Categories > Books > Harry Potter > The Nightmare Before Hogwarts
The Nightmare Before Hogwarts
By: USA Tiger
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the property of Touchstone/Disney and Tim Burton. Corpse Bride is also the property of Tim Burton and Warner Bros. Pictures. Beetlejuice is also property of Tim Burton.
Author note: Worry for the wait, there was a bit of being sick going around but I’ve got most of chapter 12 done and 13 is mostly plotted out in my head.
This chapter has been betaed by Werejaguar of Halloween Town
Edit 5-24-18: This chapter betaed a second time by The Patient One.
Chapter 11
For days after Harry’s disappearance, Petunia was constantly looking over her shoulder as she was adamantly convinced that wizards were going to appear out of nowhere and ask her where her nephew had gone. Yet as the days went by...nothing happened. No robe-wearing, wand-wielding freaks, no letters delivered by ruddy birds, nothing. Vernon was completely relaxed about the whole thing, taking the absence of any “freakish activity” as a good sign.
Their neighbors didn’t question them, either; they didn’t even seem to notice that they were one person short in their house. Those who did notice were the ladies that Petunia had over to afternoon tea and a game of Bridge, and they all believed Petunia when she said that a distant cousin of hers offered to take the troublesome boy in. The ladies even sympathized with her, saying how good it was that the little hoodlum was someone else’s problem now and they hoped this cousin could bring the boy under control.
The school didn’t even question her when Petunia had gone to tell them Harry would no longer be attending classes, telling them the same lie about the mysterious cousin. Instead, they had offered to make copies of Harry’s school records, not that there were very many as Harry had only been attending Year 1 of Primary, never going to Nursery or Reception like Dudley had. Petunia had forced a smile on her face and accepted the copies, promising to send them to her ‘cousin’. Those copies had gone into the bin as soon as she got home.
Dudley seemed to be the only one who was upset by Harry being gone, not out of any love for the younger boy—heavens, no—but because he now didn’t have someone to always pick on anymore.
Yet, despite Petunia’s fears, nothing happened even as the days turned into weeks. Things were calm and normal around the house, everything was as it should have been. It was a bit of a hassle to start doing all the chores and cooking again, but as Harry had just barely started doing those, it wasn’t hard for Petunia to get back into the swing of things.
A sigh escaped Petunia as she sat at her kitchen table, trying to relax with a nice cup of tea.
“Maybe Vernon is right,” Petunia mused to herself. “If nothing has happened by now, then maybe those freaks really don’t care about the boy.”
She startled as sudden banging sounds came from somewhere in her kitchen, making her drop her cup of tea. The cup shattered as it hit the table, spilling tea all over the surface and on Petunia. She cursed, using words she learned in her youth in Cokeworth that she would never utter where anyone could hear her as she pushed back from the table, scowling at the mess. Letting out a huff of annoyance, Petunia stepped away from the table to grab a kitchen towel to clean the mess up and wondered what in the world that noise was.
“It had to be a mouse, it likely knocked something over in the cupboard,” she told herself. “I’ll have Vernon call pest control in the morning.”
When Petunia turned back to the table, she let out a little startled scream and dropped the towel as her hands raised to her mouth. Her tea cup was no longer shattered into tiny pieces, instead, it sat upright in the middle of the puddle of tea as perfectly whole looking as ever. With trembling fingers, Petunia picked it up and examined the cup looking for any sign that it had been broken, but could find not a single chip or crack anywhere on the ceramic.
“I-It must have been my imagination,” Petunia stammered as she quickly put the cup down into the sink then picked up the towel from the floor and wiped the table clean. When she turned back again she paused, eyes wide, when she saw the tea cup sitting on the countertop instead of inside the sink. She shook her head, blond locks bouncing with the motion, and quickly thought to herself she must have placed it on the counter instead of the sink. After all, things don’t move by themselves! Or repair themselves!
“Just my imagination,” Petunia repeated to herself nervously as she turned away and left the kitchen to sit in the lounge instead, dropping the kitchen towel in the bin on the way out.
“Aunt Petunia?”
She stopped, her breath stuck in her throat and eyes wide as she slowly turned to look at the cupboard under the stairs. She had to be hearing things, the boy was gone! He couldn’t be calling her name!
