Bloodline | Harry Potter x Reader [DISCONTINUED]

Fourth Year~Chapter Two

Harry's POV

By twelve o'clock next day, my trunk was packed with my school things, and all my most prized possessions – the Invisibility Cloak I had inherited from my father, the broomstick I had got from Sirius, the enchanted map of Hogwarts I had been given by Fred and George Weasley last year. I had emptied my hiding place under the loose floorboard of all food, double-checked every nook and cranny of my bedroom for forgotten spellbooks or quills, and taken down the chart on the wall counting the days down to September the first, on which I liked to cross off the days remaining until my return to Hogwarts.

The atmosphere inside number four Privet Drive was extremely tense. The imminent arrival at their house of an assortment of wizards was making the Dursleys uptight and irritable. Uncle Vernon had looked downright alarmed when I informed him that the Weasleys would be arriving at five o'clock the very next day.

'I hope you told them to dress properly, these people,' he snarled at once. 'I've seen the sort of stuff your lot wear. They'd better have the decency to put on normal clothes, that's all.'

I felt a slight sense of foreboding. I had rarely seen Mr or Mrs Weasley wearing anything that the Dursleys would call 'normal'. Their children might don Muggle clothing during the holidays, but Mr and Mrs Weasley usually wore long robes in varying states of shabbiness. I wasn't bothered about what the neighbours would think, but I was anxious about how rude the Dursleys might be to the Weasleys if they turned up looking like their worst idea of wizards.

Uncle Vernon had put on his best suit. To some people, this might have looked like a gesture of welcome, but I knew it was because Uncle Vernon wanted to look impressive and intimidating. Dudley, on the other hand, looked somehow diminished. This was not because the diet was at last taking effect, but due to fright.

Dudley had emerged from his last encounter with a fully-grown wizard with a curly pig's tail poking out of the seat of his trousers, and Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had had to pay for its removal at a private hospital in London. It wasn't altogether surprising, therefore, that Dudley kept running his hand nervously over his backside, and walking sideways from room to room, so as not to present the same target to the enemy.

Lunch was an almost silent meal. Dudley didn't even protest at the food (cottage cheese and grated celery). Aunt Petunia wasn't eating anything at all. Her arms were folded, her lips were pursed and she seemed to be chewing her tongue, as though biting back the furious diatribe she longed to throw at me.

'They'll be driving, of course?' Uncle Vernon barked across the table.

'Er,' I said.

I hadn't thought of that. How were the Weasleys going to pick me up? They didn't have a car any more; the old Ford Anglia they had once owned was currently running wild in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts. But Mr Weasley had borrowed a Ministry of Magic car last year; possibly he would do the same today?

'I think so,' I said.

Uncle Vernon snorted into his moustache. Normally, Uncle Vernon would have asked what car Mr Weasley drove; he tended to judge other men on how big and expensive their cars were. But Harry doubted whether Uncle Vernon would have taken to Mr Weasley even if he drove a Ferrari.

I spent most of the afternoon in my bedroom; I couldn't stand watching Aunt Petunia peer out through the net curtains every few seconds, as though there had been a warning about an escaped rhinoceros. Finally, at a quarter to five, I went back downstairs and into the living room.

Aunt Petunia was compulsively straightening cushions. Uncle Vernon was pretending to read the paper, but his tiny eyes were not moving, and I was sure he was really listening with all his might for the sound of an approaching car. Dudley was crammed into an armchair, his porky hands beneath him, clamped firmly around his bottom. I couldn't take the tension; I left the room, and went and sat on the stairs in the hall, my eyes on my watch and my heart pumping fast from excitement and nerves.