"The Letters from No One," she read before she was cut off by the still-simmering potion in the corner giving off a large belch of smoke and enveloping the room's occupants in a smelly green cloud. Everyone began coughing as the smoke cleared to reveal six figures, four of which were teenagers, and the other two adults.
"No…it can't be…" Harry said in a shocked voice. "Not you…"
"What's wrong with us?" One of the red-haired teenagers asked. "You're acting like there's something wrong with meeting the Amazing Gred and Forge!"
"You're dead!" Ginny nearly screamed, causing Fred and George to hold their ears in pain.
"Sheesh, Gin, no need to scream. We can hear you, but we don't feel dead," George told her, causing her to pinch herself to see if she was dreaming. She wasn't.
One of the adults turned to the other one. "Sirius, is it just me dreaming, or is that Lily and James?"
"No Lupin, and I don't think this is a dream. Hold on, let me check." He pinched himself as painfully as he could. "Yep, we're not dreaming. But that means…" he trailed off as he caught sight of the room's other occupants.
"Harry, what're you doing here? And where is here?" Older Sirius asked while turning to view the room. "Weren't you at Hogwarts, getting ready for O.W.L.s?"
"No, Lupin, that was four years ago, we've graduated since then."
"Then how…?"
"I don't know exactly why, but Harry's potion suddenly began giving off smoke, and here you are," Hermione cut in.
Well, what's happened since…erm…four years ago?" Sirius asked.
"Well, we're reading these books about my life, so you'll have to listen," Harry stated, as if commenting on the weather. "Oh, by the way, your younger selves are here too," he added, still acting like he was talking about weather.
The older and younger versions looked at each other and gaped.
"Well, this'll make things more difficult," the older Sirius remarked.
"I think that when speaking about us, then the younger Sirius should be called Sirius, older Sirius should be Padfoot, I'll stay Remus, and my older self should be Moony," the younger Remus remarked. The other three nodded.
(Just so you know, this is how I'll refer to them as.)
The greasy-haired teenager turned to Lily. "Lily, what are we doing here? And why are you hugging Potter like that?" he added when he saw the way Lily was hugging James.
"Because we've decided that we're going out!" she replied cheerfully. Severus' jaw dropped. Then he pulled out his wand and pointed it at James. "Let her go!"
"Or what, you'll hex me?"
"Hell, yeah! Sectumsempra!" The spell wasn't very effective, as James had used a shield charm just in time to blunt the force used against him; that didn't completely dull it, however. James screamed with pain when the spell hit him, and he dropped onto his knees, and instantly every wand in the room was pointing at Severus, forcing him to drop his wand and raise his hands in the air.
"Why are you all acting like this? Especially you, Lily, I thought you hated James, unless…" his eyes widened. "You've been confounded!"
"Nonsense," Lily scoffed. "You can even look at James' memory if you want, there's a Pensive around here somewhere," Harry added, looking for said Pensive.
"I'd rather not," Severus sniffed.
There was much arguing, during which the final new person was looking at the rest of the room's occupants with a look of disgust on her face.
"WILL YOU QUIT ARGUING, YOU BUNCH OF FREAKS!!!" Petunia Evans shouted at the top of her lungs. All eyes turned to her, all with a very angry look in them. Petunia gulped. Being in a room full of magical people, or 'freaks', was not at the top of her priority list. In fact, it was quite close to the bottom.
"Petunia," Lily growled menacingly. "Lily," Petunia growled back.
"WHY THE F***ING HELL DID YOU DO IT?!?" Lily asked loudly in a voice that was filled with malice.
"Why'd I do what, freak?" Petunia asked her in return.
"WHY'D YOU TREAT HARRY LIKE THAT?!?!" Lily screamed at Petunia.
"Why'd she do what now?" Fred and George asked simultaneously.
"This…this…pathetic excuse for a human being," Lily spat, "treated my son like…like…" she was trying to find the words to describe how Petunia and Vernon Dursley had treated Harry in the last chapter, but she was failing.
James tried to calm down his newly proclaimed girlfriend, although he too was glaring daggers at Petunia.
Severus seemed reluctant to take sides in the argument. On the one hand, Lily's sister had apparently badly mistreated Lily's son for most of his life; on the other hand, James Potter, his mortal enemy, was with Lily, his first and only love. He eventually decided, much to his own reluctance, to join with James in the argument.
Petunia kept insisting that she didn't know what the hell the other three were talking about, and that they were all "freaks from hell." This only made things worse, and when it was over, the new people had been given a short summary of everything that had happened, while Petunia was spitting with fury from the chair she had been tied to. She was eventually given a silencing charm for her trouble.