“No. No no no, I’ve just had a stressful day,” she said to herself as she turned away and went into the lounge, sitting in her favorite chair. She took a deep breath and forced herself to lean back and relax. Dudley would be home in a few hours, she would have to make sure his afterschool snack was ready for him. That’s what she needed to concentrate on, her Dudders.
“Aunt Petunia? Please, can’t I come out?” the voice seemed to drift from the hall right into her ears. Petunia just sat there, eyes shut tight and mind racing in denial.
“I promise to be good, please let me out.” This went on for a few more minutes, Harry’s voice pleading to her, trail off after a minute or so and then starting again just as she started to relax. Petunia finally broke and sprang up, grabbing the phone and dialing Vernon’s office number.
An invisible James laughed to himself as he watched a panicked Petunia tell Vernon that she swore she heard ‘the boy’ speaking inside the cupboard, but couldn’t bring herself to open it. He could faintly hear Vernon’s voice on the other end trying to calm her down.
He would have been there a lot sooner to start his revenge against his in-laws, but between getting their new home set up, getting Harry settled, and practicing his new powers, James only recently had found the time. There were still things to do, he hadn’t yet tried entering his old family house to see if it was possible.
James had tried to remember all the things Peeves would do while tormenting anyone at Hogwarts, and so far turning invisible was his most useful talent since he didn’t have the family cloak. Speaking of, James wondered what happened to it. He had leant it to Dumbledore during the war as a way to help out since he was out of the fighting once he went into hiding with his family. So it was possible, and more than likely, that his old Headmaster still had it.
It should have been placed in Harry’s trust vault so he could retrieve it when he turned 11, just as James had when he started Hogwarts. But the man hadn’t even followed his and Lily’s wills since he placed Harry with the Dursleys, so why would he put the family cloak where it needed to be?
Getting back to the matter at hand, James had practiced and tested out what new abilities he had. Harry delighted in watching James work his magic and it always brought a smile to his face at how happy Harry was by it. James honestly wasn’t sure just how he was a poltergeist now as everybody in the wizarding world knew that poltergeists were immortal, meaning they were never a living person to begin with unlike other ghosts. Or at least that’s what everyone believed anyway, now James wondered how much of that was true.
Either way, it gave him the perfect way to enact his revenge on the Dursleys, starting small for now. It was fun to see Petunia panic over the tea cup and the sounds he made come out of the cupboard. While Petunia was on the phone, James silently turned all the photos on the mantel above the fireplace upside down. Petunia didn’t notice the difference as she sat down again, twisting her skirt in her lap, and flinching when James made Harry’s voice come from the cupboard again.
‘Okay then, I’ll just have to get her undivided attention,’ James thought, nudging a frame to the edge then letting gravity take over so the frame hit the floor. Petunia screamed and jumped at the sudden sound, whipping around to look at the source.
“How…” Petunia asked herself as she stood and went over to pick up the photo. She relaxed slightly as she found that neither the frame nor the glass was broken as she reached up to place the baby photo of her son back on the mantel. It was when her eyes swept the rest of the mantel that her face instantly paled as she saw that every frame was upside-down. Frantically, she began righting them so they stood the correct way.
“Aunt Petunia,” Harry’s voice pleaded again and Petunia covered her ears.
“Shut up!” she howled, eyes screwed shut and her hands still covering her ears.
‘Wow, I barely started and she’s already cracking,’ James thought with amusement as he leaned against the wall and let the sound bleed out of the room. He had to see if he could get a pensieve, another thing he hoped might be in his old family home, so he could show Lily. Petunia had finally realized it was quiet again and moved to sit in her chair. James considered starting with the sounds again but held off for now, he didn’t want Petunia to crack too soon after all. For now he left her and decided to get a good look around the house.
The house was horribly boring, just so… so Muggle-looking. That didn’t really surprise him all that much, not after everything Lily told him about her sister growing up. Petunia wanted to be the opposite of Lily. Lily had been a talented witch so Petunia went for being a boring housewife.
Looking around upstairs not only bored him, it ticked him off, they had bloody four rooms up there! One was obviously Vernon and Petunia’s room, then there was a spare bedroom, and a bedroom that had to belong to the youngest Dursley. It was filled to the brim with junk! And then he peeked into the last room…
“And I thought I had been spoiled,” James murmured, shaking his head in distaste when he saw even more junk, most of it trash or things that didn’t hold Dudley’s attention it seemed. Yet for some reason there was a shoddy looking bed, desk, and wardrobe in the room… his anger peaked, and it was a credit to how much he had been practicing his new powers that nothing began shaking.
