"The public is warned that Black is armed and extremely dangerous. A special hotline has been set up…"

"Boys, don't forget that your Aunt Marge is arriving today," Uncle Vernon said over the television as he finished his toast. "I expect you both to be dressed smartly."

Dudley and Harry nodded. Summer had been wonderful to Harry so far, a whole carefree month of writing back and forth with his friends and joining Dudley in avoiding Hermione's questions about their homework. He should have known it wouldn't come without a price. Harry poked at his bacon and sighed.

Uncle Vernon noticed this and his moustache twitched. "I'm letting you leave tomorrow, and I signed that Hogsmeade paper of yours," he said, addressing Harry directly. "You can mind your manners around your aunt while you're still here."

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," Harry intoned. Uncle Vernon gave him one last look before saying goodbye and leaving for the station.

Uncle Vernon had informed them of Aunt Marge's visit a week ago, and Harry had immediately written to all of their friends, looking for a place to escape to for the week. Neville had been the only one to respond affirmatively, and so now Harry was planning on spending a week with Neville and his greenhouses, which he had sounded very excited about showing Harry in his reply.

Dudley speared another sausage and blinked, suddenly remembering something.

"Oh! I didn't tell you, did I?" He grinned and pulled a letter out of his pocket, handing it to Harry. "Ron's dad won the lottery, their owl arrived this morning with the news!"

Harry opened the letter and grinned at the newspaper clipping that had been included with the note. "Lucky I didn't ask to stay with him then, eh? I'd be in Egypt."

"Lucky?" Dudley asked incredulously. "They've got loads of cool stuff there! Three headed skeletons and all sorts!"

Harry laughed as he reached that part of the letter. "He says the last one was so bad his little sister wasn't even allowed in to see. Wonder what it was, he doesn't say."

They spent a while trying to think up things that could be worse than a three headed skeleton, becoming more and more gruesome and inventive as they went. The day was spent doing little else until Uncle Vernon got home, at which point they both put on nice clothing and went downstairs to greet him and Aunt Marge. They heard the crunch of gravel outside and Harry pulled the door open with a feeling of mild foreboding.

Aunt Marge stood on the threshold, suitcase under one arm and bulldog under the other.

"Dudders!" she roared, thrusting the suitcase into Harry's arms and coming inside to greet Dudley with a hug , a kiss, and a twenty pound note. "How's my little neffy-poo?"

Uncle Vernon followed her inside, smiling jovially as he shut the door behind him.

"Tea, Marge?" he asked, heading for the kitchen. "And what will Ripper take?"

"Ripper can have some tea out of my saucer," Marge said as the proceeded to the kitchen. "I'm so sorry about Petunia, Vernon. I always said that woman was a bit high strung…"

Harry watched them head into the kitchen as he adjusted his grip on Aunt Marge's bag. He reminded himself as he hauled it up the stairs that he was leaving tomorrow, and all he had to do was avoid Aunt Marge as much as possible until then. Hopefully, he would be able to use packing as an excuse and escape to his room after dinner.

He took a long time in putting Aunt Marge's suitcase away, so that by the time he got back, she had already been supplied with tea and fruitcake and was discussing her bulldogs with Uncle Vernon as Ripper lapped away noisily in the corner.

"…He pines if he's away from me."

Ripper began to growl as Harry sat down, directing Aunt Marge's attention toward him for the first time.

"So," she barked. "Still here, are you?" Uncle Vernon began to look slightly uncomfortable.

"Yes," Harry said. He saw Uncle Vernon's face and added, "Ma'am."

Aunt Marge seemed slightly mollified by addition. Uncle Vernon took the opportunity to cut in.

"The boy is really shaping up these days," he told her. "He's got himself a job that pays for his schooling. He's even been accepted to the same school as Dudders."

Aunt Marge's eyebrows went up and she looked back at Harry.

"Is that so?" she asked with a note of approval. "Finally decided to contribute to society, have you? Stop being a burden on your hardworking uncle?"

