Chapter Text
The Dursleys of Number Four, Privet Drive, were staunchly, proudly ordinary. They upheld their normality like a shield, dismissing anything out of the ordinary as sheer foolishness. They cultivated a life of tedious routine, confident that nothing strange could ever touch them.
Mr. Dursley, the portly director of a drill manufacturing firm, possessed a remarkable lack of a neck and an even more remarkable, large mustache. His wife, Petunia, a lanky blonde, was defined by her long, graceful neck, a feature she exploited to peer over fences and into her neighbors' lives. Their only son, Dudley, was in their estimation a perfect child. To the Dursleys, their comfortable existence was complete, yet it was built on a foundation of unspoken fear—a secret they prayed would never surface. Their very identity depended on denying the existence of the Potters. Mrs. Dursley's sister was a Potter, a fact they’d buried deep, pretending she didn't exist, as her family's eccentricities were antithetical to everything the Dursleys held dear. The very thought of a public connection to such people was a source of profound dread.
The day began as any other Tuesday, a grey, unremarkable morning. Mr. Dursley chose his most boring tie, his wife wrangled a shrieking Dudley, and the world outside seemed just as mundane. Neither of them noticed the large, tawny owl silently gliding past their window, a warning. Events to come.
As Mr. Dursley drove to work, the first crack in his predictable reality appeared: a tabby cat, perched on a street corner, appeared to be studying a map. He dismissed it instantly as a trick of the light, an aberration. But then, as he drove on, he noticed a gathering of people clad in strange cloaks. Their presence filled him with a visceral rage; their unusual attire was a personal affront to his rigid worldview. He saw them as a ridiculous, incomprehensible nuisance, a stain on his perfectly normal morning commute. He tried to brush it off as some ridiculous charity stunt, but the whispers he overheard later that day in a lunch-time crowd chilled him to the bone.
"The Cursed Energy and Mana at their property…”
“The Potters… that’s what I heard.”
“Their son, Harry…”
The blood drained from Mr. Dursley's face. He ran, scrambling back to his office, his mind in a panicked spiral. He tried to rationalize it away; the name "Potter" wasn’t uncommon. It couldn't be them. Not his wife's family. Not the people they had so carefully erased from their lives. He almost called Petunia, but stopped himself. The thought of bringing up her estranged sister was too terrible. He convinced himself it was all just a coincidence, an irrational fear. Yet, his anxiety festered throughout the afternoon.
When he left work, a tiny old man in a violet cloak bumped into him. The man, seemingly filled with pure joy, hugged Mr. Dursley and exclaimed, "You-Know-Who has gone at last, Mana be blessed!" He even called Mr. Dursley a "Muggle," a word that meant nothing to him but felt insulting nonetheless. The encounter left him profoundly unsettled.
He returned to Privet Drive to find the same strange cat from the morning still there, staring back at him with a knowing gaze. Dinner with Petunia was a torturous affair of feigned normalcy, his unease growing with every passing minute. He was so distracted that he had to force himself to pay attention to the evening news. The newscaster joked about hundreds of owls flying in daylight and reported a "downpour of shooting stars." The reports only confirmed his darkest fears. The world was changing, and it felt as if the strangeness was closing in on his family.
Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. He cleared his throat and asked his wife, “Petunia, dear… have you heard from your sister lately?” Her reaction was just as he had feared—a mix of shock and icy anger. But when he pressed the issue, alluding to the bizarre occurrences, her lips thinned.
When he asked their nephew's name, she spat out, "Harry. Nasty, common name, if you ask me."
The name was a final, damning confirmation. As Mr. Dursley lay in bed, he couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was happening, something that linked the whispers, the owls, and the strange people to his despised relatives. He comforted himself with the thought that no matter what was going on, it could never touch his perfect, ordinary life.
He was wrong. So very wrong.
On the cold brick wall outside the Dursleys’ house, the tabby cat remained motionless, its eyes locked on the street's far corner. It was nearly midnight when a figure materialized out of thin air, a man with a long silver beard and flowing purple robes. His name was Albus Dumbledore.
