Chapter Text
The accidental explosion of the telly had earned Harry his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started, and Dudley had already wrecked a multitude of his birthday presents, including the new video camera, the remote-controlled airplane, and his racing bike.
Harry would have been glad school was over, but, unfortunately, there was no escaping Dudley and his gang. Luckily, he found a calm comfort from their rounds of Harry Hunting.
The library.
As the Dursleys had determined that none of them ever wished to visit the place and that Harry was able to spend time at the library without “doing anything freakish,” he was allowed to attend whenever he was done with his chores. Aunt Petunia was glad to be rid of Harry and invite her neighborhood friends over without a run-in with him, and so Harry spent a majority of his summer cooped up with Mr. Frayley and the books.
“Where will you be attending secondary school, Mr. Potter?” he idly asked one day when he was reshelving books near where Harry was reading.
“Stonewall High, sir,” Harry said, looking up from his copy of ‘The Interpretation of Dreams.’ He still hadn’t found out the meaning behind the flying motorcycle.
“Huh,” the librarian said, “I just remembered, didn’t you say your cousin was going to Smeltings?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Huh,” Mr. Frayley said again, “That seems a rather odd choice, doesn’t it?”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“Doesn’t it seem a bit unfair to you that you’ll have to go to a public school while your cousin is going to a posh private one like Smeltings?”
“Not at all, sir. It’s just what Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia decided.”
“But still. Did your cousin earn a scholarship of some sorts?”
Harry shook his head.
“Did he pass the entrance exams while you didn't?”
“No, sir. I don’t think Dudley had to take any entrance exams. He got in on account of Uncle Vernon being an alumnus.” Or, at the very least, that’s what Harry thought. Dudley hadn’t once in his life passed a test that he hadn’t cheated on, and Harry doubted that that would change on an entrance exam of any kind.
“Well then,” Mr. Frayley exclaimed, beginning to work himself into a tizzy, “Well then that’s just cruel.”
“Sir?”
“Your cousin, by way of attending Smeltings, is going to have a lot of opportunities that you will be flat-out denied, Mr. Potter. He will be going to school and growing up with the sons of CEOs, politicians, admirals, and the like. He will also have access to greater educational opportunities, as a private school of that caliber will be able to afford them while a standard public school will not. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Potter. Stonewall is by no means a bad school. But it can’t hold a candle to Smeltings, and for a pair of adults to get up and decide to send off one and not the other is just… it’s just plain wrong.”
“But sir, my aunt and uncle just want what’s best for Dudley, and I, I’m not their kid like he is.”
“And is that supposed to make any sort of difference?” Mr. Frayley put the last book away and turned fully to Harry, his eyes fierce and his glasses askew. “Ever since they took you in, it’s their responsibility to raise you up. To love you and guide you and give you the best opportunities they can. If it was a matter of money, there are plenty of other private schools that are cheaper but provide just as good an education. Or they could have simply sent both you and your cousin to Stonewall and placed the money they would have spent at Smeltings into a savings account for university. But to strictly deny you a chance that they’re offering your cousin is horribly insulting, and frankly, you deserve better, Mr. Potter.”
“Thank you, Mr. Frayley,” Harry said, quickly returning to his book in an attempt to hide his red face.
After that, Mr. Frayley bought him a shrink-wrapped muffin and a bottle of apple juice from the vending machine and left him to his reading, but Harry might as well have had blank pages before him. All the boy could think about for the rest of the day were Mr. Frayley’s words.
It was rather odd that he was being sent to Stonewall, wasn’t it? The Dursleys hated him, so why was he being sent to the secondary school a short walk away? Harry imagined that if they really wanted to, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon could’ve found a cheap, run-down private school for him that only let him out for the summer holidays. Or maybe even shipped him off to military school like the Polkiss’s had threatened to do to Piers. So why keep Harry so close when Ickle Diddykins was getting placed in Smeltings, which was halfway across the country?
And that last thought made Harry’s blood freeze. Because while he had been mentally celebrating Dudley and him going to different schools, he forgot to account for the fact that Dudley and him would be going to different schools.
Meaning that while Dudley was off terrorizing the poor posh snobs of Smeltings, Harry would be stuck at Privet Drive with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and no Dudley to take up their attention.
