FicWad

So, because this is the first chapter, I do not own anything related to Harry Potter - well I may have a copy of a certain map - but all rights and reserves belong to JK Rowling. Now on with the story!

“Chapter One: Owl Post” Dumbledore read clearly.

Harry Potter was a highly unusual boy in many ways.

“Well we already knew that,” the twins chimed.

“Shut up,” Harry said half-heartedly.

For one thing, he hated the summer holidays more than any other time of year.

“No Harry! What’s wrong with you?” George sobbed and pretended to faint.

For another, he really wanted to do his homework

Fred gaped like a fish before pretending to pass out next to his brother.

but was forced to do it in secret, in the dead of night. And he also happened to be a wizard.

“You would save that for last,” Hermione remarked.

It was nearly midnight, and he was lying on his stomach in bed, the blankets drawn right over his head like a tent, a flashlight in one hand and a large leather-bound book (A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot)

“You actually read that book?” Ron asked.

“I had to for the homework,” Harry answered defensively.

“Yeah but you actually read…” Ron repeated.

“Just because he was trying to do his work instead of leaving it until the last minute Ron,” Ginny mentioned and Ron went slightly pink.

propped open against the pillow. Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, 'Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless -- discuss.'

“Uh because the Muggles never caught real witches?” Neville offered.

“Actually,” Hermione began but Harry cut her off.

“I think we could go without the history lesson ‘Mione.”

The quill paused at the top of a likely looking paragraph. Harry pushed his round glasses up the bridge of his nose, moved his flashlight closer to the book, and read:
Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognizing it. On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a basic Flame-Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burned so much that she allowed herself to be caught no less than forty-seven times in various disguises.

“Why would anyone enjoy being burned at the stake?” Fred wondered.

“I don’t think any sane person would,” George pointed out and they looked at one another with identical grins.

Harry put his quill between his teeth and reached underneath his pillow for his inkbottle and a roll of parchment. Slowly and very carefully he unscrewed the ink bottle, dipped his quill into it, and began to write, pausing every now and then to listen, because if any of the Dursleys heard the scratching of his quill on their way to the bathroom, he'd probably find himself locked in the cupboard under the stairs for the rest of the summer.

Remus gave a soft growl and Sirius, who had gotten no further in the first book than the first few pages until he fell asleep, was thoroughly confused.

The Dursley family of Number Four, Privet Drive,

“Why do we have to read about them every single book?” Remus groaned, sensing that a brief summary of the past two years would soon be following.

was the reason that Harry never enjoyed his summer holidays. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and their son, Dudley, were Harry's only living relatives. They were Muggles, and they had a very medieval attitude toward magic. Harry's dead parents, who had been a witch and wizard themselves, were never mentioned under the Dursleys' roof. For years, Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had hoped that if they kept Harry as downtrodden as possible, they would be able to squash the magic out of him.

“Never going to happen.” Ron said smugly. The idea of Harry without magic was…well…ridiculous.

To their fury, they had not been unsuccessful. These days they lived in terror of anyone finding out that Harry had spent most of the last two years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The most they could do, however, was to lock away Harry's spell books, wand, cauldron, and broomstick at the start of the summer break, and forbid him to talk to the neighbors.

“Petunia should have known that you had summer work,” Remus muttered under his breath.

And that is exactly why they were locked away, Snape thought grimly.

This separation from his spell books had been a real problem for Harry, because his teachers at Hogwarts had given him a lot of holiday work. One of the essays, a particularly nasty one about shrinking potions, was for Harry's least favorite teacher, Professor Snape, who would be delighted to have an excuse to give Harry detention for a month.

Judging by the sneer on his face, Harry took his assumption about Snape to be right.

Harry had therefore seized his chance in the first week of the holidays. While Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley had gone out into the front garden to admire Uncle Vernon's new company car (in very loud voices, so that the rest of the street would notice it too), Harry had crept downstairs, picked the lock on the cupboard under the stairs,

“Told you that would be useful,” George said happily.

“Yup one of the best things I’ve ever learned.” Harry added.

