"Now, as we all know, today is a very important day," Uncle Vernon said, clearing his throat.
Dudley grinned and pulled a present out from under the table. "Happy Birthday, Harry!"
Harry looked up with some surprise. He wasn't the only one. Uncle Vernon blinked as Dudley handed Harry the cylinder shaped gift, and Aunt Petunia looked on in distaste.
"Er, right, yes, of course," Uncle Vernon blustered. "Let me finish, Dudley. Today is a very important day, yes, for two reasons. The first of which is Harry's birthday, of course."
Harry tried not to smirk. Everyone at the table (with the possible exception of Dudley) knew that his birthday was not what Uncle Vernon had meant, and that he was only pretending so to please Dudley. Harry didn't mind though. Dudley had remembered his birthday, had even bought him a present!
Uncle Vernon coughed slightly. "The other reason, of course, is the deal I could make tonight from this dinner party. Now, I think we should run through the schedule one more time. We should all be in position at eight o'clock. Petunia, you will be…?"
Aunt Petunia frowned and recited, "In the lounge, waiting to welcome them graciously into our home."
"Right, and Dudley?"
"I'll be waiting to open the door." Dudley put on a simpering voice. "May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason?"
Uncle Vernon nodded. "Excellent. And you, Harry?"
"I'll be standing next to Dudley." Harry didn't put on a voice, but he did repeat the words Uncle Vernon had told him to use. "Allow me to escort you to the lounge, Mr. and Mrs. Mason."
Harry couldn't help but feel a bit stupid as he parroted his line at Uncle Vernon, but he had to admit that it was better than being shut up somewhere, which was what Uncle Vernon used to prefer when he had his dinner parties.
"Good, good. And I'll explain that you're our nephew, visiting for the summer, and…" Uncle Vernon seemed to have been struck with an idea. "We could even turn it into a small birthday dinner for you, as well! They have children, they'd love the idea!"
Uncle Vernon looked benevolently down on Harry, who was currently sitting stunned in his chair, trying to wrap his mind around the idea of a birthday dinner for him. True, it would only be because Uncle Vernon wanted to look like a family man in front of a possible client, but Harry would take what he could get.
"Alright, it's settled then," Uncle Vernon said, clapping his hands jovially. "I'll tell them that I invited them to celebrate your birthday because…at Grunnings, we like to think of clients as family!" Uncle Vernon seemed absolutely ecstatic at his own cleverness. "Excellent! Now, after we lead them into the lounge…"
After breakfast, Harry and Dudley went out in the backyard to open Harry's present. Uncle Vernon had left directly after breakfast to attend to a few last minute details about the dinner, and neither Harry nor Dudley wanted to be alone with Aunt Petunia.
As the summer had progressed, Aunt Petunia's antipathy toward her only child had only increased. Harry felt that he may not have helped matters, what with having bought Dudley what now seemed, in retrospect, like half of Zonkos for his birthday. The pranks seemed never ending with Aunt Petunia's disapproving, often angry or disgusted scowl at the end of them.
Dudley had caught on to this too, and had begun avoiding his mother whenever possible. Aunt Petunia had silently claimed the kitchen as her domain, and Dudley avoided it like the plague unless he was certain she wasn't home. Harry received a shock one day when he looked at one of the many pictures on the walls containing a younger Dudley. He still couldn't be labelled thin by any means, but compared to last year, Dudley was positively trim.
Even if Dudley hadn't been having a stellar time of it, Harry personally felt that this was the best summer he'd ever experienced. Aunt Petunia, while still snappish and rude to him, had expanded her horizons to being snappish and rude to everyone in the house, and it was much easier to bear when he wasn't alone in it. Uncle Vernon had been positively polite to him (which was somewhere in between doting on Dudley and fighting almost constantly with Aunt Petunia), and had apparently decided to simply leave Harry to himself whenever possible. Dudley, of course, had become quite friendly with Harry, despite not inviting him along to hang out with his old friends. Harry was actually quite relieved at this, and said nothing. Instead, he asked for use of Dudley's owl and wrote to his own friends. Dudley sometimes asked him to add a greeting from him, never having been very enthusiastic about the business of writing for pleasure, and Harry had also been 'gifted with the honour' of cleaning out Whitey's cage and feeding her for the summer, which he didn't really mind as much as he pretended to.