And if his aunt and uncle really did have no other recipient for their attention than Harry, then Harry was in for a horrible next few years.
It was this horrible future in mind that drove Harry to seek out Mr. Frayley with his copy of ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ in hand and ask, “Is there any way I could attend another school?”
“Do you wish to go to Smeltings like your cousin, Mr. Potter?” the librarian asked, looking up from his work at the catalog.
“No. No, not Smeltings. But maybe somewhere else? Somewhere farther away?”
“Oh. Looking for a bit of an adventure, are you? Just like James from James and the Giant Peach?” At Harry’s quick nod, Mr. Frayley thought for a moment and then led him over to a small room just off the main entrance of the library. “This should help you a bit, Mr. Potter. Have you ever used a computer before?”
“No, sir.”
“Not to worry, it’s simple enough. Let me show you how.”
Mr. Frayley pressed the 'on' button and waited for the screen to light up. “If you ever need to use the computer, you sign in by typing ‘guest’ in the username box with a capital G, and then ‘password’ in the password box with a capital P.”
“Guest and Password,” Harry committed to memory, watching as Mr. Frayley typed. “Why are the letters out of order like that?” he asked before he could stop himself.
“Ah, that would be because of a publisher from the States,” Mr. Frayley answered easily, “Christopher Latham Sholes was inspired to make a typing machine so that men could print their thoughts twice as fast as they could write them. However, he quickly found that his machine was prone to jamming when commonly used letters were placed right next to each other. Therefore, he spaced the letters out just so to ensure that there was a lesser chance of his machine jamming. This typing machine became one of the first typewriters, and the QWERTY arrangement became a staple amongst typewriters everywhere. And because the computer keyboard is adapted from the typewriter keyboard, the arrangement has been kept.”
"Neat," said Harry, watching as Mr. Frayley pulled up something called the WorldWideWeb, "What did this do?"
“This, Mr. Potter, allows us to search for different schools. Ah, here’s one that looks promising.” Mr. Frayley pressed the little box wired to the computer, and a loading screen appeared before a new website was shown with paragraphs of text and pictures of smiling students filtered throughout the page.
Mr. Frayley helped Harry search through dozens of different schools and their websites, most of which Harry sadly wrote off before moving on to the next one. It was so hard to find anything substantial; there was always one detail or another that firmly disqualified each school. Some schools were too expensive, and Harry rejected them, knowing that the Dursleys would never give him a pound more than they absolutely had to. Other schools were too close to Privet Drive, and Harry knew that if he picked them, there was a good chance that the Dursleys would force him to walk to and from school rather than letting him live somewhere else. Some looked too nice, their students too happy. Others were too dreadful, and Harry hoped that those schools were never brought to his aunt’s and uncle’s attention, for they would surely love to make Harry’s school life as miserable as possible. One by one, secondary school after secondary school was eliminated from the long list of WorldWideWeb results until suddenly, the screen of the computer went blue, and a horrible string of beeping sounds emitted from the machine.
“Ah, it’s crashed again,” Mr. Frayley said as the computer continued to give off the horrid ber-rah, ber-rah sound before transitioning into the sound of an explosion and another of a jet plane taking off, “Well, nothing to do but wait, now. Did any of the schools catch your eye, Mr. Potter?”
“Er--” said Harry, “No, not really. But thanks for helping me, anyway.”
“It’s no problem, Mr. Potter, no problem at all. We’ll try again sometime later.”
*****
‘Sometime later’ came and went, and Harry still had no luck finding a perfect school.
The library computer, while at least a little bit helpful in finding out new information, had a tendency to crash whenever Harry used it for more than twenty minutes at a time. Mr. Frayley was baffled by the machine’s behavior, claiming that it had never crashed so consistently and so often before, but Harry just brushed it off, mentally writing it off as his usual bad luck.
Untimely and unfortunate computer crashes aside, Harry was stuck. No secondary schools seemed to be what he was looking for. Every school was unacceptable for one reason or another, and the boy was starting to lose hope of ever finding the perfect one. Add to this Dudley and his gang’s habit of “Harry Hunting,” and anyone could see why Harry was having a perfectly dreadful summer.
And then, quite peculiarly, everything changed one day in July.
