Love Is Thicker Than Blood

Chapter 3 - The Letters from Somewhere

About three weeks after the incident at the London Zoo, Harry and his family packed up for a week away from Little Whinging. Harry and Hermione were going on holiday in the Scottish Highlands while their parents attended a dental convention and professional seminar in Edinburgh.

'"You two do understand why Mum and I can't spend the week with you, don't you?" Dad asked at dinner the night before they left.

"Of course we do, Dad," Hermione replied after carefully chewing a mouthful of spaghetti bolognese. "You need to attend this conference so you can keep up with the newest dental techniques. It's called continuing education," she finished with a satisfied smile.

"Yes, dear, we know," Mum responded with a hint of impatience in her voice. Harry thought he saw a frown flash briefly across his sister's face.

"What's a dental convention like, anyway?" Harry prodded.

"Oh, you know, pretty boring, actually," Dad chuckled. "We'll probably be crowded in with hundreds of other dentists in a huge, badly lit room that's either too hot or too cool. We'll sit in uncomfortable chairs and stare at a large screen full of pictures of decayed teeth and root canals. It's the sort of stuff only a dentist could love." Dad flashed a big grin at Mum, who rolled her eyes and slapped him lightly on the arm.

Harry blanched. "Yeah, only a bunch of dentists would want to look at pictures of anything as nasty as a root canal. Thanks but no thanks. I'm glad we get to visit Gran while you're in Edinburgh." He reckoned that visiting their grandmother Mary Anne Pratt would definitely be the highlight of the summer.

After dinner, everyone pitched in and got the car packed, then turned in early so they could get on the road by 7:00 a.m. Lying in bed, Harry was too excited to fall asleep right away. This would be their first long visit with Gran Pratt since he and Hermione were six years old, and he tried to remember everything he knew about her. Mum had told him that her full name was Mary Anne Hayward Pratt. Her silvery hair was always perfectly groomed, and although she often looked quite stern, her eyes twinkled with untold mischief from across the decades. According to Mum, Gran was the kind of woman who had served her country in a world war and lived to tell the tale. She was the sort of woman who had not stood for any nonsense from Adolf Hitler and would not stand for it from anyone else either. Harry had read about Hitler in school and knew that he was an evil man who ordered the deaths of several million people in the 1930s and 1940s. He couldn't imagine anyone in the world who could be as evil as Hitler had been, so he reckoned if Gran hadn't been afraid of Hitler, she'd probably never been afraid of anyone.

