Chapter One
- Posted by RH on 13.02.07
- 44 comments
Harry leapt out of bed at precisely 5am. It was September first, which could mean only one thing! He ran out of his door, which was conveniently unlocked, and ran into Dudley's room.
"PINCH PUNCH, FIRST OF THE MONTH!" he yelled in his cousin's ear as he pinched and punched him. Dudley muttered something into his mattress.
"Sorry, what was that?" Harry asked. The Fat Bastard droned a little louder.
"Ruddy blithering stool?" Harry repeated, a little perplexed.
"Wizarding school, you idiot, WIZARDING SCHOOL!" Dudley yelled. Harry was still looking at Dudley blankly, with a distant sense of having forgotten something, as Aunt Petunia ran into the room, quickly followed by Uncle Vernon.
"Did you just say the 'W' word, Sweetums?" she cooed with a slightly nervous look on her face.
"No actually," said Harry. "I said 'blithering stool'. It was Dudley who said 'wizarding school'."
"Not you!" snapped Aunt Petunia. "I was talking to my darling Diddykins!" She punctuated this by slapping Harry across the face. "And don't say the 'W' word in my house! You know how it unnerves me!"
The slap seemed to have brought Harry back to his senses.
"Ah yes!" said Harry. "I'm a wizard, aren't I? I go to a wizarding school called Hogwarts, where I get to learn magic and wave my wand about!" He pulled his wand out of his pyjamas, which conveniently had pockets, and waved it about in Aunt Petunia's face.
The sudden and unabashed use of the 'W' and 'M' words seemed to push Aunt Petunia over the edge. It began with a small twitch of her left eye, quickly followed by a sudden jolt of her arm. Within moments, she was on the floor, flailing about and generally looking like a spaz. If Harry had noticed, he might've found it either funny or alarming, but neither that, nor Dudley's squeals or Uncle Vernon's shouts seemed to have any effect on him.
"I suppose I ought to go pack, then," he said musingly as he wandered out of the room. "Sounds like jolly good fun, this wizarding business..."
For reasons Harry couldn't quite grasp, Uncle Vernon seemed angry with him and wouldn't drive him to King's Cross train station. After the two of them got a bit CAPSLOCKY, Harry stormed out of the house and out of Privet Drive.
He was more than a little embarrassed to have to go back and fetch his belongings.
After storming out a second time (they hadn't argued again, but Harry thought it would be fitting for his newfound teenage angst) Harry had a stroke of genius. Throwing his belongings into the back seat of Uncle Vernon's car (which disgruntled Hedwig a little), he clambered into the front and grasped the steering wheel. He waited for a moment or two. Why wasn't the blasted thing starting? Striking a thoughtful pose, he remembered that Ron had started the Anglia by tapping his wand against the ignition - but that had been an emergency, hadn't it? Harry wasn't sure he could get away with it and so tiptoed out of the car and back into the house. Being careful not to draw attention to himself, he quietly lifted Uncle Vernon's keys off the key rack and trod carefully back toward the door.
Unfortunately, being a spotty, pigheaded, angsty seventeen year old, Harry couldn't help but slam the front door as loudly as he could.
"POTTER!" came Uncle Vernon's anguished shout. Harry ran quickly to the car and started it up. Luckily, this is a children's story and so he didn't have to worry about switching off the alarm or the immobiliser, or that the car could've been a manual transmission (and thus impossible to drive without prior experience). In fact, so lucky was Harry that the doors weren't even locked.
Anyway, Harry zoomed out of the driveway and raced through the streets of Little Whinging to freedom.
The drive took Harry precisely three hours, twenty-two minutes and eleven point eight-six-one seconds. He may have arrived two hours earlier if he had used Tom Tom Go's Satellite Navigation System, which retails at only £ 300 and may or may not have paid the author to appear in this story. This extended journey meant he arrived at King's Cross with mere seconds to spare. Throwing his belongings (and the still-disgruntled Hedwig) onto a trolley, he raced through the departures hall and onto platform nine. Racing toward the barrier, he braced himself for the strange sensation of passing through the wall, but instead hit an old lady and shattered her hipbone. Apologising profusely, he threw the old lady out of the way and made for the barrier again. Apon reaching the other side, he mowed down a few small children and squashed Neville's toad underfoot before finding himself on the train. Dragging his trunk behind him, he found that, as ever, all the compartments were full, bar one, in which Ron, Hermione and a cloaked stranger were sat.
"Harry!" Hermione exclaimed, looking glad to see him. Ron had also looked glad to see him, though his smile quickly disappeared at Hermione's joy in seeing the Boy Who Lived.
"Alright, Harry?" Ron greeted him. "You'll never guess what I got as a leaving present this year!"
"What have you got?" Harry asked, pretending to be interested in what he knew would be a hand-me-down from one of the twins. Smiling, Ron produced a filthy, tattered old rag.
