Confusion followed the shock, then realization. But it was too slow…
Someone was approaching the rocky peninsula in the storm.
Shivering violently, Harry darted back into the hut, water dripping from his naked form. – Why? Where were his clothes?
He nearly stumbled on a pack on his way to the sofa. – Wha?
Casting his eyes around frantically, he found his forsaken clothes – his own – by the sofa, just where he had left them. The older Dursleys had not been woken up by the noises he had made, thankfully, and neither the younger.
Wiping away most of the water from himself, Harry tiptoed to the pool of his clothes and donned them one by one, still trembling. – What had happened? Had it all been real? Whose pack was it? Where were the clothes he had been given?
There was a splashing sound outside that seemed off…
Where should he hide the pack? Who was outside?
His rucksack, another hand-me-down from Dudley, was parked against the sofa; its contents were only a change of clothes and writing tools. Harry got an idea.
Stuffing the smaller, heavier pack into his larger one, he waited for whoever it was to knock on the door.
He had never expected the poor door-plank to be banged, though, on thrice of which it finally collapsed inside with a deafening crack. And on the threshold, stooping slightly to avoid the lintel, stood a huge someone that Harry did not recognise at all.
As if on cue, the door to the bedroom banged open, and out hobbled Uncle Vernon, carrying a gun in his hands. "You are trespassing, Sir!" he bellowed, and Dudley woke up with a start.
"Who are you?" Harry squeaked, hugging his rucksack as if a shield against the giant of a man. His eyes widened when the scraggly hair on the man's face twitched into a smile.
"Name's Rubeus Hagrid, Harry, but ye'can call me just Hagrid. Everyone does."
The man's voice was just as big as his body, and Harry could imagine the stone floor groaning under his weight as he advanced on Uncle Vernon.
"Put that thing away, Dursley," he growled. And when Uncle Vernon refused, he simply seized the gun and bent it double. Lacking no other defence, Harry's uncle hurried to a spot behind the sofa, the watching Aunt Petunia and Dudley following him.
Harry himself sat in the open alone, feeling vulnerable but certain that his relatives would not share the dubious safety of their 'fortress' with him. But the huge man would not harm him, would he?
He looked up uncertainly when the man – Hagrid – crouched before him, peering at him closely. His whole forearm was shaken by the man's dustbin-sized hand, then, making him bob forward and his teeth chatter.
"Nice te'meet yeh," Hagrid said warmly, smiling once more. "Am a good friend of your parents. Put you with them on 'Fessor Dumbledore's orders, sorry." And he glared at the cowering Dursleys behind Harry.
Something in Harry snapped.