Time to take a chance

The letters from no one

Disclaimer: All the text in bold and the characters belong to J. K. Rowling. This is just a story written by a fan who doesn't get any kind of compensation for it except for a few reviews from time to time.

The letters from no one

"If I could have everyone's attention for a moment," Flitwick's voice interrupted them. "We've finished the first chapter," he announced, pointing at the floating book, which was glowing with a yellow light.

"Should we continue with the next one then?" Dumbledore asked calmly, his eyes twinkling. He ignored all the stares in his direction, knowing that many people wanted to talk to him about his decision of leaving Harry with the Dursleys. They would have to wait until they finished reading for the day, though, and they were somewhere private. "We haven't been reading for long so I think that we can wait for a while yet before we take a break, don't you think?"

"I don't have a problem wiz zat," Madame Maxime nodded her agreement. She was shocked at the treatment the Boy-Who-Lived had received and she was certainly going to have words with Dumbledore, but she knew it was not the time nor the place for that.

"The sooner we finish this, the better," Karkaroff said in a bored tone. He just wanted to get back to the Triwizard Tournament.

"Well, then," Flitwick nodded, flicking his wand in the book's direction. It glowed green for an instant as the next page turned.

The letters from no one

"Letters from no one?" Neville blurted out without thinking. He went beet red when all the attention turned towards him.

"How can letters be from no one?" Dean asked. "They have to be from someone, right?"

"But it says they're from no one?" Lavender pointed out with a confused frown.

"And whose letters would Harry receive?" Katie asked baffled. As far as she had understood it, no one from the wizarding world had bothered to check on Harry, so it didn't make sense for anyone to send him letters.

"Maybe it's the letter from Hogwarts," Hermione said pensively. "He's about to turn eleven in the story, so he has to get it any moment now."

"But then they wouldn't be letters from no one. They would be from Hogwarts," Seamus pointed out.

Hermione sent him an irritated look. "Harry would have no idea what Hogwarts was and letters from the school don't have a remittent or a stamp."

"They don't have a what or a what now?" Ron asked puzzled.

"Oh! I remember stamps!" Mr. Weasley exclaimed enthusiastically. "They're such a curious thing."

"Arthur, dear, not now," Molly sighed, grabbing his hand and squeezing it to try to calm him down.

"Even if it was the letter from Hogwarts, it says letters. As in, more than one. Why would Harry receive more than one letter from Hogwarts?" Dean asked, looking at his roommate in search for answers. If anyone had them, it would be him.

Harry smiled innocently, but his eyes were dancing with mirth. This was going to be a funny chapter with the odyssey his uncle had put them through for nothing.

"Harry?" Hermione asked with narrowed eyes. "Something you wanna share?"

"Nope," he shook his head, his smile widening. "You'll see. It didn't end badly. I promise."

"That doesn't exactly reassure us, mate," Ron muttered under his breath. All the mishaps they had got themselves into had ended well, but that didn't mean they hadn't been scary or they couldn't have ended very differently.

The escape of the Brazilian boa ... the summer holidays had started

"So, a couple of weeks then in that damn cupboard?" Hermione asked seething. She usually wasn't one for swearing, but she was so pissed.

"More or less. There were a couple of weeks till my birthday," Harry shrugged, eyeing her warily. Anyone who didn't think that Hermione wasn't scary hadn't met her when she was angry. And right then she looked ready to go on a war path.

Hermione gritted her teeth, but she didn't say anything else. She would make those people pay when they got out. Until then, she would plot her revenge on her brother's behalf.

and Dudley had already broken ... Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.

"You weren't lying when you said that he breaks his presents quickly," Katie observed with a wince.

"What's a the mote control plate?" Mr. Weasley asked curiously.

"A what?" Harry asked confused. He wasn't the only one. Many muggle-borns wore similar expressions.

"Are you talking about the remote control airplane, Mr. Weasley?" Hermione guessed after a moment thinking.

The man brightened. "Yes! Exactly!"

"Honey, why don't we wait till the break and then you can ask them questions?" Molly intervened, putting a hand on his arm.

"Mrs. Weasley's right. We'll never finish reading otherwise," Tonks said.

"Call me Molly, dear," the redhead smiled at her.

The metamorphmagus grinned. "Call me Tonks, please. Never Nymphadora," she replied happily.

Molly's smile widened before she turned back to her husband. "So, Arthur, can we leave all those questions for later?"

"Sure, honey," he agreed easily. He looked at Harry and Hermione. "Do you...?"

"We don't mind, Mr. Weasley," Harry assured him. Hermione was better than him at explaining things, but he could try to help.

"Of course not," Hermione said in agreement.

Harry was glad school was over, ... the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader.

"I don't think that rule is right in every occasion," Ron said. He was staring at Malfoy and his two goons with a smirk.

"Something you want to say, Weasley?" Malfoy snapped, glaring at him.

"Just wondering who the leader of your little group should be according to that rule. Crabbe or Goyle?" Ron smirked sharply.

"Ron," Hermione chided exasperated. She didn't want to get into a fight that day.

"What? It's true. They're about the same size, so I think Goyle would be the leader. He's stupider," Ron said.

"Ron!" His mother scolded scandalised.

"Sorry, mum," he said, not sounding sorry at all.

The rest of them were all quite happy ... Harry Hunting.

"Oh, don't tell me," George said sarcastically.

"They're so unoriginal," Fred scoffed, rolling his eyes. "They didn't invent that game."

"Exactly. You-Know-Who and his merry band have been playing that game since long before them," George nodded.

"They're just copying them," Fred said.

"George! Fred!" Molly hollered. How could they joke about something like that? Why did all her sons do things like that?

"We're just saying," Fred said, raising his hands defensively.

Harry snorted and grinned. He loved how the twins managed to joke about things that other people found worrying, like they had done with the whole business about the heir of Slytherin. He would have gone crazy then if it hadn't been because of the humour they added to the situation.

"It's not funny," Sirius growled.

"It's a bit funny," Harry contradicted him with a shrug.

"Why do you find it funny?" The animagus asked frustrated.

"Why don't you?" Harry replied.

"It's your safety!"

Harry snorted. "Dudley and his friends weren't gonna kill me."

"They still hurt you," Sirius insisted stubbornly.

"When they could catch me, which I've already said wasn't often," Harry reminded him. "Think of it as practice for what we'd see when I arrived to Hogwarts."

"Mate, you're not helping yourself saying that," Ron said, nudging him with his elbow.

"They're gonna know sooner or later," Harry shrugged.

"Can we leave it for later then? It means less time with my mum angry at us," Ron asked. He was eyeing her warily, not liking the way she was narrowing her eyes at them.

Harry snorted once more. "Okay," he agreed.

This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out ... see a tiny ray of hope.

"The end of the holidays brings a ray of hope?" Angelina repeated sceptically. "Since when? You wanna go to school?"

"Didn't you say before that you were happy that the school was over?" Seamus asked his roommate with a frown.

"Because that meant I didn't have to see Dudley 24/7," Harry answered, looking at Seamus. Then he turned towards Angelina. "But the following year I wouldn't be going to the same class as Dudley anymore."

"He was thrown out?" Dean asked hopefully. "I mean, he's eleven and he can't add two. There's no way they're allowing him to pass grade."

"They did," Harry said.

"Then you were thrown out?" Dean asked with a frown.

Harry sent him a deadpan look. "You think that Dudley would pass and I wouldn't?" He asked. He was offended, and more than a little insulted. He wasn't going to lie.

Dean scrunched up his nose. "No. Sorry. I don't know what I was thinking."

When September came he ... was going to Stonewall High, the local public school.

"Stonewall High? What about Hogwarts?" Neville asked. He went beet red when the attention was focused on him.

"I didn't know I'd be going there," Harry shrugged. "I didn't know that magic existed, remember?"

"Oh," Neville said embarrassed.

"I bet those relatives of yours wouldn't want you to learn to control your magic," Fred smirked sharply.

"They'd be terrified you'd retaliate for everything they've put you through," George agreed.

"They were," Harry grinned, remembering all the scares he had given Dudley before they had found out that he wasn't allowed to use magic outside of school.

"That's why it would've been much better for them if they had been kind to you," Luna said softly. "If they had been your family, you wouldn't have wanted to get revenge."

"I don't wanna get revenge," Harry denied.

"You don't?" Ron blurted out.

"No," Harry shook his head. "I'd be happy simply never seeing them again."

He didn't want to hurt them like they had hurt him. He didn't want to stoop down to their level of pettiness. He just wanted the time when they would follow different paths to arrive already.

Dudley thought this was very funny.

"Is it?" Fred frowned.

"I don't see what's so funny about it either," George scoffed.

"The joke will be on him when Harry comes back knowing magic," Fred grinned. "Let's see if he dares to mess with Harry then."

George's smirk caused shivers to go down the spines of many people. "Now, that will be fun to watch."

"We won't watch it," Lee Jordan chipped in.

"Shut it, Lee," Fred replied.

"We'll hear it, and we have a wild imagination," George said dismissively. "That's even better."

"They stuff people's heads down the toilet ... upstairs and practice?"

"So little originality," George moaned.

"Couldn't he come up with something better?" Fred said, shaking his head sadly.

Hermione frowned. "I have to agree with you two. That's the classic bullying act all bullies do."

The twins gaped at her.

"Did we hear that right?" Fred gasped in mock-surprise.

"Did our little future perfect prefect agree with us?" George asked. "What's the world coming into?"

"Oh, shut up," she replied, blushing a little bit.

"They aren't wrong," Ron intervened. "I mean, first, we find out that you don't think the library's some kind of heaven. And now you're agreeing with Fred and George."

"Shut up, Ron," she glared at him, blushing even more.

"And now's the time when you listen to her and shut up," Harry said, elbowing his best friend and sending him a pointed look.

Ron closed his mouth and smiled sheepishly. "Am I about to put my foot in my mouth?"

"Most definitely," Harry nodded firmly. He didn't know what Ron was going to say, but he was sure that it was going to be something that would either embarrass, annoy or anger Hermione. Or maybe all three.

Ron leant forward to look at Hermione, who had her eyes narrowed dangerously. He gulped and leant back, looking at Harry again. "Yeah, I think maybe I'll shut up now."

"Good call," Harry sighed in relief.

"No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's ... ran, before Dudley could work out what he'd said.

People snorted or snickered around them.

"Now, that's a little funnier," Fred grinned proudly.

"Not the funniest, but it was good," George nodded approvingly.

"You didn't have to run, though," Alicia grinned amused. "I doubt your cousin would've figured out any time soon that you've insulted him."

"Better safe than sorry," Harry said. "Dudley may have had a sprout of brilliance right then and it's better to be out of reach if that happens."

"You could use that survival instinct a bit more often here at Hogwarts, you know," Ron grumbled good-naturedly.

Harry grinned at him. "Maybe that's why I don't have much left when Hogwarts comes around. I've used my quota of the year with my relatives."

Ron rolled his eyes. "You're incorrigible."

One day in July, Aunt ... gave him a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she'd had it for several years.

"How do you know how a piece of chocolate cake that has been stored for several years tastes like?" Ron asked befuddled.

"I stole a piece of chocolate that Dudley had just bought once," Harry said, grinning wickedly. "That was good. Much better than Mrs. Figg's. That one tasted like dust and, underneath all that, chocolate. It wasn't that bad, though."

"Did they catch you?" Fred asked.

"Stealing Dudley's chocolate, we mean," George clarified quickly.

"Dudley? No way. They almost never caught me," Harry assured them.

He had been stealing food from the kitchen for so long that he had the quantities he could take from each thing calculated almost down to a science. And Aunt Petunia was much more observant than her son so, if she didn't catch him, there was no way that Dudley would.

"There's hope for you yet, young Harry," George said, smiling brightly.

"You might still make us proud," Fred wiped a fake tear off his cheek.

"He shouldn't have to steal food," Sirius grunted, clenching his fists.

"We stole food from the kitchen too," Remus reminded him.

"We didn't steal it!" Sirius hissed, elbowing him in the ribs. "We politely asked the house-elves for it and they happily gave it to us!"

"That's basically the same thing as stealing it," Remus said amused.

That evening, Dudley paraded ... supposed to be good training for later life.

"They give them sticks so the students can hit each other?!" Molly asked scandalized. "What kind of school is that?"

"Mrs. Weasley, here they give us sticks to hex each other," Harry reminded her gently, holding up his own wand.

Ron snorted. "He's got a point, mum. I mean, they can give each other a bruise, but we can do much worse."

"Just thinking about what can happen if a spell goes wrong would horrify muggles," Hermione agreed. When she told her parents about her school year, she censored a lot, and not just about the extra adventures that normal students didn't have.

"But... It's not... It's not the same," Mrs. Weasley argued weakly. She had never thought about it that way.

"Oh, the possibilities these little things have," George said, twirling his wand between his fingers.

"Poor muggles, that they have to result to simply beating each other up with the sticks instead of hexing off ears or noses or making tentacles grow out of their foreheads," Fred laughed.

"Muggles can do a lot of damage too," Dean argued.

"But wizards can do more with less effort," Seamus replied.

"And it's easier to get away with it without being caught at all," Angelina nodded.

As he looked at Dudley in his new ... the proudest moment of his life.

"Those are some low standards," Percy said with a scrunched-up nose.

"What's so special about those knickerbockers?" Charlie asked confused.

"Maybe nothing, but I think it's not that different as when a kid boards the train to Hogwarts for the first time. It's special," Hermione said pensively.

There was a collective gasp of horror.

"You didn't," Tonks said, clutching her chest with one hand.

"How can you compare Hogwarts to a school that has a uniform like that?" Parvati asked appalled.

"'Ogwarts' uniform is not zat great eizer," a girl from Beauxbatons scoffed. She was the one that resembled a veela, with silvery blond hair.

An uproar rose from all the students wearing black robes. Many stood up indignant, others simply gave the girl the stinking eye, a few were grabbing their wands.

"Silence!" Dumbledore shouted before it could get too out of control. All the students froze in their places and looked at him. "Please, everyone, return to your seats. Mrs. Delacour has every right to voice her opinion."

"That doesn't mean that she's right," Ginny huffed, rolling her eyes. "Just because they're wearing those flimsy robes that are no good in this weather, it doesn't mean that our robes are bad."

"They could be a bit more stylish," Lavender said, staring at her own robes pensively. They were a bit like sacs, black sacs that didn't favour her in the slightest. Maybe she could alter hers a little bit, just enough to show her figure a bit more without McGonagall scolding her?

"Lavender," Hermione hissed, glaring at her.

"What? I'm just saying," the girl shrugged unrepentant. "They're so... without curves."

"They're school robes! They don't have to have curves! They have to be practical!" Hermione argued.

"Things can be practical and beautiful at the same time. There's nothing wrong with that," Lavender contradicted her.

Hermione growled under her breath and rolled her eyes. She wasn't going to help her when Lavender came crying to her and asking for help to fix her robes after McGonagall scolded her for having altered them.

Aunt Petunia burst into tears ... he looked so handsome and grown-up.

"Especially grown-up," Harry huffed a laugh. "The buttons of that tailcoat were about to burst. He needed another size or two."

"Why didn't his mother get him a bigger size then?" Molly asked with a frown.

Harry shrugged. "I think she refused to admit that her son needed more than an extra-large size from the uniforms that were supposed to be for the students in third year."

"That couldn't have been very comfortable for that boy," Arthur said sadly. He pitied that boy so much. They were ruining him and they weren't even noticing it.

Harry didn't trust himself ... horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry went in for breakfast.

"Didn't you cook breakfast?" Alicia asked confused. And relieved too, if she was honest. It was good to see that they didn't make Harry cook every day.

"Not always. Just sometimes," Harry shrugged. Other times, he had to do other things, things that Aunt Petunia preferred not to do. Like cleaning the bathroom or dusting the living room so they were perfect when the Dursleys wanted to make use of them.

"That's good, isn't it?" The chaser said happily.

"But it says that it didn't smell very good," Ron said, scrunching up his nose.

"Maybe they aren't as good as cooks as Harry," Katie said.

"I thought we had agreed that if Harry is half as good cooking as he is in Potions, it's a miracle that he hasn't poisoned his relatives yet," Ron joked. "Not that I'd blame you if you did, mate."

"I'm not that bad," Harry protested, rolling his eyes. "And neither is Aunt Petunia. It wasn't her cooking that stunk."

"Then what was it?" Ron asked impatiently.

"If you waited for half a second, maybe we could all find out," Hermione cut in, glaring at the redhead into silence.

It seemed to be coming from ... dirty rags swimming in grey water.

"What the hell is that?" Fred asked with a grimace.

"Fred, what your language! I don't want you to talk like that in front of your sister!" His mother scolded him.

Ginny rolled her eyes behind her mother's back. She had heard much worse from all her brothers and while she had been at Hogwarts.

"Sorry, mum," Fred said automatically.

"I hope that really wasn't breakfast, Harry," George said, with the same grimace his twin had.

"It wasn't, but it didn't make me any happier," Harry laughed.

"Why are you laughing then?" Dean asked, staring at his roommate like he was crazy. He had had the suspicion that Harry wasn't really sane for years now, but he had never said it aloud. It wasn't his business and, besides, it wasn't a bad case of insane. It was something that he considered necessary for Harry to do and go through everything he did without losing his mind in a bad way.

"Because I remember what else happened that morning," the black-haired boy smirked. "That was the beginning of a fun week."

"Fun at your relatives'?" George asked sceptically.

"I didn't know they liked jokes," Fred said.

"Or that they were any good at pranking," George added confused.

"They aren't, but they're ridiculous," Harry grinned. "Trust me. It was worth it."

"If you say so..." Fred said uncertainly.

"What's this?" he asked ... dared to ask a question.

The teachers winced and exchanged a look.

"It's going to be the truth after all," McGonagall said sadly. "All his life he's been dissuaded from asking questions."

"And now he doesn't even think about asking them even though it wouldn't be frowned upon," Professor Sprout said. "How do we fix this?"

"Telling the brat that he can ask questions won't solve anything," Snape said before any of them could suggest something stupid like that. He had had the same thing as Potter grilled into him, so he knew from experience. And he wasn't chipping in into the discussion to help Potter, but to save himself the pain of hearing more stupidities than strictly necessary.

"Maybe we can keep an eye on him to see if he's struggling with something and offer our help without singling him out in front of everyone," Professor McGonagall suggested pensively. Harry always reacted better when they talked face to face instead of with an audience.

"He may not want it anyway," Flitwick said.

"He can always ask Ms. Granger. He doesn't seem to have a problem with asking her for help," Sprout reminded them. The young witch was undeniably brilliant and they all knew that she would be more than willing to help her friend with whatever he needed, probably before he even asked her.

"We have to hope that's enough then," the head of Gryffindor sighed. She was still going to keep a closer eye on Harry in class to make sure that he was doing his best and he understood everything.

"Your new school uniform," she said.

"Ew," Lavender said, turning her face away.

"You can't smell it," Hermione said exasperated.

"I can imagine myself wearing those rags," she scoffed. "They're horrible and smelly."

"You wouldn't have been the one wearing them. I would have," Harry pointed out confused. "And we all know that I didn't get to wear them because I came to Hogwarts."

"And what kind of uniform that... Rockwall school, or whatever it was called, had that it could be faked with those grey things?" Parvati said. "And grey? Really?"

"Your uniform is black," the same blond girl from before pointed out with a raised eyebrow and a sneer. "It's not zat different."

"Black is elegant!" Parvati protested indignant. "And stylish! And it can be combined with every colour!"

The blond girl scoffed and turned away, tossing her hair over her shoulder in clear dismissal.

"That little..." Ginny scowled, glaring at her. She despised her attitude.

"It doesn't matter," Hermione said, but she was glaring at the girl from Beauxbatons too. "It's not worth getting angry over it."

"You're angry too," Ron pointed out.

"Shut up, Ron," she snapped at him.

"Just saying," he said defensively.

"Then don't say anything."

"Then don't be a hypocrite and say things you're not doing."

"Ron!" She snapped again, glowering at him.

Ron opened his mouth to reply, his temper rising too. Before he could utter a single word, Harry stomped on his foot, making the redhead shut his mouth to smother a pained yelp. The black-haired boy didn't even lose his calm expression.

"What the hell, Harry?" Ron hissed, glaring at him.