Hermione, Draco, Pansy and Blaise had promised him presents that were apparently supposed to arrive today, and Anthony had mentioned that he wasn't sure when Harry's present would be arriving, as he had owl-ordered it, and had told him to watch the skies.
At the moment, though, Harry was looking down at the present he had, rather than up for the presents he would be getting. This would be his first ever present, and he wanted to savour it. He and Dudley were sitting on the small bench in the yard now, and Dudley had a big grin on his face as he encouraged Harry to open it.
"Go on then," he said as Harry ripped open the wrapping and stared blankly at the contents.
"…Hairspray?" he asked faintly, holding the bottle in his hands in disbelief.
"Remember!" Dudley laughed, "On the train, they were all talking about buying you stuff for your hair!"
Harry couldn't help but smile a bit at the memory. He was honestly expecting Draco's present to be a mirror, although he wasn't sure if the rest of them would take the joking seriously.
"Anyway," Dudley said, still chuckling, "That's not your real present, I was just taking the mickey."
He pulled another, smaller box out of his pocket and handed it to Harry, who was overwhelmed. Two presents? And a birthday dinner? The Dursleys had never been this good to him, and Harry had no illusions about whose good will was causing it.
"Thank you, Dudley," Harry said fervently, looking down at the box in his hand.
"It's no big deal," Dudley said, waving his hand. "I wasn't just gonna get you hairspray."
Harry grinned at him and opened the box carefully.
"A watch?" Harry asked, lifting it out of the box and examining it.
"Yeah," Dudley hurried to explain. "I mean, you've had my old one forever, and this one's much nicer, the strap isn't taped together. And it's not even digital, so it'll work at Hogwarts."
"Thanks, Dudley," Harry said happily, taking off his old watch and putting on the new one. "It's really nice."
Dudley grinned at him and cuffed him on the arm. "Let's go watch the telly."
Over the course of the day, several owls came for Harry. The first was from Blaise, who had bought him his own practice Snitch with a note enclosed that told him to practice so that they'd win the cup, and that he should tell Pansy that Blaise had also bought him a brush.
The next was from Hermione, a large book of uncommon spells, in which she'd bookmarked sections she thought he'd be interested in, including cleaning, protective and defensive spells.
He sent both owls back with 'thank you's, and warned Blaise that he couldn't be held responsible if Pansy got the truth out of him.
At lunch, Dudley somehow convinced Harry to make them sandwiches. They ate in the backyard, and played with Harry's Snitch. Harry gave Dudley the remote for the television and told him to pretend to be controlling it while Harry chased it so that the neighbours wouldn't wonder.
That was the newest rule in the Dursley household: Don't let the neighbours see anything you can't explain. Uncle Vernon was fine with the other residents of Privet Drive thinking that his son had a pet bird and lots of cool gadgets, as long as they had no clue about the magical aspect of it all.
Harry noticed Aunt Petunia giving him a dark look from the kitchen window at one point, and that was when the Snitch got put away. He knew that she had never agreed with Uncle Vernon's reasoning about the neighbours, and would prefer that Dudley didn't have a bird, and that they kept all their 'gadgets' in their trunks. Aunt Petunia was not adjusting well to magic, and anyone could see that she resented Uncle Vernon for welcoming it so easily into their home. Harry knew that that was the source of his Aunt and Uncle's constant fighting, and although Dudley sometimes wasn't the brightest of boys, Harry could tell that his cousin had also made the connection.
They sat quietly for a bit after the Snitch game was over. Another owl fluttered down, this one from Pansy, and delivered a smallish box and a note. In the note, she wished him a happy birthday and informed him that the box was the sort that had expansion charms on the inside, and that it was a useful sort of thing and so he should save it. She also told him that she had no doubt that Blaise had not gotten him a brush as he'd promised, and that she expected him to actually use the one she had enclosed.
Harry smiled to himself and decided not to open it in the backyard, as this was the sort of thing that Uncle Vernon would not approve of the neighbours seeing. He put it in his pocket along with the note for later.