Ginny took the book back, and began to read again.
"The Letters From No One," she read.
The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started
"Okay, even Petunia's got to admit that's child abuse," Moony said, and Petunia nodded, seemingly reluctantly, and opened her mouth to try and speak, but found she couldn't, because of the silencing charm. Ginny lifted the silencing charm from Petunia.
"Who are all these people," she asked Lily in a friendlier tone. Lily apologized, and began to introduce everyone.
"My son Harry, his friends Ron and Hermione, his girlfriend Ginny, Ginny's twin brothers, my boyfriend James, his friends Remus and Sirius, their older counterparts, and of course you know Sev," lily said, introducing each person in turn.
"Great. Can I be untied now?" Petunia asked.
"Only if you don't insult us," the room chorused back.
"Fine."
and Dudley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.
"This kid's a brat, whose kid is he anyway?" Petunia asked Lily.
"Yours."
"What? But I'd never raise a kid to be like this…fatboy!" she cried.
"Well, you did."
Harry was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley's gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader.
"You know, that actually makes sense, in a retarded way," Sirius remarked.
The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Dudley's favorite sport: Harry Hunting.
Many growls could be heard, even, surprisingly, from Severus and Petunia.
This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where he could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn't be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.
"Why should Fatty think it's funny?" Fred asked.
"Don't, Fred, life has no meaning to Fatty," George told him.
"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"
"No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it — it might be sick." Then he ran, before Dudley could work out what he'd said.
They all burst out laughing.
One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Harry at Mrs. Figg's. Mrs. Figg wasn't as bad as usual. It turned out she'd broken her leg tripping over one of her cats, and she didn't seem quite as fond of them as before.
"Why shouldn't you like cats?" Ginny asked, shocked.
"Ginny's a cat lover," harry explained at the looks of confusion.
She let Harry watch television and gave him a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she'd had it for several years.
"That's just a waste," Remus and Moony said at the same time.
That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings' boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.
"You mean for being a jerk?" Hermione asked sweetly.
As he looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up.
"Ickle Dudleykins?" Lily asked Petunia, trying not to laugh.
"What? I can't embarrass my kid?" she asked with a huff.
Harry didn't trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh.
James looked worried. Only one of his ribs had cracked.
There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray water.
"What's this?" he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.
"Your new school uniform," she said.
Harry looked in the bowl again.
"Oh," he said, "I didn't realize it had to be so wet."
"Sarcasm is lost on Petunia," Lily told Harry in an undertone.
"HEY!" Petunia shouted.
"Sorry," Lily said. "Not," she quietly told Harry.
"Don't be stupid," snapped Aunt Petunia. "I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things gray for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished."
James snorted.
Harry seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. He sat down at the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Stonewall High — like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably.
"Maybe, or it might be hippo skin," George said to Harry.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry's new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.
"Even in the shower?" the Twins asked Harry. "I'm not sure, but I think so, I never bothered to check," he explained.
They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.
"Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.
"Make Harry get it."
"Get the mail, Harry."
"Make Dudley get it."
"Fight, Harry!" James shouted.
"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley."
James growled.
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.
"It sounds as though your kid never got any mail," Petunia remarked to Lily. Lily glared back. "Oh, right."
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.
"Wow, you really did have a miserable existence before you met me and Ron," Hermione remarked to Harry.
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
"It's always creepy how they do that," the Siriuses observed together.
The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. 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.
"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.
"Okay, that was terrible! He should be ashamed of himself for laughing at that!" James shouted, while the other jokers cringed at the terrible joke.
Harry went back to 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.
"You know, he really should have opened that in the hall," Severus remarked. "Then again, he's got Potter's brain, so I'm not surprised." James growled angrily in response.
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!"
"Thanks a Lot, Fatty! You're going to get Harry in trouble!" the Twins yelled.
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.
"Fat bastard!" James growled angrily.
"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon,
"Lots of people, they just don't…erm…" Harry trailed off when he realized that the rest of the people in the room had either been dead, didn't know him at that time, or they hated him.
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 grayish white of old porridge.
"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.
"Wow, dramatic much?" Padfoot asked with an eye roll.
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!"
"I repeat, dramatic much?"
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.
"Nooooo!" Ginny said in a singsong voice.
"I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it's mine."
"Okay, I've got to admit that he should have gotten to read the letter. It was his, after all, even though it probably was for your freak school," Petunia said reluctantly. Everyone glared at her for the 'freak' statement.