“You know, most people wouldn’t consider knowing how to pick locks a good thing to learn,” Sirius pointed out.

“You did.” Remus said with a roll of his eyes.

“Well that’s different.”

“Of course it is.”

grabbed some of his books, and hidden them in his bedroom. As long as he didn't leave spots of ink on the sheets, the Dursleys need never know that he was studying magic by night.
Harry was particularly keen to avoid trouble with his aunt and uncle at the moment, as they were already in an especially bad mood with him,

“Oh no,” Remus groaned. “What happened now?”

“Ron happened.” Harry said teasingly to his friend, who blushed a bright red.

“I apologized for that you know!” Ron defended and Harry smirked.

“Yes you did but its still fun to annoy you with it.”

all because he'd received a telephone call from a fellow wizard one week into the school vacation.
Ron Weasley, who was one of Harry's best friends at Hogwarts, came from a whole family of wizards. This meant that he knew a lot of things Harry didn't, but had never used a telephone before. Most unluckily, it had been Uncle Vernon who had answered the call.

“Oh this should be good,” Remus commented and Fred and George, who had been there for the call laughed.

"Vernon Dursley speaking."
Harry, who happened to be in the room at the time, froze as he heard Ron's voice answer.

“Wait a minute. You were in the room, not on the telephone so you shouldn’t have heard his answer.” Sirius mused.

“You know what a telephone is?” Harry inquired.

“Yup, I took Muggle Studies to annoy my mum,” Sirius answered happily.

“You actually paid attention though?” Remus said in amazement.

“Of course I did,” Sirius said in a ‘what are you dumb?’ kind of tone. “It wouldn’t have annoyed her if I didn’t get a good grade in it.”

"HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? I -- WANT -- TO -- TALK -- TO -- HARRY -- POTTER!"
Ron was yelling so loudly that Uncle Vernon jumped and held the receiver a foot away from his ear, staring at it with an expression of mingled fury and alarm.
"WHO IS THIS?" he roared in the direction of the mouthpiece. "WHO ARE YOU?"
"RON -- WEASLEY!" Ron bellowed back, as though he and Uncle Vernon were speaking from opposite ends of a football field.

“Muggle thing,” Hermione answered quickly.

“That’s the thing were they play that game that Dean is always talking about right?” Ron asked and Hermione sighed.

“Yes Ronald. You play football in a football stadium.”

"I'M -- A -- FRIEND -- OF -- HARRY'S -- FROM -- SCHOOL --"
Uncle Vernon's small eyes swiveled around to Harry, who was rooted to the spot.
"THERE IS NO HARRY POTTER HERE!" he roared, now holding the receiver at arm's length, as though frightened it might explode.

“You know,” George whispered to his twin. “We are getting some really good ideas from these books.”

“Yeah,” Fred whispered back. “We should hire Harry and just let him think all day, we’d probably get some really good stuff.”

"I DON'T KNOW WHAT SCHOOL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN! DON'T YOU COME NEAR MY FAMILY!"
And he threw the receiver back onto the telephone as if dropping a poisonous spider.

Ron shivered, as did a few others who were recalling the incident with Aragog the previous day.

The fight that had followed had been one of the worst ever.
"HOW DARE YOU GIVE THIS NUMBER TO PEOPLE LIKE -- PEOPLE LIKE YOU!" Uncle Vernon had roared, spraying Harry with spit.

“Eww.” Ginny, Hermione, and Luna all wrinkled their noses in disgust.

Ron obviously realized that he'd gotten Harry into trouble, because he hadn't called again. Harry's other best friend from Hogwarts, Hermione Granger, hadn't been in touch either. Harry suspected that Ron had warned Hermione not to call, which was a pity, because Hermione, the cleverest witch in Harry's year, had Muggle parents, knew perfectly well how to use a telephone, and would probably have had enough sense not to say that she went to Hogwarts.

“So glad you think that,” Hermione sighed.

“I meant it in a good way!” Harry defended.

“I know you did,” she said with a small smile.