Harry sat awkwardly across from Mr. Mason as he tried very hard not to listen to the argument going on in the kitchen. The group in the dining room (Harry, Dudley, and the Masons) were able to catch faint snatches of what was starting to sound like a very serious fight.
"…don't care…you just….."
"…unreasonable! ….how important….to me…"
"I don't….I won't pretend…those freaks….!"
Harry looked over at Dudley, who was much less used to this sort of attitude from Aunt Petunia. Sure enough, he looked very upset. The Masons, on the other hand, were furious.
"How dare she!" Mrs. Mason hissed. "I have never been so insulted! In all my days…"
"You are absolutely right, dear," Mr. Mason agreed, folding his napkin up and standing. "We are leaving." He turned to Harry. "I apologise, dear boy, if we have ruined your birthday. Clearly your aunt is unable to tolerate our presence. Tell your uncle that we will not bother him again."
Harry wanted to stop them, just a little bit. Uncle Vernon had spoken of nothing but this dinner party for weeks, and Harry had learned young that an unhappy Uncle Vernon did not bode well for him. But what would he say? No, don't worry Mr. Mason. She's just talking about us. She doesn't think you're a freak. Just her son and nephew.
He didn't think that would go over much better, to be honest. So instead, he apologised for his aunt as he led them to the door and handed them their coats.
"She's just been having a hard time recently," he tried as they stood on the doorstep. "Don't blame my uncle for it."
Mrs. Mason smiled at them, as Dudley had followed Harry to the door, looking upset and lost.
"You're sweet children," she said, "But your aunt and uncle seem to have several issues they need to work out."
"Too right," Mr. Mason agreed gruffly. "Can't expect a man to focus on business when he needs to be concentrating on his family."
They wished Harry a happy birthday once more, and left. Harry and Dudley went back to the dining room and finished their dinners, and when Uncle Vernon came back to apologise and found his guests gone, the fighting started all over again. Harry left the plates on the table and dragged Dudley upstairs, away from it.
They spent the rest of the night in Dudley's room, Dudley flipping absently through the channels on the television and turning up the volume when ever the yelling got particularly loud. Harry looked through the box from Pansy, and even got Dudley to laugh at the bottle of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion. Even though the potions and brush were meant as his real present, Harry thought the box was much more interesting and distracted Dudley by betting him that he could fit his dresser in it. They spent a while trying to lift the dresser, which was filled with toys and clothing, and was therefore immensely heavy. Eventually they gave up and collapsed, and Harry made them both feel better by pointing out that even if they had managed to do it, they would still have had to get the dresser out later.
It was nearing eleven by this point, and the only sound from downstairs was the television. Harry said goodnight to Dudley and went to his own room, where an eagle owl was waiting on his desk with a long, thin package. Harry untied the package and it hopped away from him, ruffling it's feathers irritably.
He pointed it toward Whitey's cage, and she bristled and hooted condescendingly at him. He sighed and went out to the bathroom to get the new owl some water. As he made his way back to his room, he saw Aunt Petunia disappearing back into her own bedroom with an armful of something.
He wondered about it as he went back to his room, but soon forgot as he contemplated his present. This one was from Draco, and Harry had a very good idea of what it was. Despite that, he was still surprised when, after he'd unwrapped it and set it upright on his desk, it snapped at him to straighten his collar. Harry grinned bemusedly at it and did as he was told. It then asked him to do something about his hair, which prompted him to explain that he was just about to go to bed anyway.
"That is absolutely no reason to look so scruffy," the mirror huffed as he turned his back on it and began to get changed.
"Yeah, yeah," Harry agreed absently, suddenly realizing he hadn't seen a note and going back to the wrapping paper for a look. It was a short letter, wishing him a happy birthday and telling him Draco would see them next Wednesday, and that he and Dudley were to meet them at the Leaky Cauldron at noon. He also assured Harry that he'd be tucking in his shirt automatically by September. Draco seemed very amused by the idea.
Harry made a face as he tossed the note back down on the desk and climbed into bed. He wasn't sure if he was going to like this present or not.