Dumbledore, a symbol of everything the Dursleys detested, seemed at home in the quiet street. He pulled a peculiar silver device from his pocket, then pumped it with a little flash of Indigo Light. Then, with a series of clicks, the streetlights one by one winked out, plunging the street into near darkness. He then sat beside the cat and addressed it by name.
"Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."
The cat transformed into a stern-looking woman in an emerald cloak. She was visibly annoyed, having spent the entire day on the hard, cold wall. They were there, waiting for something, and as they spoke, the reason for their presence became clear. There was a whispered conversation about Voldemort—a name Dumbledore insisted on using, while Professor McGonagall flinched at the sound—and a multiyear conflict that had come to a sudden end.
Professor McGonagall, who had been following the rumors all day, got straight to the point. "They're saying that last night Voldemort turned up in Godric's Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The rumor is that Lily and James Potter are - are - dead." She whispered the last word.
Dumbledore bowed his head, confirming the tragic news. The professor's voice trembled as she continued, revealing the stunning rumor: Voldemort had tried to kill their infant son, Harry, but failed.
"He couldn't kill a little boy? It's just astounding," she gasped, her voice thick with emotion.
Dumbledore explained that he was there to bring the boy to his only remaining family. Professor McGonagall, horrified, pointed at the Dursleys' house. "You don't mean them! You couldn't find two people who are less like us!"
Dumbledore was firm. It was the only way. To grow up away from the blinding fame and legend that would undoubtedly surround him. He had written a letter to the Dursleys to explain, a gesture Professor McGonagall found woefully inadequate. SHe told him as much.
A low roar from the sky heralded the arrival of the final figure: a towering giant of a man on a flying motorbike. This was Hagrid, an enormous, bearded man who was carrying a bundle of blankets. Dumbledore took the bundle, revealing a sleeping baby boy with a curious, lightning-bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. His fingers brushed the scar, and for an instant a pulse of chilled and static energy stirred beneath his skin—brief, illusory, vanishing as though it had never been. for a moment, he thought he felt...
The three of them stood in a somber silence for a minute, looking at the child. Hagrid began to sob, his grief for the Potters and his pity for the baby's future overwhelming him.
"Lily and James dead... and poor little Harry off ter live with Muggles..." he choked out.
Dumbledore placed the baby gently on the doorstep of Number Four, Privet Drive, tucking a letter into the blankets. He gave the boy a final look.
"Good luck, My Boy" he murmured, before turning and vanishing into the night.
The breeze rustled the neat hedges, and Harry Potter, the boy who had survived the most powerful dark wizard of their age, slept on, unaware of his monumental destiny. He was a child who had a secret, and he was about to discover the one thing that was not a part of a perfectly normal life.
*
Ten years had passed, but time seemed to stand still on Privet Drive. The meticulously manicured hedges, each one a testament to Uncle Vernon’s obsessive need for order, stood in perfect, verdant blocks. The brass number four on the front door gleamed with a polish that screamed of aggressive, self-satisfied normalcy. Every house on the street was a flawless clone of its neighbor, painted a pristine, unblemished white, their lawns a manicured, uniform green. The Dursleys’ living room, a monument to tasteful boredom, remained exactly as it had been a decade ago, with its matching, beige furniture and its aggressively neutral decor, all of it frozen in time. The only signs of time’s passing were the photographs on the mantelpiece—a gallery of their son, Dudley, evolving from a pink, round infant into a massive, blond boy on a bike, a testament to the Dursleys' singular obsession. There was no photographic evidence that another child resided in the house. There had never been.
Yet, Harry Potter was still there. The first sound of the day was the familiar, piercing shriek of Aunt Petunia. "Up! Get up! Now!" The ritual was the same every morning, a shrill, sharp sound that sliced through the pre-dawn silence. Harry, in his cramped, spider-infested cupboard under the stairs, groaned. It was Dudley's birthday. A day of excessive gifts and forced cheerfulness, a day Harry was expected to make perfect. It was a day that always ended with a tantrum, a punishment, or both. He knew his role: to be seen as little as possible, to make no sound, and to earn his keep by being a ghost in their perfect machine while avoiding Vernon and Dudley's fist.