So Harry had had no word from any of his wizarding friends for five long weeks, and this summer was turning out to be almost as bad as the last one.

“Except for the bars, the locks, and the crazy elf,” Remus stated and a few seconds later he received a slight hit to the back of the head from Hermione. “Would you stop doing that?” He asked her.

“When you stop being mean to Dobby.” She replied innocently.

“Shut up,” Remus snapped at Sirius who was trying not to laugh.

“Who me?”

“Yes you.”

There was just one very small improvement -- after swearing that he wouldn't use her to send letters to any of his friends, Harry had been allowed to let his owl, Hedwig, out at night.

“Good.” Luna said firmly.

Uncle Vernon had given in because of the racket Hedwig made if she was locked in her cage all the time.
*]
[* Harry finished writing about Wendelin the Weird and paused to listen again. The silence in the dark house was broken only by the distant, grunting snores of his enormous cousin, Dudley.

“He cant be enormous, he’s only what… a year older than you?” Sirius wondered.

Harry looked at him. “You haven’t read the first book yet have you?”

Sirius shook his head.

“Well, to answer your question, yes he can. I told you about the diet last summer right?”

“Yeah but you just said it was just because your Aunt had gone mad.”

“Actually it was because Dudley had gotten so big to the point where the school he goes to no longer sold trousers to fit him.”

It must be very late, Harry thought. His eyes were itching with tiredness. Perhaps he'd finish this essay tomorrow night...

“Good, you shouldn’t be doing work so late,” Mrs. Weasley said reprovingly.

He replaced the top of the ink bottle; pulled an old pillowcase from under his bed; put the flashlight, A History of Magic, his essay, quill, and ink inside it; got out of bed; and hid the lot under a loose floorboard under his bed. Then he stood up, stretched, and checked the time on the luminous alarm clock on his bedside table.
It was one o'clock in the morning. Harry's stomach gave a funny jolt. He had been thirteen years old, without realizing it, for a whole hour.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!” Fred, George, and Sirius all shouted, causing Remus to jump.

“You couldn’t have waited a few months could you?” Harry asked them with a smile.

“Nope,” the twins answered, popping the ‘p’.

Yet another unusual thing about Harry was how little he looked forward to his birthdays. He had never received a birthday card in his life.

“You should have,” Remus said, glaring slightly at Dumbledore, who was pointedly ignoring the werewolf’s glare.

The Dursleys had completely ignored his last two birthdays, and he had no reason to suppose they would remember this one.
Harry walked across the dark room, past Hedwig's large, empty cage, to the open window. He leaned on the sill, the cool night air pleasant on his face after a long time under the blankets. Hedwig had been absent for two nights now.

Hermione smiled, knowing exactly where Hedwig had gone and what she was bringing back.

Harry wasn't worried about her: she'd been gone this long before. But he hoped she'd be back soon -- she was the only living creature in this house who didn't flinch at the sight of him.
Harry, though still rather small and skinny for his age, had grown a few inches over the last year. His jet-black hair, however, was just as it always had been -- stubbornly untidy, whatever he did to it.

“Yeah James could never get it to work, no matter what Lily did to it,” Sirius said fondly.

“Remember the potion before Christmas?” Remus said and they both burst out laughing.

“He wouldn’t go in public for weeks!” Sirius got out into between laughter.

The eyes behind his glasses were bright green, and on his forehead, clearly visible through his hair, was a thin scar, shaped like a bolt of lightning.
Of all the unusual things about Harry,

“And that list is quite long,” Ron intoned.

“Thanks mate.”

“Anytime.”

this scar was the most extraordinary of all. It was not, as the Dursleys had pretended for ten years, a souvenir of the car crash that had killed Harry's parents,

“What!?” Sirius yelled. “They said what?”

“If you had read the first book you would already know about this,” Remus growled, angry at the reminder of what the Dursleys had told Harry and of how they had treated him.

because Lily and James Potter had not died in a car crash. They had been murdered, murdered by the most feared Dark wizard for a hundred years, Lord Voldemort.