“You have four rooms in this house, and you make my son sleep in a damn cupboard...” he whispered hatefully.
Forcing his anger down by reminding himself he was avenging his son with his pranks, James considered the fourth room for a moment. Shrugging his shoulders as he came to a conclusion, he started to look through the mess; if the stuff was in this room then obviously the little porker didn’t want any of it. Lily might not wholly approve of James taking the stuff but the way he saw it, it was payback for not providing Harry with even the most basic human necessities. Reducing him to a level of care even beneath that of a House Elf!
After sifting for a few minutes, he found that the vast majority of the junk consisted of toys that had been heavily damaged. Aside from that, he found some books that looked like they had never been opened, kiddy art sets that were either as untouched as the books or barely used, and some toys that were less damaged than the rest; a few repair charms would have them good as new. James finished sorting the rejected possessions, transfigured a wooden block into a box, and then shrunk all of the items he picked out for Harry and placed them inside.
As he turned to leave, James did a double-take as something on the bed caught his eye. He picked up the ratty-looking blanket that was half-wedged behind the bed and confirmed his suspicions: it was Harry’s blanket, the one that he would sleep with when he was a baby, right down to the monogrammed initials on one corner. Without a second thought, he stowed the blanket into the box; he and Lily would fix it up as good as new for Harry as soon as he returned home.
He scanned the room once more, not wanting to miss anything else that might have come from Godric’s Hollow. The wardrobe held numerous garments, all of which had clearly been Dudley’s before he outgrew them; most had rips in conspicuous places. The inside of the desk was nasty, every drawer filled with empty candy wrappers and dirty napkins. And though an extra bit of searching let him find a loose floorboard in the room that would make an ideal hiding place, he was unsurprised to find the compartment bare. If his Prongslet had that room, he’d be bound to use that…
James blinked as he thought that, and made a mental note to check their house for similar compartments. Then he left the room, having no doubt that what he took would go unnoticed. He paused on his way back downstairs as he heard a car driving up. A glance out the window revealed Vernon, looking fatter than ever, sitting behind the wheel.
James grinned from ear to ear and hurried back downstairs to ‘play’ with Petunia again.
*****
Petunia sat on the edge of her seat waiting for Vernon to get home. She hadn’t heard the boy’s voice from the cupboard again, but still couldn’t bring herself to look inside. When she heard a car drive up, Petunia snapped her gaze to the window and gave a sigh of relief when she saw her husband. Vernon would fix this whole mess.
As Petunia stood to go open the door and greet her husband, she heard once again, “Aunt Petunia, please let me out. It’s dark in here.” Followed by a thump on the cupboard door. She screamed loudly which had Vernon running into the house, huffing and puffing like an overheated walrus.
“Petunia? What’s wrong, Pet?” Vernon said as he tried to calm his wife down.
“The cupboard! The boy is in the cupboard!” Petunia wailed hectically, covering her face with her hands. Vernon puffed up in anger then stomped over to the cupboard door, throwing it open.
Inside was nothing but the cleaning utensils they had put there after cleaning the boy’s stuff out. Most of it had been binned sans the mattress and the blanket, which had been returned to Dudley’s second bedroom where they belonged.
“Pet, see, come here,” Vernon said as he motioned for Petunia to come over. “See, the boy isn’t here. No one is here but you.”
“But… but, Vernon, I heard him,” Petunia said, looking inside the cupboard. Her husband was right, there was no one there.
“There, there, Petunia,” Vernon said as he closed the door. “I think the stress of worrying about those people is getting to you. I think you need a nice cuppa, maybe we should get out of the house for the weekend. Just me, you and Duds for a little weekend trip.” He guided Petunia into the other room while the invisible and silent James watched with wicked glee. With Vernon and Petunia distracted, James set up a few very minor pranking charms: one to make banging and rattling sounds in the cupboard, one to tap on random windows, and one to make it sound like water was dripping in the master bath when it wasn’t.
He would come back and magnify the spells later, but his fun had just begun; right now, he would let Petunia have time to settle down again. No need to break her yet after all, and Vernon’s time would come as well. Grinning maliciously at a job well done, James left Number 4 Privet Drive via the magical tunnel in the cupboard, two words on his breath as he returned to Halloween Town:
“Mischief managed.”