"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;
"Go Harry!"
Dudley won,
"Damn."
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?"
"No, the headmaster writes the letter, then they put a spell on the letter to show the address. I've seen McGonagall do it," Hermione explained.
"Watching — spying — might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.
"What did I just say?!"
"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…"
"Okay, that's a terrible idea. If you don't answer the letter, then they keep sending them, and eventually they send someone to get you personally," Lily remarked.
"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?"
"Magic is only dangerous in the hands of dark wizards," Ron said sagely.
That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he'd never done before; he visited Harry in his cupboard.
They all gasped.
"He actually FIT?!?! The world is ending! Run for your lives!" James cried dramatically.
"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.
"See my above comment."
"I have burned it."
"Idiot, they'll just keep coming," Severus sneered.
"It was not a mistake," said Harry angrily, "it had my cupboard on it."
"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling.
Lily and Ron started hyperventilating from fear.
He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.
"Probably was," one of the Twins said.
"Er — yes, Harry — about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking… you're really getting a bit big for it… we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom."
Once this statement sunk in, every person in the drawing room looked shocked. Then they all started getting an enraged expression on their faces. Even Petunia and Severus. The room exploded in a storm of swear words cursing the Dursleys for everything they did to Harry. It took about ten minutes to calm everyone down, but they still continued reading with angry expressions on their faces.
"Why?" said Harry.
"Don't ask questions!" snapped his uncle. "Take this stuff upstairs, now."
The Dursleys' house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge), one where Dudley slept, and one where Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom.
"Spoiled brat. Why do you pamper him so much?" Remus asked Petunia. Petunia merely shrugged.
"He's in my future, so how the hell would I know?" she answered. "He acts like a…a…" She was at a loss for words to describe Dudley Dursley, apparently her only son.
It only took Harry one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room. He sat down on the bed and stared around him. Nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old video camera was lying on top of a small, working tank Dudley had once driven over the next door neighbor's dog; in the corner was Dudley's first-ever television set, which he'd put his foot through when his favorite program had been canceled; there was a large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Dudley had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all bent because Dudley had sat on it. Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they'd never been touched.
"They probably weren't, Dudders never liked books," Harry remarked.
From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother, "I don't want him in there… I need that room… make him get out…"
"How about…no." Lily said sweetly.
Harry sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he'd have given anything to be up here. Today he'd rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it.
"I know that feeling," Sirius and Padfoot said simultaneously, they looked at each other before Sirius decided to explain. "My dear old mum would often take away things I really liked, and in an effort to make it up to me, she would give me something else, usually pureblood-related."
Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn't have his room back.
"That should really happen more often, just so that he'll learn his lesson," Remus observed monotonously.
Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he'd opened the letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.
When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry, made Dudley go and get it.
They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one! 'Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive —'"
"F*** you, Fatty. F*** you," the Twins chorused.
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind.
"Good going, Harry," James said, cheering his son on.
After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick,
"Even Fatty?" Sirius asked. Harry nodded.
"I'm not sure how that happened, myself, I just know he was yelping."
Uncle Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry's letter clutched in his hand.
"Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom," he wheezed at Harry. "Dudley — go — just go."
Harry walked round and round his new room. Someone knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn't received his first letter. Surely that meant they'd try again?
"Yep."
And this time he'd make sure they didn't fail. He had a plan.
"If this Potter is anything like the original, then the plan will fail," Severus sneered.
The repaired alarm clock rang at six o'clock the next morning. Harry turned it off quickly and dressed silently. He mustn't wake the Dursleys. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.
"Hey, it's…not bad," Severus said, shocked. He quickly composed himself, though. "I'll bet that your uncle will have done something to stop it, though," he added to Harry.
He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door —
"AAAAARRRGH!"
"Knew it."
Harry leapt into the air; he'd trodden on something big and squashy on the doormat — something alive!
Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Harry realized that the big, squashy something had been his uncle's face.
They all burst out laughing.
Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do.
"Told you," Severus said calmly.
He shouted at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Harry shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vernon's lap. Harry could see three letters addressed in green ink.
"I want —" he began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes.
"Okay, that's just cruel," Petunia acknowledged.
Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.
"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."
"I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon."
"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.
"If that's how your mind works…" George began slowly.
"Then we don't want to be like you!" Fred ended, and the Twins high-fived each other happily, while everyone laughed.
On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.
Uncle Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" as he worked, and jumped at small noises.
"Okay, I think he's gone crazy from paranoia," Moony observed.
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two-dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor.
"Why does he like to complain so much?" James asked.
"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Harry in amazement.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.