It started off usual enough. Uncle Vernon and Dudley had come down to breakfast late, Dudley waving his Smeltings stick every which way and miming out hitting various objects. Uncle Vernon chuckled at this behavior, praising it as ‘fine preparation for later life.’ Aunt Petunia let out a hum of agreement as she squinted at the clothing she was dying gray in the sink--Harry’s new school uniform, apparently.
Harry had just finished making breakfast and scooping a truly enormous amount of scrambled eggs onto Uncle Vernon’s plate when the sound of the mail slot clicking and the echo of letters dropping to the floor came from the hall.
“Get the mail, Dudley,” said Uncle Vernon.
“Make Harry do it.”
“Get the mail, Harry.”
“Make Dudley do it.”
“Poke him with your Smeltings stick, Dudley.”
Harry dodged the Smeltings stick and went and got the mail. There wasn’t much, he noted, as he walked towards the doormat. Just a postcard from what looked to be Aunt Marge, a brown envelope that was probably a bill, and… and a letter for him.
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. Who would? He had no friends or other relatives, and he knew it wasn’t a letter about overdue books because he never checked books out of the library in fear of the Dursleys ruining them. So who….?
Harry looked at the letter again. There was no mistaking his name in the bright emerald ink.
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
No. 4 Privet Drive,
Little Whinging,
Surrey.
“Hurry up, boy!” Uncle Vernon shouted. “What’s taking you so long?”
Harry jumped and picked up the other mail, ready to run back to the kitchen before catching himself and thinking better of it. He glanced at the letter and then slid it under the cupboard door.
If the letter truly was for him and wasn’t a mistake, then Harry would rather read it by himself first before his aunt or uncle surely snatched it and threw it away. And besides, what if the letter was from someone who knew his parents? The Dursleys made no secret of how much they hated the Potters. What if some of his parents’ friends had tried to write him over the years and the Dursleys had thrown out all of the previous letters with Harry none the wiser?
Shaken, Harry entered the kitchen quietly, trying not to draw any attention to himself whatsoever. He handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard and sat down, returning to his breakfast and doing everything in his power not to act strangely and draw attention to himself.
Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and threw it onto the table. He then flipped over the postcard and grumbled as he read it.
“Marge is ill,” he informed Aunt Petunia, “Ate a funny whelk and has food poisoning. Her own fault, really. She should know better than to trust those dirty islanders. Foreign foods are horrible on a good, healthy English disposition.”
Harry eyed the postcard picture saying that it was from the Isle of Wight and thought back to his last geography lesson of the school year. He then had to bite his tongue and shove a forkful of eggs into his mouth to keep from snickering at what Uncle Vernon considered “foreign.”
Harry sped through his breakfast almost as fast as Dudley did, eager to return to his cupboard and read the letter in peace. Once he was done, he cleared his dishes, brought them over to the sink, and stacked them to the side. He eyed his ‘new’ school uniform with apprehension, before turning to Aunt Petunia and asking, “May I go to the library?”
Aunt Petunia opened her mouth and pointed at the dishes before she, too, eyed the clothes dying in the sink. “Fine,” she allowed bitterly, clearly not wanting to be saddled with doing the dishes on top of finishing his uniform, “But don’t come back until dinner. I’m hosting friends for lunch, and they don’t need to be subjected to your company. Now, shoo.”
Harry darted out of the kitchen the moment Aunt Petunia waved him away. He slipped into the hall and the second the kitchen door swung shut, he opened the cupboard door, grabbed the letter off the floor, silently closed it again, grabbed his shoes, and dashed out of Number 4, Privet Drive.
Harry ran like a madman, his bare feet slapping the asphalt with a heavy thump-thump-thump, his heart feeling as if it would beat out of his chest. By the time he had arrived at the library, he was sweating profusely in the summer heat and panting like one of Aunt Marge’s dogs. But Harry hardly cared. He had gotten a letter, and he was going to read it.
Harry smiled in victory as he pulled his shoes on and held the letter away from his sweaty body. He dabbed a bit at his forehead and walked carefully through the library doors, taking in the cool air from the electric fans scattered across the main hall, and pattering over to his favorite armchair. Seeing that it was empty, Harry sat, broke the wax seal on the parchment, and began to read.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. Of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress
Harry blinked owlishly at the letter before letting out a tired, defeated sigh. It was a prank. Of course it was. Why would he think any different, honestly? No one had written to him before, and no one was going to start doing so now.