Harry bit his tongue. "Yes, ma'am," he repeated with difficulty.

"Well done, Vernon," she said with a curt nod. "He's a credit to your rearing skills. No doubt that ex-wife of yours was keeping it from showing. I never did understand what you saw in her, no offence meant, you understand…"

Harry stopped listening at that point, noting the look on Dudley's face. He wasn't taking the jibes toward his mother very well. He looked extremely upset and his knuckles were white on his fork. Uncle Vernon looked uncomfortable as well, but he wasn't taking it quite as badly as Dudley was.

"…There was just something wrong with that woman - "

Crack!

Aunt Marge's teacup split in half in her hand, spilling tea all over the tablecloth and her clothing.

"Goodness, Marge," Uncle Vernon said, standing up immediately to get a dishcloth. "Are you alright?"

"I apologise," Aunt Marge grunted, mopping up a bit of the mess with her napkin. "Must've squeezed it too hard, did the same thing at Colonel Fubster's the other day…I have a very firm grip, you know."

Uncle Vernon glanced at Dudley and Harry with a mildly suspicious yet grateful look as he wiped up the tea and changed the subject.

"Heard the news this morning, Marge?" he asked, wringing out the dishtowel. "What about that escaped prisoner, eh?"

Harry and Dudley had escaped from the table directly after desert, and they were up in Harry's room now, packing Harry's things for his visit to Neville's house.

"I wish I could come with you," Dudley said, flipping through one of Harry's photo albums morosely. "I don't much like Aunt Marge right now. Was she always this bad?"

Harry dumped a stack of shirts into his trunk and looked up at him. "Pretty much," he admitted. "She's really good at it, actually. Maybe Uncle Vernon will talk to her. I can't imagine he appreciates her talking about Aunt Petunia like that any more than you do."

"It was horrible of her, though," Dudley said softly, and Harry understood he was talking about Aunt Petunia now. "Leaving like she did. After I stopped being so sad, I was really angry at her."

Harry nodded and stayed silent, letting Dudley talk. He hadn't said anything about Aunt Petunia to Harry since he'd retreated into Riddle's book last year.

"It's been almost a year, you know. Since she left."

Harry nodded again. He remembered as well as Dudley did.

"She hasn't even written. I don't even know what's happened to her," Dudley said unhappily. "I tried sending her a letter by owl, but it came back unopened. That probably wasn't the best idea."

Harry had not known about this at all. He sat down on the bed next to Dudley, who had pulled his legs up and was leaning against the wall.

"You wrote her a letter?" he asked curiously. Dudley nodded.

"I thought of maybe sending it to her through the post, but I didn't know where to send it. Our grandparents on that side died before we were born, and we don't have any other living family on Mum's side."

Harry frowned. He had known his grandparents were dead, but he hadn't known when it had happened. "How do you know when grandma and grandpa died?" he asked.

"Mum told me all about them when we were little," Dudley said, momentarily sidetracked. "There are pictures in the albums, Harry. Didn't you ever wonder who they were?"

"I wasn't allowed to look in the albums," Harry said with a frown. "I don't even know where they are. There's one picture of them in the ones Uncle Vernon gave me for Christmas first year, but otherwise I've not seen any."

Dudley seemed to perk up a bit. "I'll tell you about them," he said, standing up. "Let me go get the pictures first, though. You need the pictures for the stories."

Harry waited bemusedly as Dudley ran downstairs to wherever the photo albums were kept. Dudley had seemed happy to be distracted from his search for his self-exiled mother, even if it meant bringing back memories of her by telling Harry her stories. At least they were happy stories. Harry heard Dudley running up the stairs, and moments later he burst in with a stack of albums, plopped them down on the bed next to Harry, and sat down, already riffling through one.