By: USA Tiger
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is the property of J. K. Rowling. The Nightmare Before Christmas is the property of Touchstone/Disney and Tim Burton. Corpse Bride is also the property of Tim Burton and Warner Bros. Pictures. Beetlejuice is also property of Tim Burton.
Author note: Worry for the wait, there was a bit of being sick going around but I’ve got most of chapter 12 done and 13 is mostly plotted out in my head.
This chapter has been betaed by Werejaguar of Halloween Town
Edit 5-24-18: This chapter betaed a second time by The Patient One.
Chapter 11
For days after Harry’s disappearance, Petunia was constantly looking over her shoulder as she was adamantly convinced that wizards were going to appear out of nowhere and ask her where her nephew had gone. Yet as the days went by...nothing happened. No robe-wearing, wand-wielding freaks, no letters delivered by ruddy birds, nothing. Vernon was completely relaxed about the whole thing, taking the absence of any “freakish activity” as a good sign.
Their neighbors didn’t question them, either; they didn’t even seem to notice that they were one person short in their house. Those who did notice were the ladies that Petunia had over to afternoon tea and a game of Bridge, and they all believed Petunia when she said that a distant cousin of hers offered to take the troublesome boy in. The ladies even sympathized with her, saying how good it was that the little hoodlum was someone else’s problem now and they hoped this cousin could bring the boy under control.
The school didn’t even question her when Petunia had gone to tell them Harry would no longer be attending classes, telling them the same lie about the mysterious cousin. Instead, they had offered to make copies of Harry’s school records, not that there were very many as Harry had only been attending Year 1 of Primary, never going to Nursery or Reception like Dudley had. Petunia had forced a smile on her face and accepted the copies, promising to send them to her ‘cousin’. Those copies had gone into the bin as soon as she got home.
Dudley seemed to be the only one who was upset by Harry being gone, not out of any love for the younger boy—heavens, no—but because he now didn’t have someone to always pick on anymore.
Yet, despite Petunia’s fears, nothing happened even as the days turned into weeks. Things were calm and normal around the house, everything was as it should have been. It was a bit of a hassle to start doing all the chores and cooking again, but as Harry had just barely started doing those, it wasn’t hard for Petunia to get back into the swing of things.
A sigh escaped Petunia as she sat at her kitchen table, trying to relax with a nice cup of tea.
“Maybe Vernon is right,” Petunia mused to herself. “If nothing has happened by now, then maybe those freaks really don’t care about the boy.”
She startled as sudden banging sounds came from somewhere in her kitchen, making her drop her cup of tea. The cup shattered as it hit the table, spilling tea all over the surface and on Petunia. She cursed, using words she learned in her youth in Cokeworth that she would never utter where anyone could hear her as she pushed back from the table, scowling at the mess. Letting out a huff of annoyance, Petunia stepped away from the table to grab a kitchen towel to clean the mess up and wondered what in the world that noise was.
“It had to be a mouse, it likely knocked something over in the cupboard,” she told herself. “I’ll have Vernon call pest control in the morning.”
When Petunia turned back to the table, she let out a little startled scream and dropped the towel as her hands raised to her mouth. Her tea cup was no longer shattered into tiny pieces, instead, it sat upright in the middle of the puddle of tea as perfectly whole looking as ever. With trembling fingers, Petunia picked it up and examined the cup looking for any sign that it had been broken, but could find not a single chip or crack anywhere on the ceramic.
“I-It must have been my imagination,” Petunia stammered as she quickly put the cup down into the sink then picked up the towel from the floor and wiped the table clean. When she turned back again she paused, eyes wide, when she saw the tea cup sitting on the countertop instead of inside the sink. She shook her head, blond locks bouncing with the motion, and quickly thought to herself she must have placed it on the counter instead of the sink. After all, things don’t move by themselves! Or repair themselves!
“Just my imagination,” Petunia repeated to herself nervously as she turned away and left the kitchen to sit in the lounge instead, dropping the kitchen towel in the bin on the way out.
“Aunt Petunia?”
She stopped, her breath stuck in her throat and eyes wide as she slowly turned to look at the cupboard under the stairs. She had to be hearing things, the boy was gone! He couldn’t be calling her name!