Fumbling in the dark, Harry grabbed a sock, pulling off a spider, before descending from his cupboard. The dining table was overwhelmed by Dudley's monstrous pile of presents, a sickening display of consumerism. Small and slight in Dudley's massive hand-me-downs, Harry knew the new bike was just a prop; Dudley was too fat for real exercise, save punching someone. Harry, with tape-mended glasses and bright green eyes, had quickness honed by years of evasion from Dudley's frequent assaults. He liked only the lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, a mark of his past about which his aunt had given the house's only rule: "Don't ask questions."
The scar felt like a permanent piece of a puzzle, a constant reminder of something he was not allowed to remember. He often found himself touching it, a faint, phantom warmth lingering beneath his fingertips, a warmth that felt like a quiet, humming energy.
Uncle Vernon’s daily command, "Comb your hair!", was another tired ritual. The boy's hair was an unruly mess that no amount of cutting could tame. Harry had long ago stopped trying to make sense of it.
Dudley, a physical replica of his father, waddled into the kitchen. He immediately began counting his gifts. His face, a pink, fleshy mask, soured upon discovering he had thirty-six presents—two fewer than the previous year. A spoiled-brat tantrum was imminent. His parents, desperate, placated him with the promise of more gifts, averting the inevitable meltdown. His father was telling him that the ten 'comics' counted as ten presents, Dudley was correcting him that they were called 'Manga'.
Their fragile calm was shattered by the telephone. Aunt Petunia returned from the call looking both enraged and distressed. "Mrs. Figg’s broken her leg. She can’t take the boy." Harry's heart leaped. For the first time, he would be spared the cabbage-scented prison of Mrs. Figg's home and her endless cat photos, she didn't even have internet. Last time they left him alone the Dursleys came back to him watching YouTube videos in Dudley's room, which was a travesty according to Dudley because the 'freak' will ruin his algorithm. So to say the least, they saw this as a catastrophic inconvenience. They spoke about Harry as though he were an object— an unwelcome chore.
Dudley, sensing an opportunity for manipulation, feigned a massive tantrum, screaming that Harry would "spoil everything." Their plans were in shambles, but the doorbell saved them from a full-blown crisis. Dudley's best friend, the rat-faced Piers Polkiss, arrived. An hour later, Harry found himself in the back of the car, en route to the zoo.
Before they left, Uncle Vernon pulled him aside, his face a purple beet of fury. "I'm warning you now, boy—any funny business, anything at all—and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas." Harry's protests were pointless. He had long ago accepted that no one believed him.
The problem was, "funny business" happened to Harry. Strange events were a part of his life, a silent, bizarre accompaniment to his miserable existence. The Dursleys referred to these occurrences as "the funny business," a term they spat out with a venomous disdain. But for Harry, they were something more. They were moments when the world around him seemed to obey a different, unspoken set of rules.
There was the time Aunt Petunia sheared off his hair, leaving him looking like an egg with glasses, only to have it regrow overnight. She had attacked it with kitchen scissors, hacking at it in a fit of rage after an argument. The next morning, Harry had woken to a strange, tingling sensation on his scalp, a chill that seemed to hum just beneath his skin. When he looked in the mirror, his reflection stared back at him, his hair perfectly restored, as if by an unseen hand. The process was a quiet, almost imperceptible surge of something he could not name, he did however try to remember the feeling. It had earned him a week in the cupboard and his food halved.
Or the time she tried to force him into one of Dudley’s massive sweaters, only for it to shrink until it was child-sized. The wool had felt odd, as he struggled to pull it on, a strange, buzzing energy seeming to crackle against his skin. He had felt a familiar pressure building in his chest, a kind of internal protest, and in that moment, the wool had tightened and shrunk, the threads pulling in on themselves as if in a silent revolt. The most infamous incident was when he somehow ended up on the school kitchen roof while being chased by Dudley’s gang. One moment he was running across the asphalt, the next, he was running on the rooftop, Lungs heaving, completely mystified. It was a jump, was how Dudley and his gang described how harry had gotten there. A burst of wind that knocked them off their feet and lifted him to the roof. The Dursleys, naturally, blamed him for this inexplicable act, their fear of the unknown manifesting as rage.