“What have you got there, Mr. Potter?” came the voice of Mr. Frayley, the old librarian walking towards him.
“A prank letter,” Harry admitted sourly, handing it over to the man.
Mr. Frayley read it and hummed. “Why that’s a bit mean, isn’t it? You’ve been in here day in and day out trying to find a good secondary school, and somebody sends you this? The nerve of some youth these days.”
“Yeah,” Harry agreed, still disappointed, “The nerve.”
“Despite the meanness, I do have to give them some points for creativity. Who would think of a magical school, of all things?” Mr. Frayley handed the letter back to Harry and returned to his cart of books, pushing it along and reshelving as he went.
Harry suddenly froze and read the letter again. And then again. And then once more for good measure. He scanned the attached list of “school supplies” it claimed he needed and squinted every which way at the handwriting.
“Who in the world wrote this?” he asked disquietly.
Harry had assumed, initially, that Dudley had somehow found out about the hunt for secondary schools and decided to prank him. His cousin, however, lacked the creativity to come up with the idea, let alone all the strange names, titles, and books mentioned on the parchment. Even if he had enlisted his gang for help, Harry doubted that Dudley could have come up with and pulled off something like this.
It seemed even less likely that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had anything to do with this. They loathed anything they considered “abnormal” or “freakish,” and they were quick to scold Harry for indulging in “childish behavior,” so it was safe to assume that they wouldn’t stoop to it themselves.
All of that aside, a prank letter didn’t coincide with any of the Dursleys’ go-to methods of making Harry miserable. None of them wrote the letter.
But then who did?
Harry read the letter once more, and then examined the envelope.
Mr. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
No. 4 Privet Drive,
Little Whinging,
Surrey.
Harry didn’t have any friends. He had no living family (other than the Dursleys). He knew of absolutely no one who would write to him, let alone write him a prank letter.
So who did?
And how did they know he slept in the cupboard under the stairs?
*****
Harry stashed the letter under his mattress and tried to forget about the whole thing.
‘It was just a prank,’ he told himself all that day, trying to carry on as usual, ‘Just some prank pulled by somebody in Dudley’s gang. They’ll probably have a great laugh about it later.’
In Harry’s state of distraction, he had burned the potatoes, to which Aunt Petunia whacked him over the head and sent him to bed that night without supper. Harry had gazed at the underside of the stairs for ages that night, all but feeling the letter burn a hole through his mattress.
The next morning, an irate Aunt Petunia had pulled a groggy Harry out of the cupboard by his hair and watched like a hawk as he made the usual breakfast spread. This prompted Uncle Vernon to tell Dudley to get the mail, at which point all three occupants of the kitchen felt their blood run cold when Dudley cried out “Mum, Dad! There’s a letter for Harry! ‘Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs, No. 4, Privet Drive--’”
“Give me that!” Uncle Vernon roared, snatching the letter away before Dudley could open it. Harry saw the same parchment, the same emerald ink, and the same purple stamp as yesterday.
Uncle Vernon looked the letter over, his face losing color until it resembled the grayish-white of old porridge. “P-p-petunia!”
Dudley tried to make a grab for it, but Uncle Vernon held it out of his reach. Aunt Petunia stepped forward and grabbed the letter curiously, before similarly losing color as she read the first line. “Vernon! Oh my goodness--Vernon!”
Quicker as a flash, Uncle Vernon had grabbed both him and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and tossed them unceremoniously into the hall. Dudley shoved Harry out of the way and leaned his ear against the door, trying to eavesdrop.
“Veron,” they heard, Aunt Petunia’s voice quiet and quivering, “Look at the address--how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don’t think they’re watching the house?”
“Watching--spying--might be following us,” Uncle Vernon muttered wildly.
That was all Harry heard before shoving past his cousin and shutting himself in the cupboard. He collapsed onto the tiny cot and planted his face into his pillow.
That confirmed it, then. None of the Dursleys had anything to do with the letter.
Someone was stalking Harry.
*****
That night, Uncle Vernon did something he had never done before: he visited Harry in his cupboard.