“No. No no no, I’ve just had a stressful day,” she said to herself as she turned away and went into the lounge, sitting in her favorite chair. She took a deep breath and forced herself to lean back and relax. Dudley would be home in a few hours, she would have to make sure his afterschool snack was ready for him. That’s what she needed to concentrate on, her Dudders.
“Aunt Petunia? Please, can’t I come out?” the voice seemed to drift from the hall right into her ears. Petunia just sat there, eyes shut tight and mind racing in denial.
“I promise to be good, please let me out.” This went on for a few more minutes, Harry’s voice pleading to her, trail off after a minute or so and then starting again just as she started to relax. Petunia finally broke and sprang up, grabbing the phone and dialing Vernon’s office number.
An invisible James laughed to himself as he watched a panicked Petunia tell Vernon that she swore she heard ‘the boy’ speaking inside the cupboard, but couldn’t bring herself to open it. He could faintly hear Vernon’s voice on the other end trying to calm her down.
He would have been there a lot sooner to start his revenge against his in-laws, but between getting their new home set up, getting Harry settled, and practicing his new powers, James only recently had found the time. There were still things to do, he hadn’t yet tried entering his old family house to see if it was possible.
James had tried to remember all the things Peeves would do while tormenting anyone at Hogwarts, and so far turning invisible was his most useful talent since he didn’t have the family cloak. Speaking of, James wondered what happened to it. He had leant it to Dumbledore during the war as a way to help out since he was out of the fighting once he went into hiding with his family. So it was possible, and more than likely, that his old Headmaster still had it.
It should have been placed in Harry’s trust vault so he could retrieve it when he turned 11, just as James had when he started Hogwarts. But the man hadn’t even followed his and Lily’s wills since he placed Harry with the Dursleys, so why would he put the family cloak where it needed to be?
Getting back to the matter at hand, James had practiced and tested out what new abilities he had. Harry delighted in watching James work his magic and it always brought a smile to his face at how happy Harry was by it. James honestly wasn’t sure just how he was a poltergeist now as everybody in the wizarding world knew that poltergeists were immortal, meaning they were never a living person to begin with unlike other ghosts. Or at least that’s what everyone believed anyway, now James wondered how much of that was true.
Either way, it gave him the perfect way to enact his revenge on the Dursleys, starting small for now. It was fun to see Petunia panic over the tea cup and the sounds he made come out of the cupboard. While Petunia was on the phone, James silently turned all the photos on the mantel above the fireplace upside down. Petunia didn’t notice the difference as she sat down again, twisting her skirt in her lap, and flinching when James made Harry’s voice come from the cupboard again.
‘Okay then, I’ll just have to get her undivided attention,’ James thought, nudging a frame to the edge then letting gravity take over so the frame hit the floor. Petunia screamed and jumped at the sudden sound, whipping around to look at the source.
“How…” Petunia asked herself as she stood and went over to pick up the photo. She relaxed slightly as she found that neither the frame nor the glass was broken as she reached up to place the baby photo of her son back on the mantel. It was when her eyes swept the rest of the mantel that her face instantly paled as she saw that every frame was upside-down. Frantically, she began righting them so they stood the correct way.
“Aunt Petunia,” Harry’s voice pleaded again and Petunia covered her ears.
“Shut up!” she howled, eyes screwed shut and her hands still covering her ears.
‘Wow, I barely started and she’s already cracking,’ James thought with amusement as he leaned against the wall and let the sound bleed out of the room. He had to see if he could get a pensieve, another thing he hoped might be in his old family home, so he could show Lily. Petunia had finally realized it was quiet again and moved to sit in her chair. James considered starting with the sounds again but held off for now, he didn’t want Petunia to crack too soon after all. For now he left her and decided to get a good look around the house.
The house was horribly boring, just so… so Muggle-looking. That didn’t really surprise him all that much, not after everything Lily told him about her sister growing up. Petunia wanted to be the opposite of Lily. Lily had been a talented witch so Petunia went for being a boring housewife.
Looking around upstairs not only bored him, it ticked him off, they had bloody four rooms up there! One was obviously Vernon and Petunia’s room, then there was a spare bedroom, and a bedroom that had to belong to the youngest Dursley. It was filled to the brim with junk! And then he peeked into the last room…
“And I thought I had been spoiled,” James murmured, shaking his head in distaste when he saw even more junk, most of it trash or things that didn’t hold Dudley’s attention it seemed. Yet for some reason there was a shoddy looking bed, desk, and wardrobe in the room… his anger peaked, and it was a credit to how much he had been practicing his new powers that nothing began shaking.