The zoo was a rare reprieve. He ate his lemon ice lolly, a token of their grudging generosity, and kept a safe distance from Dudley and Piers, who were already bored and looking for a target. The two boys were loud and obnoxious, banging on the glass of the various enclosures, trying to elicit a response from the animals. Harry, on the other hand, felt a strange kinship with the caged creatures. In the reptile house, Dudley and Piers whined, trying to provoke a massive boa constrictor that was fast asleep. "Do something! I need pictures for my Insta!" Dudley whined, rapping his knuckle on the thick glasswhile the light bore down upon the boa. They soon grew bored, put away their smartphones and left. Harry, however, was fascinated. He found a kinship with the slumbering snake, a shared sense of being gawked at and misunderstood.
He stared at the snake, and it winked at him. Harry, in a moment of sheer impulse, winked back. He began a quiet conversation through the glass, a soft, low whisper that felt like a secret shared between the two of them. "Hello, sssir," he whispered, a sound that felt both strange and natural, his breath felt chilled and warm at the same time. The snake, to his shock, moved its head toward a sign that read: "Boa Constrictor, Brazil." Harry asked if it liked it there, and the snake shook its head, pointing to the line that said it was bred in captivity. "You’ve never been to Brazil?" Harry asked, his voice filled with a genuine, heartfelt sympathy. The snake nodded, its black, beady eyes seeming to hold a world of sadness. Just then, a deafening shriek from Piers broke the moment.
"DUDLEY! BRING YOUR PHONE! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE!"
Dudley pushed Harry to the ground and pressed his face against the glass. The next second, the glass had warped and split open. The great snake, now free, slithered past the terrified boys, a low hiss audible only to Harry: "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo."
Piers, in a moment of panicked betrayal, blurted out that Harry had been "talking to it."
Back at Privet Drive, Uncle Vernon was so enraged he could barely speak. He pointed to the cupboard and managed to stammer, "Go—cupboard—stay—no meals." Harry, defeated, retreated to his dark prison.
Lying in the cupboard, Harry tried to make sense of his life. He tried to remember the "car crash" that killed his parents, but all he could recall was a blinding green light and a searing pain on his forehead. It was the "funny business" that haunted him, the strange events that happened around him, the weird strangers who seemed to know him, and the lightning scar that felt both familiar and foreign. He had no one at school, no friends, no allies. His life was a lonely existence of bizarre accidents and constant ridicule. He was an outsider, a mystery even to himself.
And as he lay there, the truth of his life was hidden just out of reach, a secret he was not yet ready to discover.
*
The large metal tub in the sink was filled with what looked like dirty rags swimming in grey, acrid-smelling water. Harry stood over it, a dull ache in his chest. A question formed on his tongue, one that he already knew was forbidden. He turned to Aunt Petunia, whose lips were already drawn into a thin, white line.
"What’s this?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.
"Your new school uniform," she said, as if explaining something simple to a particularly dull child.
Harry looked into the tub again, the grey water swirling, smelling faintly of old socks and chemicals. His stomach twisted. He couldn’t imagine a uniform looking like this.
"Oh," he said. "I didn’t realize it had to be so wet."
Aunt Petunia’s eyes, already as small and hard as dried peas, narrowed to tiny slits. "Don’t be stupid. I’m dyeing some of Dudley’s old things grey for you. It’ll look just like everyone else’s when I’ve finished."
Harry doubted this. The clothes at the bottom of the tub—one of Dudley’s old shirts and a pair of trousers he’d outgrown a month ago—were lumpy and shapeless, as if the grey dye was actively trying to dissolve them. He imagined himself walking into his new school, Stonewall High, wearing the fabric equivalent of old, crumpled elephant skin. He thought it best not to argue. Arguing with Aunt Petunia was like arguing with a brick wall that could shriek. He decided to change the subject.
"Can i go to the library after we take care of the garden?" he held his breath. Aunt Petunia didn't answer, which he took as a win because it wasn't a "no".