Remus and Sirius bowed their heads, their hands trembling as they remember what happened in this book, how the filthy traitor got away…

Harry had escaped from the same attack with nothing more than a scar on his forehead,

“Not true,” Remus whispered softly. Harry had gotten much more than a scar that night.

where Voldemort's curse, instead of killing him, had rebounded upon its originator. Barely alive, Voldemort had fled...
But Harry had come face-to-face with him at Hogwarts. Remembering their last meeting as he stood at the dark window, Harry had to admit he was lucky even to have reached his thirteenth birthday.

“Honestly, I don’t know whether you have the best luck or the worst luck of anyone I have ever met,” Neville mused.

“I like to think about it as having bad luck but then getting an insane amount of good luck when I need it the most,” Harry said casually.

He scanned the starry sky for a sign of Hedwig, perhaps soaring back to him with a dead mouse dangling from her beak, expecting praise.

“How about a dead rat?” Sirius grumbled and Remus nodded in agreement.

Gazing absently over the rooftops, it was a few seconds before Harry realized what he was seeing.
Silhouetted against the golden moon, and growing larger every moment, was a large, strangely lopsided creature, and it was flapping in Harry's direction. He stood quite still, watching it sink lower and lower. For a split second he hesitated, his hand on the window latch, wondering whether to slam it shut. But then the bizarre creature soared over one of the street lamps of Privet Drive, and Harry, realizing what it was, leapt aside.

“What was it?” Luna asked interestedly.

Through the window soared three owls,

“Ah,” Luna said with a dreamy smile.

two of them holding up the third, which appeared to be unconscious. They landed with a soft flump on Harry's bed, and the middle owl, which was large and gray, keeled right over and lay motionless. There was a large package tied to its legs.

“Errol,” all the Weasleys groaned. How that owl had lived so long was beyond all of them.

Harry recognized the unconscious owl at once -- his name was Errol, and he belonged to the Weasley family.

“Unfortunately,” Ron grumbled.

“But would you rather have Errol or Pig?” Harry asked.

Ron thought for a moment. “I don’t know, they’re both bloody annoying.”

“Ronald! Language!” Mrs. Weasley scolded.

Harry dashed to the bed, untied the cords around Errol's legs, took off the parcel, and then carried Errol to Hedwig's cage. Errol opened one bleary eye, gave a feeble hoot of thanks, and began to gulp some water.
Harry turned back to the remaining owls. One of them, the large snowy female, was his own Hedwig. She, too, was carrying a parcel and looked extremely pleased with herself. She gave Harry an affectionate nip with her beak as he removed her burden, then flew across the room to join Errol.
Harry didn't recognize the third owl, a handsome tawny one, but he knew at once where it had come from, because in addition to a third package, it was carrying a letter bearing the Hogwarts crest. When Harry relieved this owl of its burden, it ruffled its feathers importantly,

“Sounds like a Percy owl,” George stage whispered and all those who could hear glanced up at Percy and smiled in amusement.

stretched its wings, and took off through the window into the night.
Harry sat down on his bed and grabbed Errol's package, ripped off the brown paper, and discovered a present wrapped in gold and his first ever birthday card.

“Yes! And it was from me!” Ron cheered happily.

Fingers trembling slightly, he opened the envelope. Two pieces of paper fell out -- a letter and a newspaper clipping.
The clipping had clearly come out of the wizarding newspaper, the Daily Prophet, because the people in the black-and-white picture were moving. Harry picked up the clipping, smoothed it out, and read:
MINISTRY OF MAGIC EMPLOYEE SCOOPS GRAND PRIZE
Arthur Weasley, Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office at the Ministry of Magic, has won the annual Daily Prophet Grand Prize Galleon Draw.
A delighted Mr. Weasley told the Daily Prophet, "We will be spending the gold on a summer holiday in Egypt, where our eldest son, Bill, works as a curse breaker for Gringotts Wizarding Bank."
The Weasley family will be spending a month in Egypt, returning for the start of the new school year at Hogwarts, which five of the Weasley children currently attend.