Harry looked at him, narrowing his eyes slightly. "Shut. Up. Now," he hissed right back. "Before you anger Hermione enough that she wants to hex you. I'm sitting between you two and I don't want you using me as a shield."

Ron deflated. "I wouldn't have angered her," he protested half-heartedly.

Harry quirked an eyebrow. "Really?" He said sceptically.

The redhead leant forward a bit, just enough to take a peek at the brunette sitting on Harry's other side. He winced when he could practically see the waves of anger oozing off of her. Maybe Harry had a point.

Harry looked ... didn't realize it had to be so wet."

"That was weak, Harry," Fred sighed.

"It wasn't like there was much material to begin with, though," George pointed out.

"Sarcasm's always beautiful," Tonks said, grinning at Harry.

"See, Padfoot?" Remus said softly, smiling sadly at the black-haired teen in spite of talking to his childhood friend. "That was pure Lily. All sarcasm and witty remarks."

Sirius frowned, staring at his godson. It was true that James wouldn't have said something like that. He would have thrown that thing away and refused to wear it, to be honest. He would have ranted and shouted and raged at everything to make his displeasure known instead of saying it in a more subtle way like Harry had done and Lily would have. It was all so confusing.

Harry was so much like James, but then Remus pointedout something that made Sirius realize that he wasn't so similar to his fatherat all, and the animagus was left floundering. He really needed to get to knowhis godson better, spend more time talking to him. If only Harry trusted him abit more, it would be so much easier. If things had happened as they shouldhave thirteen years earlier, everything would be different and he would be somuch happier. They would all be so much happier.

"Don't be stupid," snapped ... look just like everyone else's when I've finished."

"She's delusional," Alicia scoffed disbelievingly. "She can't possibly think that it'll look the same."

"Maybe she didn't care if it did or not," Angelina pointed out.

"She didn't," Harry confirmed.

"But if it looked so different, someone would've definitely noticed," Hermione said. "Didn't they care that that would raise questions?"

Harry shrugged. "My baggy clothes and my permanently broken glasses hadn't raised any questions until then," he pointed out. "Why would a second-hand uniform do it now?"

"That's something else that doesn't make sense!" She exclaimed angrily.

"Notice-Me-Not," Luna said softly.

Hermione gasped. "But that's an incredibly advanced charm!" She exclaimed. "It'd make sense, though."

"Um, Hermione?" Harry asked hesitantly. You never knew how Hermione was going to react if you interrupted her when she was having an enlightenment.

"Accidental magic, Harry!" She exclaimed, grabbing his arm with bruising strength.

"O-kay?" He said slowly, not getting it at all.

She huffed impatiently. "You probably did accidental magic and you didn't even notice it, Harry. Nobody did," she explained.

"I did?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

"It's called Notice-Me-Not Charm," she continued her explanation like he hadn't talked. "It's difficult, very difficult. It's similar to a Disillusionment Charm, which was made to hide someone by turning them almost invisible. Except that the Notice-Me-Not Charm can be applied to anything and it doesn't turn anything or anyone invisible. Everyone can still see it, but they don't focus on it, like an unknown face in a crowd that you don't remember later."

"So, it changes your features?" Ron asked confused.

"No," she shook her head, sending her bushy hair flying everywhere. "More like makes it unimportant. Like there's something unconsciously telling everyone that that's not what they're looking for."

"Like the Force!" Dean exclaimed enthusiastically.

"What force?" Seamus asked, staring at his best friend like he had grown a second head.

"You know, the Force," Dean said. "These aren't the droids you're looking for," he said with a grave voice as he waved his hand in front of Seamus.

The other boy swatted it away with a bewildered expression. It didn't help that most of the muggle-borns and some half-bloods were cackling up. "What are you doing? What force? And what droids? What's a droid?"

"Dude, I can't believe I haven't told you about the Force yet!" Dean said dramatically.

"And you still haven't explained to me what it is!" Seamus said exasperated.

"It doesn't matter right now," Hermione intervened, but she was grinning in amusement.

"I get it now, though," Harry said, grinning too. Even he, who wasn't allowed to watch the TV at the Dursleys, knew what that catchphrase was about.

"I don't," Ron said, as confused as before.

"We can watch the movie this summer or something. Then you'll get it," Harry dismissed.

"What movie?" Ron said, even more confused. "Dean was talking about a force."

"You'll understand when you watch the movie," Harry snickered.

"You're a prat," Ron huffed.

"And you're impatient," the younger boy replied.

"The point is," Hermione said, trying to get back on topic. "That Harry subconsciously hid all the signs about how the Dursleys treated him."

"Why would he do that?" Ron asked. That was even more confusing than the movie and the force thing.

Hermione glared at him. "I said subconsciously!" She snapped. "Children who are treated like Harry," she said, desperately trying to avoid the word 'abused'. She never wanted to use it in the same sentence as Harry, even when there was no other way to look at it. "Are taught to hide it from everyone."

"But why would they obey?" He insisted.

"It's not something they do on purpose, Ron!" She yelled at him. Her face was reddening with fury. "Just like you take magic for granted and would never even consider life without it, they never think that they should tell someone! It's something subconscious! He was convinced that he had to hide it and his magic acted accordingly."

"Hermione," Harry said quietly, grabbing her hand to get her attention.

He was trying to ignore his own embarrassment and all the stares he was getting. Instead, he focused on his friend, who was breathing harshly and was clenching her fists so tightly that she was probably leaving marks on the palms of her hands. Slowly, he forced her fingers to uncurl one by one, watching as all the tension was drained out of her.

"That's better," he said quietly when he finally straightened her ten fingers and he could grab her hands freely, allowing her to cling to one of his hands as tightly as she wanted. He smiled at her gently.

Hermione sighed and squeezed his hand. "Sorry, Harry," she muttered, knowing that he couldn't be too happy about how she had yelled in the Great Hall about how much the Dursleys had affected him.

"It doesn't matter," he said sincerely. It wasn't anything new that they couldn't already guess from what they had read.

Hermione smiled at him. She released his hand to link her arm with his and lay her head on his shoulder. She was so grateful that she had Harry as her brother.

"You okay, Ron?" Harry asked quietly since the redhead hadn't moved yet.

"You still think like that?" He asked instead of answering.

"Like what? Like I have to hide it?" Harry said. He snorted, careful not to dislodge Hermione. "I think that choice has been taken out of my hands now."

"Not what I mean, Harry," Ron said seriously.

"I told you about it willingly," the black-haired boy reminded him. "And you and Hermione already knew a lot of what we've read and a lot of what we haven't."

"Does that mean that you'll talk to us?" The redhead pressed on. He didn't want his best friend to hide things like that. They would eat him up from the inside out.

Harry smiled wryly. "Do I have another option?" He asked knowingly.

"No," his best friends answered at the same time.

"We'd beat it out of you sooner or later," Ron said, sending him a warning glance.

"Then I'll have to talk to you," Harry gave him half a shrug, still careful not to dislodge Hermione off of his right shoulder.

"You better," she said quietly before straightening again. She was not above using underhand tactics to help Harry.

"Does that mean we can continue reading?" Bill asked hesitantly after a minute in silence.

"Yes," Harry nodded, ignoring all the curious and worried stares.

"Harry," Sirius began to say.

"Not now," Harry interrupted firmly. He was never going to talk with his godfather about the Dursleys, especially in front of the Great Hall. The animagus was capable of going to kill them, and become a murderer for real and Harry hadn't prevented that four months prior only to let it happen now.

Sirius sighed disgruntled, but he gave in. He had to corner his godson at some point. He needed to talk to him and clear the air. He didn't want to have secrets between them. Well, there were things that he wouldn't talk to Harry about, but it wasn't supposed to be the same the other way around. He was the adult, and Harry was his godson. He needed to know everything about the kid to be able to protect him and know what was best for him.

Harry seriously doubted this, ... like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably.

"That's... horrible to picture," Lavender said with a grimace.

"It was just a comparison," Katie sighed. "A horribly accurate and somewhat disturbing comparison, but it was a good way of describing it."

"But it makes it even worse than I imagined," the younger girl said with a frown.

"What does it matter?" Hermione asked tiredly. There was a reason she had never become close with her roommates. They made her want to tear her hair out.

"It's a matter of principle," Lavender said defensively.

"Principle of what?"

"Of what should be worn and what should be burnt. That should definitely be burnt," she sneered.

Hermione rolled her eyes. "She's ridiculous," she grumbled under her breath.

Dudley and Uncle ... banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.

"Why?" Percy asked bewildered. Hitting the table served no purpose at all except possibly spilling the food.

"Maybe he liked the sound," George suggested with a mischievous grin.

"Like a baby that shakes the rattle because of the sound," Fred smirked.

"He's not half as cute as a baby, though," Angelina joked.

"How do you think he was as a baby?" Seamus asked curiously.

"We already know, remember?" Alicia said. "It appeared in the previous chapter. How did it describe him slightly? Different-coloured beach balls?"

"'A large pink beach ball with different-coloured bonnets'," Angelina corrected with a chuckle.

"That's right!" Katie laughed.

"I don't remember that," Harry said confused.

"You were asleep," Ron told him.

"Oh," Harry said, blushing a bit. He hated that part about the spell.

"It was very descriptive, like that thing about elephant skin," Katie nodded amused.

They heard the click of the mail ... the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.

The twins gasped and fell dramatically off of the couch they were sharing. They gave each other a hard pinch on the arm.

"I'm awake then," George said wide-eyed.

"Me too, but that was so unexpected," Fred gasped with a hand pressed to his chest.

"He made his son move," George said wide-eyed.

"Even if I don't agree with all those dramatics," Percy said, sending a disapproving look at the twins. "I have to admit that I didn't think your uncle would do something like that."

"Especially when Harry's right there too," Charlie said with a confused expression.

"Maybe this means that they really make their son do some chores too," Mrs. Weasley said hopefully. That boy needed some discipline and responsibilities, even if it was something as trivial as getting the mail.

"Sorry, Mrs. Weasley. They didn't," Harry said before she could get her hopes too high.

"Make Harry get it."

"Get the mail, Harry."

"See? Now that's more normal," Fred said, returning to his seat.

"I'm almost relieved," George said jokingly. "For a moment I thought I was hallucinating."

Mrs. Weasley sighed disappointed. "Oh, well. I'm not surprised."

"Me neither. That man does everything his son tells him to do," Arthur said sadly. "They're spoiling that child too much. He won't know how to fend for himself when he grows up and he has his own problems."

"Life will teach him," Bill said. "It teaches everyone."

"It's not the best method of learning, though," his father said sadly. It tended to be painful and difficult and often scarring for the recipient.

"Make Dudley get it."

Ron whirled around to stare at his best friend. "Seriously?" He asked incredulous.

"What?" He asked, inching away from him warily. He could see Ron's hands twitching to slap him on the back of his head.

"You really thought that would work?" The redhead asked exasperated. His best friend could be such an idiot sometimes.

"Not really."

"Then why did you do it?!"

"Miracles happen?" He asked more than answered. The slap on the back of his head came from behind him. He should have seen it coming. "Ouch! Hermione!"

"You don't have to taunt your uncle like that!" She scolded him. Those were the kinds of things that ended up with Harry punished, which wasn't a good thing with his relatives.

"He wasn't being fair!"

"And you thought he'd suddenly make a turnaround and become fair?" She asked, glaring at him.

"No, but someone had to point it out," he said stubbornly.

"You're impossible," she huffed.

"And I'm right too," he said, crossing his arms.

"No, you're not," she said, glaring at him again. "There was no need to do that."

"You would've done the same!"

"You don't know that!"

"I do!" He argued. Of course, he knew how she would react.

"And, besides," she added, ignoring his comment. "You can't reason with your relatives!"

"That much is true," Harry conceded with a nod.

Hermione huffed satisfied and settled down again.

"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley."

"Really?" Sirius growled. "That's his answer? To poke my godson with the stick?"

"We already said that they can't do much more with their sticks," Fred cut in, ready to diffuse the growing tension.

"Not like us. We can charm his stick to follow him around and hit him nonstop," George grinned mischievously. They would be of age when summer came around so there would be nothing to stop them.

"You can't do that!" Their mother scolded them. "He's just a child!"

"Who hits Harry and everything within range with a stick," George pointed out.

"We're just returning the favour and letting him know how it feels," Fred nodded in agreement.

"You will not do that!" She ordered them.

The twins exchanged a look and shrugged. They could obey their mum and still have some fun, like when they had sent Harry the toilet in his first year. There were so many other possibilities to make those people pay (even if Harry said that he didn't want revenge), and so many that didn't require magic at all. They were going to have so much fun that summer.

Harry dodged the Smelting stick ... and — a letter for Harry.

Everyone leant forward in anticipation. This had to be it, didn't it? Was this the letter from Hogwarts, the most important letter a wizard received in his life?

Harry picked it up and stared ... He had no friends,

"Now you do," Ron said firmly.

"And we write as often as possible," Hermione said, knowing that it wasn't always that easy with two owls for the three of them. If she had gotten an owl instead of Crookshanks the year before, the communication would have gone much faster, but still, she didn't regret having chosen her orange cutie.

"I know," Harry said amused. After that disaster with the letters withheld by Dobby the summer before second year, each of his best friends had written at least a couple of times every week. Hedwig and Errol, now substituted by Pig, always got a workout during the holidays.

"We can write too, right, brother mine?" George said.

"Every week if we have to," Fred nodded.

They never wrote to Harry, usually just adding something to Ron's letters to his best friend and receiving news about him the same way, but maybe they could make an effort. Although, if they truly managed to stop Harry from having to go back to his relatives, that wouldn't be necessary.

no other relatives

"Thank Merlin for that," Alicia said.

"You're very right," Fred nodded with mock-seriousness.

"He's got enough of a zoo as it is with the morse, the pig and the horse," George agreed. "I don't think the house would stay standing if you added more animals to the mix."

"Besides, who needs more relatives like them when you have a bunch of redheads," Charlie joked with a wide grin.

"Some people would argue that we're a scarier bunch than the zoo," Bill joked, grinning in amusement.

"Please, Bill," Fred scoffed. "That's ridiculous."

"Don't offend us by comparing us to those animals," George huffed.

"I don't think it's that bad to say that we're scarier than the Dursleys," Charlie said pensively.

"I'd be offended if they were scarier than us," Ginny huffed, crossing her arms over her chest.

"They certainly have less tools at their disposal to try to scare anyone. They can't do anything we can't do," Percy observed.

— he didn't belong to the library, ... rude notes asking for books back.

"Muggles just get rude notes?" Seamus asked. "We get Madam Pince following us everywhere like a vulture!"

"She has no qualms about using a Summoning Charm if you don't return the books," Angelina grimaced. She knew it from experience. She had been studying with a book, knowing that she should have returned it a few days before, when it had flown out of her hands and directly to the library.

"I heard that she sneaks into your room to find it if you put charms on it to prevent it from being summoned," Alicia said. A student from seventh year had told them that a couple of years prior, after the incident with Angelina.

"Or to threaten you if she can't find it," Dean laughed. He had seen it happen to Seamus and he had had a blast.

"Muggles definitely get off easy for not returning the books to the library," Ron grumbled.

"It's your own fault for not returning them in time," Hermione huffed.

"And here I was thinking that it had been too long since you had stood up for your precious library," Ron scoffed, rolling his eyes.

"What does that mean?" She asked, leaning forward to glare at him since Harry was sitting between them.

"Nothing," Harry said quickly before they could begin arguing. He still stood by his opinion of not being literally stuck between them when Hermione finally hexed Ron.

Yet ... addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:

"The automatic feather that's used to write the addresses wouldn't write anything less than the exact place of residence, Mr. Potter," Dumbledore said with a kind smile. "It's been used for years and it's never mistaken."

Mr. H. Potter

The Cupboard under the Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

"If there's no way it can be mistaken, I don't understand how you could have missed this, Albus," Molly seethed. She couldn't believe that the school had known and had done nothing. She was going to have a few words with the headmaster.

"Unfortunately, Molly, I am not the one who sends the letters every year," the old man said. His smile had become a bit strained.

Professor McGonagall sent him an irate look for putting the blame on her so blatantly. She faced the redheaded woman without a hint on a smile. "I'm the one who sends the letters, Molly, but I must confess that I don't always read all the addresses the feather writes," she admitted regretfully. She faced Harry. "I'm sorry, Mr. Potter."

"No problem, Professor," he said uncomfortable. "You have a lot of work and there are a lot of letters being sent every year."

The woman pursed her lips and frowned. "Still, I think that does not excuse my inactions. If I had done what I had to do properly, I would've been knocking on that door that very same morning and you wouldn't have spent another day with those people."

Harry smiled a little. "I appreciate the sentiment, Professor, but it really is alright. It's in the past now."

The head of Gryffindors didn't stop frowning. She couldn't allow something like that to happen again. She would read every single letter herself before sending them if she had to before she risked missing something like this ever again.

The envelope was thick ... was no stamp.

"It would be fascinating if we used stamps too," Mr. Weasley said excitedly. "I wonder, how many stamps would be needed to send each letter of Hogwarts?"

"It'd depend on where each letter was addressed to, Mr. Weasley," Hermione answered quickly. "But, considering it altogether, too many to be worth it."

"Not that they're used," Percy said with a frown. "Owls don't need stamps for anything."

"I still don't understand how putting that little paper on the envelope pays the letterpeople that delivers the letter, though," Mr. Weasley mused with a frown.

"They're called postmen, Mr. Weasley," Harry corrected, biting his lip to conceal a smile.

"Right, right. Postmen," the man nodded, hanging on to every word.

"And it's not the stamp that pays the postman, Mr. Weasley," Hermione explained, hiding her amusement. "The money you pay for the stamps is what pays the postman."

"So, if they deliver more letters and further away, they earn more money," Arthur nodded understandingly.

Hermione winced a little. "Not exactly. The system's a bit more complicated than that. Why don't I explain it to you later?" She offered.

"Oh, thank you!" He exclaimed with a bright smile.

Turning the envelope over, ... purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion,

"There it is!" George cheered. "That's us!"

"The best house of Hogwarts!" Fred shouted, punching the air in victory.

An uproar of indignation rose from the other three houses.

"Who says it's the best one?" Tonks snapped, glaring at them. She was a badger at heart and would always be.

"We do," the twins said at the same time. They didn't look repentant in the slightest about the ruckus they had just caused.

"Well, you're wrong," Padma Patil said from a bit further away.

"Padma, you have to admit that Gryffindor is a bit more entertaining than Ravenclaw," Parvati said, rolling her eyes. "All you do is read and study and keep your nose between the pages of a book."

"Well, all you Gryffindors do is rush head first into whatever situation you encounter!" Cho Chang snapped. "You don't think before you act! You hope for the best and think everything will be alright just because you're lions!"

"That's not true!" Ginny yelled back.

"It's a bit true that most Gryffindors aren't known for stopping to think of a plan," Luna pointed out calmly.

Ron snorted. "Tell that to Hermione."

"I said most, not all," the blond girl reminded him.

Ron grunted in acknowledgement, but he wasn't satisfied. "Which house has won the House Cup for the last three years, uh?" He asked smugly.

"That's got nothing to do with it!" Blaise Zabini argued. "Slytherin had been winning for six years in a row!"

"Until we won," Dean pointed out.

"You won't win forever," Daphne Greengrass hissed at him, glaring at him dangerously.

Ron refused to feel intimidated. "Still, Gryffindor is the best house. It's the first crest that Harry saw."

"Ron," Harry hissed under his breath. He didn't want to get involved in this debacle if he could help it. He loved Gryffindor with all his heart, of course, but that was because of where he had ended up, not because of any other particular reason.

"That's because it's the one located on the top left corner, where we're used to start reading," Cedric Diggory pointed out with an annoyed scowl in response to Ron's comment. He hadn't heard Harry.

"Well, they put it there for some reason," Ron replied, equally annoyed.

"No, they didn't," Anthony Goldstein snapped at him.

"Please, if we could calm down and continue," Dumbledore intervened before someone could draw their wand to curse a student from another house.

an eagle,

"Now, that's the best house of Hogwarts," Michael Corner said smugly.

"Really?" Seamus asked with a raised eyebrow. "Somehow, I doubt it."

"You would. You're not a Ravenclaw, but we know the truth," Cho Chang replied. "Besides, its crest is on the right bottom corner, which, according to what Cedric said, would mean that it should've been the last one Harry noticed, but it was the second one. That proves that it's the best one."

