Harry Potter and the Den of Snakes

Diagon Alley

Harry locked his knees to keep from falling over.

The man—his father?—looked almost disappointed. Like he'd been expecting Harry to jump for joy and run into his arms. But Harry was busy turning over what Aunt Petunia had said—you dumped him in my arms in the middle of the night, gave a thirty-minute rushed explanation, and disappeared—and he didn't think he liked his father much.

All this time he'd thought his parents were dead. That if they were alive they'd have come to get him and he'd have a life like a kid in a book, with parents who loved him even if they were poor or on the run from evil people or facing some danger.

He had so many questions he didn't even know where to start.

James' explanation took an hour.

Harry sat silent and still through it all, keeping his face as blank as possible. It clearly unsettled James that Harry was so unresponsive, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

Harry sat on one of the chairs in the living room that he'd never been allowed to touch before. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon took the sofa, while James took an armchair to Harry's left and across the table from his aunt and uncle.

And Harry learned several things about his family:

James had married Lily, Aunt Petunia's sister, right out of school. Wizarding school, apparently, because his mum and dad were a witch and a wizard, and there was a school for people with magic. That was about the only good part of the whole speech, actually—when Harry pulled out his letter from his pants, he relished the look of revulsion on Aunt Petunia's face, and savored the excitement that came with knowing he might be a freak but he wasn't the only one and there was a place he could go to learn more.

His mum and father were fighting in a war against an evil wizard named You-Know-Who.

When his mum got pregnant, they went into hiding.

She gave birth to twin boys.

(When Harry learned he had a twin brother born seven minutes after Harry, named Julian, he momentarily forgot how to breathe.)

They trusted the wrong person, and one night was out at a meeting for their side of the war while his mum watched over their sleeping sons. A fight started at the meeting and James got sidetracked. It was really just a distraction; while they were fighting, the evil wizard broke into their house and killed their mum and then tried to kill Julian with the worst, deadliest spell ever. Somehow Julian survived and managed to destroy You-Know-Who in the process, which Harry found ridiculous because Julian had been only a year old then, so it's not like he fought some great battle, but he still wasn't able to summon words so he just nodded numbly.

Overnight, Julian became a hero to Wizarding Britain, as James called it, but You-Know-Who's followers still very much wanted the remaining Potters dead, and in the chaos, it was decided that young Harry ought to be sent away until his magic appeared and he'd be able to defend himself. "It was for your own safety," James said, almost begging Harry to believe him. (Harry didn't.) "I was a target, and your brother was a target, but that didn't mean—didn't mean you had to be, too."

Harry had been left in the care of his mother's sister with the understanding that she would call a certain number when Harry displayed "accidental magic" which was apparently the sign that a wizarding child had magic. Which, obviously, she never did. So James had assumed that Harry was something called a "squib," or a baby from wizard parents without magic and that Harry would be better off away from wizards since he'd never be able to defend himself against them. Harry thought that was ridiculous, too; he could've at least gotten to know his family in secret, but by this point, he thought he was too angry to say anything to James Potter that wouldn't come out badly.