He sat down at the table, forcing himself to focus on the worn wood grain, but he couldn't escape the smell. A moment later, Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in. Both wrinkled their noses in unison. The smell of Harry’s new uniform was a tiny, persistent stain on their otherwise perfect morning. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual, its crisp pages a comforting crinkle of normality, and Dudley banged his Smeltings stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table. The dull thud was the soundtrack to their daily lives.
They heard the quiet, polite click of the letter-box and the soft flop of letters on the doormat. It was an ordinary sound, one that happened every day, yet today it felt charged with a strange, foreboding energy.
"Get the post, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper, his voice a low rumble.
"Make Harry get it."
"Get the post, Harry."
"Make Dudley get it."
The words were a meaningless ritual, a game they played every morning. The only difference was the rising irritation in Uncle Vernon’s voice. Harry dodged the stick and went to get the post.
Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon’s sister Marge, who was holidaying on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill and – a letter for Harry.
He picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band that had just been plucked. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. He had no friends, no other relatives he knew of. He didn’t belong to the library so he’d never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:
Mr H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
The words seemed to pulse with an impossible, undeniable weight. The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment. The address was written in emerald-green ink in a flowing, elegant script that seemed to glide effortlessly across the page. There was no stamp, no postmark. It was as if the letter had simply willed itself into existence on their doormat.
Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter ‘H’. The symbol felt ancient, heavy with a kind of power he couldn’t name.
A scuffling sound behind him made Harry glance over his shoulder. Dudley was moving slowly toward the door, his Smeltings stick held low like a weapon. Without a second thought, acting on a sudden, desperate instinct, Harry darted toward his cupboard, which was slightly ajar. Dudley's missed swing had him falling over and yelling. He flicked the letter into his cupboard and snapped the door shut.
"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter-bombs?" He gave a short, humorless chuckle at his own joke.
Harry went back to the kitchen, his heart pounding in his chest. He placed the mail in front of Uncle Vernon. Patunia looked over to harry and snarled, "Boy, come finish the eggs and sausages then you go water the roses in the guargen."
"Yes Aunt Patunia."
Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust and flipped over the postcard. "Marge’s ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk …"
Hours later, long after the Dursleys dismissed him for the night, Harry crept into his cupboard, his mind still fixated on the missing letter. He checked under his pillow, where spiders often made a home after he'd been working in the garden all day, but found nothing but dust motes. He patted down the old, lumpy mattress before giving up. The letter was gone.
A deep, heavy disappointment settled in his stomach. He was sure he had put it in here. He didn't even get to go to the library because he finished his chores too late. He lay down on his bed, the familiar ache in his chest replaced by a profound sense of loss. Reaching up, he pulled the string for the bare light bulb, casting the tiny space in a pale yellow glow.
As he stared at the low ceiling, so close he could touch it, he couldn’t help but wonder who would care enough to write to him. Who could have known he was here? The thought was a small, fragile spark of warmth in the suffocating darkness of his life. He switched off the light and lay back, closing his eyes, and couldn't help but hope, with every ounce of his being, that whoever they were, they would try again.
*
The large metal tub in the sink was filled with what looked like dirty rags swimming in grey, acrid-smelling water. Harry stood over it, a dull ache in his chest. A question formed on his tongue, one that he already knew was forbidden. He THe next morning was a repeat of the day before, Harry waking up to banging on his cupboard, helping with breakfast and being told to get the mail by an angry Patunia this time. He was stunned and a warm feeling spread through him, whoever had sent him his letter from before sent it again. Next to offers about changing internet service and other junk mail, was the same letter from the day before.
Harry went back to the kitchen in a sort of daze and handed Uncle Vernon the junk mail. He sat down and slowly began to open the yellow envelope. He felt a nervous anticipation that made his skin tingle.
"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly, his voice a rare thing to hear when he wasn't demanding something, Harry then remembered why the day before he was trying to hide it. "Dad, Harry’s got something!"
Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon.