Another uproar rose from the other three houses. This time, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Slytherin alienated against Ravenclaw.

"That proves nothing!" Ernie Macmillan protested.

"You can't deny that we tend to use our brains a bit more than the rest of you," Terry Boot tried to reason. "That helps us face problems with a cool head and find solutions faster. Not to mention all the knowledge that we learn and you're not interested in."

"Bullshit!" Justin Finch-Fletchley shouted. Use their brains? Face problems with a cool head? He had seen Terry panic because he couldn't find his wand when he had it in his hand! That wasn't using his brain nor facing the problem with a cool head!

"Mr. Finch-Fletchley!" Professor Sprout exclaimed scandalized. "That language isn't appropriate, especially to be used in front of the whole school and all our guests."

"Sorry, Professor," the boy said through gritted teeth. He was still glaring at Terry Boot.

"Good, now, let's continue," the woman ordered.

a badger,

"Ha!" Justin exclaimed triumphantly. "That's the best house."

"What are you talking about? You're a bit late to the party. It was the third house Harry noticed," Katie snorted.

"The best things are worth waiting for," Hannah Abbot said, coming to the defence of her house.

"Yeah, we know that badgers have little ambition and even less cunning to get what they want," Pansy Parkinson said with a sly smirk.

"And I'll let you know that we're the first ones who don't shy away from hard work!" Susan Bones snapped at the girl angrily.

"You mean to say that you're the idiots that end up stuck with all the tasks that no one wants while we're clever enough to avoid that," Pansy replied.

"Or you're just lazy and not trustworthy enough to do what needs to be done," Cedric said icily.

"That's enough!" Sprout intervened again. "We should be above these petty insults! We're all schoolmates!"

"Sorry, Professor," Cedric said, bowing his head respectfully.

Sprout turned towards her colleague. "Don't you have something to say, Severus?" She pressed with narrowed eyes.

"I prefer not to get involved in my students' battles," Snape said innocently, almost with indifference. Sprout glared at him until he sighed and rolled his eyes. "Behave. Don't give me a reason to intervene again," he ordered, looking at his snakes.

"Of course, Professor," Daphne Greengrass said politely.

"That wasn't much of a scolding," Sprout grumbled under her breath.

"It was enough," Snape said dismissively. His snakes knew the consequences of disobeying him, especially disobeying an order he had given in public.

and a snake

"What do you have to say now, uh?" Ernie Macmillan said smugly. "Your house was the last one Harry noticed."

"Potter has never had good taste in anything," Malfoy sneered.

Harry bristled and glared at him, but he still refused to get involved in this argument. If he did, it would only get worse if, and when, they read the conversation he had had with the Sorting Hat the night he had been placed in Gryffindor.

"Not even in broomsticks?" Hermione asked slyly. "Because I remember hearing you talk about how great Firebolts are and, as far as I know, Harry's the only one with one as of now."

Malfoy's cheeks turned pink in embarrassment while many Gryffindors cheered.

"Well said, Hermione!" Seamus congratulated her.

"And, in spite of the crest of Slytherin being on the right top corner, which means it should've been the second one to be noticed, it was the last one. That has to mean something," Susan Bones said, still sore about the comments against her house earlier.

"Nothing, apart from the fact that Potter's as blind as a bat," Theodore Nott retorted without missing a beat.

"Dude, what have I done now?" Harry protested. "I haven't even opened my mouth! Leave me out of it!"

"Shut up, Potter," Malfoy glared at him.

Harry narrowed his eyes. "You shut up, Malfoy. For once, I haven't said anything against you."

"Please, can we continue with the reading?" Dumbledore intervened again tiredly.

surrounding a large letter H.

"Hogwarts!" The Weasley twins shouted, startling a lot of people.

"If there's something we can all agree on," Fred said.

"It's that Hogwarts is the best school," George grinned.

"I would not be so sure about zat," the blond girl resembling a veela sneered. "Beauxbatons is more elegant."

"Hovarts has a lot of flavs," Viktor Krum said with a grimace of distaste. "I don't see vot's so special about it. Durmstrang's curriculum is much more complete."

The collective uproar from all the students wearing black robes was instantaneous. Even those that usually acted like they couldn't care less about their school rose to its defence without hesitation. It was one thing when they, students of Hogwarts, insulted another house or criticised the school, but it was another thing for these upstarts to belittle Hogwarts and they weren't going to stand for it.

"Alright, there's no need to compare the schools," Dumbledore said. He had to stand up and raise his hands to get everyone's attention. "They're all wonderful and special in their own way. It's the differences between them that make this competition we're celebrating this year so astounding."

Nobody looked happy right then. The students were glaring at the ones from other schools and both Madame Maxime and Karkaroff had strained smiles on their faces, like they were refraining themselves from snapping at the older headmaster. Clearly, they didn't see the competition the same way Dumbledore had portrayed it to be.

"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle ... checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.

"Now, that was just painful to hear," Fred said with a grimace.

"My poor ears," George moaned, grabbing them. "They're gonna fall off if they have to hear something that horrible again."

"You could always go show them how a good joke really is. Maybe that'll teach them a lesson," Bill suggested with a wicked smirk.

"Bill, don't encourage them to prank people, especially muggles!" His mother chided him annoyed.

"On the contrary, mum, that's an excellent idea," George beamed at his oldest brother.

"We could even show them the funniest side of magic, that it doesn't have to be scary," Fred said. "So, if you look at it that way, we're just doing them a favour."

"No, you aren't," Molly sighed exasperated. "You're gonna scare them even more."

They gasped in mock indignation. "We would never!" They exclaimed at the same time.

"Why would we want to do that?" George asked innocently.

"It can't possibly be because of their awful treatment of Harry," Fred drawled out sarcastically.

Molly's retort died in her lips. She didn't want her sons to prank the muggles, but she couldn't deny that the Dursleys deserved to be taught a lesson.

"Maybe we could go along with them," Remus whispered so only Sirius, who was next to him on the couch, could hear him.

"Why?" The animagus growled.

Remus frowned at him. "What do you mean why? Don't you wanna get some revenge on Harry's behalf?"

"Oh, I'm gonna get revenge alright," Sirius promised with darkened eyes. "But it's not gonna be a silly prank and a warning."

"Sirius..." The werewolf sighed tiredly.

"No, leave me be, Remus. I'm gonna make them pay," Sirius said, not an ounce of mirth in his face.

"You're gonna get into trouble if you harm them," Remus reminded him.

"It'd be worth it for what they did to Harry. We only know a fraction of what he went through because of them and I wanna kill them already. I am gonna kill them just because of what we've learnt."

Remus sighed again and rubbed his eyes. "We'll talk about this later."

"There's nothing to talk about. I'm not gonna change my mind."

"There's a lot to talk about and, fortunately for me, neither you nor anyone else can leave the castle for the foreseeable future so we'll have plenty of time to talk."

Harry went back to the kitchen, ... slowly began to open the yellow envelope.

"You thick-headed, stupid...!" Hermione exclaimed, hitting Harry with each word.

"Ouch! Hey! Hermione!" Harry exclaimed shocked, grabbing her hands to stop her. Thankfully, he was stronger than her because the girl seemed to be hell-bent on hitting him for some reason.

"You're smarter than that, Harry!" She accused him.

"Than what?" He asked bewildered.

"Than that!" She snapped. "How could you think it'd be a good idea to open the letter in front of them?"

"Why wouldn't it be?" Dean asked confused. "What's the problem with that?"

"They take everything away from him, including a proper uniform for school or a proper bedroom. Why wouldn't they take the letter too?" She asked impatiently.

"Oh," Dean said, blushing slightly.

"I didn't think of that, Hermione," Harry sighed, releasing her now that he knew that she wasn't going to try to hit him again.

"It was a stupid move, mate," Ron pointed out with a grimace.

"I know," Harry agreed.

"But surely they couldn't take the letter from Hogwarts too?" Charlie said, but it sounded more like a question than anything.

"I agree with Hermione here," Tonks said. "Those people don't seem to have a limit to what they'd do to keep magic out of their lives."

"You think they'd try to stop Harry from going to Hogwarts?" Charlie asked, slightly alarmed.

"Charlie, don't you remember when Ron invited Harry to the Quidditch Cup? He said that they may have to break Harry out of his relatives' house," Bill reminded him quietly. "And the twins said that they had already had to help Ron do exactly that two years ago."

Charlie shut his mouth, his confusion vanishing. "Yeah, I remember. It doesn't seem an exaggeration anymore."

They had been shocked and confused and maybe slightly concerned when they had heard that story from the twins, even if it hadn't had a lot of details. The most disconcerting thing may have been the twins' expressions, which had been dark and unamused. It was rare to see Fred and George so serious, but neither they nor Ron hadn't been joking when they had said that they would get Harry out of his relatives' house one way or another.

Uncle Vernon ripped open ... "Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk..."

"Good," Harry smirked.

"Harry!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed scandalised. "You shouldn't wish that on anyone."

"It's just a stomach ache," he said dismissively. He had had tons of those when the Dursleys didn't feed him for more than a day or they gave him something that had begun to go bad, so he had little sympathy if the same had happened to Marge.

"Still, Harry, it's not right to wish for someone to get sick," the redheaded woman insisted.

"I don't wish for her to get sick, but I'm not sad about it," Harry defended himself. "She said some awful things about me and my parents last summer."

"What did she say?" Sirius cut in.

"I guess you'll see at the end of the second book or the beginning of the third one," Harry said. If it appeared at all. If it didn't, Harry wasn't going to tell his godfather.

"Harry," the animagus growled. He didn't want to wait that long.

"No. I don't wanna talk about it. You'll become murderous again and I don't wanna deal with that once more. It'll probably appear later anyway," Harry said, glaring at him. He could see the rage in his godfather's eyes and he was getting tired of it. He didn't need anyone swiping in to solve his problems, especially when that would cause even more problems and bigger ones.

The silence stretched uncomfortably while Sirius and Harry stayed locked in a staring contest, neither of them willing to give in. It went on for so long that the Flitwick's spell decided that the interruption had finished and reassumed the reading.

"Dad!" said Dudley ... got something!"

"And here I was beginning to hope that they wouldn't notice," Dean sighed disappointed.

"They could've kept talking about that Marge woman, but that idiot had to be watching Harry instead of his food," Seamus grumbled.

"It makes you wonder why he pays so much attention to Harry if he claims to hate him so much," Angelina said, glaring at the book.

"Maybe he's jealous," Alicia suggested, not very convinced. A loud snort caught her attention.

"Jealous?" Harry laughed. "Of me? What could Dudley be jealous of? His parents did, and still do, literally anything he wants to make him feel special and better than me. Anything I could possibly have that he wanted was automatically his without argument and I was punished more times than I can count just because he wanted."

"Maybe he still knew somehow that you had something that he didn't," Luna said softly.

"You're talking about magic," Ginny said, doing a poor job of hiding her scepticism.

"There are only so many instances when something incredible happens before you begin to notice a pattern, don't you think?" The blond girl hummed. "And, in spite of his parents' insistence that magic doesn't exist, even Dudley Dursley had to see that all those instances took place around Harry and were too incredible to explain rationally."

"I'm not sure if that reasoning is within my cousin's abilities, Luna," Harry said amused. "He's not one for deep thinking."

"Perhaps," she shrugged, not taking offence.

Harry was on the point of unfolding ... trying to snatch it back.

"They really took it away from you!" Seamus exclaimed indignant.

"How could they do that?!" Katie seethed.

"Isn't it illegal to read someone else's correspondence?" Neville asked hesitantly.

"Technically, it isn't in this case," Hermione said, looking like it pained her to admit that. "They're his legal guardians so they have every right to access everything that's Harry's, including his letters."

"That sucks," Dean blurted out, glaring at the book.

"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle ... the greyish white of old porridge.

"That's almost enough to steal my appetite," George grimaced.

"Not completely, though," Fred said.

"I'm still hungry," Ron said.

"We haven't even read two chapters yet. We're not stopping for a while, Ron," Hermione warned him.

"I haven't even asked if we could!" He complained.

"Just making sure you're not getting ideas," she huffed.

"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.

"P-P-Petunia!" George mocked him, doing a poor imitation of him.

"He's ridiculous," Fred scoffed. "And I thought there was no one more prone to exaggeration than Percy."

"I'm not prone to exaggeration!" Percy spluttered.

"You are a bit," Bill contradicted him.

"That's not fair! You're all against me!" Percy exclaimed, glaring at his siblings.

"See? That's an exaggeration again," Charlie pointed out calmly. "We're not all against you. Only Bill and the twins said that you exaggerate, but, after this, I'm inclined to agree with them."

"That... That's not..." Percy stammered wide-eyed.

Dudley tried to grab the letter ... and made a choking noise. "Vernon! Oh my goodness — Vernon!"

"And she's an even bigger drama-queen than her husband," Angelina rolled her eyes. "The whole family's kind of ridiculous."

"Wasn't she Harry's mum's sister?" Alicia asked confused.

"Yeah," Harry nodded. "Why?"

"Why is she so surprised then? Her sister had to receive the same letter when she was eleven, right?" The chaser asked.

"Maybe she forgot," Neville suggested quietly.

'Impossible,' Snape wanted to scoff, but he held it in. Petunia had been obsessed with that letter for weeks. He knew that she had read it more than a dozen times, so it wasn't possible that she had forgotten at what age wizards started their magical education.

"I don't think that's it," Remus said with a frown. "I think it goes more along the lines that she was hoping that Harry wouldn't receive his letter."

"Why wouldn't he receive it? He's a wizard," Dean said confused.

"And they couldn't not have known about that. They punished him for his accidental magic," Ginny frowned heavily. She didn't like that. All her life, accidental magic had always been something to laugh at or at least be amused by as long as it didn't hurt anyone or put them in danger.

Remus' frown deepened. "I'm not sure."

Harry stayed silent through all this. He had his own suspicions about why the Dursleys had been so surprised. They had spent so long trying to get rid of his magic that part of them must have thought that that was enough to extinguish it. Fortunately for him, that hadn't been the case.

They stared at each other, ... his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.

"Holy Merlin, is he crazy?" Ron blurted out with wide eyes.

"Aren't they going to do anything in response to that?" Mr. Weasley asked angry.

"No, they didn't," Harry shook his head.

"It's like they don't have an ounce of self-respect. I'd never allow my children to do something like that to me or to anyone else," Arthur said. His eyes were dark and he was clenching his fists in his lap.

"No kidding," Bill laughed nervously. "I think our ears would still be ringing a week later."

"That would be the least of your problems, young man," his mother warned.

"I want to read ... Harry furiously, "as it's mine."

"You sound really angry," Colin Creevey said uncertainly. He had never heard his hero sound so angry at anyone and he wasn't sure that he liked it.

Ron and Hermione snorted at the same time.

"He's not angry," the redhead assured the younger boy.

"Well, he doesn't sound precisely happy," Parvati pointed out.

"I wasn't," Harry huffed.

"But you don't sound angry either," Hermione said. "You sound more annoyed than anything."

They had both seen Harry angry or annoyed plenty of times, more commonly annoyed rather than angry. However, the times when they had seen him angry were more than enough. They still remembered when they had heard that Sirius had betrayed his parents and apparently everyone knew and nobody had thought he should know. That had made him furious. He didn't sound angry in the book right then. People would hear the difference later.

Harry shrugged. "It wasn't the first time they took something from me so it was nothing new. I was used to it, even if it did annoy me."

"You shouldn't have been used to that," Sirius growled, gritting his teeth.

"There were a lot of things I shouldn't have been used to," Harry replied, barely keeping himself from snapping. He was getting so tired of Sirius getting so angry over things that had happened so long ago and couldn't be helped now. He didn't need nor want anger.

Sirius stared at his godson baffled. What was his problem? Why did he seem so angry at him when Sirius was just angry on his behalf and trying to show his support?

"Get out, both of ... WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted.

Colin Creevey flinched. "You sound really angry now," he repeated.

"Maybe a little," Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"That's not a little," Ginny said, squirming uncomfortable. She had never imagined that Harry could have that temper in him.

"It is," Ron laughed. "I mean, he's not happy."

"But I think it's better when he shouts and screams," Hermione confessed.

Harry whirled around to gape at her. "You think what?" He asked surprised. He knew that he had quite a temper, but he always tried not to scream and rage.

The brunette witch shrugged. "Don't get me wrong. It's not fun, but at least you don't bottle up everything inside that way."

"You get all cold and furious and terrifying when you do that, mate," Ron agreed, grimacing a bit.

They both remembered the silent fury Harry had carried with him the previous year, after they had discovered what Sirius had supposedly done. That had really scared them. They had glimpsed it again that day when Malfoy had called Hermione a mudblood, but that had been nothing compared to their third year.

"I do?" Harry said, blinking in shock.

"Yeah," the redhead nodded. "Scary as hell," he repeated.

"Ron," his mother said warningly.

"Sorry. Very scary," he corrected himself, barely keeping the sarcasm in check.

"James had quite a temper on him, too," Sirius intervened, an amused and nostalgic smile on his face.

Harry whirled around to stare at him with wide eyes. "He did?" He asked, latching onto the new piece of information on his parents.

"It was better to leave him alone until he cooled off. You could end up with a new pair of ears or talking in rhymes for the rest of the week if you didn't," Sirius chuckled, remembering the few times he had been on the receiving end of James' fury.

"And your mother was also one to avoid when she was angered," Remus said, smiling at the black-haired teenager.

Snape carefully kept his face blank, refusing to show any emotion as memories assaulted him. Memories of Lily shouting and raging, her darkened emerald eyes glaring daggers at whoever had angered her, her red hair resembling crackling fire and her wand clenched in her fist but usually unused when she was like that. He stomped down on the lump of emotion that clogged his throat and focused back on the present.

"Although, James seemed to purposefully ignore all the warnings to keep riling her up," the werewolf was adding.

"He never learnt his lesson," Sirius said with a longing smile.

Both Remus and he knew that James had known that he shouldn't cross Lily, but that he hadn't cared, that he had kept doing it in the hope of attracting her attention. It had taken him years to understand that having her attention didn't mean having her affections and that he had to change if he wanted to have a chance with her.

"Like my mum," Ron said, nudging his best friend with his shoulder.

"I suppose," Harry grinned. Mrs. Weasley wasn't someone he wanted to anger either.

"And you have inherited both their tempers. Merlin help us," Hermione teased him. "No wonder it's scary when you let it all out, even if it's better in the long run."

Harry winced. "Sorry," he said sheepishly.

"Don't," she shook her head, smiling at him reassuringly. He usually had a very good reason for being furious. "If you need to shout, be my guest."

"She's right," Remus said. "It was always worse when James or Lily bottled it up inside. They always blew up in the end and they felt worse for it."

Harry smiled uncertainly. He didn't like having a temper like that. He always felt ashamed after an outburst. He needed to learn how not to direct it towards someone who didn't deserve it.

"Let me see ... Dudley.

"It's. Not. His!" Angelina said exasperated. "Is that so difficult to understand?"

"For someone who can't add two?" George asked.

"It must be," Fred nodded, grinning.

"That kid's gonna have a lot of problems when he grows up and he realizes that people won't give him everything he asks for just because he wants it," Arthur said sadly. He wished there was some way of helping Dudley, even if he had bullied Harry. He had only done what his parents had taught him to do, so, even if that didn't make him blameless, it wasn't completely his fault. "The reality check he's gonna get is gonna be very harsh."

"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took ... hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them.

"He threw you?" Sirius hissed, narrowing his eyes.

"I'm fine, Sirius," Harry sighed. "No harm done."

"You're rubbing the back of your neck," the animagus pointed out, staring with laser-like focus at the hand Harry was using to massage his neck, like it was sore because his uncle had grabbed him too roughly and the stupid books were making him relive it.

Harry immediately dropped the hand, but it was too late. Everyone had noticed already. "It's alright," he sighed tiredly. He knew that he wasn't convincing anyone, but it was the truth. He had gone through much worse than that.

Harry and Dudley ... fight over who would listen at the keyhole

"Harry," Hermione sighed, looking at him sympathetically.

"What?" Harry asked innocently. He knew exactly what she wanted to say.

"You didn't have a chance against your cousin," Ron said bluntly. "You were a scrawny kid and he was a huge pig."