"Here's one from Grandma's birthday," Dudley said, pointing out one of their grandmother with a dismayed look on her face and a fork in her hand. Harry grinned. "Grandpa made her a cake, Mum said you can tell by the look on Grandma's face, she's just taken a bite, see…"

After breakfast the next day, Harry was packed and waiting in the garden for Neville to arrive. Harry had stressed the need for muggle transportation, warning Neville that his muggle aunt would be visiting, and that she was very nosy. He had put his trunk in the box Pansy had given him for his birthday last year, and put that and some clothing in a pack so that Aunt Marge and the neighbours wouldn't question his strange luggage. He had decided to take his snake along as well, and she was wound around his wrist under his shirt, napping. Now he just had to wait.

Dudley sat next to him, having brought out some lemonade and some regular playing cards so that they could enjoy the sunshine while they waited for Neville. It wasn't as much fun playing Exploding Snap when you knew that the cards weren't actually going to explode, but they gave it a go anyway.

"Boom!" Dudley exclaimed eventually, throwing his cards into the air and grinning. "You lose!"

Harry laughed. "How do I lose? It was your cards that exploded!"

"You have less points than I do, though, look." Dudley picked up his cards from where they'd fallen and showed them to Harry. Harry gave him an incredulous look.

"Is that how we're going to play it then?" he asked, shuffling the cards again. "Once you know your cards are better, blow them up?"

Dudley laughed and nodded. "Sounds good to me."

"But don't you loose thirty points when your cards explode?"

Harry and Dudley looked up to see Neville standing on the other side of the garden fence. There was a shiny black car parked behind him. Harry could see a man helping an elderly woman out of the back. Her hat had a stuffed vulture on it.

Harry and Dudley put the cards away, grabbed their cups, and went over to greet Neville and his grandmother.

"How's your summer been so far, Neville?" Harry asked in greeting, opening the gate for them.

"It's been nice," Neville said. "Harry, Dudley, this is my Gran, Augusta Longbottom. Gran, this is Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley."

Mrs. Longbottom had reached the group by this point, and offered her hand to both boys. "Neville has told me much about both of you," she informed them grandly. "It is an honour."

"It's an honour to meet you too, ma'am," Dudley said in his best 'polite to guests' voice. "Would you like to come inside?"

"I'm afraid not, we have much to be getting along with," she said graciously. "But thank you for the kind offer, my boy."

She offered her hand one last time and turned around to head back to the car. Neville smiled at Dudley and Harry and shrugged.

"I guess I'll see you at school, Dudley," he said, shaking Dudley's hand and following his grandmother back to the car.

"See you in a week or so, Dudley," Harry said, waving as he followed Neville. "I'll send you a letter."

Dudley waved back as Harry followed Neville to the car. The man, who Harry assumed was the driver, held the door for them and closed it behind them.

"We're just driving to London," Neville explained as they settled in and the car began to move down the street. Neville's grandmother pulled out the Daily Prophet and began reading. "We'll floo from there."

Harry nodded. Neville reached into his pocket and pulled out an Exploding Snap pack.

"Want to play for real?" he asked with a grin.

Neville's house was very…interesting. They didn't spend much time indoors, as Neville seemed most comfortable in the vast greenhouses that, as he told Harry, his portion of the basilisk had paid for.

"Gran was so proud when I told her what we did last year," he explained as they wandered through Greenhouse Six one day. "She got the best deals for all of it and I got to buy this before she put the rest of the money in my trust fund. I've also started building a hedge maze, come see!"

They left the greenhouse, Harry narrowly avoiding a bite from something that Neville called a 'baby tentacula', and headed across the grounds to an area of knee high hedges.

"Gran said that if I take care of them while I'm here and get it started, she'll hire some people to keep it up while I'm at school," Neville explained excitedly. Harry grinned as his friend hopped over several hedges toward a part that had gotten up and was trying to wander away. "This is a bit of Wandering Shubbery," Neville explained, soothing the bush. "The trick is to train them to move only when no one is looking, so as to confuse someone inside the maze."

"Wicked," Harry said. Something was slithering near his feet, and as he looked down, a vine curled around his ankle in a friendly sort of way. "Nev, there's a vine on my foot."