“Boy,” he began, “Do you know anything about this letter business? Anything at all?”
“No, sir,” Harry said quickly, idly wondering if his uncle could feel the burning letter under the mattress like he could, “I assumed it was a prank, sir.”
Uncle Vernon’s posture lost a great deal of tension. “A prank-- yes, that’s exactly what this nonsense is. A joke. Someone, somewhere trying to get a rise out of us. Don’t treat it as anything but.”
“Right, Uncle Vernon. I won’t.” Harry fidgeted with his hands a bit before asking, “Is that all, sir?”
Uncle Vernon forced himself to smile widely, making the act look painful, and as if he would prefer to do anything but. “No, actually. You see, Harry, your aunt and I have been thinking… you see, about this cupboard… well, you’re getting a bit big for it, aren’t you? We think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley’s second bedroom.”
“Why?” Harry asked before he could stop himself.
“Don’t ask questions!” his uncle snapped, “Take this all upstairs, now!”
Harry rounded up his few meager belongings into some of the cardboard boxes that had predated his stay in the cupboard, and when he was sure no one was looking, he flipped his mattress to grab the letter.
To Harry’s shock, there was now a burned, blackened hole where the letter had sat all of last night, and the envelope’s parchment was now darkened around the edges as if someone had thrown it into an oven and left it to bake along with a rack of cookies.
Or as if the letter had burned itself in protest of being hidden beneath the cot.
Hesitantly, Harry picked up the letter and hid it again in the bottom of one of the boxes. He then picked up as many boxes as he could carry and rushed up the stairs, dumping them in Dudley’s second bedroom. In a flash, he rushed back down, collected the last of his things, and rushed back up again. Heart beating out of his chest, Harry rammed the door shut, caught it before it could slam and startle the Dursleys, slowly closed and locked the door, and then pulled out the box with the letter.
He looked it over again, trying to find who or what would make the letter burn so. The only thing he could think of would be some type of chemical reaction of some kind, but he couldn’t imagine what would burn the letter without burning him or whoever opened it.
Harry shuddered harshly before placing the letter back in the box. He tried to take his mind off the whole letter business by cleaning out Dudley’s old broken things and sorting out his own. He even tried to pull a few of the untouched books off the bookshelf and see if those could distract him, but nothing came of it. All Harry could do was take anxious glances at the letter now sitting harmless and alone in the cardboard box.
Eventually, Harry gave up, shoved the letter and box into the armoire stuffed with Dudley’s toys, and went to sleep.
*****
Breakfast the next morning was silent. Harry tried to eat as quickly and cleanly as usual, while Dudley sniffled and moaned about the unfairness of giving up his second bedroom, and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia exchanged glances over their heads. Not a word was said all morning until they heard the ‘click’ of the mail shoot go off like a gunshot.
Dudley jumped to his feet and tried to rush to the hall, but Uncle Vernon beat him to it, moving faster than Harry had ever seen him move before. He returned to the kitchen in moments, Dudley trailing after him and whining for one of the letters. There, in Uncle Vernon’s meaty paw, was not one, not two, but three letters written up in emerald ink.
“But Daddy!” Dudley cried, purposefully blotching up his cheeks and scrunching up his face, “I want, I want to read one of them.”
Uncle Vernon responded by tearing all three letters to pieces before their eyes. “No one will read this, this codswallop. The boy said it best last night: it’s nothing but a prank. Petunia, get me a brandy. Boy, get back to your cupboard-- I mean room. Dudley, just… just go.”
Harry didn’t need to be told twice before he was racing through the hall, turning ‘round the landing to take the stairs two at a time. He bolted the door behind him and breathed heavily, trying to calm his thumping heart. A loud pop startled him out of his daze, and Harry’s eyes widened as he saw that the letter hidden in the, now open, armoire was burning again.
“Quiet,” he hissed grabbing the letter and waving it wildly to put out the sparks, “The Dursleys can’t know that I’ve got you. I’ll be in so much trouble.”
Harry despaired a bit once he realized that he was speaking to a letter as if it could understand him, but the letter put itself out and returned to normal, save for a few new scorch marks around the edges.