"Ron!" Hermione exclaimed, exasperated but not surprised at his lack of tact.

"What?" He shrugged. "It's true. In fact, he still is scrawny, and his cousin is a small whale on the making."

"Ronald!" His mother scolded him. "You can't talk about people like that!"

Harry snickered. "It's a bit true, though."

The woman looked at him hesitantly. "You could put on some weight. You're all skin and bones, dear," she told him.

Harry shrugged. "I'll eat an extra portion of treacle tart at lunch."

She frowned. "That's not what I meant," she grumbled under her breath. Harry needed nutrients and vitamins and things that were good for him, not just sugar.

"The point is that Harry doesn't know how to pick a fight with people of his own size," Ron joked, rescuing his best friend before his mum could go on a mother-henning spree.

"And he didn't get better at it when he came to Hogwarts," Hermione snickered.

"He didn't?" Seamus asked perplexed.

"You're getting into trouble with older students?" Fred asked, gasping in mock-horror. "And you didn't tell us?"

"Shame on you, Harrykins," George said, shaking his head.

"I haven't picked a fight with an older student," Harry protested, rolling his eyes.

"Sure, you haven't. I knew you were a troublemaker," Tonks said, winking at Harry playfully.

Harry blinked at her, realizing that she believed that he was joking. "I haven't..."

Molly frowned. "You shouldn't fight with other students, Harry. No matter whether they are older or not," she said disapprovingly.

"I don't..." Harry tried again.

"But it's better if they aren't older," Charlie chipped in. "At least until you know a bit more of magic, especially defensive magic."

Harry scowled and gave up on trying to defend himself. He glared at Hermione. "See what you've caused?" He hissed.

She covered her mouth with a hand to smother a giggle. "Sorry. How was I supposed to know that they would reach that conclusion?" She asked, not sounding very sorry at all.

Harry rolled his eyes, incapable of staying angry with her. "They certainly weren't gonna think of the troll you were talking about," he huffed.

"And Fluffy," Ron added. "And the Devil's Snare. And Aragog. And the basilisk. And the dementors. Although, those weren't that big. But they made up for it with creepiness."

"Ron," Harry hissed, elbowing him to shut him up.

"Just saying," he shrugged. "They'll figure out what Hermione was talking about sooner or later."

Dudley won, so Harry, ... listen at the crack between door and floor.

"Told you you were gonna lose," Ron snickered.

"I knew I couldn't win against him," Harry scoffed.

"Why pick a fight with him then?" Parvati asked baffled.

"I wanted to know what the letter said. I wasn't gonna do nothing and let Dudley figure it out before me," he defended himself.

"And why not listen at the crack between the door and the floor from the beginning?" Hermione asked exasperated.

"It was my letter," Harry scoffed, his voice filled with pure stubbornness. "I wasn't not going to fight for the best spot to hear about it, even if I knew I wasn't gonna get it."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "You're impossible," she sighed, more amused than exasperated.

"Vernon," Aunt Petunia ... might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.

"I think we have better things to do," Bill said with a grimace.

"Although, with all the wizards I met before I even knew that they were wizards, it isn't that farfetched to think that they were watching," Harry shrugged.

Snape inwardly scoffed. He knew that the arrogance he had seen from the first day had to be somewhere and it was only a matter of time before it appeared. He didn't get his hopes up about anyone noticing it, though. They were all blind when it came to Potter.

"If the wizarding world had been watching, someone would've turned them into cockroaches long before that," Tonks said upset. She wished that someone had been watching.

"Turn them into cockroaches?" Sirius hissed. "They deserve worse than that."

"Maybe," Remus said, even if he agreed with his friend. "But that's not for you to decide, Sirius."

"Isn't it?" The animagus mumbled under his breath. He didn't care what Remus believed. One way or another, he was going to make those people pay.

"But what should we ... we don't want —"

"They don't want what?" Lavender asked.

"Isn't it obvious?" Hermione replied, inwardly seething at the nerve of those people. "They didn't want Harry to come to Hogwarts and learn magic."

"They wanted to stop Harry Potter from coming to Hogwarts?" Neville asked incredulous. That was unthinkable. It was just impossible.

"Can you imagine the chaos if Harry hadn't come?" Seamus asked, shaking his head.

"People would've rioted all over the country if they had known what your relatives were planning to do," Bill said, staring at Harry.

Harry forced a smile on his face, not sure how to take those words. Would people have rioted too if he had been a normal kid being abused or was it just because he was Harry Potter, their saviour? Would they have insisted as much as they had, sending dozens of letters day after day, if he wasn't the boy-who-lived? Would they have ignored his guardians when they said that he wasn't allowed to go to Hogwarts if he wasn't Harry Potter or would they have left him with them?

It wasn't something he wanted to think about for too long. It made him paranoid and he didn't want to end up like Mad-Eye, not trusting anyone.

Harry could see Uncle ... Yes, that's best... we won't do anything..."

"They wouldn't give up anyway," Charlie scoffed.

"The wizarding world wouldn't let Harry go that easily," Percy shook his head knowingly. "Not when people had been waiting to meet him for ten years."

Harry squirmed uncomfortable. Those words were not reassuring him, nor were they helping him forget about his earlier thoughts. If anything, they were only making him even more sure of what he already suspected. People wouldn't have cared if he came to Hogwarts or not if he hadn't been Harry Potter. They wouldn't have cared that a child was still stuck in an abusive household while they kept going with their lives.

He shook his head, trying to banish those thoughts to the back of his mind again. They were doing him no good and he hated them.

"Harry?" Hermione asked quietly, putting a hand on his arm. She was staring at him in concern.

Harry stared at her, not saying a word.

"Mate?" Ron said, making the black-haired boy turn around to look at him. The redhead looked concerned too. "You okay?" He asked tentatively.

Harry shook his head and plastered a smile on his face. "I'm fine," he said. He didn't recognize his own voice. It wasn't going to be enough to convince his best friends.

"Sure..." Ron said slowly. What was bothering Harry so much and so suddenly? They couldn't press the issue there, though. They knew that Harry wasn't going to talk about it in front of the Great Hall.

The younger boy avoided their gazes and looked at the book instead. He didn't want to keep thinking about these things. He wanted to forget all about it.

"But ... swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?"

"Nonsense? What nonsense?" Alicia asked, her brow creasing in confusion and concern. She had a bad feeling about this.

"It sounds... It sounds like they're talking about magic," Angelina said hesitantly. She stared at the smallest member of the quidditch team. "Harry's magic."

"They didn't want any of that in their house," Harry said, shrugging like it didn't matter. However, he was so tense that it looked more like a jerk than a shrug.

"How are you supposed to stamp out someone's magic?" Colin asked baffled.

"You can't," Remus answered darkly. "But people can try out of fear."

"But that... Trying to get rid of someone's magic..." Hermione stammered.

When she had first found out that she was a witch, she had tried to learn everything she could about her magic. Not only spells and potions, but information about her magic, about where it came from, why she had it and her parents didn't, how it worked... It had all been very theoretical and advanced, but there had been one thing that had stuck with her.

There had been a few examples of children who had grown fearful of their own magic, either because of some outburst of accidental magic or because people around them had feared it. The children, either unconsciously or on purpose, tried to get rid of their own magic. The consequences were never pretty, neither for the child nor for the people around them.

Hermione grabbed Harry's hand in a vice grip, terrified for her best friend and brother. She wracked her mind, trying to figure out if Harry was suffering any of those consequences. She didn't want to imagine the possibility, but he had been so young and it had been so many years of abuse...

"Hermione?" Harry muttered when he felt her trembling. His alarm only grew when he saw the fear in her eyes. "What's wrong?"

"Do you fear your magic?" She replied, keeping her voice down.

Harry blinked in confusion. "No," he replied honestly.

The girl waited a minute, staring at him in the eye. Finally, she let out all the air in her lungs when she could see nothing but sincerity and concern. "Good," she sighed, laying her head on his shoulder.

Harry exchanged a baffled look with Ron, who seemed a bit alarmed too. He turned back to the girl still clutching his hand like she had no intention of releasing it any time soon. "Hermione, you okay?" He asked hesitantly.

"Yeah," she said, raising her head. Her smile faded when she saw how unconvinced the two boys were. "It's just that it would've been so easy for you to end up fearing your magic and trying to get rid of it."

"Why would I want to do that?" Harry asked perplexed. His magic had saved his life more times than he could count.

Hermione shrugged. "If you had believed that your relatives would treat you better if you didn't have it, you may have subconsciously tried to do it."

Harry paused. "You think they would have?" He asked quietly.

"No," Ron growled. He wasn't going to allow his best friend to make excuses for them. "They're just sick people."

"And if you had begun to fear your magic..." Hermione continued. She shuddered, tightening her grip on Harry's hand. "Children can die for things like that. At the very least, they end up messed up for life."

"They do?" Ron gulped. He had never considered it. Magic was something as wonderful as it was normal for him. He couldn't imagine life without it. However, that didn't matter in the face of the possibility of his best friend dying because of his relatives. It was the second time that he heard they had put his life in jeopardy and he hated it.

He hated them. He didn't think he could even hate You-Know-Who that much. As far as he was concerned, even Azkaban would be too good for the Dursleys.

Harry smiled weakly at his best friends. "Well, then it's a good thing that I wasn't clever enough to think about getting rid of what they hated me for, huh?"

"Don't joke about that," Hermione hissed warningly at him. She closed her eyes. "Seriously, don't," she choked out, her voice breaking a little bit.

Harry softened and squeezed her hands. "It's alright, Hermione. I'm fine. I'd never wanna get rid of my magic. It's always protected me and looked after me."

"Good," she repeated.

Unknowingly to all three of them, Dumbledore's thoughts were very similar to Hermione's. He couldn't help but notice the similarities with his sister's story and how her magic had tried to destroy itself because the girl had been terrified of it. It had only ended in disaster.

'However, that wasn't the same that had happened to Harry,' he thought to himself.

Ariana had been attacked by muggles when she had been a small child. And he would agree that Harry's childhood had been difficult and far from happy, but it wasn't the same. Harry had been neglected and insulted, but he hadn't been beaten because of his magic. It was different.

He ignored that, even when he was just saying it to himself, it sounded like cheap excuses.

That evening when he got back from work, ... through the door. "Who's writing to me?"

"You're like a dog on a bone, Harry," Seamus snorted in amusement. "You never know when to let it go."

"I wanted my letter," Harry explained unnecessarily.

"Didn't it worry you that your uncle would punish you?" Katie asked, a bit concerned about him. Or the Harry in the book at least.

Harry shrugged. "If I never did anything that may have earned me a punishment, I wouldn't have been able to do anything. I would've lived in constant fear."

More than he already had, that is. Because he had been terrified of his relatives as a kid. He had been the smallest one of them and always much weaker and always the one being punished and ignored and singled out in a way. That had faded little by little over time until his eleventh birthday, when he had gotten all the explanations he needed for his relatives' irrational behaviour and he had realized that he didn't need to be afraid of them anymore.

It hadn't been as easy as flipping a switch. The fear hadn't disappeared overnight, but the months away from the Dursleys and surrounded by his friends had helped a lot. The fear had gotten smaller and smaller with time until he was barely bothered by it in his everyday life.

He owed Ron and Hermione so much for helping him, much more than they could ever even begin to guess. One day, he would figure out how to thank them for all of it (not repay them, because they would kick his ass if he even thought about doing that), but for the moment he didn't even know how to begin to put it into words.

"No one. It was addressed ... have burned it."

"He burnt it?!" Neville squeaked. He had feared for years that he wouldn't receive that letter and that man had burnt it so carelessly, like it wasn't worth anything.

"He burnt the first letter of Hogwarts a child receives?" Tonks asked scandalized.

"I still have mine somewhere," Charlie murmured.

"I think most of us do," Bill nodded.

"How could he burn it?" Percy asked wide-eyed. "How can he have so little care for something so important?"

Snape pursed his lips. He would never voice his suspicions, but he was pretty sure that it had been Petunia who had burnt it, or it had at least been her idea to do it. After becoming so obsessed to her sister's letter, which would have been exactly the same except for the name on the greeting, Petunia wouldn't have wanted to keep seeing it. The very same thing that she had been desperate to receive and that had been denied to her again and again, and the nephew she considered so worthless suddenly got it. It would have been her personal nightmare.

"It was not a mistake," ... my cupboard on it."

"Your cupboard?" Sirius asked in a strangled voice. Hearing that felt like a punch to the gut.

Harry glared at him. "Yes. My cupboard," he said firmly, tired of this nonsense.

Everyone knew already and if his best friends didn't care and didn't treat him differently. So, he wasn't going to keep being ashamed of it. He was tired of skirting around the subject like it was a dirty secret that he had to keep. It had taken him a long time to understand that it wasn't his fault and his friends had put too much effort into making him understand that it was the Dursleys who should be ashamed of what they had done. He wasn't going to go back to that.

"Harry, don't... don't... A cupboard isn't..." Sirius tried to explain through gritted teeth. He didn't want to hear about it. It hurt to hear how bad things had been for his godson when he had been a kid.

"Isn't what? A bedroom?" Harry snapped, his temper rising quickly. "You're right. It isn't. But it was my bedroom for ten years and nobody can change that now."

Sirius stared at him with pained eyes. "I wish I could. I'd do anything to be able to change it."

"Well, you can't change it and you can't hide it," the teenager snapped.

"Harry," Hermione said softly, putting a hand on his arm. "Nobody's asking you to hide it."

"Calm down, mate," Ron nudged his shoulder gently.

Harry took a shaky breath and gritted his teeth. He was so tired of having his homelife in the open for everyone to discuss and feel pity for and get angry about. He wanted to get past it already, but they weren't letting him do it.

"SILENCE!" yelled ... spiders fell from the ceiling.

Ron shuddered and grimaced. "Blimey, Harry, you weren't kidding about being used to them."

"After so long, they weren't that scary," the black-haired teen shrugged.

"They can be. You know they can be," the redhead insisted.

"The ones in my cupboard were nothing like the ones we followed, Ron," he huffed. "They were tinier and much more normal."

"More normal than what?" Remus asked warily.

"Than some other spiders we found," Harry dismissed. That had all the chances of appearing in the second book, so it wasn't worth it to give everyone a heart attack ahead of time.

"Bet Ronnie loved that you found some spiders," Fred snickered.

"He probably ran as far away from them as possible," George said teasingly.

Ron's ears reddened in anger. Ran away from them? He hadn't run away from anything since he had met Harry, if only because he knew that if his best friend was going to run anywhere, it was going to be directly towards the danger, not away from it. Since he refused to leave him alone, he had been running towards danger for years. And now his brothers had the audacity to mock him for a phobia that they had caused?

He was about to stand up to... to do something. To yell at them. Or to hex them. Or maybe to tell everyone that he wasn't a coward like some people believed him to be.

A hand on his arm stopped him and kept him on the couch. He was about to lash out at whoever it belonged to, but it was Harry, and he had vowed a long time ago that he would never lash out at his best friend. He knew that the day that he did that, if it ever came to be (which he would never allow because he would cut his own hand before he did that), it would be the day that he would lose his best friend forever.

"Don't," Harry murmured, holding his arm tightly. "Don't do it."

"Harry, they..." He protested. Why didn't Harry want to stand up for him and wasn't even going to let him stand up for himself?

"I know. But you know they aren't right. The three of us know that they aren't right, that you aren't a coward," Harry interrupted him, tilting his head towards Hermione.

The girl was glaring at the twins so ferociously that it was a wonder they hadn't turned into pieces of charcoal already. That, and the cold fury in Harry's eyes, did a lot to calm down the redhead. It was true, after all. They knew the truth.

"And everyone will know the truth when we get to that," Harry continued. "Hell, they'll find out before we finish the first book that you couldn't be the furthest thing from a coward if you tried. You're one of the bravest people I know, Ron."

All the fight left Ron with those words. It was the first time that someone considered him brave and it was... different. It was good. If Harry, who was willing to face his worst fear again and again to learn to fight against it, thought that he was brave, that had to count for something.

"Thanks, mate," he murmured.

Harry released his hold and patted his arm with a smile. "You have my back and I got yours, right?"

"And Hermione's," Ron added.

"That goes without saying, but I think we both know that Hermione can watch her own back much better than we ever could," Harry joked.

Hermione blushed and shoved him lightly, but she had a pleased smile on her face. It felt good to know that her boys had her back while knowing that she could look after herself. She wasn't a damsel in distress.

"Besides, can you imagine their faces when they realize how wrong they are?" Harry snickered.

Finally, Ron chuckled as he imagined it. He would be the one to laugh then.

He took a few deep breaths ... be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom."

"Second bedroom?" Sirius growled dangerously. It was bad enough that they had put Harry in a cupboard, but to do so when they had enough bedrooms to give him one for himself? It was like they were asking to be hexed within an inch of their life.

"They should've turn that into Harry's bedroom from the very beginning," Molly frowned upset.

"Dudley said that he needed it," Harry shrugged.

"And what he says goes in that house," Fred nodded seriously.

"It's like, the first rule anyone has to follow if they don't want to be hit with that stick of his," George agreed.

"It's not funny, boys," Arthur scolded them softly. Child abuse wasn't something to laugh at or joke about.

"We aren't laughing," they replied at the same time.

"I would if I wasn't gonna be the only one laughing," Harry chipped in with a shrug. He preferred to deal with all of it that way. Didn't people say that if you could laugh about it, you could get past it? Then, he definitely wanted to laugh about it. He didn't want to get dragged down by it for the rest of his life.

"I wish I could say that I'd laugh with you, mate, but..." Ron grimaced.

"Too soon?" Harry asked.

"Just a little bit," Hermione agreed.

Harry sighed and racked a hand through his hair. "It's not like it matters anymore now. It hasn't been my bedroom for years. I spend most of the year at Hogwarts and then part of the holidays in Ron's room."

"Might as well be your room too," George shrugged. "You clean it too when you're there."

"And your things are all over the place. We gave up a long time ago in trying to figure out which were your things and which were Ron's," Fred added.

Ron and Harry whipped around to glare at them suspiciously.

"When did you try to do that?" Harry asked.

"And when did you go into our room?" Ron asked.

"Don't worry. We didn't mess with anything," George said dismissively.

"Not much anyway. And we put everything back the way it was," Fred added.

"What everything?" Ron asked, getting annoyed.

"Everything," they replied at the same time.

The younger redhead glared at them for a minute before turning towards Hermione. "Do you know spells to lock someone out of a room?"

The girl raised an amused eyebrow. "I do, but may I remind you that you can't cast them on your room because you can't do magic outside of Hogwarts?"

Ron gritted his teeth. That restriction was so annoying.

"We could cast spells to keep anyone but us from opening our trunks, though," Harry pointed out. "And we can do that in Hogwarts."

Ron grinned. "Brilliant, Harry," he agreed. He looked at Hermione pleadingly. "Please?"

She rolled her eyes in amusement. "I think I can look up a thing or two."

"Brilliant!" Ron repeated. "Thanks, Hermione!"

"Why?" said Harry.

"Why are you questioning it? Just be glad about it!" Dean exclaimed.

"I would've been jumping up and down in joy about getting my own bedroom," Seamus agreed.

"No way," Lavender scoffed. "They should've done that a lot time before that. I would've given them a hard time about it."

"But not too much of a hard time. Just enough scorn to make them think that it was your plan all along," Parvati agreed. "It'd make them all nervous and skittish around you."

Everyone stared at the two girls, a bit perturbed.

"What?" Parvati said defensively. "Just because I'm not in Ravenclaw like my twin, it doesn't mean I don't have a brain and I don't know how to use it."

"Blimey. Girls are scary," Ron murmured.

"I still wouldn't argue too much with the Dursleys. They may change their minds about giving Harry the bedroom," Ginny pointed out.

"I wasn't going to accept something from them without questioning everything about it. It'd be like not being suspicious if Malfoy gave me a gift," Harry argued.

The blond teenager snorted. "Not happening. Ever. Not unless it was cursed."

Harry rolled his eyes. "My point exactly."

"The Dursleys can't curse anything, though. They don't have magic," Katie reminded him, like he could ever forget.

"That doesn't mean they aren't capable or willing to make up petty reasons to punish me. It's just self-preservation," Harry insisted.

Ron snorted. "I didn't believe that you knew what that was."

Harry elbowed him in the ribs. "I know about it enough that it's a bad thing to accept anything from someone who openly hates you."

"CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" Moody roared, startling everyone in the Great Hall. It was the first time he spoke since he had joined everyone. "Potter was right to question his relatives! You should never accept anything from a declared enemy!"

"Merlin's pants, Mad-Eye! You wanna give us a heart attack?" Tonks protested. She had almost fallen off the couch. She elbowed Charlie sharply for snickering at her clumsiness.

"You should always be on alert! I'm always warning you about it and none of you listen!" He shouted. "All of you recruits think that this is a joke when we could get killed tomorrow!"

"We're not gonna get killed tomorrow," the metamorphmagus rolled her eyes. "We're in Hogwarts. The safest place in the world, except maybe Gringotts. Isn't that right, Hagrid?"

"Tha' is righ'," the man nodded proudly.

"Nobody's died here in more than fifty years," Tonks nodded satisfied. "So, I doubt anyone's gonna die here any time soon."

"Plus, we're in a time bubble. Nobody can enter or get out. We literally couldn't be safer," Charlie agreed with her.

"Don't ask ... Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom.

"They had two extra bedrooms?" Molly said with tears in her eyes. She hated it. She hated them. She hated them so much that she felt like she was going to choke on it.

"I'm gonna kill them, Remus," Sirius growled darkly.

"No, you're not," the werewolf sighed.

"No. You're right. I'm gonna make them suffer so much they're gonna wish I'd just killed them," the animagus growled, clenching his fists.

Remus sighed and shook his head. He really needed to have a talk with his friend about his murderous tendencies. They are what had gotten him chucked into Azkaban in the first place.

"He has so many things that he needs a second bedroom to put them all in?" Angelina asked perplexed. It was safer to focus on that than on the injustice of it all.

"With how many presents he got for his birthday, it doesn't surprise me," Alicia snorted.

"But Harry said that he broke them," Angelina remembered. He turned towards her youngest teammate questioningly.

"That he broke them doesn't mean that he threw them away. Most things ended up piled in there," he explained with a shrug.

"That's a waste of space," Cho muttered under her breath.

"It wasn't like they were going to use it for anything else, was it?" Padma, who wasn't sitting too far from her, pointed out.

"If I had a second bedroom, I'd turn it into a bachelor room," Seamus said firmly.

"What are you talking about?" Dean asked perplexed. "What in Merlin's name is a bachelor room?"

"You know, like a bachelor apartment, but a bachelor room since I'm not old enough to live on my own."

"You're an idiot," Dean huffed a laugh.

"And you're jealous. Just for that, I'm not inviting you to my bachelor room," Seamus scoffed.

"You don't have a bachelor room," his best friend pointed out amused.

"But if I did, I wouldn't invite you to it," he insisted.

It only took Harry one trip ... everything he owned from the cupboard to this room.

"You can still do that," Ron huffed before anyone could comment on how sad it was that Harry had so few things of his own that he only needed a trip to move them. "You literally carry absolutely everything you own in your trunk."

Harry grinned amused. "Better than to leave anything with my relatives."

"I'm not saying that it's a bad idea," the redhead said. "But you could leave a few things in our room in the Burrow, you know. I know for a fact that you still have your books from first year in your trunk."

Harry shrugged. "I don't have anywhere else to leave them."

"You do. I just told you to leave them in our room," Ron said exasperated.

"Ron, if we put all of our things in our room, we'll be the ones who have to get out," Harry pointed out.

The redhead frowned. "We could always put them in the attic. The ghoul won't mind. And we should put my things there too, while we're at it. We'd have more space to walk around when both beds are out."

"Does that mean that Harry's trunk will stop weighing as much as all of ours put together?" Fred asked in mock relief.

"Our backs will feel so much better without having to haul that monstrosity everywhere. Mine hasn't recovered from when we helped put it in the luggage rack," George moaned.

"Your father put a Feather-light Charm on it," Hermione scoffed. "I could've raised it with one hand."

"It's the principle of the thing, our dearest Hermione," Fred argued.

"Just thinking about how much it would have weighed without the charm makes our backs ache," George agreed.

He sat down on the bed and stared ... looked as though they'd never been touched.

"It's like a storage room," Percy said, blinking in surprise.

"There are so many things in that room. And they're all broken or have never been used," Tonks shook her head. "I don't understand why he'd want to keep them if they're broken."

"Because he's stupid. He could've used the space to make himself a bachelor room," Seamus huffed.

Dean rolled his eyes and shoved his best friend hard enough that he almost fell off the couch. "Shut up, you idiot. No one wants a bachelor room but you."

"Dudley would probably want one," Harry chipped in with a grin.

Seamus scrunched up his nose. "What are you trying to do? Making me give up on my dream of a bachelor room just because that pig of a cousin that you have also wants one?"

"Is it working?" Harry teased him.

"... Maybe."

They roared with laughter when they heard that. It was such a Seamus thing to say.

"Mine would be a million times better than his, though," the boy argued, but that only made them chuckle even more.

Harry shook his head with a grin. "I doubt Dudley would ever think of having a bachelor room. He just wanted a place to put all his broken things and prove that he had them, like the first television they bought him."

"How many televisions has he had?" Hermione asked with a grimace of distaste.

"I'm not sure... Four? Five?" Harry tried to take a guess. "It depends on how many temper tantrums he's had since he went to Smeltings."

"But doesn't he like those tevelisions things?" Ron asked confused.

"He does. But he's stupid," Harry shrugged. "You've already heard that he broke the first one with a kick because his favourite programme was cancelled."

"It'd be like Ronnie breaking his broom if the Chudley Cannons were disbanded," Fred joked.

"Or if they lost the league. Which means that Ron wouldn't have been able to keep his broom for more than a year," George teased his little brother.

"Shut up," Ron replied as his ears turned red.

"And he gave up his pet for a stupid toy?" Lavender asked upset. "I would've never given up Binky."

"And he didn't even take care of the toy," Parvati pointed out with a grimace. "He sat on it and broke it."

"He didn't care. He just asked his parents to buy him a new air rifle," Harry shrugged.

"And let me guess. They bought him a new one which was even better than the first one," Arthur sighed sadly. How could they not care about how much damage they were inflicting upon their son?

"And the books?" Hermione intervened. "I mean, I had already guessed that he wouldn't care much for them, but if it's gonna become your room, you could read them."

"Don't get your hopes up, Hermione," Harry stopped her. "They were books of stories for little kids for the most part. Nothing too interesting."

"You read them?" Ron asked aghast.

"No, I didn't read them."

"You didn't read them?" Hermione asked, equally aghast.

"Would you just listen for a minute?" Harry interrupted them exasperated. "I read some of them," he admitted, hurrying to explain when both of his best friends seemed outraged for very different reasons. "Only some, because I didn't have time to read more before I got my books about magic and those were much more interesting than the books for kids," he said, looking at Hermione.

"Okay, that's a good excuse. I suppose," she accepted, but she didn't seem completely satisfied. Harry could have missed a real gem between all that crap.

"And yes, I read some books and I still do during the summer holidays," Harry said, looking at Ron. He smirked at the betrayed expression on the redhead. "You've met my relatives, Ron. I prefer to spend the day reading books in my room or walking outside than to try to socialize with them more than strictly necessary."

Ron stopped in his tracks and grimaced. "Point taken, mate."

From downstairs came the sound of Dudley ... that room... make him get out..."

"He's just annoyed because now he won't be able to have his bachelor room," Seamus nodded his head with mock sympathy. "I'd be upset too if I couldn't have mine."

"You don't have one!" Dean exclaimed, raising his arms in amused exasperation.

"I know. It's a tragedy that I'll remedy in the future."

Dean huffed a laugh. "You better go about remedying it in a different way than Dudley, though. Your mum will tan your hide if you dare to scream at her like that."

"I'll be subtle and cunning about it," Seamus nodded with determination.

"Dude, you wouldn't know cunning if it hit you in the face," Dean snorted. "You're not a Slytherin."

"I could learn," he argued.

"And who are you going to ask to teach you?" Dean challenged with a raised eyebrow.

Seamus stared at the Slytherins pensively, but none of the faces seemed even a little willing with his endeavour of learning how to be cunning to get his own bachelor room. In fact, some of them, like Pansy or Malfoy, seemed ready to hex his mouth if he dared to ask.

"I'll find someone," he said finally.

Dean snorted again. "Yeah, you do that."

Harry sighed and stretched ... rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it.

Charlie snorted. "Now, that's an exaggeration if I ever heard one. Don't do that, Harry. We don't need another Percy in the family," he joked.

"One is more than enough," Bill agreed.

"I just wanted my letter," Harry shrugged. "It was the first one I received and I didn't even know who had sent it. Besides, anything that could rattle my relatives that much had to be brilliant."

"Now, that's more like it," George nodded approvingly.

"We always knew that you loved to make a little mayhem and chaos wherever you go, Harrikins," Fred said, wiping a fake tear off his eye.

"You'd probably get another letter anyway," Neville murmured.

"Of course, he would. The chapter was called The letters from no one," Luna pointed out before going back to humming distractedly.

"Oh," Neville blinked in understanding. He turned to look at his roommate. "You really got a second letter."

"Yep," Harry nodded with a big grin. A second one, and a third one, and a fourth one, and too many too count after that. Not that the others knew it, though, and he wasn't going to tell them. That would spoil all the fun.

"I've never heard of anyone who got two first letters of Hogwarts," Tonks mused with an amused grin. "Your relatives are gonna hate it, Harry."

"They did," he agreed.

"Did they hurt you because of it?" Sirius interrupted, looking grave and furious.

"They had other things to worry about at the moment," Harry dismissed.

"Like what?"

"You'll see."

Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley ... still didn't have his room back.

"Oh, my. Poor little thing," Fred cooed in mock sympathy. "Can you imagine, Feorge, the shock of being denied something?"

"And he put so much effort into getting it, Gred. He was even sick on purpose," George agreed.

"I think it's about time that they tried to teach their son some manners and show him that he can't get everything in this life," Arthur said, looking sad and approving at the same time. "Although, it's a bit disappointing that they allowed it to get to this point."

"He paid his frustration on his pet again," Lavender said disgusted. "It wasn't that poor tortoise's fault."

"It worries you more that he threw his tortoise than the fact that he kicked his mother and whacked his father with his stick?" Hannah Abbot asked incredulous. And, okay, maybe Vernon and Petunia Dursley had had it coming for spoiling him rotten, but she hadn't thought that Dudley could get away with even that without consequences.

Alicia shuddered. "I'd be grounded until I was eighty if I did that."

"Grounded?" Fred snorted.

"We'd be six feet under," George agreed.

"I'd move to the other side of the world to hide from mum's fury," Charlie said.

"You and me both, brother," Bill agreed.

Tonks snorted and looked at them. "You both moved to the other side of the world as soon as you graduated from Hogwarts, remember?"

"That's got nothing to do with it," Charlie denied vehemently. "I was just following my passion."

"Me too. My passion. Besides, breaking curses in Egypt for the goblins is much, much safer than even thinking about kicking mum or hitting dad," Bill said.

"Not to mention dragons. Their temper has nothing to do compared to mum's," Charlie nodded.

"How do you think we should take that, dear?" Mrs. Weasley whispered to her husband.

The man smiled and kissed her forehead. "You should take as the fact that we did good with those boys and they've grown up to be capable and independent young men who know not to mess with you," he said, wrapping an arm around her to pull her closer.

She smiled and leant against him. "We did good, huh?" She repeated, looking at all of her children.

"Very," he nodded, leaning his cheek on top of his head.

Harry was thinking ... wishing he'd opened the letter in the hall.

"Told you," Hermione sighed.

"Should've thought of that sooner, mate," Ron shrugged sympathetically.

"I told you that I didn't think about it!" Harry exclaimed, rolling his eyes. "I was just happy that I got a letter in the first place."

"To be fair, it was unthinkable that they'd take your first letter of Hogwarts from you," Tonks conceded. It was, like, sacred or something.

"They have no concept of boundaries," Angelina scoffed.

Uncle Vernon and Aunt ... made Dudley go and get it.

"Wow, now that's a change. No wonder he was in shock," George blinked. "I'm in shock and I'm not the one they made go get the mail."

"After denying him something for the first time in his life. It's a miracle that it wasn't too much for him," Fred nodded with mock seriousness.

"At least they're trying to be nice to Harry now, even if it's just because they're afraid of wizards," Molly said, trying to stay positive.

"A bit late for that, isn't it?" Sirius growled darkly. "About ten years too late."

"I think it's a pity that they didn't send Harry to get the mail this time," Bill intervened before anyone could comment about the animagus' words. "He could've found the second first letter and hide it until he could read it later."

"Maybe it didn't come then. Maybe it arrived later with an owl," Padma mused.

They heard him banging ... another one! 'Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive —'"

"Or maybe it did," Padma frowned. She looked at Harry. "How did you get it? You'd have to fight your cousin for it and we've already seen that you can't win a fistfight against him."

Harry smiled. "I got it in the end. Don't worry."

"What does that mean?" Dean asked confused.

"It means that this second first letter of Hogwarts wasn't the last one that Harry got," Hermione realized.

"You received more?" Neville asked wide-eyed.

"I didn't get that one," Harry confirmed. "Even if I could've taken it from Dudley, there's no way my uncle would've allowed me to read it."

"Just how many first letters of Hogwarts did you receive, mate?" Ron asked surprised.

"A lot," Harry snorted. "You'll see."

"Either way, your cousin's an idiot, Harry," Dean snorted. "He should've hidden the letter to be able to read it by himself later."

"Dudley Dursley would've never ended up in Slytherin. He's neither subtle nor cunning," Seamus nodded in agreement.

"Of course, he would've never ended up in Slytherin. He's a muggle," Malfoy spat.

"But if he were a wizard, he wouldn't be a Slytherin," Seamus argued hotly.

"He wouldn't be a Ravenclaw either. He doesn't like learning or studying and he prefers to hit things instead of thinking them through," Padma added.

"He wouldn't be a Hufflepuff either," Hannah snorted. "He wouldn't last a day in our house. He doesn't work hard and he has zero patience."

"He'd be right next to the kitchens, though. I bet he'd love that," Pansy sneered with a cruel smirk.

"At least we're not in the dungeons like you," Susan replied with narrowed eyes.

"What we know for sure is that Dudley Dursley wouldn't be in our house," Ernie Macmillan intervened before the girls could come to blows.

"Wait, are you saying that he'd be a Gryffindor?" Dean spluttered. "Are you mad?"

"He'd never be a Gryffindor!" Colin intervened red-faced. He didn't want to be in the same house as Harry's cousin.

"Well, if we can all agree that he wouldn't be a Slytherin," Blaise Zabini reasoned with a smirk.

"Nor would he be a Ravenclaw," Terry Boot added.

"And he wouldn't be a Hufflepuff," Justin Finch-Fletchley grinned.

"He can only be a Gryffindor," Cedric Diggory finished amused.

"You're not saddling us with that idiot!" Seamus protested angry. "He isn't brave nor chivalrous."

"You aren't exactly the epitome of chivalry, Finnigan," Padma observed.

"But Dudley Dursley is, in fact, stubborn and short-tempered," Michael Corner pointed out.

"That's not fair! You're short-tempered too! You were in a bad mood for weeks after Gryffindor defeated Ravenclaw in quidditch last year!" Dean accused him.

"That... That's not true!" Michael spluttered.

"It's a little bit true," Anthony Goldstein contradicted him.

His friend glared at him. "Whose side are you on?!"

"Dudley Dursley may not even want to come to Hogwarts," Luna said suddenly, stopping all the discussions in an instant. "There are other schools of magic and he may prefer to be as far away from Harry as possible."

"I wouldn't mind that," Harry smiled a little. "In fact, if he were a wizard, I'd very much prefer him to be in another school."

"Not in Beauxbatons," the veela-look-alike scoffed in disdain.

"Nor in Durmstrang. He'd be hexed the first day," Viktor Krum sneered with his thick accent.

"I zink ze boy would want to stay as close to 'is 'ome as possible, which means zat 'e would go to 'Ogwarts," the blond girl finished triumphantly.

Harry frowned. "That... That I can't deny. He may have been interested in Durmstrang, but, if it's somewhere as cold as it seems, he wouldn't have wanted to go," he said. And since he was the one that knew his cousin the most, the others didn't even argue.

"He still wouldn't be in Gryffindor. I'd go live in the Forbidden Forest before having to share a bedroom with him for seven years," Ron said vehemently.

"Thankfully, if Dudley Dursley were a wizard who attended Hogwarts, the decision of which house he'd end up in wouldn't be ours to make, but the Sorting Hat's," Dumbledore intervened before the discussions could begin anew.

"I'd pay that old hat to put him in literally any other house," Ron murmured under his breath.

"Unfortunately, I think that Dudley would ask the Sorting Hat to be put in Gryffindor," Harry replied in the same tone with a grimace.

"So? He can ask all he wants. It's the Sorting Hat's decision," the redhead snorted.

Harry didn't reply. Ron was in for a surprise when they got to their sorting.

With a strangled cry, Uncle ... Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind.

Tonks snorted. "You tried to wrestle your uncle for the letter?" She asked amused. "There's no way you'd win."

"I had to try," Harry shrugged.

The metamorphmagus snorted again. "You might as well have been wrestling a troll to take his club or his food."

Harry had to make an incredible effort to keep his face blank instead of bursting out laughing like he wanted to do. It didn't help that he could sense Ron and Hermione laugh quietly on either side of him. "Yeah. Ha. Wrestle a troll. My uncle's not a troll."

"I think he's the closest thing to one you could find in the muggle world," Bill mused. "He's big, ugly and not very smart."

"And he wrestles with his son to solve the conflicts," Charlie added amused. "He shares a lot of treats with trolls, now that I think about it."

"And our little Harrikins wrestled with him too. We're so proud of his craziness," George grinned. "It was about time that he did something like that."

"It had been a pretty tame chapter so far," Fred agreed. "Wrestling the closest thing to a troll that you can find in the muggle world adds just the spiciness it needed."

Ron and Hermione were having trouble keeping his laughter in check. Thankfully, the attention was focused on the discussion and on their best friend.

"Stop laughing," Harry hissed, elbowing them sharply while trying to be discreet about it.

"You have to admit that it's a bit ridiculous, Harry," Hermione giggled behind her hand.

"It's almost like they're doing it on purpose," Ron agreed gleefully. "You should've told us that you practiced ahead of time for Halloween."

"Shut up," Harry hissed, elbowing him again. "You want someone to figure it out? I thought you said you didn't want your mum to find out things like that sooner than she absolutely had to!"

Any mirth on Ron's face vanished in an instant when he thought of that. "Good point," he gulped. He eyed his mother uncertainly. "You think that'll appear in the book?"

"No clue. I hope not, but if my life with the Dursleys is appearing..." Harry grimaced.

"Goddammit," Ron cursed.

After a minute of confused fighting, ... with Harry's letter clutched in his hand.

"Second first letter was a failure too," Alicia sighed. "Pity."

"Not a pity. It gets better now," Harry grinned as he discreetly rubbed his forearm, which was smarting sharply like it had just been hit with Dudley's stick.

"Is it bruised?" Hermione murmured in concern.

Harry immediately stopped. "What is?" He asked innocently.

Hermione narrowed her eyes. "The book just said that everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick. Including you," she snapped. She grabbed his arm to pull his sleeve up and check for herself if there were bruises, but there was nothing.

"I'm fine, Hermione. It's not I was actually hit with it now," Harry said, gently freeing his arm from her grasp. "It just feels like it, but I'm not really hurt."

She gritted her teeth. "You can't hide these things, Harry."

"It was just a stick, Hermione. The most I got was a few bruises. We all know that I've had much worse," Harry reassured her.

"Still. Don't try to hide them from us, Harry. Please," she added when he opened his mouth to argue.

He sighed and deflated. "Alright. But you can't fuss. I'm fine," he bargained.

"Deal," she accepted.

"Go to your cupboard — I mean, ... he'd make sure they didn't fail. He had a plan.

"A plan? What kind of plan?" Colin asked wide-eyed.

"A good one," Harry answered.

"A stupid one," Ron and Hermione said at the same time.

Harry stared at them betrayed. "What kind of friends are you?" He accused them.

"The ones that call you on your bullshit," Ron smirked.

"You have to admit that you're better at thinking on your feet than you're at planning ahead of time, Harry," Hermione reasoned.