“You have four rooms in this house, and you make my son sleep in a damn cupboard...” he whispered hatefully.
Forcing his anger down by reminding himself he was avenging his son with his pranks, James considered the fourth room for a moment. Shrugging his shoulders as he came to a conclusion, he started to look through the mess; if the stuff was in this room then obviously the little porker didn’t want any of it. Lily might not wholly approve of James taking the stuff but the way he saw it, it was payback for not providing Harry with even the most basic human necessities. Reducing him to a level of care even beneath that of a House Elf!
After sifting for a few minutes, he found that the vast majority of the junk consisted of toys that had been heavily damaged. Aside from that, he found some books that looked like they had never been opened, kiddy art sets that were either as untouched as the books or barely used, and some toys that were less damaged than the rest; a few repair charms would have them good as new. James finished sorting the rejected possessions, transfigured a wooden block into a box, and then shrunk all of the items he picked out for Harry and placed them inside.
As he turned to leave, James did a double-take as something on the bed caught his eye. He picked up the ratty-looking blanket that was half-wedged behind the bed and confirmed his suspicions: it was Harry’s blanket, the one that he would sleep with when he was a baby, right down to the monogrammed initials on one corner. Without a second thought, he stowed the blanket into the box; he and Lily would fix it up as good as new for Harry as soon as he returned home.
He scanned the room once more, not wanting to miss anything else that might have come from Godric’s Hollow. The wardrobe held numerous garments, all of which had clearly been Dudley’s before he outgrew them; most had rips in conspicuous places. The inside of the desk was nasty, every drawer filled with empty candy wrappers and dirty napkins. And though an extra bit of searching let him find a loose floorboard in the room that would make an ideal hiding place, he was unsurprised to find the compartment bare. If his Prongslet had that room, he’d be bound to use that…
James blinked as he thought that, and made a mental note to check their house for similar compartments. Then he left the room, having no doubt that what he took would go unnoticed. He paused on his way back downstairs as he heard a car driving up. A glance out the window revealed Vernon, looking fatter than ever, sitting behind the wheel.
James grinned from ear to ear and hurried back downstairs to ‘play’ with Petunia again.
*****
Petunia sat on the edge of her seat waiting for Vernon to get home. She hadn’t heard the boy’s voice from the cupboard again, but still couldn’t bring herself to look inside. When she heard a car drive up, Petunia snapped her gaze to the window and gave a sigh of relief when she saw her husband. Vernon would fix this whole mess.
As Petunia stood to go open the door and greet her husband, she heard once again, “Aunt Petunia, please let me out. It’s dark in here.” Followed by a thump on the cupboard door. She screamed loudly which had Vernon running into the house, huffing and puffing like an overheated walrus.
“Petunia? What’s wrong, Pet?” Vernon said as he tried to calm his wife down.
“The cupboard! The boy is in the cupboard!” Petunia wailed hectically, covering her face with her hands. Vernon puffed up in anger then stomped over to the cupboard door, throwing it open.
Inside was nothing but the cleaning utensils they had put there after cleaning the boy’s stuff out. Most of it had been binned sans the mattress and the blanket, which had been returned to Dudley’s second bedroom where they belonged.
“Pet, see, come here,” Vernon said as he motioned for Petunia to come over. “See, the boy isn’t here. No one is here but you.”
“But… but, Vernon, I heard him,” Petunia said, looking inside the cupboard. Her husband was right, there was no one there.
“There, there, Petunia,” Vernon said as he closed the door. “I think the stress of worrying about those people is getting to you. I think you need a nice cuppa, maybe we should get out of the house for the weekend. Just me, you and Duds for a little weekend trip.” He guided Petunia into the other room while the invisible and silent James watched with wicked glee. With Vernon and Petunia distracted, James set up a few very minor pranking charms: one to make banging and rattling sounds in the cupboard, one to tap on random windows, and one to make it sound like water was dripping in the master bath when it wasn’t.
He would come back and magnify the spells later, but his fun had just begun; right now, he would let Petunia have time to settle down again. No need to break her yet after all, and Vernon’s time would come as well. Grinning maliciously at a job well done, James left Number 4 Privet Drive via the magical tunnel in the cupboard, two words on his breath as he returned to Halloween Town:
“Mischief managed.”
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