Harry let out a sigh of relief and placed the letter on the desk (which, like every surface of the room, was mostly covered with Dudley’s demolished toys). He picked it up again and read it once more. The new examination of the letter wasn’t much more fruitful than the previous ones, and Harry frowned a bit as he thought.
He still hadn’t the slightest idea who could be sending the letters, and it didn’t seem like they were going to stop coming anytime soon. He squinted at the last line in the letter and thought.
“We await your owl by no later than July thirty-first,” he read, “Owl? Do they mean response?”
With the idea planted in his head, Harry dug around the bedroom until he pulled out the calligraphy set Aunt Marge had gifted Dudley some Christmases ago. It had been almost as untouched as the books, and Harry figured that it would be a safe bet to nick a single envelope and a piece of paper or two.
He smoothed the paper on the desk, grabbed one of the fancy fountain pens that also came with the kit, and began to write.
Dear Deputy Headmistress McGonagall,
Thank you for the letter(s). I have never received a letter before, and it was very nice of you to send one. However, I didn’t like that the letter was a joke or that you kept sending the joke letters after I’ve already opened the first one. While the fake books, names, and other magical things you wrote about were amusing, I think I would greatly appreciate it if you stopped sending me them.
Thank you,
Harry Potter
P.S.: Please stop watching the house. I think it’s very creepy that you know which room I sleep in, and I don’t think my aunt and uncle appreciate it either.
Harry looked the letter over one more time before grabbing the envelope and folding the paper inside. He sealed the letter with the fancy little stamp press (no hot wax needed, according to the kit box), turned the envelope to the front, and wrote ‘Minerva McGonagall, Hogwarts’ on the front. He then placed a stamp in the corner and stuffed the letter down his shirt.
Harry snuck back downstairs and squeezed past Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be nailing the mail slot shut. He walked as quietly as he could into the kitchen, where Aunt Petunia seemed to be making a cake of some sort.
“Might I go to the library?” Harry asked.
“Shoo,” Aunt Petunia waved off, “Be back by supper or you shan’t get anything.”
Harry nodded and left out the back door through the garden. Along his way, he walked past a bright red postbox and deposited the letter inside. That done, he continued on his way and hoped that the letter problem had been fixed.
*****
The letter problem had, evidently, not been fixed. If anything, over the next few days, it got worse.
On Friday, no less than twelve letters came for Harry, all of them shoved under the door, through the cracks along the side of it, or through various windows throughout the house. Uncle Vernon had confiscated all of the letters and burned them before sealing every crevice of the house with prejudice.
On Saturday, over two dozen letters were found, the most notable of which were hidden in a dozen eggs, one letter per egg. That had set Uncle Vernon into a frenzy, calling up the post office and the grocer, demanding answers.
“Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?” Dudley had asked Harry in amazement, to which Harry truthfully replied that he had no clue.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.
“No post on Sundays,” he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspaper, “No damn letters today--”
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. In the next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets.
“Out! OUT!” Uncle Vernon bellowed, grabbing Harry by the waist and tossing him out into the hall. Aunt Petunia and Dudley followed, their hands covering their faces. Uncle Vernon slammed the kitchen door shut behind them, but they could all still hear the letters streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.
“That does it,” said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts of hair out of his mustache as he spoke. “I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We’re going away. Just pack clothes and nothing else. No arguments!”
He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later, they had wretched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding towards 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 into his bag.
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, muttering “Shake 'em off… shake ‘em off” as he did so.
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, and he’d never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of some 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 are stale cornflakes and cold 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? I got about a' hundred of these at the front desk.”
She held up a letter so they could read the green-inked address:
Mr. H. Potter
Room 17,
Railview Hotel,
Cokeworth.
It seemed that Harry’s stalker was persistent.
*****
“Daddy’s gone mad, hasn’t he?” Dudley asked dully late that afternoon.
After disposing of the one hundred or so letters that had arrived at the hotel, Uncle Vernon had driven them to dozens of odd places where he would park the car, get out, look around for something, and then return with a shake of his head. This process had repeated for a giant forest, the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage. Now, Aunt Petunia, Dudley, and him were all waiting for Uncle Vernon to return from where he had wandered off a little down the coast.
It began to rain, and Dudley sniveled. “It’s Monday. The Great Humberto’s on tonight, and I’m going to miss it.”