"Oh, that's just the Devil's Snare saying hello," Neville said, coming over to investigate. "The plan was that it would capture you and then you'd be stuck in the maze, but so far it doesn't seem to want to be especially fierce. I'm going to read up on them next week and figure out how to make it a bit less friendly toward strangers."

The Snare curled it's way up Harry's leg, eventually ending up wrapped gently around one of his arms. Another vine wrapped around his back and Harry wondered bemusedly if this was what being hugged by a plant was like. His snake stuck her head out of his sleeve to see what was going on, and when she caught sight of the vines holding Harry, she hissed angrily.

"Should I bite it for you?"

"Please don't," Harry replied. "It's friendly, and anyway, it's a plant."

"I eat plants sometimes, you know," she hissed, looking down at the Snare in what Harry thought was meant to be a threatening manner. "It's not always mice and grasshoppers. Tell it that."

"You eat the feathers off of my quills sometimes," Harry hissed wryly. "I think we both know you're not exactly picky. And I don't speak Plant, anyway."

That night at dinner, after Neville had finished explaining how he was going to get some Whomping Willow seedlings from Professor Sprout after break ended, Neville's grandmother struck up a conversation with Harry. Harry had already learned why Neville had been so shy back in first year. Mrs. Longbottom was a very foreboding and exacting woman, who felt that tact was for younger, less esteemed people.

"I wonder, Mr. Potter, are you at all alarmed about Sirius Black's escape from Azkaban?"

Harry blinked.

"What?"

"Sirius Black, boy," she repeated. "What is your opinion on his escape, given your history with him?"

Neville looked between the two of them worriedly and interrupted. "Gran, Harry's been with muggles all summer, he wouldn't be getting any wizarding newspapers."

"Nonsense, Neville," Mrs. Longbottom said dismissively. "The muggles are aware of his escape as well. The Daily Prophet had said that it is in their news. The name is recognisable enough."

Harry still felt confused. "He's escaped from Azkaban?" he asked confusedly. Neville nodded.

"We still have that paper, if you want to look at it, Harry," Neville suggested. Harry nodded, and they both excused themselves from the table to go find it.

Neville led him into the library and began looking through a stack of old papers on a shelf.

"Gran saves the important headlines," he explained. "She says they bring back the really interesting memories."

He found the paper he was looking for on the end and handed it to Harry.

'SIRIUS BLACK ESCAPES FROM AZKABAN' the headline screamed. Harry read though it twice. His parent's once best friend, turned spy for Voldemort, turned insane Azkaban escapee. The article said he was the first person to ever break out. Harry wondered how he'd escaped.

"Are you alright, Harry?" Neville asked uncertainly. Harry sighed and rested his forehead on his palm.

"I don't know," he said, starting to feel a bit angry. "I mean, I'm upset, yes. I remember reading about him in some book first year. He betrayed my parents, didn't he?"

"Well, no one's really sure what happened, but it certainly seems like it," Neville said uncertainly. "The papers say he killed Peter Pettigrew, and he was one of your parent's friends as well. All they found was a finger."

Harry thumped the table he was sitting at in frustration. His snake came slithering out of his sleeve to see what was going on.

"Are you alright, Harry?" she asked curiously.

"The person who killed my parents escaped from prison," Harry hissed in explanation.

"If this person hurt you, I'll bite them for you," she promised, slithering in angry circles on the table. Neville watched curiously, sitting down across from them.

"He didn't hurt me, he hurt my parents,"Harry hissed, then frowned. "Well, he let someone hurt them, and he killed one of their other friends too. And a lot of other people."

She stopped slithering and rose up on her end curiously. "Why was he in charge of them? Were they very small?"

Harry grimaced. "No, he was supposed to…well…he did…it was his fault…"

Harry stopped hissing and thought about it. He really had no idea what had happened. The newspaper and all the books had said was that it had been Black's fault, and that he had killed Peter, and then he had been put in Azkaban. There had never been any details.

He would just have to find out what had happened for himself, then.