"Ron," said Hermione, "you are aware that that is a filthy, tattered old rag?" Ron stared blankly at Hermione, then to Harry, then to the rag.
"Aww blast!" Ron exclaimed. "Fred and George told me it was a magic carpet!" The look of bewilderment went and he went into a sulk for most of the journey. Hermione gave Ron a pitying look and then turned to face Harry.
"I've been learning to cook," she told Harry loftily. "Over the summer, I've decided that I'm too much of a career woman. I think it's time to settle down and become a good girlfriend and eventual housewife." She held Harry's hands earnestly. "Don't you think that's a great idea?" Unbeknown to both Harry and Hermione, Ron was becoming increasingly agitated at the conversation. Pouting and feeling sorry for himself, he turned away from the pair, seemingly staring out of the window and muttering to himself under his breath. Hermione continued prattling on about all the very feminine passtimes she had taken up, including gardening, sewing and clothes shopping, but Harry, like any normal male, began to tune out. In an attempt to engage Harry, Hermione began pulling an assortment of saucepans and telling Harry about her plans to practice cooking in her spare time and how she had chosen the pans with superior-quality handles and coatings that made them non-stick.
"Teflon, you say?" Harry said, trying not to sound bored. He was staring out of the compartment door, nearly wishing Malfoy would turn up to give him his yearly taunting.
Just at that moment, Ron leapt to his feet and yelled, "NOW!"
Instantaneously, the mysterious cloaked stranger (whom you had forgotten about) jumped up, revealing his massive height. Ron grabbed his owl, Pigwidgeon, and threw it at Harry. The owl, clearly confused, fluttered about in the air and landed next to Crookshanks, who promptly ate it. The stranger descended apon Hermione's bag and grabbed a frying pan. Before Harry could realise what was happening, the mysterious stranger grabbed him by the back of his collar and beat him repeatedly around the head with the teflon-coated frying pan.
The stranger continued to beat Harry around the head until he seemed quite satisfied that the Boy-Who-Lived had been bludgeoned to death. Dropping Harry's lifeless body, he turned to face Ron.
"Say it!" the stranger demanded. "Say. IT."
Ron gave a sigh and rolled his eyes. "I'm your bitch," he muttered. "I don't know why I bothered betting you I could bludgeon him to death first, I never win anything." Ron slapped a few sickles into the stranger's large palm as he bemoaned his bad luck.
"Ron!" shrieked Hermione. "What have you done!"
"I've just lost my bloody life's savings, that's what!" Hermione looked torn between comforting Ron and doing something about the blood-splattered compartment. At that point, Draco Malfoy and his two goons entered.
"Well," Malfoy began with a sneer, "what do we have h-" Malfoy suddenly noticed the mess and looked around the compartment confusedly. "What in blimmin 'eck have you done in here?" Hermione looked to Ron and Ron looked at the stranger. The stranger quickly hid the blood-covered frying pan behind his back and began whistling.
"Crabbe! Goyle!" Malfoy barked. "Prod Potter!" Without further ado, Malfoy's cronies dashed forward and began poking the dead body with their wands, and then with their fingers. They poked him in the back, then in the side and on the arms, then they turned him over and began prodding his chest and thighs.
"Enough!" commanded Malfoy. "I just wanted you to see if he's dead! Not give him a hard-on!" Malfoy ordered the idiots back to his side and Crabbe stopped to stroke Harry's face before standing behind Malfoy again. "What did you do to Potter, exactly?" Malfoy asked. Ron and Hermione instantly pointed at the stranger, who suddenly became very interested in the ceiling. "You there! The stupidly tall one! Did you kill Potter?" In an attempt to pretend not to have heard him, the stranger began picking his nose. Malfoy, enraged, started forward but nearly tripped over the Boy-Who-Lived-But-Not-For-Much-Longer-Cos-He-Died-Anyway. "Remove the body!" he yelled to Crabbe and Goyle. Crabbe immediately picked up the recently deceased boy, but Goyle stopped and whispered something in Malfoy's ear.
"Eurgh!" exclaimed Malfoy, cringing. "But he's dead!" Goyle looked pleadingly at Malfoy and looked lustfully at Harry's lifeless form. "Oh alright," said Malfoy, with a look as though he were in pain. "Take the body, but make sure you're done with it before I come back. It's not something I want to see!" Crabbe and Goyle gleefully dragged Harry's body out of the compartment. "Disgusting..." Malfoy muttered as the two left, salivating over the corpse.
"So!" Malfoy continued. "Who are you, who finally got rid of the Boy-Who-Whinged?" Without a moment's hesitation, Malfoy stepped forward and demasked the stranger. Malfoy and Hermione both gasped.
"Ethan!"
Author's notes:
Art by Sly.
