid of it) but since this follows directly on from OoTP I've included the last couple of lines at the start of this fic. I DO NOT OWN THIS PART, IT IS NOT MINE, EVERYONE BOW DOWN TO THE ALMIGHTY JKR AND HER BUNCH OF OVERPAID LAWYERS :p.

"…he smiled, raised a hand in farewell, turned around and led the way out of the station towards the sunlit street, with Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia and Dudley hurrying along in his wake."

Chapter One: Return to the Dursleys

Once he was out of the station and out of sight of his friends and the other witches and wizards, who had been there to welcome them home from school for the summer, Harry Potter slowed his pace to allow his relatives to catch up as he had to admit he really had no idea where the Dursleys had parked their car.

Once he had loaded his school trunk and Hedwig's cage into the boot of the car, under close observation from his uncle of course (Vernon would never let his nephew do so by himself incase Harry were to scratch the paintwork), he climbed into the back seat next to his ridiculously overweight cousin and directly behind his equally whale like uncle, who was driving.

Now, Harry Potter had spent many years with the Dursleys and as such he knew that the silence following the confrontation at the train station was much too good to last. In his mind the only question was when the explosion from his uncle would occur.

Currently Vernon Dursley was a most hideous shade of red from his anger and was rapidly approaching purple which, as Harry knew, was incredibly dangerous as far as his immediate safety was concerned.

'Why can't he just blow a few blood vessels…just this once?' Harry thought.

By this point the car had made it almost halfway through the journey back to Privet Drive in Surrey and for almost all of that time his aunt had been shooting him glares from the front seat, his uncle had been watching him in the rear view mirror more often than looking at the road and his cousin had been engaged in a most fruitless exercise trying to hide in the corner of the vehicle and keep as much distance between himself and his 'freak' cousin (most difficult considering he took up more than 2 thirds of the back seat by himself). Seeing this and recognising the fact that it would probably be best to get it over with before they arrived so his uncle would not be able to immediately beat him, Harry decided to head off his uncle and explain, 'Gryffindors charge ahead' after all he thought.

"Um…Uncle Vernon?" Harry asked nervously.

"What?" his uncle growled.

"I wanted to explain" he replied "those people back at the station…I had no idea they were going to do or say any of that, in fact I wish they hadn't. Please don't take notice of it, I'll write them the notes they wanted every few days to keep them happy and that should stop them from doing anything else and hopefully you won't have to have any more contact with them."

Harry sat and waited while Vernon considered this and was getting more and more nervous as every second passed until eventually his uncle replied "See that you do keep them bloody freaks away from my house, boy. If they show up I'll make you pay, mark my words."

Harry took this as probably the best possible outcome, as a matter of fact, for his uncle that was positively polite so he simply muttered a quiet "yes sir" to which the older man merely grunted.

For the remainder of the trip he sat in silence, thinking back over the past year and considering all that had happened in the past few weeks. He had recently however come to the conclusion that the events in the Department of Mysteries were not entirely his fault, oh he knew that he held some of the blame for Sirius' death, but most of it could be assigned to Bellatrix for firing the spell, Voldemort for luring them there in the first place, Dumbledore for not informing Harry about the existence of the prophecy previously and a fair amount of blame was left over for Snape for not teaching him occlumency properly to prevent the dreams from happening. Yes, he thought, defiantly enough blame to go around.

When they pulled up on the drive way of No.4 Privet Drive, Harry climbed out of the car and carried his possessions up to the smallest bedroom of the house where he was told to stay and that he would not be receiving a meal that evening.

"and don't you even think of coming downstairs again until we call you in the morning to make our breakfast, boy!" his uncle had bellowed at his retreating form as he climbed the stairs, trunk and bird cage in hand.

Looking around his bedroom Harry discovered that everything was pretty much as he had expected, the room hadn't been cleaned since he had been there last (probably the only one in the house not cleaned at least twice a day by his cleaning obsessed aunt) and the pile of broken items and unread books courtesy of his favourite cousin had grown slightly in his absence, otherwise it remained unchanged.

Harry unpacked his clothes, books and school supplies, placed Hedwig's cage, open, on a small table near the open window and placed some water and owl treats inside for when his friend arrived as he had released her prior to leaving the train (owls in cages not being overly common in the middle of muggle London and him knowing that while with his relatives he was not to do anything that could be considered abnormal).

Once these basic tasks were completed Harry was fairly tired from the long day and decided to get an early night so he stripped down to his underwear and climbed into his bed, where he fell asleep almost instantly.