Morning light filtered through a gauzy screen and fell across his eyelids, kindling brightness inside a darkened field of vision.
Harry opened his eyes.
He looked around. No four-poster bed. No ancient brick walls. In their place was a soft Simmons mattress and white walls skimmed smooth with putty—this was a Muggle home.
The moment he saw the furnishings, Harry's neck began to prickle as if pricked by needles. Bitterness rose in his chest. This place was far too familiar.
This was the Dursleys' house—the prison that had confined and tormented him for more than ten years.
The calendar by the bedside said the date was August 28th, 1992.
Four days until school started.
He heard a commotion downstairs: a boy shouting something crude, followed by a sharp, terrified scolding. Aunt Petunia—her shrill voice, like an iron awl, punched through the first-floor ceiling and stabbed straight into Harry's ears.
"Quiet! Don't let… (lowering her voice) …hear you, darling Dudley, or he'll…"
Brilliant, Harry thought. A torment that never ends.
He got up slowly and dressed himself. Any moment now, the Dursleys' little servant-boy would begin the day's work all over again. Pulling on his short-sleeved shirt, he mimicked Uncle Vernon:
"Harry, you little brat—go mop the floor! All you ever do is eat, you useless lump!"
Hitching up his trousers, he mimicked his cousin Dudley and even added a thumping sound:
"Bang! Hahaha—Mum, look! Harry's glasses are broken again! Look, it's hilarious!"
Then, as he tied his shoelaces, Harry mimicked Aunt Petunia:
"You lazy little thing, you ought to wash the dishes. What? Your breakfast? There's none for you."
He dawdled down the stairs. The space beneath them—once his childhood "room"—had been an absurdly cramped cupboard. Fortunately, Harry had been so underfed back then that even that narrow cupboard had felt almost roomy.
The smell of bacon drifted from the kitchen, an intense smoky scent that made him think of factories thousands of miles away. How did the workers there take good pork from slaughterhouses and smoke it into delicious rashers? The Muggle machines would roar and clatter; the television always said the fat pigs raised on farms never saw real grass.
When Harry reached the ground floor, Uncle Vernon was behaving strangely. He wasn't sprawled in his comfortable chair with the newspaper. Instead, he sat stiffly at the table. When he saw Harry, his stupid, bloated cheeks quivered—as if he were trying to squeeze out an ugly smile, and failing.
"Good morning," Harry said, hunching his shoulders to look smaller and more insignificant, afraid that if anything was wrong, this oddly abnormal uncle would seize on it.
"H-harry, good morning." Vernon's face wrinkled up; his features looked like they were fighting one another. His voice, unnervingly, was gentle. "Petunia will have breakfast ready soon." He hesitated, then asked carefully, "You seem to have slept in today?"
Harry shuddered and blurted, "I'm sorry!"
Vernon looked baffled. At that moment, Aunt Petunia came out of the kitchen carrying a breakfast so abundant it bordered on obscene. Harry thought, what day is it? He stared at the plates, trying to find his share—the smallest share.
There was no smallest share.
The portion on Harry's plate was the same as the portion given to his fat cousin. Enough to stuff him senseless.
Oh God, Harry thought. Have they… changed their minds? Do they actually have kindness in them after all? Yes—after all, I'm Aunt Petunia's nephew. In the end, she couldn't bear to cut off that blood tie. For all these years, even if they'd squeezed him like free labour, they had still fed him and given him a roof.
The more the boy thought, the guiltier he felt. Shame burned in him for all the silent, bitter mockery he'd aimed at the Dursleys in his head after each humiliation. If he looked at it that way, he was the burden, wasn't he? If he hadn't existed, they would have lived their small, vulgar, ordinary lives without being disturbed by the wizarding world's strangeness. Their bullying, their insults, their mockery, their exploitation—perhaps it was all revenge for the fright he'd brought into their home.
Trembling with caution, Harry ate the fragrant plate of bacon, eggs, and toast, then drank a full cup of milk. He'd never drunk pure milk at the Dursleys'; usually it was some watery, pale "milk drink" cut with tap water.
Silence ruled the table. No one spoke. Dudley had his face buried in his plate, rooting around like a pig. Normally the house was loud and quarrelsome.
Harry thought the scene felt… warm. A small happiness bubbled up from the bottom of his chest like a newly opened fizzy drink.
When he finished quickly, he stood to clear the plates. Aunt Petunia sprang up at once, forcing an awkward, rigid smile at him.
"Put it down!" She looked frightened, uneasy. "I'll… I'll do it."
"Thank you," Harry said, hesitating for a long time before he managed, "Aunt."
On Petunia's thin, sharp face, an expression of disgust and fear twisted uncontrollably. She nodded rapidly. At that moment, Dudley made a little snuffling grunt like a piglet, his expression completely vacant, and Uncle Vernon hurriedly shoved his toast onto Dudley's plate to stop him from making more noise.
It was strange. Wrong. Harry felt as if biting cabbages were crawling all over his skin.
After that, the Dursleys behaved as though they'd forgotten Harry existed. They didn't assign him chores like they always did. He was able to stay quietly in his room and move freely—and that only made him more uneasy.
It was Friday. Uncle Vernon went to work as usual. From a second-floor window, Harry saw his aunt and uncle saying goodbye beside the car, clinging to each other in a tight embrace, looking absurdly affectionate.
"Hang on a little longer, love," Vernon murmured into Petunia's ear. "I've already booked the boat tickets and the train. The moment September comes, we're off—taking our darling Dudley with us to Casablanca. Just endure a bit longer. Four days. After that we'll never see this little mongrel, this little brat, ever again."
Petunia clutched and twisted at his shoulder, crying until her eyes were red.
Watching their tearful farewell, Harry found it oddly amusing. He felt like he was looking at a big toad hugging a bald, scruffy goose.
Uncle Vernon glanced up at the second floor. When he saw Harry at the window waving goodbye, Vernon's face changed. He muttered a low curse and drove off in a rush.
Then, without warning, the sky began to dim.
The morning sun, as if reversing itself, sank again from the east—and its angle shifted, dropping toward the southeast horizon. Low clouds piled up. Snow began to fall in soft, hissing flurries. Before long, the street was coated in dirty, slushy snow.
The world plunged straight into winter.
Harry was already uneasy at the abnormal sky when he saw a golden firework bloom outside Privet Drive—then several more, bursting in different colours. A group of wizards surged into the street, all in black robes and pointed hats. They brandished their wands and repeatedly cast Muggle-Repelling charms. Neighbours, passing cars—everyone veered away from Privet Drive as though signs had been posted at both ends of the road reading: roadworks ahead, no entry. No one approached.
The wizards marched straight to the Dursleys' front door.
At a glance, Harry saw three people dressed in ridiculous clothes trailing behind them—
The Dursleys.
Somehow, they were already there. And from the look of it, they'd been hexed: their movements slow, their faces blank and slack.
No—Aunt and Uncle are in danger!
Harry's heart sank. A fierce dread and panic flooded him.
He fumbled through his pockets, trying to pull out his wand—but he couldn't find it. He spun and tore through the bedside drawer instead. He saw his own hands shaking.
Harry's eyes flicked to the calendar.
The date had changed. He remembered it had said August.
December 28th, 1992.
Christmas holiday.
Shock hit him like a slap.
Downstairs, the wizards had already crowded into the house. They were shouting over one another, praising the great Dark Lord.
"Master! We brought these Muggles back from Casablanca!"
No wand. The danger closing in.
For a child, it could not have been worse.
And yet, to protect his family, Harry forced himself into a hard, decisive courage—empty-handed, he walked toward the sitting room.
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