Disclaimer:
Harry Potter and all of its characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
I own nothing but the original characters I make.
"Dialogue"
'Thoughts'
-Author notes-
Chapter 03: The Letter
The month that followed the zoo trip passed slowly, like treacle sliding down a cold spoon.
Daniel was finally starting to come to terms with the fact that this was not a dream or an illusion.
This was his real life now. He was Harry Potter, and he had to accept that fact. Even if he didn't understand how this happened, and perhaps he never will.
Over the past month, he had the chance to settle into an almost comfortable rhythm.
He ate breakfast with the Durleys. He played football in the garden with Duddley and Piers. He sat under the shade of a tree and read books from the local library, including those about ordinary things like geography, astronomy, and the life cycle of frogs.
This was truly an ordinary life, and he would have been completely fine if things had remained this way forever, allowing him to live a long, normal life with a family that genuinely cared for him.
Unfortunately, fate was not going to be so kind to him.
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July twenty-fourth, he reminded himself each morning, marking another day off the mental calendar in his head. Just wait until July twenty-fourth.
The date loomed in his mind like a lighthouse in a storm...a promise of answers, one way or another.
In the original story, Harry's first letter from Hogwarts had arrived on this day, but Vernon didn't allow the boy to open it and took it away, as well as all the other letters that came afterwards. The man had nearly lost his sanity during that time.
It would not be until a week later, on his eleventh birthday, that he finally received the visit from Hagrid.
Of course, he could not imagine this version of Vernon doing such a thing. The man was one of the kindest people he had ever met during his two short lives.
And the day had finally arrived. The day when everything would either begin or end.
The morning of July 24th dawned on him, with grey clouds pressing down on Privet Drive like a lid on a pot.
Rain pattered against the windows, soft and insistent, and the air in the kitchen smelled of toast and tea and the faint, earthy scent of wet grass.
He sat at the table, pushing a piece of marmalade-coated toast around his plate. His stomach was too tight for eating. His eyes kept drifting to the letter box on the door.
"Eat up, Harry," Petunia said, setting a cup of tea in front of him. "You'll waste away to nothing if you dont eat enough. You are already skinny enough as it is."
"Sorry," he mumbled, and took a bite he did not taste.
Vernon was behind his newspaper, as usual. Dudley was busy constructing a tower of bacon on his plate in complete concentration.
The clock on the wall ticked. The kettle hummed softly on the stove. Everything was ordinary. Everything was normal.
And then...it happened.
A letter flew through the mail box and into the living room.
His head snapped back and spotted the white rectangle now resting in the middle of the room.
Petunia gasped, and Vernon lowered his paper.
"What on earth-?" Vernon began. "What is the mailman thinking, tossing letters in such a way?"
Petunia walked up to her husband and clenched his shoulder. "Vernon..." Her voice was filled with dread as she looked at the envelope on the floor.
He almost jumped out of his chair and went to pick it up.
The paper had a yellowish tone. The letters were big and written in emerald green ink. It was addressed to him with elegant handwriting.
To:
Mr. Harry Potter
The large bedroom
4 Pivet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
His heart stopped.
It was real. This was an actual letter from Hogwarts, and it had his name on it. Magic was...real after all.
Petunia had gone completely pale, as if she had seen a ghost. "Vernon, it's...it's from them."
Vernon put down his newspaper. His pink face was drained of colour as he stared at the letter in Harry's hands, then at Petunia.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
The only sounds came from the ticking clock and the pattering rain.
"Harry, wait, dont open that letter." Vernon finally spoke. His was low and rough, not like the cheerful one that he had grown used to by now.
"No, that won't work...they will just send more," Petunia said. "Perhaps they will even send one of them..."
"What is that?. Who sent that letter?" Dudley, even with his innocent mind, had noticed the tension in the room.
"Diddy," Petunia spoke gently. "Why dont you go play in your room?. We need to speak with Harry alone."
"Mmm..." Duddley looked down at his plate filled with bacon. "Can I take my plate with me?"
"Sure thing, buddy, go on." Answered Vernon.
Harry walked into the kitchen with the letter in hand. "What is going on?. Do you know about this?"
It appears that his first instinct had been the correct one. Despite being so different from the originals, his aunt and uncle definitely knew about Hogwarts and thus, about the existence of magic.
Also, they didn't seem to be thrilled about it.
'Perhaps not everything is different,' Harry thought.
If that was the case, would they react the same way that they did in the books he had read so many times?. Would Uncle Vernon go crazy while trying to prevent him from opening the letters that kept coming?.
What was he supposed to do if that happened?.
He had only known this family for a short time...however, he had started to grow fond of them. Of their kindness and their constant attention.
Something that he never experienced in his previous life.