Harry scanned the moving photograph, and a grin spread across his face as he saw all nine of the Weasleys waving furiously at him, standing in front of a large pyramid. Plump little Mrs. Weasley; tall, balding Mr. Weasley; six sons; and one daughter, all (though the black-and-white picture didn't show it) with flaming-red hair. Right in the middle of the picture was Ron, tall and gangling, with his pet rat, Scabbers,

Though he was glaring darkly at the book, Sirius couldn’t help but smile slightly. If it hadn’t been for that picture… he put his arm around his godson who seemed surprised but didn’t pull away.

on his shoulder and his arm around his little sister, Ginny.
Harry couldn't think of anyone who deserved to win a large pile of gold more than the Weasleys, who were very nice and extremely poor. He picked up Ron's letter and unfolded it.
Dear Harry,
Happy birthday!
Look, I'm really sorry about that telephone call. I hope the Muggles didn't give you a hard time.

“What were you expecting to happen?” Neville asked.

“Well honestly, I never really thought they were that bad,” Ron defended.

I asked Dad, and he reckons I shouldn't have shouted.

The twins exchanged looks. “You think?”

It's amazing here in Egypt. Bill's taken us around all the tombs and you wouldn't believe the curses those old Egyptian wizards put on them. Mum wouldn't let Ginny come in the last one. There were all these mutant skeletons in there, of Muggles who'd broken in and grown extra heads and stuff.

Ginny smiled happily. “Fred and George showed me pictures. It wasn’t all that bad.”

I couldn't believe it when Dad won the Daily Prophet Draw. Seven hundred galleons! Most of it's gone on this trip, but they're going to buy me a new wand for next year.

“Thank goodness,” Ron sighed.

“Yeah you probably wouldn’t have survived another year with the old one,” Harry agreed.

Harry remembered only too well the occasion when Ron's old wand had snapped. It had happened when the car the two of them had been flying to Hogwarts had crashed into a tree on the school grounds.

“You make it seem so casual,” Hermione muttered.

We'll be back about a week before term starts and we'll be going up to London to get my wand and our new books. Any chance of meeting you there?
Don't let the Muggles get you down!
Try and come to London,
Ron
P.S. Percy's Head Boy. He got the letter last week.
Harry glanced back at the photograph. Percy, who was in his seventh and final year at Hogwarts, was looking particularly smug.

“Urgh, I am so glad James never turned out to be that kind of Head Boy,” Sirius said, making a disgusted face. “By the way,” he turned to Dumbledore and McGonagall. “How’d he become Head Boy in the first place? Don’t you have to be a Prefect first? And the smartest Prefect was…” He trailed off and looked over at Remus who was whistling innocently.

“Carry on sir,” Remus said after mouthing ‘I’ll tell you later’ to Sirius.

He had pinned his Head Boy badge to the fez perched jauntily on top of his neat hair, his horn-rimmed glasses flashing in the Egyptian sun.
Harry now turned to his present and unwrapped it. Inside was what looked like a miniature glass spinning top. There was another note from Ron beneath it.
Harry -- this is a Pocket Sneakoscope. If there's someone untrustworthy around, it's supposed to light up and spin. Bill says it's rubbish sold for wizard tourists and isn't reliable, because it kept lighting up at dinner last night. But he didn't realize Fred and George had put beetles in his soup.

Said people laughed at the memory. “That was great!” Fred laughed.

“Especially when he caught the first one!” George agreed.

Bye -- Ron
Harry put the Pocket Sneakoscope on his bedside table, where it stood quite still, balanced on its point, reflecting the luminous hands of his clock. He looked at it happily for a few seconds, then picked up the parcel Hedwig had brought.
Inside this, too, there was a wrapped present, a card, and a letter, this time from Hermione.
*]
[*Dear Harry,
Ron wrote to me and told me about his phone call to your Uncle Vernon. I do hope you're all right.
I'm on holiday in France at the moment and I didn't know how I was going to send this to you -- what if they'd opened it at customs? -- but then Hedwig turned up! I think she wanted to make sure you got something for your birthday for a change.