"Your plans never work, Harry. Something always wrong and you've never planned for things like that," Ron told him.

"I always have a plan B," Harry huffed.

"Yeah. Ask Hermione. That's your plan B," the redhead snorted.

Harry wanted to deny it, but he really couldn't. His plan B was always to ask Hermione for help and she usually found a solution. "Well, you can't deny that it's a good plan B," he defended himself.

The girl rolled her eyes. "You're both hopeless," she said, but her lips were twitching upwards.

"Without you?" Harry grinned.

"Always," Ron and Harry finished at the same time with a chuckle.

The repaired alarm clock ... the next morning.

"You fixed it yourself?" Remus asked surprised.

Harry shrugged, a little uncomfortable with so many surprised stares fixed on him. "I've always had a knack for fixing small things like that."

"It's no wonder. You had to learn to fix them if you wanted to have them since your relatives wouldn't buy you things that weren't broken," Sirius scoffed.

He was so furious. His godson shouldn't have had to grow up like that. It wasn't fair. He wanted to make the Dursleys for everything they had done, he wanted to make them suffer before killing them slowly and painfully.

It was even worse because he seemed to be the only one genuinely upset about their treatment of Harry anymore. It was like everyone had gotten used to it and they weren't faced by it anymore. Why weren't they angry too on Harry's behalf? Why weren't they planning revenge on the Dursleys? Didn't they care about Harry?

"Oh, Harrikins, you're gonna become dad's best friend now that he's found that you can fix muggle things," Fred said loudly, distracting everyone from Sirius' comment.

"You're gonna have to find a new best friend, Ronnikins," George said in mock sympathy. "Dad isn't gonna let him go now that he knows Harry can fix all the trinkets he has in the broom shed."

"It's true that I'd appreciate some help fixing a few things to learn how they work..." Arthur said, staring at Harry hopefully.

"I'm not that good, Mr. Weasley," Harry said hesitantly. He didn't mind helping the man with his little projects, but he didn't want to disappoint him.

"No problem, Harry," he assured him. "I don't mind if it doesn't work, but maybe you could show me how you fixed the alarm clock?"

Harry smiled. "That I can do," he agreed.

"Fantastic!" The man exclaimed with a huge grin.

"Now you've done it, mate. He's not gonna stop pestering you all summer," Ron snorted.

Harry turned it off ... the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first.

"That's not such a bad plan," Colin said pensively. "In fact, it's great!"

"Just wait for it," Hermione said, crossing her arms over her chest. "He may not have realized that it's Sunday or something like that."

"What does it matter if it's Sunday or not?" Percy frowned.

"The postmen don't work on Sundays, which means that there's no mail delivered that day," she explained.

"Which is why owls are much more efficient than postmen," Seamus nodded.

"But even if it's Sunday and he hasn't realized, he can always wake up early the following day, on Monday, and try again, can't he?" Colin insisted. It wasn't a bad plan. It really wasn't.

"It wasn't Sunday," Harry scoffed. "How stupid do you think I am?"

"Not stupid. Distracted," Hermione corrected him. "You don't always think of little details like that."

"Well, I did this time. And it wasn't Sunday," he defended himself.

"Does that mean that your plan worked and you finally got your letter?" She asked with a raised eyebrow.

Harry opened his mouth and closed it with a snap. "No," he admitted grudgingly. "Something went wrong."

Hermione grinned amused and looked at Colin. "Told you."

His heart hammered ... "AAAAARRRGH!"

"Holy Merlin! What was that?" Tonks exclaimed startled.

"It sounded like a dying whale," Alicia said, scrunching up her nose.

"More like Moaning Myrtle on one of her worst days," Lavender corrected her with a shudder.

"That makes no sense. What would Moaning Myrtle be doing in Privet Drive?" Padma huffed. "It's not like she follows Harry around."

"She wouldn't even know him since she's always in the girls' bathroom of the second floor," Hannah added.

"Right," Harry nodded, doing his best to keep a straight face.

"Well, the guess about the dying whale doesn't really make sense either," Angelina said, looking at Alicia apologetically. "There's no way there could be a whale in Privet Drive either. The ocean is miles away from it."

"It's a banshee!" Dennis Creevey exclaimed.

"Don't be an idiot. A banshee doesn't sound like that," Daphne Greengrass scoffed.

"And how would you know?" The younger boy argued. "Have you ever heard one?"

"Dennis, banshees sound much more horrible than that," Seamus told him with a shudder. "They can leave you deaf, or even kill you, if you hear them."

"Then what was that?" Neville asked timidly.

"Maybe if you dunderheads finally shut your mouths and allowed the reading to continue, we'd find out," Professor Snape intervened, his voice frosty enough that he didn't have to raise it to silence all the discussions.

Harry leapt into ... — something alive!

"Oh, Merlin. How could we not have guessed earlier?" Fred asked delighted.

"There is a whale in Privet Drive," George said gleefully.

"What are you talking about?" Angelina said confused. "No, there isn't."

"Oh, but there is," Fred insisted.

"And it sounds just like that when it's disturbed," George nodded seriously.

Lights clicked on upstairs ... making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do.

"Brilliant!" The twins exclaimed.

"It's not brilliant. Harry didn't get his third first letter either," Angelina said, but she was smiling in amusement.

"It's worth it," George said dismissively.

"He'll get the fourth one," Fred agreed with his twin.

"I have to admit that I didn't think this was what could go wrong," Hermione confessed amused. "I had no idea that your uncle could guess what you were gonna do."

"I did live with them for ten years straight. Whether you want or not, we were bound to get to know each other even a little bit," Harry grimaced.

He shouted at Harry ... see three letters addressed in green ink.

"I stand corrected. He'll get the sixth first letter. Not the fourth one," Fred said.

"Still worth it," George said. "Besides, if there are gonna be more letters arriving each morning, it'll be easier for Harry to get his hands on one."

"But how many more are they gonna send? I mean, someone had to have noticed that something wasn't right when they had to send five first letters in three days," Susan argued uncertainly.

"They had to see that it'd be easier to simply give Harry his letter personally," Lisa Turnip agreed.

"Does that mean that a wizard will have to go visit Harry like they do for muggle-borns?" Neville asked.

"Even if he isn't a muggle-born, he might as well be one since he has no idea that magic exists or that he's a wizard," Luna said softly.

"That's right. He'd have no idea where to buy his things for school or how to get to Hogwarts," Terry Boot realized wide-eyed.

"Man, that's weird," Ernie Macmillan frowned. He, like all pure-bloods and most half-bloods, had grown up knowing the name of Harry Potter, who, apparently, had no idea that they knew about him. He was going to give himself a headache if he kept thinking about how messed up that was.

"Who told you, Harry?" Anthony Goldstein asked eagerly.

"You'll see," Harry grinned. "You'll never guess who it was," he said, sending a fleet glance at one blushing half-giant.

"I want —" he ... tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes.

"He's rubbing it in your face!" Sirius exploded enraged.

"He seems to take pleasure in the pettiest things," Fred commented quickly.

"To be fair, his back must be hating him a little bit for having slept on the floor just to get those letters. I'd pay my frustration on them too," George said casually.

"Except if they were first letters of Hogwarts," Fred added.

"Except if that were the case," George agreed.

"I'm surprised by the fact that you tried to argue about getting the letters," Katie said amused as she stared at her teammate. "Even I can see that it was a lost cause."

"Haven't you learnt by now that Harry's all about fighting for lost causes?" Angelina said, staring at Harry teasingly.

"I can still hear Oliver. 'Get the snitch or die trying, Harry!'," Alicia said, imitating her old captain as best as she could.

"What?!" Sirius startled. When had that happened? Who had told his godson to do that?

"And what did Harry do? He said that he wanted to face the rogue bludger on his own," Alicia continued like the animagus hadn't talked.

"What?! A rogue bludger?!" Sirius exclaimed wide-eyed. What the hell had happened?

"I didn't do that bad then," Harry defended himself with a grin. He was so grateful for what they were doing, ignoring all the overprotective comments that Sirius made to avoid riling up the man even more.

"Mate, it broke your arm," Ron pointed out.

"What?! A broken arm?!" Sirius shouted.

"Better my arm than my head," Harry told his best friend. He grimaced. "That would've caused an even bigger mess."

There were several more grimaces when people remembered what had happened to Harry's arm when the match had ended. It hadn't been pretty.

"Point taken," Ron agreed.

"What the hell happened?!" Sirius blew up.

"Sirius Black! Watch your language in front of the children!" Molly Weasley scolded him.

"I want to know what happened to Harry!" He said furious.

"You'll find out in the second book," Harry cut in, staring at him firmly.

"Harry..." He growled.

"I'm not gonna tell you, so the more you argue, the longer it'll take you to find out," his godson insisted, not budging even a little bit.

Remus put a hand on his friend before he could retort. "Leave it, Sirius," he murmured.

He whirled around to stare at him. "Leave it? I can't leave it!"

"You'll find out eventually," the werewolf reasoned. "But you know that Harry isn't gonna tell you anything. He's as stubborn as James and Lily put together."

Sirius narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Do you know what they're talking about?" He accused.

"No, I don't," Remus sighed. "But it doesn't sound like Harry was seriously hurt."

"He got a broken arm!"

"Which you know that Madame Pomfrey can heal in minutes," Remus told him calmly.

Sirius gritted his teeth. He hated it. He hated that his godson was keeping things from him. Why did he have to keep secrets from him?

Uncle Vernon didn't go to work ... nailed up the mail slot.

"He... He nailed up the mail slot?" Dean said confused.

"Wouldn't that prevent them from getting all of their mail?" Seamus asked, tilting his head.

"Actually, it wouldn't do anything," Hermione huffed, crossing her arms. "He's being an idiot."

"The postman would just slide them under the door if he can't put them in the mail slot," Justin agreed. "It's what they do to deliver letters to my house since we don't have a mail slot."

"What if he nailed up the bottom of the door to block that space too?" Ernie asked curiously.

"They could knock on the door," Hermione said like it should be obvious.

"What if they don't answer the door?" Anthony wondered.

"The postman would figure something out. It's their job to deliver the letters," Hermione said firmly.

"See," he explained ... not sure that'll work, Vernon."

"At least your aunt has some common sense," Percy frowned. "On the other hand, I think your uncle is about to suffer a psychotic breakdown."

"You think?" George asked hopefully.

"That would be fantastic," Fred said enthusiastically.

"He didn't suffer a psychotic breakdown. At least, I don't think so," Harry said hesitantly. "He did lose his mind a little bit, though."

"What do you mean?" Tonks asked.

"I mean that nailing up the mail slot is something tame compared to what he did later," Harry smirked.

"He should've just listened to Petunia," Snape scoffed under his breath. "She's the one who knows more about magic and the wizarding world out of all of them."

"I think I'd pity him a little bit if he hadn't treated Mr. Potter like he did," Professor Sprout said pensively.

"I'm with you there. Instead, I'm cheering on whoever is sending the letters to figure out more ways to drive that muggle crazy," Flitwick said gleefully.

"It wasn't me. I don't remember ever having to send more than one first letter," McGonagall shook her head with a frown. "I have no idea about who could it be."

"Probably whoever had to explain everything about magic to Potter," Flitwick said. "I just know that it wasn't me."

"Nor me," Sprout shook her head.

"It wasn't me either," McGonagall pursed her lips. They were usually the ones who had to visit the muggle-borns to explain things.

They turned to look at their colleague questioningly. Snape raised an eyebrow and sneered at them.

"You think I was the one who told Potter that I was a wizard?" He scoffed disbelievingly. "I've never gone to tell any muggle-born. I certainly wasn't gonna tell Potter."

"I guess we'll have to wait to find out with everyone else," Flitwick sighed, but he didn't seem too disheartened about it. "In the meantime, I'm gonna enjoy the show."

"Oh, these people's ... knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.

"Was it... Was it really a piece of fruitcake?" Neville asked perplexed.

"It was. Unfortunately," Harry grinned in amusement.

"Was it several days old so it was hard as a rock?" Dean asked baffled.

"No. In fact, he squeezed it between his fingers," Harry snickered. "He was furious when he had to clean himself up."

"How in Merlin's name did he think that he was gonna be able to knock a nail with it then?" Terry asked flabbergasted. That man made less and less sense the more they read about him.

"Maybe he got it mixed up with the hammer," Justin hesitantly. "Although, I'm not sure how you can get them mixed up."

"You can't," Charlie snorted. "Percy's suggestion of a psychotic breakdown is looking more and more likely."

On Friday, no less than twelve letters ... forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.

"Told you that the postman would slide the letters under the door," Justin said smugly.

"It was one dedicated postman, that's for sure. I've never heard of letters being delivered through the bathroom window," Dean chuckled.

"I'm not convinced it was the postman who did that," Hermione frowned. "They would've knocked on the door before trying to find a window to push the letters through."

"So, you think that it was whoever was sending the letters?" Lavender asked.

"Probably. I'm not sure," Hermione shrugged. "We'd have to ask that person."

"Do you know who it was?" Hannah asked curiously.

"If they were the same person who told Harry about magic, then yes, I know who it was," Hermione nodded. Of course, she knew. It was about her best friend.

"And you're not gonna tell us?" Susan asked hopefully. "Because I can tell you right now that they have my most sincere congratulations for driving the Dursleys crazy."

"You'll find out soon," Harry said.

"And, Harry, how couldn't you get one of all the letters that came that day?" Angelina demanded. "It says that at least a dozen arrived that morning."

"Uncle Vernon got all the letters that came through the cracks on the door and Aunt Petunia was the first one to use the bathroom downstairs. She was the one who found them," Harry said disgruntled. "If I had known that they would arrive through other means than the door, I would've checked everywhere."

"You'll get the next one," Fred shrugged.

"Whichever first letter that it'll be. I don't even know anymore how many you've received now," George snickered.

Uncle Vernon stayed at home ... burning all the letters,

"He burnt them again?" Tonks choked out.

"How can you burn any first letter of Hogwarts?" Charlie said horrified.

"It's, like, almost sacrilege to do that. It's definitely a huge disrespect," Bill shook his head.

"They weren't even for him. They were for Harry," Katie said upset.

"Unfortunately, just like he can read Harry's mail because he's his legal guardian, technically he can destroy it too without repercussions if he considers that it's something harmful," Hermione said, pursing her lips angrily.

"And since they were about magic, there was nothing more harmful in his eyes," Harry said.

he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up ... the Tulips" as he worked, and jumped at small noises.

"He hummed what?" Ginny asked bewildered.

"'Tiptoe Through the Tulips'," Hermione answered. "It's a song from Tiny Tim that was released at the end of the '60s."

"He was humming a song from more than three decades ago?" Ginny frowned. "Why?"

"He's jumpy and nervous and he has the feeling that he's being watched," Tonks grinned. "It's fantastic."

"He's gonna end up as paranoid as Mad-Eye," Ron murmured. Not that he could blame the ex-auror after he had been stuffed in a trunk for weeks, but Harry's uncle had no excuse.

Harry snorted. "Worse," he told his best friend.

Ron looked at the old ex-auror discreetly. The magic eye was constantly looking around for threats and the man seemed about to hex anyone who even breathed in his direction.

"It can't be worse than that, Harry," he said sceptically.

"Just wait," he grinned.

On Saturday, ... get out of hand.

"Dude, I think they had already gotten out of hand," Terry said uncertainly. "Your uncle had locked all of you up inside the house and hadn't let you out for two days straight. I'd go crazy being holed up at home for two days straight."

"He got worse," Harry told him. "Much worse."

"How can he get worse? What is he gonna do? Bury the house in a pile of dirt so that not even air or light can get in or out?" Padma asked sarcastically. She frowned when Harry didn't seem surprised nor amused. "I was joking, Harry," she told him dryly.

"He didn't bury the house, but what he did wasn't any less crazy," Harry shrugged.

Twenty-four letters ... shredded the letters in her food processor.

"In the eggs? The letters were inside the eggs?" Ron asked baffled. He made a shape with his fingers that was roughly the size of an egg. "How could a letter fit inside an egg?"

"Very carefully. Rolling it up, like it says, and folding it several times until it was tiny," Dean said with a frown. He was having a hard time imagining it too.

"I'm more interested in finding out how the letters got inside the eggs," Hermione frowned. "Maybe with a Switching Spell to change its contents with the letter..."

"Why is the milkman delivering eggs? If the postman delivers the mail, shouldn't the milkman deliver the milk instead of the eggs?" Mr. Weasley asked confused.

"The milkman was the person that delivered milk every morning before fridges became common and people could put the food inside to keep it from going off too soon. That's why there are many less milkmen now than it used to," Hermione explained. "But they didn't just delivered milk. They could also distribute cheese, butter and eggs among other things."

"Why are they called milkmen then, if they don't deliver just milk?" Arthur frowned. "And who pays them?"

"Honey, why don't you wait until the break to ask all those questions?" Mrs. Weasley interrupted. "We'll be here all day otherwise."

Arthur stared at Hermione hopefully. She smiled and nodded. "Of course, Mr. Weasley."

"Who on earth wants to ... asked Harry in amazement.

"Told you they wouldn't let Harry Potter go that easily," Percy huffed. "The wizarding world had been waiting for him to come to Hogwarts for a decade."

Harry's smile fell as the thoughts from earlier bombarded him again. Would they have put that much of an effort into getting in contact with him if he hadn't been Harry Potter or would he have been left with the Dursleys? Would anyone care about what had happened to him then?

Thankfully, he was distracted from his thoughts by Fred and George.

"People had been writing him letters for years," George said.

"Our dear sister wrote him every week until the year that Ron came to Hogwarts and befriended her hero," Fred revealed teasingly.

"I'm gonna kill you," Ginny hissed furiously, her blush so strong that it clashed madly with her hair.

"She didn't wanna write to him after that, though," George shrugged, not very intimidated.

"Do you think she was expecting him to write back to her, Feorge?" Fred wondered innocently.

"I don't know, Gred. Should we ask her dashing hero what he thinks?" George replied before they both turned towards Harry.

The boy was blushing like crazy too while he seemed to be trying to hide himself between the pillows of the couch. He was glaring at the twins. "I think that I'm gonna get to you before Ginny does and kill you myself," he snapped embarrassed.

"I think he doesn't like the fact that he had fanmail before he knew that he was famous, Gred," George told his twin.

"I think so too, yeah. He's looking quite murderous, isn't he, Feorge?" Fred commented.

"I will kill you," Harry threatened as heblushed even more. He did not want fanmail. The mere mention of it tookhim back to the detention with Lockhart, which had been an scarring experience.

On Sunday morning, Uncle ... "no damn letters today —"

"That's what you said," Ron said, looking at Hermione.

"Yeah, the postman won't deliver any letter nor will the milkman, but if whoever was sending the letters is already beginning to use magic to try to get them to Harry, that may not matter," she shook her head.

"It didn't," Harry grinned.

"He can't exactly stop magic with muggle means. They won't work any better than trying to hammer a nail with a fruitcake did," Anthony argued.

"That didn't stop him from trying," Harry shrugged.

Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney ... Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one —

"Ah, Oliver would've been so proud of you for having been already practicing how to catch things that fly," Fred gave a fake sniff.

"Of course, he probably would've had a stroke before that when he found that, at that point, his star seeker didn't even know that there was a wonderful sport called quidditch," George pointed out.

"Did you finally catch a letter?" Angelina asked hopefully.

"I did, and then Uncle Vernon took it from me before I could even try to open it," Harry sighed disappointed. "I only had a couple of seconds to try to catch one before Uncle Vernon reacted."

"See? Oliver wouldn't have been so happy with that," George said.

"He would've made you practice every afternoon until you dropped in exhaustion," Fred nodded.

"It would've been easier to grab a letter from the floor, though," Luna said softly.

"Maybe," Harry agreed with a shrug. "I didn't think about it. I just wanted to get a letter and I went directly for one of those that were coming out of the fireplace."

"Out! ... threw him into the hall.

Harry winced when his shoulder throbbed painfully, but he fought the urge to grab it.

"He hurt you?" Hermione whispered.

Ron and she were staring at Harry with thinly veiled concern and slight anger and the treatment he had received. Harry had tensed up slightly like he had just been hit. It had been a movement small enough that nobody else seemed to have noticed, but they were sharing a couch with Harry. He couldn't hide it from them so easily.

