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An hour into the morning of Harry's eleventh birthday, an owl flew in through the open window and landed on the counter. Then it started to shake one leg - which had something tied onto it - in Aunt Petunia's general direction.
That would have been startling enough in and of itself, and indeed, Dudley made a sort of squawking noise and dived under the table and only strong newly-eleven-year-old pride kept Harry from doing the same. But what struck Harry almost as strongly was how calmly his aunt and uncle took it. Uncle Vernon merely harrumphed and hid himself behind his paper; Aunt Petunia sighed, put down her fork and shouted, "Lily!"
The owl continued to shake its leg. It hooted a few times. To Harry, it sounded irritated; for Harry's part, he just stared at it until he heard the sound of his mother coming into the kitchen. She was still in her house-coat, and she used her crutches instead of having put her leg back on yet.
As she came into the kitchen, she said, "I heard your dulcet tones, Petuni - ah," and it was quite clear to Harry that the last sound wasn't meant to be part of his aunt's name. "Harry, darling," she said, as she made her way to her chair - the one beside the wall, so she could lean her crutches up against it - and sat down, "would you untie the letter from the owl's leg? And be a darling and give it one of these." She rummaged in her house-coat pocket and handed him a small bronze coin. At Harry's hesitation, she gave him a gentle push. "Go on, love. It's for you anyway, and the owl won't hurt you."
Harry got up and warily went over to the owl. Dudley had, by this time, arisen from underneath the table with his father firmly (and broadly) between him and the owl, but did his best to peek around Uncle Vernon's head to see what was going on. The owl, for its part, simply held out its leg very imperiously, and after saying, "Excuse me," because he didn't know what else to say, Harry carefully untied the letter (it was a letter, how had his mum known it would be a letter?) and then, even more warily, held out the little coin.
The owl took the coin in its beak without even scratching Harry's fingers, hopped to the window and out of it, and then took off, a little awkwardly.
"Really, Lily," Aunt Petunia said, irritably, as Harry came back to his place at the table beside his mother. Lily held up her hands in a half shrug.
"Look, I asked them to wait until after lunch, when we'd be at the zoo anyway," she said. "Don't blame me. Come here, love, and open the letter."
"Mum," Harry said, feeling she had missed an integral part of this whole thing, "an owl just flew in the window and gave me a letter. And you're acting like this is normal."
Uncle Vernon made another, rather pointed, harrumph! and turned the page of his paper.
Harry's mother sighed and put an arm around his shoulders. "You remember those stories we used to read when you were littler," she said, "about young people, boys and girls, who have a special past or birthright but they have to get to a certain age before it's safe to tell them about it?"
"Yes . . . ?" Harry said, eyeing her. She kissed his cheek and gave him a half-hug.
"Your life is a little bit like one of those stories," she said, with a sigh. "Now come on, let's finish breakfast and then you can carry my tea to the living-room and we'll read your letter and start some of the explaining."
"Are we still going to the zoo?" Dudley demanded, looking worried. Harry didn't roll his eyes, because his mum would tell him off if he did. There were any number of injustices in Harry's life, he felt, but one of the worst of them was that on Harry's birthday, Dudley basically got a second birthday - got to do everything that Harry got to do, and got at least three presents (usually four: one from his own mum, one from his dad, one from Harry's mum, and one from Aunt Marge), when on Dudley's birthday, Harry and his mum went to visit Mrs Figg and even though his mother told him not to complain, and even if he did get cake every time, Mrs Figg's house was boring and filled with (and smelled of) cats.
When he complained about this, Harry's mum always told him that being kind to someone - even someone he didn't like - was good for his character and never cost him anything, and even if Dudley was spiteful, was that a good reason for Harry to be? Her expression, at these moments, was always so forbidding that Harry never argued, but the injustice rankled.
"Yes, Dudley," Harry's mother said, in her patient voice. "And the cinema."
"OK," Dudley said, sitting back down. Then, after a moment of careful (for Dudley) thought, he added, "Who sends post by owl? That's just weird."
At that, Harry's mum caught Aunt Petunia's eye, and they both had the kind of half-smile on their faces that Harry considered "complicated". Uncle Vernon just kept his nose in his newspaper.