“She cares a lot about you,” Luna sighed happily.

“Yeah she does,” Harry agreed. He didn’t know what he would do without Hedwig.

I bought your present by owl-order; there was an advertisement in the Daily Prophet (I've been getting it delivered; it's so good to keep up with what's going on in the wizarding world), Did you see that picture of Ron and his family a week ago? I bet he's learning loads. I'm really jealous -- the ancient Egyptian wizards were fascinating.
There's some interesting local history of witchcraft here, too. I've rewritten my whole History of Magic essay to include some of the things I've found out, I hope it's not too long -- it's two rolls of parchment more than Professor Binns asked for.

“How on Earth could you write two rolls of parchment more than the requirement?” Remus asked her bemused.

“There was a lot of interesting facts that I wanted to include!” Hermione protested.

Ron says he's going to be in London in the last week of the holidays. Can you make it? Will your aunt and uncle let you come? I really hope you can. If not, I'll see you on the Hogwarts Express on September first!
Love from
Hermione
P.S. Ron says Percy's Head Boy. I'll bet Percy's really pleased. Ron doesn't seem too happy about it.

“Understatement to both of those,” Ron said.

Harry laughed as he put Hermione's letter aside and picked up her present. It was very heavy. Knowing Hermione, he was sure it would be a large book full of very difficult spells

“I am not that predictable!”

Harry and Ron shifted guiltily and Hermione huffed.

-- but it wasn't. His heart gave a huge bound as he ripped back the paper and saw a sleek black leather case, with silver words stamped across it, reading Broomstick Servicing Kit.

“Wow,” all the Quidditch players and fans alike breathed. Fred and George were practically drooling.

"Wow, Hermione!" Harry whispered, unzipping the case to look inside.
There was a large jar of Fleetwood's High-Finish Handle Polish, a pair of gleaming silver Tail-Twig Clippers, a tiny brass compass to clip on your broom for long journeys, and a Handbook of Do-It-Yourself Broomcare.
Apart from his friends, the thing that Harry missed most about Hogwarts was Quidditch, the most popular sport in the magical world

“The only sport in the magical world,” Remus corrected.

-- highly dangerous, very exciting, and played on broomsticks. Harry happened to be a very good Quidditch player;

“Or the best Quidditch player Hogwarts has ever seen,” Ginny added rolling her eyes.

“Oh come on, I’m not that good!” Harry said, blushing slightly.

“You’re right mate,” Ron said seriously. “You aren’t that good. You’re better.”

“Your father would be so jealous that his son is a better player than he could ever be,” Sirius chuckled.

he had been the youngest person in a century to be picked for one of the Hogwarts House teams. One of Harry's most prized possessions was his Nimbus Two Thousand racing broom.

“Nope, it’s my Firebolt.” Harry amended, giving Sirius a smile.

Harry put the leather case aside and picked up his last parcel. He recognized the untidy scrawl on the brown paper at once: this was from Hagrid, the Hogwarts gamekeeper. He tore off the top layer of paper and glimpsed something green and leathery, but before he could unwrap it properly, the parcel gave a strange quiver, and whatever was inside it snapped loudly -- as though it had jaws.

“I hated those things,” Neville mumbled, remembering all the accidents he had with those books that year.

Harry froze. He knew that Hagrid would never send him anything dangerous on purpose, but then, Hagrid didn't have a normal person's view of what was dangerous. Hagrid had been known to befriend giant spiders, buy vicious, three-headed dogs from men in pubs, and sneak illegal dragon eggs into his cabin.

“Quite the track record, wouldn’t you agree Minister?” Umbridge broke in, speaking for the first time.

“I believe you will find Dolores, that no evidence of any of those activities can be proven and we have only the word of Mr. Potter, who you believe to be a compulsive liar, so clearly his testimony isn’t worth much.” McGonagall snapped.

Harry smiled. That was the first time he had ever been glad to have been called a liar.

Harry poked the parcel nervously. It snapped loudly again. Harry reached for the lamp on his bedside table, gripped it firmly in one hand, and raised it over his head, ready to strike.