It was a good thing that nobody else had noticed because Sirius was murmuring not-so-nice things under his breath again. The more they read about the Dursleys, the more he resembled the murderer that they had believed him to be the year before. Finding out all of this was doing nothing good for him. Harry was beginning to wonder if he was going to have to learn how to erase memories to stop his godfather from killing his relatives in cold blood.

"It's nothing. I just hit the wall with my shoulder," Harry murmured, remembering their deal.

"You sure you're okay, mate?" Ron asked.

"It was just a bruise. Nothing else," Harry promised.

When Aunt Petunia and Dudley ... letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

"How many letters did they arrive?" Lisa asked wide-eyed as they heard the faint noise of dozens of letters coming through the chimney.

"A lot. I don't even know how many," Harry shook his head.

"Holy Merlin, whoever was sending the letters was really getting desperate," Justin whistled.

"Or fed up with the Dursleys," Cho argued. She herself was getting fed up with them.

"Or maybe they just wanted to annoy them even more," Cedric smirked.

"Perhaps they wanted to see if his face could turn purple enough to explode," Dennis giggled.

"Whoever they were, we wanna meet them," George decided.

"That kind of ingenuity is worthy of getting a firm handshake at the very least," Fred nodded in agreement.

"I think it's kind of ironic that the boy-who-lived was the one who had more problems than any one of us to get his first letter of Hogwarts," Ernie snickered. "By the sound of it, he needed dozens to be able to read a single one."

"That does it," said Uncle ... going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"

"Okay..." Tonks said slowly. "He's beginning to reach Mad-Eye's levels of paranoia, which can be good sometimes, but just makes this man seem crazy."

"He is crazy," Neville said wide-eyed. "He ripped off part of his moustache. I've never known anyone to actually tear their hair out in frustration."

"I'm a bit concerned that he's gonna have a heart attack at this rate," Remus commented casually. "His blood pressure must be off the racks."

"If he has a heart attack, it'll just save him from the suffering I'm gonna inflict upon him when I get my hands on him," Sirius growled quietly.

"Sirius, let it go," Remus ordered sternly under his breath while the discussion continued around them. "It's not the time to be planning revenge against the Dursleys."

The animagus glared at his friend. "They hurt Harry, Remus. It's exactly the time to plan revenge against the Dursleys."

The werewolf sighed and shook his head, but he didn't try to reason with him. He didn't want to get in a screaming match with Sirius in front of the Great Hall. Later, when they were alone, he could corner him and give him a stern talking to.

"The man's like a ticking time bomb about to go off at any minute," Hermione shook her head. "I almost don't want to be in the blast zone when he finally explodes."

"It depends on where the explosion is directed at," Harry grinned.

He looked so dangerous with half his moustache ... VCR, and computer in his sports bag.

"They're finally trying to teach him something," Arthur sighed in relief.

"I'm not sure if that can be called teaching him anything, dear," Molly said hesitantly. "I think the man's so scared that he just wants his son to move quickly."

"They were scared. Terrified is more like it," Harry nodded. "Uncle Vernon was really losing it and Dudley was getting scared of seeing his dad like that. Aunt Petunia just... She just went along with it."

"She knew that, whatever her husband tried, it wouldn't work if they were that determined to give Harry his letter," Tonks nodded.

"Which is why just leaving like that is a stupid move," Padma shook her head. "That man is just scaring his family now."

"He got over it," Harry reassured them. "Once I finally received my letter and he couldn't do anything about it, he was just... resigned, I guess."

They drove. And they drove. ... shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.

"Holy sh... crap, Harry," Ron corrected himself at the last minute. "He really was off his rocket."

"Like Tonks said, he was jumpy and nervous and he thought that he was being watched. He wanted to get away from them," Harry grimaced in sympathy.

He would never like his uncle, but if there was one thing he could never deny about him, it was that he loved Dudley and Aunt Petunia and would do anything to protect them. Including trying to lose some wizards that terrified him. Other people would have fled on their own and would have left Petunia and Dudley behind since he had nothing to do with magic, but Uncle Vernon had stuck with them. Harry could respect him for that, if nothing else.

"Don't tell me you're feeling sorry for them, Harry," Ron groaned.

"I'm not," Harry assured him.

"Good. Because what they did to you wasn't right. Nothing would ever make it right," the redhead said firmly, staring at him in the eye to make sure that he got his point across.

"I know," Harry agreed. He sighed. "But they were just so scared, Ron. They were so, so scared of magic. They still are. Uncle Vernon and Dudley at least. I think Aunt Petunia is more jealous than scared."

"That still doesn't make it right," Hermione intervened.

"Yeah, I know," Harry repeated. "But Uncle Vernon was just trying to protect his family. It's the only thing that he's been trying to do since they found me on their doorstep. I'm not defending his actions, but... fear can mess up people. A lot."

"Harry..." Ron sighed, rolling his eyes. He knew it. He knew that his idiot of a best friend would find a way to absolve them from what they had done.

"Unless you want to have this conversation in front of the Great Hall, we should leave it for later," Hermione whispered to them when she realized that they were beginning to attract the attention of several people.

They didn't ... or drink all day.

Harry's stomach growled loudly enough to be heard by several people around them.

"You're hungry?" Hermione asked startled.

Harry blushed, brushing a hand through his hair embarrassedly. "Hm... Well..."

"I told you that it wasn't that crazy to be hungry already," Ron interrupted, looking at Hermione smugly. "Does that mean that we can eat something?"

"We haven't even read two chapters yet. You can't be hungry," the girl scoffed.

"Harry's stomach has just proved you wrong," Ron replied.

"Ron," Harry intervened before they could begin arguing for real. "I'm not really hungry. But I was hungry that day."

Ron stared at him in confusion for a minute before his eyes widened in understanding. "Oh," he said, deflating. "I guess that makes sense. If you fall asleep when you're asleep in the book, the same would go for hunger."

"Does that mean that you can eat as much as you want now without feeling full, Harry?" Colin asked enthusiastically. "You could eat a thousand sweets!"

"Except that would make him sick when the spell wore off or he wasn't hungry in the books anymore, Colin," Hermione replied snappishly. "That he feels hungry doesn't mean that he really is or that his body needs food right now."

"Oh," Colin said, deflating in disappointment. "I guess it's better if he doesn't eat sweets now then."

By nightfall Dudley was howling. ... never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

"That's what you put Harry through in a daily basis, you little hypocrite," Sirius growled.

"Because Harry cares so much about blowing up green little guys in a muggle machine," George joked, blurting out the first thing that crossed his mind. Well, the second one. The first one was an insult for Sirius so bad that their mum would have washed his mouth with a Scourfigy.

"It's his secret hobby. That's why he gets into so much trouble here at Hogwarts," Fred nodded with mock-seriousness as he continued his twin's nonsense. "Because the muggle machines don't work well with all the magic around them so he can't play that game and he has to make due with whatever trouble comes his way instead."

"Everything else, from tevelision to simple matters like food, is just a secondary concern," George continued, ignoring the fugitive's glare for joking about this.

"The green little guys, they're the real enemy for Harry," Fred said.

"You-Know-Who and his Death Eaters are nothing compared to those green little guys."

"They're the warming up Harry does for when he can finally face the real tough guys during the summer holidays."

Uncle Vernon stopped ... hotel on the outskirts of a big city.

"Which city? Where did he take you?" Katie asked with a frown.

"No clue. He changed directions so many times that I have no idea where we were," Harry shrugged. "Besides, it's not like I had ever gotten out of Privet Drive, not even to London, so..."

"You haven't seen the muggle side of London?" Hermione asked surprised.

"I know some," Harry said defensively.

"King's Cross and the Leaky Cauldron don't count," Hermione huffed, guessing where his thoughts had turned towards.

"I saw the underground?" Harry offered hesitantly.

Hermione shook her head. "That doesn't count either. There are so many things to see. I can't believe... This summer, Harry. I can show both of you the most important places of London."

"Both of us?" Ron squeaked wide-eyed. When had he gotten dragged into what was beginning to look like one of Hermione's wild quests?

"Both of you," Hermione said firmly. "I bet you haven't even seen the Big Ben."

"The what?" The redhead blinked confused. He knew it was the wrong answer when the girl's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Both of you," she repeated sternly.

"What have you gotten us into?" Ron hissed at Harry.

"Me? What about you? She asks you what the Big Ben is and you answer 'The what?'?" Harry replied in the same tone.

"How am I supposed to know what a big ben is?" He said defensively. "What is it? A big person name Ben? Someone important?"

"It's clock, Ron! A huge clock! One of the most famous tourist attractions in London!" Harry huffed, fighting the urge to facepalm.

"A clock?" Ron spluttered. "They name a clock Big Ben? Why in Merlin's name would they do that?"

"No idea, but I suspect that we'll find out in Hermione's tour of London," Harry sighed.

"Oh, you will," the girl intervened, glaring at them. The two boys blanched when they realized that they hadn't been as quiet as they had thought.

Dudley and Harry shared a room... staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering...

"You stayed awake all night?" Alicia asked exasperated.

"Not all night. I slept some," Harry said defensively. "I was just too nervous to sleep right away. I had no idea who was sending me the letters or if they would keep sending them now that we weren't in Privet Drive anymore."

"Oh, innocent, naive little Harrikins," George cooed.

"Who had no idea of the lengths the wizarding world would go not to let you go," Fred snickered.

Harry snorted weakly. He didn't know if the twins' words made him feel better or worse. It was nice to feel like he belonged somewhere, but the idea of belonging to anyone made him want to grit his teeth and hex whoever was stupid enough to consider it.

Ron and Hermione glanced at him oddly, sensing something... off about their best friend. It wasn't the first time during the chapter, but they honestly had no idea about what could be the matter with Harry. He didn't seem hurt, just... off. But they couldn't grill him for answers in front of the Great Hall if they didn't want him to clam up so quickly that they wouldn't be able to get a word in.

They ate stale cornflakes ... Mr. H. Potter? Only I got about an 'undred of these at the front desk."

"A hundred more?" Ernie exclaimed surprised.

"Isn't that a bit overkill? They're gonna be able to accomplish nothing by sending so many letters to the same place," Padma frowned.

"Nothing but scare the Dursleys shitless even more," Charlie grinned.

"Charles Weasley!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed scandalized. "I don't want to hear that language from you ever again! Especially not in front of children!"

"Sorry, mum," he replied sheepishly. He had become used to being away from his mother and not having her controlling his language anymore. Instead, he had spent several years now surrounded by people who worked with dragons and had the mouth of a sailor when the beasts decided to use their claws and fire against them.

"But it's true that sending so many is just gonna scare them even more," Bill said. "The man's probably gonna grab his family and begin to run again like he had a horde of goblins on his heels."

"He can't get worse than he already is," Tonks shrugged. She looked at Harry in time to see him grimace. "He can't... Can he?" She asked hesitantly.

"I wish I could tell you that he can't, but it'd be a big fat lie," Harry said sheepishly.

She held up a ... them," said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.

"And she isn't gonna do anything?" Sirius asked angrily. "She's just gonna stay there and stare after seeing a man hit a kid?"

"He knocked my hand out of the way, Sirius," Harry rolled his eyes. He had barely even felt a tap from the spell this time. "It's not like he took Dudley's stick and whacked me in the head with it."

"The bludgers hit us harder on any match or practice," Angelina agreed.

"Our bruises hurt worse after some of Oliver's worst practices," Alicia chuckled.

"Harry's stronger than that," George nodded.

"He's a scrawny, little thing with glasses, but he's one tough scrawny little thing with glasses," Fred agreed.

It wasn't that they were happy with Harry's uncle. They wanted to cut off the man's hands for touching Harry and they wanted to scare him so badly that he wouldn't dare to keep anything from his nephew ever again. In fact, they wanted to hex him so badly that the only way to control the urge to curse his name to hell and back was to focus on their friend, who needed them so much more and who had never done well with any kind of fussing or smothering.

"It's still wrong! She should do something!" The animagus insisted.

"She probably thought that Harry was the one in the wrong and his uncle was just disciplining him," Hermione sighed. "She had no way to know that Harry was, in fact, 'Mr. H. Potter'. For all that she knew, the letter was addressed to the man in front of her and the child had just been too curious for his own good by trying to read mail that didn't belong to him."

"But that's... that's not fair. And it's not true!" Terry said perplexed.

"She couldn't know that," Hermione shrugged.

"This is another reason that justifies why owls are so much better than postmen. The owls deliver the letter directly to the person it's addressed to. No middle person who can get confused," Anthony grumbled grumpily.

"Harry would've received his first letter of Hogwarts ages ago if they had delivered it with an owl," Susan Bones agreed with a tired sigh.

"It can't have taken much longer for him to get it. Whoever was sending the letters had to be getting tired of this game. I know that I am, as funny as it is to hear about Vernon Dursley getting more and more frustrated with the letters," Padma said.

"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, ... Vernon didn't seem to hear her.

"He's not listening to her. He's completely lost it," Snape snorted softly under his breath.

"It'd be in his best interest to listen to her, though. She's the one that grew up with a witch in her family, isn't she?" Flitwick reasoned. "She's the one that knows how futile their attempts are."

"He's desperate and he feels cornered," Sprout said, a bit concerned. "We all know what animals do when they're desperate and cornered."

"He's not an animal," McGonagall said half-heartedly.

"Humans are animals too," the head of Hufflepuff corrected her gently. "We have our own instincts of flight and fight too. And Vernon Dursley is quickly going to realize that flight isn't an option."

"He's gonna lash out," McGonagall said, pursing her lips. She didn't want to consider what the man could lash out against.

Maybe against the perceived threat against his family. Maybe against whom he considered to be responsible for bringing that threat upon them.

She hoped it was the first case because she wasn't going to be held responsible for her actions if that man dared to raise a hand against one of the children under her care, even if he hadn't been one of them at that point yet.

Exactly what he was looking for, ... a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

"What in Merlin's name is he looking for?" Tonks asked warily. This wasn't so funny anymore. This man was beginning to get dangerous if only because he was unpredictable and there was no one to stop him.

"Somewhere he considered safe. He had stopped feeling safe in Privet Drive and then in the hotel he booked us into. He wanted to stow us somewhere where nobody would be able to find us," Harry explained. He grimaced. "Or nobody would be able to find them. I was just being tagged along by obligation."

"But he can't find a place like that in the muggle world when there are wizards after them," Ernie said frustrated. "Wizards. As in, people with magic. Magic they can use to find them. They have nowhere to hide."

"He wanted to try. He felt that they were in danger," Harry shrugged.

"He's the one that's gonna end up putting all of you in danger by being a pig-headed idiot," Parvati scoffed.

"And what was wrong with all the places that have been mentioned? The plowed field, the suspension bridge, the parking garage..." Lavender asked confused and wary.

Harry scrunched up his nose. "They weren't isolated enough. If they had found us in a hotel in the outskirts of a random city, he wanted to find somewhere even more random."

"My sister is right. He's gonna be the one who'll end up putting all of you in danger," Padma frowned.

"Daddy's gone mad, ... asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon.

"I think he went mad the day that three letters arrived at the same time. That was when he tried to hammer a nail with a fruitcake," Ron grimaced.

"Dudley was scared, Ron," his father said sadly. "He was eleven years old and his father was acting so totally irrationally and out of character that he was getting scared. Not to mention that he knew as much in the dark about what was happening as Harry."

"Harry wasn't scared, though," Ron pointed out.

"I was a bit, Ron," Harry contradicted him. "I had no idea about who was looking for me."

"Someone good," the redhead said firmly.

"I know that now," Harry grinned. "But I didn't know it then."

"Besides, we both know that Harry's always been able to roll with anything weird that comes his way as easily as catching the snitch is for him," Hermione said teasingly.

Harry grinned, but he didn't answer. He knew that they wouldn't like what he had to say, so he didn't say anything. He didn't say that, after so long being the weird one that nobody wanted to get close to, it was easy for him to accept weird. He knew they may want to hear what he was thinking, but it would upset them. So, he didn't say anything.

Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, ... and disappeared.

"The coast? He's gonna make them camp out at the beach?" Lisa asked hesitantly.

"Isn't that kind of illegal?" Justin frowned.

"In most places it is," Hermione agreed with a frown.

"I had gotten the impression that the Dursleys loved the law," Tonks said warily.

"They do. We didn't camp out at the beach," Harry told them.

"Then what was your uncle doing, Harry?" Seamus asked uneasily.

"He had found the place where we'd stay for the night. And it wasn't the beach," he repeated.

It started to rain. ... then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry's eleventh birthday.

"That means that day was my birthday," Neville blurted out when he realized what that meant. He blushed furiously. He didn't even know why he had said that.

"Happy belated birthday then, Neville," Luna smiled warmly.

"Yeah, happy belated birthday," Harry grinned as he was followed by several heartfelt congratulations directed towards the blushing boy.

"I bet you did remember yours, Neville, unlike this one," Ron teased as he playfully elbowed Harry.

Harry shoved him in return. "I had a few busy days, in case you've already forgotten what we've just read, you prat," he defended himself. "And I didn't forget it. I just lost count of what day it was."

"Understandable. I would've forgotten too," Percy huffed.

Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun: ... coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks.

The playful mood in the air took a quick nosedive with that revelation.

"They didn't even give you a proper birthday present when they bought thirty-seven for their son?!" Sirius roared.

"Thirty-nine. They went to buy him two more so he wouldn't throw a temper tantrum, remember?" Tonks chipped in casually.

Charlie elbowed her sharply. "That's not helping!" He hissed.

"He has to learn to accept sooner or later that his godson didn't have the wonderful childhood that he had imagined for him or he's gonna upset Harry even more and push him away," the metamorphmagus replied sternly. She was losing her patience with her cousin's antics.

"I get presents now," Harry said, blushing embarrassedly but glaring at his godfather defiantly.

"A coat hanger and a pair of used socks aren't a real present, Harry," Sirius scoffed, getting even angrier when he heard his godson defending the actions of those monsters.

"I think that depends," George cut in, coming to Harry's rescue before the poor boy could blow up in front of the whole school and embarrass himself because Sirius was being an arse.

"There aren't many good coat hangers out there," Fred nodded. "The clothes often end up stretched and funny-looking."

"Exactly. Good coat hangers are very rare indeed," George said seriously.

"If they're really soft and comfortable socks, I might love them," Fred grinned. "I mean, it's so difficult to find a good pair of socks that are warm and fuzzy."

"It's much better to get socks than books, isn't it? Everyone is always giving books as a present," Harry joked with a small grin.

The twins stared at him curiously, knowing that they were missing something, but not really bothered by it. It was a common thing where Harry was concerned and, besides, at least he wasn't so tense anymore.

"Are you saying that you don't like the books I've given you as presents over the years?" Hermione asked, half teasing and half insecure.

Harry grinned and linked his arm with hers. "I always love your presents, Hermione," he said so sincerely that the girl had no option but to believe him and smile.

"Good," she said, laying her head on his shoulder.

Still, you weren't eleven every day.

"It's a very special birthday for wizards everywhere," Bill nodded with a smile. "As much as their seventeenth birthday."

"To mark the beginning of your magical education and the end of the magic restriction," Tonks grinned. "I preferred my seventeenth one. It meant that I could finally fixed everything I broke with a wave of my wand."

"I was waiting for weeks for my eleventh one," Ron confessed.

"I wasn't. I didn't even know that it was special until I got the letter of Hogwarts," Hermione shrugged. "It's special for me now, though."

Uncle Vernon ... long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd bought.

"What was it?" Remus asked curious and wary at the same time.

"I found out later that night," Harry evaded the question. He didn't think that they were going to take too lightly the fact that his uncle had bought a rifle.

"In other words, you're not gonna tell us, which means that it's awesome or horrible," Seamus said.

"Taking into account that his uncle was the one who bought it and he's actually smiling after having a psychotic breakdown that lasted for days, I'm going with horrible," Dean announced.

"I think he was jealous that his son had a stick and he bought a new one for himself," Seamus said with a completely straight face.

"You're weird," Dean snorted. "I think it was a shovel to dig up an underground cave to hide in."

Seamus laughed. "And you say I'm the weird one."

"I think they could be sensors to detect anyone who gets close," Susan said.

"I think it was a huge roast beef because he was hungry after a whole day without eating," Ron nodded with determination.

"I think it could've been a fishing rod to be able to catch some fish since they're at the coast," Hermione reasoned.

