"You never told him?" Hagrid said to Vernon. His voice trembled with something that was anger and disbelief again. "Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years?"
The Dursleys were trying to make themselves small and furious. Vernon's face had a pale colour and Petunia's fingers dug into the blanket.
Yet, from the looks of it, he had some fighting left in him.
"Stop!" Vernon barked suddenly, "Stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!"
Forbid? As if the giant was going to listen to anything he said.
"Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh," Hagrid said, and then, quieter, to Harry, "Yer a wizard."
Harry's mouth opened before he could arrange his thoughts, "I am a what?" he whispered.
"A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sagging sofa.
He sounded resigned now, "An' a thumpin' good 'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's about time yeh read yer letter."
Harry took the heavy, envelope again. This time no one had the courage to yell or snatch the letter from him.
The green ink at the top named the school, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and beneath it printed lists of books and supplies and a term date.
The writing was formal, and nothing personal was written on it. Harry read and then reread the letter, until the words tarted being familiar to him.
Hagrid meanwhile reached into his pocket and produced a ruffled owl.
He pulled a scrap of paper, scribbled a short note about giving Harry his letter. Taking him to buy his things tomorrow etc to Dumbledore.
He strapped the note to the owl and tossed it into the storm.
The bird left with steady wingbeats into the night.
"He is not going," Vernon grunted furiously.
"I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him,' Hagrid said.
"A what?" said Harry, interested.
"A Muggle,' said Hagrid, "it's what we call nonmagic folk like them. An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on."
"We swore when we took him in we would put a stop to that rubbish,"said Uncle Vernon, "swore
we would stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!"
The thought of it all crashing down gave Vernon more courage than he thought he had. All those years of hiding and keeping Harry away from the world of magic, and it was going to be for nothing.
"You knew?" said Harry. "You knew I am a...a wizard?"
"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. It was her turn to resign to fate "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was... a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"
She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years. The jealously and the neglect she felt was all evident,
"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I
knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as... as abnormal, and then, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"
Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he said, "Blown up? You told me they
died in a car crash!"
Harry's childhood wasn't the best, and now he got to know it wasn't true either.
"CAR CRASH!" roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their
corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! Harry
Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!"
"But why? What happened?" Harry asked urgently.
Hagrid threw a dirty look at the Dursleys.
"Well, it's best yeh know as much as I can tell yeh, mind, I can't tell yeh everythin', it's a
great myst'ry, parts of it…"
He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, "It begins, I suppose, with a person called- " Hagrid hesitated a bit to say the name
"Who?"
"Well, I don' like sayin' the name if I can help it. No one does."
"Why not?"
"Harry, people are still scared.Blimey, this is difficult. See, there was this wizard who went… bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse. His name was…"
Hagrid gulped, but no words came out. He took a breath. There was no simple way to say everything, he began to put together a story.
"There was this wizard," he said. He hesitated and then said the name briefly "Voldemort." The name made him shiver.
"He tarted gettin'followers, startin' trouble. Dark days, Harry. Terrible things happened. People disappeared, an' those that stood up ter him some of 'em never came back."
He looked at Harry with pity and concern, "Yer mum an' dad, they were as good a witch an' wizard as I ever knew. Best of the lot. Head boy an' girl at Hogwarts in their day. They stood up ter him, an' he came ter the village on Halloween ten years ago. You was one year old. He came ter yer house an'-" Hagrid's breath hitched and he blew his nose with a sound that filled the hut.
"-an' he couldn't kill yeh. He tried. He failed. No one knows why. There was somethin' about you that made the curse rebound. It took yer mum an'dad , but you lived. No one ever lived after he decided ter kill 'em. But you did. Never wondered how you got that mark on yer forehead? That's why yeh're famous, Harry."
Harry's mind moved through feelings too quickly to sit on any of them. He tried to make sense of his life against this new map.
There were a lot of questions,wizard? Him? How could he possibly be?
He had spent his life being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by Aunt Petunia and
Uncle Vernon.
Uf he was really a wizard, why hadn't they been turned into toads every time they had tried to lock him in his cupboard?
"Hagrid," he said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake. I don't think I can be a
wizard."
To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled.
"Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?"
Harry looked into the fire. Now he came to think about it… every odd thing that had ever made
his aunt and uncle furious with him had happened when he, Harry, had been upset or angry…
Harry thought back.
The escaping of bullies.
The haircut.
The snake at the zoo.
"See?" Hagrid beamed. "Harry Potter, not a wizard? You wait an' see, mate. You'll be right famous at Hogwarts."
Vernon though wasn't giving up.
"He is not going,"he hissed. "I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!"
Hagrid stood up and pointed the umbrella at Vernon,
"NEVER -" he boomed, pausing between words for effect, "INSULT - ALBUS - DUMBLEDORE - IN - FRONT - OF - ME!"
He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley and there was a flash of
violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain.
When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig's tail poking through a hole in his trousers
"Shouldn'ta lost me temper," Hargrid said, half rueful, "meant ter turn him into a pig but he was so much like one there wasn't much left ter do."
Silence moved back into the hut.
He threw his great coat toward Harry. "You can kip under that," he said. "Don' mind if it wriggles a bit, I think I still got a couple o' doormice in one o' the pockets."
Harry wrapped the coat around himself.
It was too big nything he felt the weight of it with something else.
The idea that tomorrow would not be the same as today.