Would he need to give that away if he wanted to pursue the path of being a wizard?.
Petunia sank back into her chair.
Vernon was resting his elbows on the table and carrying a serious expression that he had never seen before on the man.
"Harry," Petunia's voice cut through his chaotic thoughts.
When she looked at him, he realized that she didn't seem to be angry...no, this was a different emotion. Petunia... was scared. More than that, she looked terrified.
"Sit down, love. Please. We need to talk."
The kitchen felt smaller than it had been a moment ago. The clock ticked, the rain pattered, and the letter was now resting in between them.
"You need to know the truth," Petunia said slowly, carefully choosing her words. "I had hoped...I had hoped this day would never come. That they would leave you alone after everything that...I had hope you could live a normal life."
"They?" He asked, even though he already knew the answer.
"The wizards," Vernon said flatly. "The magical folk. Them..."
Petunia reached across the table and took Daniel's hand. Her fingers were cold and trembling.
"Your parents," she said, "were not ordinary people, Harry. You've probably guessed that by now. James and Lily… they were part of that world. The magical world. They went to a school called Hogwarts. They had wands and used them to cast spells. God, I know this may sound crazy to you..."
"Magic?. You mean like...in the fantasy books?" He nodded slowly and tried to sound innocent. He wanted her to continue speaking, to reveal more about the hidden side of this world.
"It's not like in those stories, though," Petunia continued, her voice dropping to barely a whisper. "It's not all wonder and adventure. It can be very terrifying, Harry."
There was a pause.
"There was a war," Petunia said. "A terrible war. It started before you were born. Wizards fought against wizards, families were torn apart, and many people died..."
She stopped again, and Vernon placed his hand on her shoulder as a gesture of comfort.
"Your parents worked for a man named Albus Dumbledore," Petunia said. "He was… is… the most powerful wizard alive," she went on. "He leads a place called the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But he's not just a headmaster. He basically rules the country. At least the magical side of it. He has many followers, and your parents were among them."
He didn't quite like the way she was describing it. His aunt Petunia was making it sound as if Albus Dumbledore was some sort of dictator.
He had a hard time imagining that. The kind old wizard who guided Harry and cared for him like a grandfather?. No way.
But then again, everyone he has met so far was completely different from his expectations...what if this change didn't affect only the Dursleys, but...everyone.
"I don't know all the details," she admitted. "Lily stopped writing to me when she got deep into that world. She changed a lot after her first few years of school. Then came James Potter...her boyfriend, who later on became her husband." She looked at Harry. "Your father."
"What was he like?." Harry asked.
"Since the day I met him, James was a difficult person to deal with. He came from a rich family, you see. And Lily...became someone I could no longer recognize. We never spoke again after they graduated from Hogwarts."
Something flickered across Petunia's face...pain, grief, and a hint of shame.
'She is hiding something,' He realized that Petunia was not telling him the whole story and that his parents may have been much worse than what she was telling him.
"Then, one night, ten years ago," Petunia continued, "someone left you on our doorstep. You were just a baby, barely a year old. There was a note. It said that James and Lily were dead, that they died during an attack near the end of the wizard war."
"Do you know how they died?" he asked, his voice surprisingly steady.
Petunia shook her head. "The note didn't say. Just that there had been an… an incident. And that you were the only survivor. The wizard folk like to keep their business in secret, and they would reveal such information to a non-magical like me."
'The only survivor,' Harry thought. 'Like in the books.' But he had the feeling that something had gone very differently in this case.
"There's more, isn't there?" he pressed. "Something you're not telling me. About my mother...about Lily."
Petunia's face crumpled. For a moment, she looked like she might cry. Then she composed herself, smoothing her apron with trembling hands.
"Your mother," she said slowly, "was not the woman I grew up with, Harry. The magic… it changed her. That world made her… harder, colder. She and James had a reputation. They were powerful, yes. But they were also feared. People whispered about them, about the things they did for Albus Dumbledore."
She would not meet his eyes.
'She's protecting me,' Daniel realised. She thinks the truth would break my heart.
"What kind of things?" he asked anyway.
Petunia was silent for a long moment. Vernon answered instead.
"Things that got them killed," he said bluntly. "Things that nearly got you killed. And that's all you need to know for now. Your aunt dont want to speak ill of the dead. Please, respect that."
He nodded and didn't ask any more questions about his parents. It was obviously a painful topic for his aunt. And she likely didn't know many details.
For what he had learned from the books, it was true that wizard folk didn't like to share information with Muggles.
He looked down at the letter on the table. The Hogwarts crest stared back at him. The lion, the badger, the eagle, the snake. The letter he had been waiting for. The letter that proved magic was real.
But the excitement he had expected...the joy, the relief...was nowhere to be found. In its place was a cold, heavy dread.