Monday.
This reminded Harry of something. If it was Monday-- and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days of the week because of television --then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry’s eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun, but still, it wasn’t every day you turned eleven.
Before Harry could contemplate this further, Uncle Vernon returned with a toothless old man and a long, thin package. Uncle Vernon and the man corralled them out of the car, into the pouring rain, and onto the man’s boat. After a frigid boat ride that seemed to last hours, the five of them landed on a spit of land with the most miserable shack Harry had ever laid eyes on. The interior was no better than the exterior: it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through gaps in the walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty.
Uncle Vernon had somehow acquired an order of chips and a sausage roll for each of them. The stout man tried to burn the wrappers after they were all done eating, but a flame wouldn’t catch, and they instead shriveled and filled the room with smoke.
“We could do with some of those letters now, eh?” Uncle Vernon asked cheerfully.
He, unlike the rest of them, was rather in a rather good mood, obviously believing that no one would ever come all the way out here to deliver a letter. Harry silently agreed though the thought didn’t cheer him up at all.
As night fell, a storm blew in around them. Spray from the waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the lumpy sofa. She and Uncle Vernon claimed the bed in the other room, leaving Harry to find the softest bit of floor and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.
The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn’t sleep. He twisted and turned every which way, trying to get comfortable, but that was impossible with his stomach rumbling with hunger and him shivering from the cold. The noise didn’t help either--Dudley’s snores were only barely drowned out by the thunderclaps outside.
Harry finally gave up on sleep completely when he noticed that Dudley’s illuminated wristwatch said that he would be eleven in ten minutes’ time. He lay there and watched his birthday draw nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all and if the stalker would know, just as they seemed to know almost everything about Harry.
At five minutes to go, Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wouldn’t cave in, although he may have been warmer if it did.
Four minutes. Harry pondered the mysterious letter writer again and wondered if No. 4, Privet Drive would be completely flooded with the things when they returned.
Three minutes to go. (Was that the sea, slapping hard against the rock like that?)
Two minutes. (What on earth was that crunching sound? Was the island 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.
The whole shack shook and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside knocking to come in.
BOOM.
They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake, groggily asking, “Where’s the cannon?”
There was a crash behind them as Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands--now Harry knew what had been in the long, thin package.
“Who’s there?” he shouted, “I warn you, I’m armed!”
There was a pause. Then--
SMASH!
The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and fell to the floor with a deafening crash.
A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles under all the hair.
“They were very kind eyes,” Harry thought to himself as the giant man stared down Uncle Vernon and his gun.
The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door, and gently placed it back into its frame. The noise of the storm dropped a little. He turned back to all of them.
“Couldn’t make the two o’ us a cup a’ tea, could ya’? It’s not been an easy journey…”
“Excuse me, two of you?” Uncle Vernon cried.
“Yes,” came a voice with the barest hints of a Scottish accent. Harry and the Dursleys turned as one towards the sound. “I assure you, this has been the most exhausting journey I have ever had to go on on behalf of a student’s letter delivery, and a cup of tea would be much appreciated.”
Stepping out from behind the man was a severe-looking woman with square spectacles and an emerald gown-and-jacket combination. Her black hair was tied into a bun at the nape of her neck, but the wind and the storm had blown it astray, ruining what Harry assumed was a usually orderly appearance.
“Ya-- you,” Aunt Petunia spat with venom, “What are you doing here?”
The mysterious woman simply raised an eyebrow. “Twenty years since our first acquaintance, and I see that time has done nothing to improve you, Miss Evans--forgive me, Mrs. Dursley.”
Aunt Petunia began to sputter, but the woman ignored her and instead turned towards him. “As for why I’m here? I am simply here to clear up a few misconceptions.”
The woman pulled a letter out of her pocket and showed it to the room. Harry’s eyes widened as he realized what exactly the letter was.
“Mr. Potter, I am Professor McGonagall. I would like to greatly apologize, as it is very clear from your correspondence that I and the school’s actions have caused unnecessary panic, fear, and confusion. I assure you, Mr. Potter, that I am neither a ‘stalker’ nor the type to make such a cruel joke. I am a teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and you, Mr. Potter, are a wizard and hopefully one of my future students.”