"No post on Sundays,"
"There's still owl post," Ginny said, a knowing look on her face.
he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today —"
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head.
"HAHAHAHA!" Ron laughed with a look of glee on his face.
Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one —
"Why didn't you try taking one off the ground?" Hermione asked Harry. "I wasn't really thinking," he replied ashamedly.
"Out! OUT!"
Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall.
When Aunt Petunia and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.
"That does it," said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"
He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue.
"I'll bet an angry Hagrid would look scarier," Padfoot said thoughtfully. Harry suddenly got a superior look on his face.
Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag. ]
"That's what you get for being a spoiled brat!" Sirius said happily.
They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.
"Shake 'em off… shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.
They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.
"Okay, I can admit to the hungry part, but still, these things happen, Fatty. Get used to it," Padfoot mocked.
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering…
They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
"'Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H. Potter? Only I got about an 'undred of these at the front desk."
She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:
Mr. H. Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth
Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.
"And she didn't say anything? What is she, drunk??" Ron asked.
"I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.
"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn't seem to hear her.
"He's crazy," the Twins remarked together.
Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.
"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon.
"Nice of you to notice, Dudders. Join the club," Harry said.
Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.
It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled.
"It's Monday,"
"Awww, my wittle baby Duddikins is learning the days of the week," Petunia mocked. 'wait, what? Am I starting to actually LIKE these freaks?!?!' she thought to herself. 'I must be going as crazy as they are!'
He told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."
Monday. This reminded Harry of something. If it was Monday — and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days the week, because of television — then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry's eleventh birthday.
"Happy birthday Harry!" Lily cheered. She was glad she was finally able to congratulate her son in some way, so she got up and gave him a hug. She sat back down with a happy smile on her face.
Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun — last year, the Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks.
The smile slid away as though it had never been there.
Still, you weren't eleven every day.
Uncle Vernon was back and he was smiling.
"Not good," Severus muttered.
He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd bought.
"I'll bet it was a gun!" Ron shouted. Sirius snorted. "Ha! I bet it was a wand, so he could protect himself!"
"Fine, I bet a galleon that it was a gun!"
"Make it two and you're on!"
Everyone snickered. They all knew that Sirius was going to lose, as Muggles couldn't use magic wands.
"Found the perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"
It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.
"Oh, no! the world will end because Dudley Dursley can't watch television!" James cried dramatically, while everyone laughed. James almost fell over out of shock when he saw that Severus Snape, his mortal enemy, was laughing at one of his jokes! Severus quickly stopped, though.
"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!"
A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.
"I've already got us some rations," said Uncle Vernon, "so all aboard!"
It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.
The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.
Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.
"We won't even say anything," Fred began.
"It's just too easy," his twin finished.
"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully.
He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail.
"Looks like the personal delivery will be coming up," Ginny noted.
Harry privately agreed, though the thought didn't cheer him up at all.
"Awww, cheer up Harry," James said, clapping the real Harry on the back.
As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.
There was instant silence.
Several floors below
Kreacher, still preparing his master's lunch, looked up as he heard the loud cursing again. He sighed, shrugged, and began the long trek up the stairs to inform his master that lunch was ready.
The drawing room
It took a little while to calm everyone down, but they continued after everyone was settled.
The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn't sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.
"Probably on his way to that shack."
Five minutes to go. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although he might be warmer if it did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he'd be able to steal one somehow.
Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?
One minute to go and he'd be eleven. Thirty seconds… twenty… ten… nine — maybe he'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him — three… two… one… BOOM.
"DO IT!" all the pranksters (the Twins, the Marauders, and the Marauders' older counterparts) yelled.
The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.
"That's the end of the chapter," Ginny said. "Who wants to read now?" The Twins raised their hands simultaneously.
"Okay, ummm… decide among yourselves who's going to read," she told them. The Twins whooped, and began a VERY long game of rock-paper-scissors. Fred had just won, when they heard a knock at the door. The door opened to reveal Kreacher, dressed in an apron. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was almost touching the ground out of shocked.
"Wh-what are you doing here?!? You're dead!!" he shrieked. Harry got up and explained everything to Kreacher, while the rest of the room looked at Kreacher with mixed reactions. Some angry, others creeped-out, and one scared.
"What is that thing?!" Petunia shrieked, causing everyone to jump. Lily quickly explained to her what a house-elf was.
"Oh yeah, master Harry, lunch is ready," Kreacher said, remembering why he had gone upstairs in the first place.
"Thanks Kreacher." And so they all went downstairs for lunch.
I kind of think this chapter was a dud. But that's just me.