“Help us!” George cried in a high pitched voice.

“Harry Potter is going to attack us with a lamp!” Fred continued in the same voice.

“No, but he will attack you with a pillow if you don’t shut up,” Harry said with a smirk that made them both shut up immediately.

“Why do you never do that for me?” Ron moaned.

Then he seized the rest of the wrapping paper in his other hand and pulled.
And out fell -- a book. Harry just had time to register its handsome green cover, emblazoned with the golden title The Monster Book of Monsters, before it flipped onto its edge and scuttled sideways along the bed like some weird crab.
"Uh-oh," Harry muttered.

“Uh-oh is right,” Neville agreed.

The book toppled off the bed with a loud clunk and shuffled rapidly across the room. Harry followed it stealthily. The book was hiding in the dark space under his desk. Praying that the Dursleys were still fast asleep, Harry got down on his hands and knees and reached toward it.
"Ouch!"
The book snapped shut on his hand and then flapped past him, still scuttling on its covers. Harry scrambled around, threw himself forward, and managed to flatten it. Uncle Vernon gave a loud, sleepy grunt in the room next door.
Hedwig and Errol watched interestedly as Harry clamped the struggling book tightly in his arms, hurried to his chest of drawers, and pulled out a belt, which he buckled tightly around it. The Monster Book shuddered angrily, but could no longer flap and snap, so Harry threw it down on the bed and reached for Hagrid's card.
Dear Harry,
Happy Birthday!
Think you might find this useful for next year. Won't say no more here. Tell you when I see you.
Hope the Muggles are treating you right.
All the best,
Hagrid
It struck Harry as ominous that Hagrid thought a biting book would come in useful,

“No, I would call that perfectly normal,” Sirius remarked.

but he put Hagrid's card up next to Ron's and Hermione's, grinning more broadly than ever. Now there was only the letter from Hogwarts left.
Noticing that it was rather thicker than usual, Harry slit open the envelope, pulled out the first page of parchment within, and read:

Dear Mr. Potter,
Please note that the new school year will begin on September the first. The Hogwarts Express will leave from King's Cross station, platform nine and three-quarters, at eleven o'clock.
Third years are permitted to visit the village of Hogsmeade on certain weekends. Please give the enclosed permission form to your parent or guardian to sign.
A list of books for next year is enclosed.
Yours sincerely,
Professor M. McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
Harry pulled out the Hogsmeade permission form and looked at it, no longer grinning. It would be wonderful to visit Hogsmeade on weekends; he knew it was an entirely wizarding village,

“How’d you know that?” Ron asked and Harry shrugged.

“I do read sometimes you know, not like Hermione level, but a bit.”

“Hermione-level?” Said girl repeated and Harry gulped.

Neville chuckled. “Guess we know who runs the Trio,” he whispered to Ginny who giggled.

and he had never set foot there. But how on earth was he going to persuade Uncle Vernon or Aunt Petunia to sign the form?
He looked over at the alarm clock. It was now two o'clock in the morning.

“You really should go to bed dear,” Mrs. Weasley said.

“Don’t worry Mrs. Weasley, I do,” Harry informed her.

Deciding that he'd worry about the Hogsmeade form when he woke up, Harry got back into bed and reached up to cross off another day on the chart he'd made for himself, counting down the days left until his return to Hogwarts. Then he took off his glasses and lay down; eyes open, facing his three birthday cards.
Extremely unusual though he was, at that moment Harry Potter felt just like everyone else -- glad, for the first time in his life, that it was his birthday.

Dumbledore sighed heavily in his mind. If he had known how Harry would be treated at his Aunt and Uncle’s…but there was nothing he could about that now. He could only hope to fix it in the future.

“That is the end of the chapter,” he announced. “Severus, I believe it is your turn to read now.”

Snape opened his mouth, probably to protest, but closed it when he saw the stern look the Headmaster was giving him. So, with a heavy sigh and two glares, one to Potter and the other to the Headmaster, Snape took the book warily.