"Or some kind of trap to put at the entrance of wherever they're gonna stay so they can trap whoever enters," Padma mused. Harry had said that his uncle didn't feel safe anymore, after all.

"I think it was some kind of huge lock to keep them inside the car and the letters out," Parvati said.

"No way. It was a bunch of rolled up clothes. It doesn't say that they took any kind of suitcase with them," Lavender argued.

"It could be a sword to defend himself against the wizards following them. He's lost it so much that he may think that a sword can defeat them," Neville mumbled.

"I think it was an air rifle like the one his son broke by sitting on it," Justin said firmly.

Ernie snorted. "An air rifle? Why would he want an air rifle? He probably bought some lights for the basement he's gonna shove all of them in."

"I think," Arthur intervened before everyone could continue to voice their opinion. "That it'd be better if we continued and we found out what was really inside the package. I don't believe we're gonna guess it this way."

Harry grinned innocently when some people turned to look at him to see if anyone had guessed correctly. None of them had, but there was someone that had come awfully close, so close that he had almost burst out laughing.

"Found the perfect place!" ... out!"

"The perfect place?" Hermione repeated with dread.

"What could be more isolated than a plowed field, a suspension bridge and a parking garage?" Lavender asked confused.

"Whatever place he thinks that it's perfect, it makes me want to run as far away from it as possible when he sounds so happy all of a sudden," Charlie grimaced.

"Maybe he found a small motel somewhere at the coast. Some place discreet, where he thinks that they won't attract attention and they won't be found," Mrs. Weasley said hopefully.

"Somehow, I don't believe that was the case," Arthur said, staring at the grimace on Harry's face.

It was very cold outside the car.

"G-Goddammit," Harry cursed under his breath as he violently shuddered once when he felt the biting cold of the wind and the rain drenching his clothes.

"You're freezing, Harry," Hermione said worried as she took the hand that he still had intertwined with her arm. She took it between both of hers and tried to rub some warmth into it even though she knew that it was pointless.

"I'm fine," Harry said, making an effort to stop his teeth from chattering. That day he hadn't even had a jacket with him.

"Sure, you are," Ron snorted quietly as he discreetly pressed closer to his best friend. Harry could deny it all he wanted, but the redhead could feel him burrowing into the warmth that he and Hermione were trying to push into him without success.

Uncle Vernon was pointing ... top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine.

"You have to be kidding me," Bill blurted out incredulous.

"A shack on a rock in the middle of the ocean? That was his perfect place?" Angelina asked perplexed and worried.

"He's gonna take his family there? I mean, I know that he really doesn't care about Harry, but he's taking his wife and his son to that place too," Arthur said worried. He couldn't imagine taking Molly or any of his children to a place like that.

"He's completely off his rocket," Tonks bit her lip. This definitely wasn't funny anymore. That place didn't sound safe and she knew that none of the Dursleys cared about Harry.

One thing was ... no television in there.

"That's what you think when you see that place?" Hannah asked, half exasperated and half bewildered.

"I was thinking about the tantrum that Dudley was gonna throw when he realized that," Harry grinned, focusing on hiding his trembling and his chattering teeth as much as he could.

"It had to have been epic," Ron said, trying to get the attention off Harry. He knew that the black-haired boy didn't want anyone else to notice his predicament.

"If it was a big one for receiving one less present than the year before, I don't want to imagine his whining when they had to stay there for the night," Hermione snorted, following the redhead's example.

"Storm forecast ... an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-grey water below them.

"A rowboat against a storm?" Parvati gasped.

"That's not gonna end well," her twin shook her head with a faint look of concern.

"It doesn't sound like it will be able to support all of you without sinking or capsizing," Anthony pointed out hesitantly. "Especially if your uncle and your cousin weighed as much as you said."

"But Aunt Petunia is so thin that she only counts like half a person and I was such a midget that I d-didn't count," Harry joked. He cursed himself when he stuttered at the end as the cold got the better of him.

"So, you finally admit that you're a midget? About time, mate," Ron was quick to intervene before anyone could notice Harry's slip. He threw an arm around Harry to put him in a headlock and give him a noogie, using the excuse to discreetly rub some warmth into him.

"I said before. I'm not a midget anymore," Harry argued, even as he leant against Ron and clung to Hermione's hands, hidden from view by their robes. He was so grateful when Hermione didn't let him go and Ron didn't remove his arm from around him, even if it wasn't technically doing anything to really warm him up. He was so cold that he didn't even care if anyone noticed that there was something going on.

"I really hope that the boat could hold their weight because we all know who's the first one they'd throw overboard if it couldn't stay afloat with all of them," Tonks murmured.

"We know that Harry was okay. He's right there on the couch with our brother and Hermione," Charlie reassured her softly, nudging her shoulder.

"And a little more frozen than he wants us to believe, I think," Bill added as he stared at the three younger teenagers.

"What?" Tonks asked, focusing all of her attention on the black-haired boy. Now that it had been pointed out to her, it was easy to see the minute trembles that shook his frame and the way he was clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering. "The spell's affecting him?" She asked saddened.

"Poor kid," Charlie grimaced. "Think it'd help to send a warming charm his way?"

"I doubt it. Besides, I think Ron and Hermione have him covered for now," Bill said, taking note of the carefully hidden worry that the two teenagers were feeling for their best friend.

Hermione's and Harry's hands were hidden from view, so it didn't take too much to guess that the girl was keeping them as warm as possible while trying not to move too much so as not to attract unwanted attention. Ron's arm was discreetly curled around Harry's back, pulling him as close as possible without becoming obvious about it. Yeah, they had him covered.

"I don't think they want anyone to notice," Charlie observed. "Not that I blame them. Mum will begin to mother-hen Harry to death if she does and I think Black is bound to try to destroy the books."

"We better keep reading. I don't wanna find out if Harry can get sick because of the damn spell," the metamorphmagus said firmly.

"I've already got us some rations," ... rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces.

"That doesn't sound good," Lavender grimaced. She shivered as she imagined how cold it must have been. It was easy to picture it with the faint sounds of the rain and the roaring waves filling the Great Hall.

"He's putting his family in danger," Mr. Weasley said angrily. He was gritting his teeth.

"I don't think trying to keep the letters away from Harry is worth that odyssey," Justin said uncertainly. "It seems a bit too dangerous for my liking."

"And uncomfortable. They're probably gonna get sick with how cold it had to be. I can almost imagine my limbs freezing and falling off," Terry joked as he wrung his hands in his lap.

"No s-shit," Harry cursed sarcastically under his breath as another violent shudder shook him. He, unlike Terry, didn't have to imagine it.

"Your hands are freezing, Harry," Hermione murmured as she kept trying to warm them up. It was as useless as trying to warm up a block of ice, except that Harry's hands weren't thawing no matter what she did. In fact, they were only getting colder and colder.

"N-No k-kidding," Harry grimaced. "I c-can't feel my f-fingers."

The black-haired teen couldn't help but curl slightly towards Ron when the redhead pulled him even closer. If they didn't get soon to the part where he warmed up, he was going to end up in Ron's lap. He would be mortified for the rest of his existence for curling up like a little kid in his best friend's lap in front of everyone, but he almost didn't care at the same time. Ron was a freaking furnace while he was an icicle that needed defrosting as soon as possible.

After what seemed like hours ... was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.

Harry relaxed slightly as the cold lessened marginally. The walls had protected them a bit from the wind, even if it had been able to enter through the gaps. It had still been better than sitting on the boat in the middle of the ocean while getting soaked by the rain.

"Better?" Hermione asked hopefully. She didn't release his hands, though.

Harry tried to grin at her, but he was pretty sure that it came out as a grimace. "A bit. T-Thanks."

"You still feel like a popsicle," Ron grumbled, rubbing his arm as vigorously as possible without anyone noticing. He hated this spell.

"A s-slightly warmer p-popsicle," Harry joked.

"Just from the description, it sounds like the shack could be blown off by the wind at any second. Can't the man see that? What are they gonna do if that happens?" Padma snapped, exasperated with the idiocy of that muggle.

"Three guesses to figure out who's gonna end up without room," Dean said through gritted teeth. "And the first two don't count."

"They can't exactly throw him out, can they? They wouldn't let him spend the night outside with that storm, would they?" Parvati said in concern.

"No," Harry smiled reassuringly, keeping his answer short to hide the chattering.

Uncle Vernon's rations ... bag of chips each and four bananas.

"That's not a good dinner," Mrs. Weasley frowned. "It's not enough food, especially if they haven't eaten since breakfast."

"No wonder you eat so little food, mate, if you're used to a bag of chips and a banana as dinner," Ron grumbled. "I have snacks that are bigger than that."

"While I agree that it's not enough food, you're not a good reference point, Ron. You eat enough for three people," Hermione scoffed.

"I'm a growing boy," the redhead protested.

He tried to start a fire ... those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully.

"He wants to burn more first letters of Hogwarts? What kind of animal is he?" Ernie gasped outraged.

"Not to mention that if he had let Harry open the first damn first letter of Hogwarts, none of that would've happened and they'd be warm in their own house," Hannah grumbled.

Susan giggled. "First damn first letter of Hogwarts," she repeated. "Never thought I'd hear that."

"Yeah, so funny," Terry rolled his eyes. "You can't see it, but I'm crackling up on the inside."

"Don't be an arsehole," Anthony chided him as he elbowed his friend in the ribs. "You have to admit that it's odd at the very least."

Terry smiled at Susan sheepishly. "Sorry. I'm just getting tired of how ridiculous the man is."

"You and everyone else, man," Justin sighed.

He was in a very good mood... the thought didn't cheer him up at all.

"That's why he put them there? To use the storm as some kind of... shield or cover or whatever against wizards?" Katie asked incredulously.

"He's seen the letters inside the eggs, and he believes that a storm will be enough to stop the person sending them?" Alicia snorted. "He's delusional."

"Besides, even if, by some chance, the storm really did stop the wizards, it won't last forever. Then what? Is he gonna keep chasing storms for the rest of his life?" Tonks rolled her eyes. "It doesn't make sense."

"And even if the problem was that wizards are so useless that they can't find a way to a tiny island that can be seen from the coast, how long did he plan on keeping you there? Forever?" Bill asked sarcastically. "You need food and a proper shelter, and there's nothing on that rock. You can't live there."

As night fell, the promised storm ... fierce wind rattled the filthy windows.

"Oh, Merlin. Can the shack be flooded?" Colin wondered aloud. "What if it's flooded during the storm? What are they gonna do?"

"It won't be flooded, Colin," Angelina assured him.

"How do you know that?!" The younger boy exclaimed.

"Because Harry's right there, breathing and alive instead of at the bottom of the ocean?" The girl snarked impatiently at him as he waved a hand towards her youngest teammate.

"Oh. That's a good point," Colin nodded, calming down a little. "But it doesn't really mean anything. They could've swum back to the coast after the shack was flooded."

"They can't swim back to shore in the middle of a storm and with that cold," she huffed.

"Does that mean that they'll drown when the shack is flooded?!"

Angelina rolled her eyes. "You're impossible. I don't know why I even bother."

"It wasn't flooded, Colin," Harry intervened. It was the last thing he wanted since he was still so cold that he couldn't feel his fingers, but the boy was going to worry everyone with his stories if he kept that up. And if everyone worried, they would begin to speculate and they wouldn't keep reading.

"Oh. Okay, Harry," he smiled, relaxing back in his seat.

Angelina stared at Harry outraged. "Why does he believe you and not me?" She demanded indignantly.

Harry raised an eyebrow. "I was actually there, Angelina," he reminded her.

She rolled her eyes. "That's a cheap excuse," she muttered.

Aunt Petunia found a few ... floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

"Should it surprise me? I feel like it should surprise, but it really doesn't," Seamus frowned. "In fact, I was expecting it. I would've been more surprised if they had given Harry a bed."

"He's gonna get sick, sleeping on the damp floor like that when it's so cold," Mrs. Weasley fretted.

"I was fine," Harry smiled at her, even as he clung to Hermione's hands again and he leant against the furnace that was Ron.

"How can they sleep comfortably in a bed while they're leaving a child on the floor?" Remus asked sadly. "I don't get it."

"They made him sleep in a cupboard when they had four bedrooms in their house. I don't even know if the floor is an upgrade for Harry or not," Bill joked.

"Bill," his father called him seriously. "It's not funny."

"I know, dad, but it's not a tragedy either. I believe Harry when he says that he was fine," he replied, just as serious as his father.

The storm ... shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger.

"I think I have a chocolate frog somewhere," Ron said pensively when Harry's stomach growled again. He was really going to lose it if he had to keep feeling his best friend shivering against his side and hearing his stomach rumbling nonstop.

"D-Don't bo-bother," Harry replied quietly. "H-Hagrid gave me s-some f-food when he a-arrived."

"I can't bite Hagrid's food on a good day without cracking my teeth, Harry," the redhead snorted.

"W-Wasn't th-that bad," Harry grinned.

"Anyway, you better be ready to eat a ton at lunch because I think my mum and Sirius are gonna pile your plate with more food than you've ever eaten in a week," Ron commented, rubbing his hand up and down Harry's arm.

"I'll s-sneak it in-into y-yours," Harry joked.

"You think I can eat my food and yours?" Ron smirked amused. "Are you calling me fat, Harry? I thought you were my best friend."

"B-Bottomless pi-pit."

"Yeah, that's what Hermione keeps saying, isn't it? If I really was a bottomless pit, I'd be able to eat a whole lot more, though," he argued.

"N-Nearly bo-bottomless p-pit," Harry amended.

"I'm a nearly bottomless pit? Huh. Maybe," he accepted. "Not that I don't enjoy it, mind you."

"Unless you want someone to hear Harry's teeth chattering, I think you better shut up now," Hermione murmured, silencing them instantly. "And yes, Ron, you're a bottomless pit."

Dudley's snores ... Harry heard something creak outside.

"There was someone outside?" Lisa Turnip gasped. "I thought the shack was the only thing on the rock."

"Maybe it was a monster," Anthony said wide-eyed.

"And where was it before if there was only the shack there and it was empty?" Dean frowned.

"It could've clawed out of the sea. The rock may have been its resting place for when it wanted to sleep, but it spent most of the time swimming to eat fish and sharks and unlucky swimmers that crossed its path," Seamus said wide-eyed as his imagination flew ahead of him.

"If that rock really was the lair of some horrible monster, it won't be happy to come back to find his home invaded by humans," Susan said hesitantly.

"That reminds me of the story of Goldilocks and the three bears," Hermione remembered with a smile.

"Who and the three what?" Ron blinked confused.

"Goldilocks and the three bears," Hermione repeated. "It's a muggle bedtime story about a little girl that enters the house of three bears in the forest. She eats their soup, sits and breaks their chairs and sleeps in their beds."

"That's just rude," Padma frowned.

"And what did the bears do when they came back and found her?" Lavender asked curious.

Justin smirked wickedly. "What do you think three bears would do to a girl that entered their home and basically trashed it? They ate her, of course."

"They ate her?" Lavender repeated wide-eyed.

"That's a bedtime story for kids? It'll give them nightmares!" Anthony exclaimed.

"That's not what happens," Hermione scoffed, glaring at Justin briefly. "There are some versions where the bears forgive her and help her find the way back home and other versions where she runs away screaming and she doesn't come back."

"That doesn't make any sense," Tonks frowned. "Why would the bears forgive her for eating their soup, break their chairs and sleep in their beds?"

"And it makes sense for the bears to eat soup and have chairs and beds?" Charlie asked sarcastically.

The metamorphmagus stopped and shook her head. "Right. The whole story is twisted."

"It's just a bedtime story," Hermione sighed.

"It doesn't have a very happy ending, whichever ending you want to choose. Personally, I think the most realistic one is the one Justin said," Ernie said.

"So, you think that's what the monster on the rock is going to do?" Hannah asked with a raised eyebrow.

"How have they decided that there was a monster? There's no mention of a monster anywhere," Harry murmured confused. His classmates were so weird sometimes.

He hoped the roof ... might be warmer if it did.

"How could he be warmer if the roof fell on him?" Bill asked confused.

"If it hurt so much that the cold doesn't matter anymore," Tonks joked.

"I really hope that the roof doesn't fall in. If Harry's hurt before we even finish the second chapter, mum will wrap him up in so many blankets that we won't be able to see his glasses and Black will burn all the books before we can blink," Charlie grimaced.

"Harry doesn't seem worried about the roof falling on him," Tonks observed. "Although, that may be because I think he's more worried about the possibility of losing a finger because of how cold he is."

"Yeah, I think we better keep reading," Bill grimaced, staring at the younger boy in concern.

Four minutes to go... full of letters when they got back that he'd be able to steal one somehow.

"You think they'd let you enter the house without checking first that there isn't a single letter in sight?" Dean frowned sceptically.

"I can dream," Harry forced a smile on his face. Why did they have to keep interrupting the reading? And he couldn't even tell them to shut up without them asking questions about why and eventually finding out that his limbs felt like blocks of ice.

"I think it wouldn't work unless the house was so full of letters that they were literally coming out through every crack on the walls, the windows and the doors," Parvati shook her head.

Three minutes to go... the rock crumbling into the sea?

"It's the monster," Seamus nodded. "It has found out that its home has been profaned and it doesn't want to use it anymore."

"You think a monster would sink the rock and the shack to the bottom of the ocean?" Padma asked with a raised eyebrow. That story was getting out of hand.

"And it'll build another one further from shore, further north where the water will be even colder, so that no human would ever want to try to invade it again," the boy nodded seriously.

"Wouldn't it be more realistic for the storm to be so strong that it's making the weakest parts of the rock crumble?" Anthony frowned. "I think it makes more sense."

"But more dangerous," Dean argued. "I don't know about you, but I'd have no idea about how to beat a storm."

"And you know how to beat a monster that lives in the ocean and only comes to that rock to sleep?" Lavender asked sceptically.

"At least it's an easier target to aim your spells at," Dean shrugged. "It's better than mother nature. That's a whole new level I don't wanna think about."

One minute to go ... he'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him — three... two... one...

"You," Hermione grumbled, squeezing his hands between hers. "Have a death wish."

"M-My b-birthday," Harry had the audacity to grin at her unrepentant.

"It would've been your last if you had woken up your cousin. I think he would've thrown you into the ocean and wouldn't have let you come back inside," Hermione huffed. The worst thing was that she wasn't even joking. She really believed Dudley capable of doing that.

"He's a reckless idiot, Hermione. You know that," Ron smirked at her.

"Which is why sometimes I wonder why I put up with you two," she grumbled, but her lips were twitching upwards.

"Y-You lo-love us," Harry grinned at her.

"That must be the reason, yeah."

BOOM.

"Holy Merlin! What was that?" Charlie exclaimed wide-eyed. "Was it a thunder?"

"It didn't sound like a thunder," Bill shook his head.

"It was the monster that's come to eat all of them," Seamus gasped.

"Dude, there's no monster that can make that kind of noise," Dean rolled his eyes.

"I thought you were on my side!"

"Ridiculous. Why would I be?" Dean replied, elbowing him jokingly.

"If it wasn't a thunder and it wasn't a monster, then what was it?" Neville asked wide-eyed. "It was so loud."

"Best part of the night," Harry intervened.

"The best part of the night? What was good about that? It sounded like the roof was really going to fall on top of your heads," Hannah said worried.

"Just wait," Harry grinned.

The whole shack shivered ... was outside, knocking to come in.

"That was someone knocking on the door?" Tonks exclaimed surprised. "What kind of door-knocking was that? Where they trying to demolish the whole shack?"

"It had to be someone very strong to knock on the door like that," Bill said pensively.

Charlie grinned as he realized who it was. "There's only one person I've ever known to knock like that," he grinned, his mood rising quickly. Harry may be right after all. This was the best part of the night.

There were some students already turning towards Hagrid, who was blushing under his thick beard and was wringing his hands nervously. Thankfully, Flitwick came to his rescue before they could ask questions.

"Should we start the next chapter?" He asked, redirecting their attention to the book glowing yellow.

"I think we have time to read a couple more of chapters before we're due for a break, Filius," Dumbledore nodded.

"Let's continue then. I'm dying to find out who broke the news to Mr. Potter about magic," the tiny professor said, flicking his wand at the book. He smirked impishly at the blushing half-giant. The next chapter was going to be very interesting.