‘Get up! Get up now, you lazy little brat!’ shouted Aunt Petunia as she rattled the door of Harry’s room.
‘I want my breakfast now, Harry!’ came a shout from Uncle Vernon from
the kitchen below. ‘And I don’t want my sausages burnt like yesterday. You
hear me, boy?’ Harry sighed as he lay in bed staring at the poster, which was
counting down the days until he returned to Hogwarts that was now stuck to the
roof above his bed. Only 1 month to go and he would be saying ‘Bye’ to the
Dursleys and wouldn’t see them until next summer.
He pulled himself out of bed and pulled on his clothes. He sat down on his bed and gazed around the room. His eyes landed on Hedwig’s cage where the owl perched getting ready to go to sleep and then onto the presents beside the cage he had been given for his birthday the day before. Ron had given him a Chudley Cannons jar of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans (and he’d have to remember to tell him he got a maggot flavoured one), Hermione, a new broom servicing kit (his old one had been running low on supplies and many of the tools had broken), Hagrid, a big box of rock cakes (Harry new better than to eat these), Dobby, a new pair of socks (which were odd, one cream with Harry’s face knitted on it and the other orange with Dobby’s face knitted on it) and Dumbledore (strange as it was to get a present from him), his (Harry’s) Marauder’s Map which he had given away the previous year to an impostor at Hogwarts and a phoenix feather quill which, Harry presumed, came from Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix.
He then went over to the window and pulled open the curtain. He gazed up
into the clear blue sky and, suddenly, a large black object went whizzing across
the sky and then another and another.
‘Boy get down hear now!’ Uncle Vernon shouted again. Harry pulled his
eyes away from the sky and, not wanting to get into more trouble with Uncle
Vernon (yesterday, Hedwig had left a present of a rat for Uncle Vernon on his
brand new car), quickly ran down stairs and into the kitchen. He noticed the
post unopened on the kitchen counter. Uncle Vernon had obviously not had enough
time to open it. He was to have a very important meeting at a restaurant for
work that evening and for the past week had spent most of his time worrying
about what would happen at the meeting to destroy his chances of a good deal.
Harry took the sausages off the cooker and started putting them down on the
plate in front of Uncle Vernon and then moved over to his cousin Dudley, and
started giving him some. He had soon forgotten about these strange objects in
the sky.
‘MORE!’ Dudley shouted. ‘MORE! MORE! MORE!’ And so Harry
continued to give the over-sized Dudley more sausages until there was no more to
give.
Just as Harry was about to sit down and eat a much needed piece of toast
something grey and about the size of a tennis ball flew in through the open
window, hit Uncle Vernon on the head and dropped a letter onto his sausages.
Before Uncle Vernon had time to realise what had happened Harry had grabbed the
letter and the grey ball (Ron’s owl, Pigwideon) and ran off up to his bedroom
where he tore open the letter from Ron.
Harry,
Hi how are you? Did you have a good birthday with the Muggles? Listen, do you want to spend the rest of the summer with us? Mum was talking to Dumbledore about it and he said it was fine. The only problem is that Mum and Dad don’t have any Floo Powder left so we can’t collect you. Do you think you’d be able to get the Knight Bus here? You do know how to call it don’t? You just stick your wand out onto the road and it will come. Mum has sent a letter to the Muggles. I’ve told her countless of times that they are only Muggles but she won’t listen. I’ll be expecting you tonight – just don’t make it too late. We’re going somewhere early tomorrow morning. You wont find out where until you get here – I want to surprise you.
I still haven’t found out anything new about you-know-what. Fudge still wont listen to Dumbledore’s requests. Dad’s been in a lot of contact with Dumbledore over the summer. What I did find out though is that the Ministry have made flying carpets legal again. Even Dad doesn’t have a clue why and he’s in the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts office. Dad’s finding it really difficult. He has never had to stay in work for so long - even after the World Cup and you know what it was like then. People keep sending owls wanting to know if they can bewitch their own rugs so they’ll fly but that’s way too dangerous. Spells have to be put on the rugs first to make sure Muggles don’t decide to buy them. Then they need to be bewitched so they know where they can and can’t land – they’re not allowed to land in Muggle areas.
I look forward to seeing you later.
Ron
You-Know-What was what Dumbledore had been planning since the event at the end of the Triwizard Tournament when Lord Voldemort rose again. Harry nor Ron nor Hermione had much of an idea as to what was being planned. What they did know was that the Minister of Magic, Mr. Fudge and most of the world didn’t know about it and that’s why they had to call it you-know-what in their letters in-case they were intercepted.
***
At
nine o’clock that evening Harry was packing his trunk. His Firebolt, books,
clothes, robes, wand, parchment, quills, sweets, owl treats, the Marauder’s
Map, wizard’s money, broom servicing kit and a plug for Mr. Weasley (he had a
great interest in electricity and collected plugs) all went in. Uncle Vernon
still hadn’t retuned from his meeting when he suddenly heard a scream from
downstairs. He ran down to the kitchen hoping that something awful had happened
to Dudley but instead saw Aunt Petunia standing on a kitchen chair in the
corner. She was staring horrified at a piece of paper on the ground. It was a
letter and Harry could make out Mrs. Weasley’s name at the very end. Her
curiosity had obviously gotten the better of her and had opened the post without
waiting for Uncle Vernon.
She
averted her gaze from the letter to Harry and said in a shrill horrified voice
‘OUT! Get out of this house NOW!’
Harry
couldn’t believe his luck. It was nothing like last year when Uncle Vernon
couldn’t decide whether to let Harry go or not. Aunt Petunia had obviously
received such a scare from the letter that she couldn’t think about punishing
Harry. He ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs and started heaving his trunk
out of his room and down to the front door, while Dudley watched and laughed as
Harry half stumbled, half fell, down the stairs with the trunk coming after him.
He then ran back up and got Hedwig, checked for any last thing he might have
forgotten and ran back down the stairs, said a quick good-bye to Aunt Petunia
and Dudley (Aunt Petunia was still on the chair scared to move and Dudley was
rolling around upstairs laughing his head off) and went out of the front door
with the trunk and cage. He took his wand out of his trunk, held it out over the
side of the road and waited. What a strange sight it would be for a passer by
– a 15-year-old boy with a trunk and an owl standing on the side of the road
holding a stick over it and waiting.
An then Harry heard a deafening bang as bright headlights appeared out of nowhere and came hurtling towards him. They stopped right in front of him and as Harry shielded his eyes from the blinding light he saw the triple-decker, violently purple, Knight Bus standing there in front of him. Harry moved around to the door which opened and let out a gasp, for standing in front of him was no other than Ludo Bagman, Head of Magical Games and Sports.
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