"That’s mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back, a furious heat rising in his chest. Mad at himself and Uncle Vernon who sneered, "Who’d be writing to you?" shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from red to the color of ash in seconds. He stared at the page, as if it contained confirmation of the end of the world.
"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped, the name a choked-off whisper.
Dudley, sensing a fight, tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched at her throat and made a choking noise, her eyes wide with a terror Harry had never seen.
"Vernon! Oh my goodness – Vernon!"
They stared at each other, a silent conversation passing between them that Harry could not understand. They seemed to have forgotten that Harry and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn’t used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smeltings stick.
"I want to read that letter," he said loudly.
"I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it’s mine."
"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.
Harry didn’t move. The fury was building in him, a hot, buzzing energy he rarely felt, a pressure behind his eyes.
"I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted, his voice cracking with a fierce demand.
"Let me see it!" demanded Dudley.
"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.
"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, "look at the address – how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don’t think they’re watching the house?"
"Watching – spying – might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly, his voice a raw whisper.
"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back?" Petunia pleaded, her voice rising to a near-shriek. The very idea of engaging with that world made her pale face even whiter. "Tell them we don’t want—we absolutely forbid—"
Harry, pressed against the wall just out of sight of the kitchen entrance, could see the glint of Uncle Vernon’s shiny black leather shoes pacing a frantic, rhythmic path up and down the polished linoleum floor. The pacing was the sound of a man battling a sudden, devastating siege on his perfectly ordered life.
"No," Uncle Vernon announced finally, the single word cutting through the tense air. The fear was still there, but it was now overlaid with a terrifying, icy resolve. His voice, though still quiet, was laced with a chilling finality. "No, we will ignore it. Completely. If they don’t get an answer... if we act as if it never arrived... yes, that’s best... we won’t do anything. We won't acknowledge it exists. We'll simply stamp it out, just as we did for ten long years."
"But, Vernon—the boy—" Petunia started, her hand hovering near the address again, horrified by the implication of such specific knowledge.
"I’m not having one of them in the house, Petunia! Not now, not ever!" Uncle Vernon roared, the whispered resolve snapping into a furious bellow. He stabbed a thick finger toward the ceiling, his face now a dangerous shade of crimson. "Didn’t we swear when we took him in we’d stamp out that... that dangerous nonsense? That cursed, freakish business that took your sister and ruined her life, and then had the audacity to drop him on our doorstep? And now... now it’s here, Petunia! It's found him in his own bed! It's a creeping vine, and we have to cut it off at the root, understand? We will not let them drag him—or us—back into that madness!"
That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he’d never done before; he visited Harry in his cupboard. He squeezed through the door, his face a mask of strained politeness.
"Where’s my letter?" said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. "Who’s writing to me?"
"No one. It was addressed to you by mistake," said Uncle Vernon shortly. "I have burned it."
"It was not a mistake," said Harry angrily. "It had my cupboard on it."
"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He jumped back swatting them off of himself. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.
"Er – yes, Bo- Harry – about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking … you’re really getting a bit big for it … we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley’s second bedroom."
"Why?" said Harry, utterly bewildered by this sudden, strange generosity.
"Don’t ask questions!" snapped his uncle. "Go upstairs, now."
The Dursleys’ house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernon’s sister, Marge), one where Dudley slept, and one where Dudley kept all the toys and little obsessions that wouldn’t fit into his first bedroom. It only took Harry one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room. He sat down on the bed and stared around him. Nearly everything in here was broken.
The month-old iPad Mini was lying on top of a small, working remote-controlled drone Dudley had once crashed into next door’s dog; in the corner was Dudley’s first-ever flat-screen television, which he’d put his foot through when his favorite YouTube channel went on hiatus; there was a large Xbox 360 case which had once held a new game that Dudley had swapped at school for a pair of beat-up Beats by Dre headphones, which were up on a shelf with one of the speakers completely detached because Dudley had sat on them. Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they’d never been touched.
From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother: "I don’t want him in there … I need that room … make him get out …"
Harry sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday he’d have given anything to be up here. Today he’d rather be back in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it. He knew instinctively that this was not a place of comfort, but of strategy. Vernon was trying to make the magic give up.