Star Quality

Chapter 5

Harry woke up the next morning feeling cross and out of sorts, his neck aching and his foot caught up in the empty, greasy pizza box. He knew he'd had bad dreams, could feel the memory of them clawing at his brain, but when he tried to remember what they were, he found he couldn't.

Fuck it. He pushed himself out of bed and lurched to the bathroom, shrugging off his clothes – he hadn't even managed to get dressed for bed last night, it seemed – and turning the shower on as hot as he could stand it, giving himself a good scrub and standing with his face under the torrent of water until he felt almost alive again. Once he was dry, he found some clothes and went downstairs. It took him some time to find his keys and wallet, and his shoes turned out to be upstairs under the bed, but once he was decent he left the house and walked the twenty minutes it took to get to the nearest decent-sized supermarket. There, he bought more food than he could comfortably carry, staggering home again with plastic bags rammed full of fruit and vegetables, the handles cutting into the palms of his hands uncomfortably.

Once home again, he unpacked his shopping and grabbed a black bin liner, going methodically through each room and picking up empty chocolate wrappers and old newspapers and scooping up things he didn't want to look at too closely with a shudder. Then, he took out the rubbish, washed his hands very thoroughly, and went back to the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea and scramble some eggs for breakfast. Soon, he was sitting down in the dining room with his over-strong tea, eggs and burnt toast. He still felt out of sorts, but at least he didn't feel quite as gross as before.

As he ate, he switched on his phone and stared at it grumpily. He'd managed to make a phone call the previous day, so he was sure he could work out how to use the rest of it. He was a wizard, not an idiot. Carefully, he pressed buttons, managing to bring up his phone book and scroll through the numbers. It wasn't a long list. Dudley was on it, for some reason, and Harry managed to accidentally call him, but as he was swearing and trying to hang up before Dudley actually answered, he could hear a tinny voice at the other end of the line saying, "The number you have dialled has not been recognised. Please try again." It was both relieving and insulting. Harry continued scrolling through, coming across numbers for work, for his GP surgery, for Parvati, and for a handful of other people whose names he didn't recognise. Were they school friends? Harry didn't feel very keen to find out. Either way, they hadn't contacted him in the last couple of days, which told its own story. It was expected, but still disheartening, to see how unpopular he apparently was here. Harry supposed he hadn't made any friends at primary school and had clearly continued that fine tradition into secondary school too.

Parvati seemed to like him, though, didn't she? Harry thought about ringing her, and then decided against it. He'd text her instead. If he could work out how. Harry ate some more of his eggs – his breakfast had gone cold now, but he was hungry and at least it wasn't pizza – and prodded at the phone, finding an old message from her about his next shift and working out how to hit reply.

PARVATI WHATS MY PHONE NUMBER FROM HARRY, he managed to type, and stared at it glumly for a moment. It had no punctuation, and he couldn't work out how to change the case so the message did give the unfortunate air of screaming rage, but it would have to do. He hit send, and then waited, taking a big slurp of tea and chasing it down with the rest of his egg on toast.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when the phone started ringing, but he managed to pick it up and answer it before it cut off. "Hello?"

"Have you had a stroke?" Parvati's voice asked from the other end of the line, her voice tinny and amused. "Or is your phone broken?"

"Er, neither," Harry said, and then didn't feel up to admitting that he didn't know how to use it. "I think a key is stuck," he prevaricated.

"Harry, love," Parvati said, speaking very slowly, her voice drenched with pity, "why don't you know your own phone number?"