Harry realized that he not only loved his grandmother, he also admired her very much. He hoped that someday, if he had to, he would be as fearless as Gran.

~~~*~~~*~~~

The drive up to Edinburgh was long, tedious and fortunately uneventful, since it was at least a seven-hour trip under the best conditions. A lunch stop near Liverpool set them back only an hour, and they arrived in Edinburgh just after 3:00 p.m.

"Well, let's hope your grandmother is on time," Dad muttered as he and Mum steered Harry and Hermione through the crowd at the train station. "The last train to Inverness leaves at 4:08."

"There she is!" Hermione shrieked, pointing at a tall, distinguished-looking woman near the ticket office who carried herself like a dowager duchess. She was in her late sixties, but Harry thought her dignified, upright demeanour made her seem much younger. Perhaps Gran seemed aloof and cold from a distance, but her grandchildren knew her as a warm, greatly loving woman who always had a stock of Mars Bars.

Hermione and Harry raced over to the older woman, barely missing a few startled travelers standing in the ticket queue. Gran smiled a thousand-watt smile as she reached down to hug them.

"Harry!" she exclaimed, turning him around in front of her. "How much have you grown this year?" She turned toward her daughter and son-in-law as they reached the queue. "Marcia," she chided, "you really must send me photos of the children more often. I almost didn't recognize Harry! And look at Hermione! You can just see the wheels turning in her head, can't you?" she gushed.

Hermione beamed, and Harry felt a surge of happiness at being with his grandmother again. No, he hadn't been born into this family, but everyone in it, especially Gran Pratt, had been warm and loving toward him for as long as he could remember. He couldn't wait to get on the train to Inverness with Gran and Hermione.

The next hour passed in a blur of reminiscence and catching up in the midst of the huge station. At precisely 3:53 p.m. the public address system blared, "Last train to Inverness now boarding at platform twelve." Mum gathered Harry and Hermione into a crushing goodbye hug, then fidgeted a bit as she spoke with Gran in a very hushed, conspiratorial manner. Dad gave Hermione a big hug and a kiss on the cheek, but caught himself before doing likewise to Harry, and instead gave him a manly handshake and a hearty pat on the back. All right, Harry thought, glowing with pre-adolescent pride, Dad's figured out I'm not a little kid anymore.

After boarding the train, Harry, Hermione and Gran found a comfortable compartment near the front and settled in for the three-hour trip to Inverness. His stomach grumbling, Harry gladly accepted two Mars Bars from the bag Gran pulled out of her purse. One for now and one for later, he thought, reckoning that they probably wouldn't settle down for dinner until well past 8:00 p.m. As the train rolled through the countryside north of Edinburgh, Gran and Hermione chatted happily on one side of the compartment while Harry leaned lazily against the window and let his eyes drift across the landscape. The rumbling of the wheels against the track had a hypnotic effect on the tired youngster, and he found himself struggling to stay awake. About halfway to their destination, Harry's head lolled forward, snapping him out of his semi-conscious state.

What he saw next made him rub his eyes and wonder if he really was still dreaming. Far to the east, high upon a heathered hill, Harry spotted a castle--a huge, ancient, gleaming castle with a tower at each corner. Harry thought it was the most beautiful building he'd ever seen.

"Hermione! Gran! Look! Come look out this window! Can you see that castle, way out near the horizon?"

Hermione squeezed onto Harry's seat and leaned over him, trying to see out the window. "Oh, my! Yes, Harry, it's...it's... just beautiful." Hermione seemed almost at a loss for words. Harry looked at his watch as if to mark the unusual moment, "5:35 p.m., Sunday, July twenty-third."

"Gran," Hermione enthused, "what's that castle over there? The one on the east horizon? It's very beautiful, don't you think? I wonder who lives there."

Gran leaned over and peered out the window. Then a somewhat puzzled look settled on her face.

"Castle? What castle? Do you mean that old ruin over there?"

Harry shot a quizzical look at his sister. She bit her lip before speaking again.

"Maybe we just thought we saw a castle, Harry. Of course Gran is a lot more familiar with Scotland than we are, since she actually lives here."

Harry nodded. "Sure. You're right, Hermione. We're both pretty tired, Gran; our eyes must have played tricks on us."

Gran smiled benevolently at her two young charges. "Oh, don't worry yourselves about it. The light really can be tricky around here. But I've taken this train many times and I've never seen anything like a castle around here, other than that old ruined one."

While Hermione returned to her seat next to their grandmother, Harry leaned back in his seat and thought about what had just happened. If he'd been the only one to see the castle, he could understand the possibility that he might have just imagined it. But how could both he and his sister see the exact same thing while their grandmother couldn't? It just didn't make sense. But lately it seemed as if more and more things in his life didn't make sense.

I won't worry about this now, Harry thought. Maybe Gran will see the castle when we take the train back to Edinburgh.

~~~*~~~*~~~

Mary Anne Pratt lived in a grey stone cottage in the village of Culloden, on the eastern outskirts of Inverness. She and her late husband, Reginald Pratt, had spent most of their married life in Blackpool, but after he died five years ago, Gran had moved to Culloden, which she had discovered many years ago during a trip to Inverness. She liked this location, she told her grandchildren, because she could easily go into the city on a public transport bus when she wanted to visit a museum or attend a cultural event, but she could also ride her bicycle to the beach along nearby Moray Firth.

Harry and Hermione agreed that Gran seemed to have the best of both worlds at her little cottage at number sixty-two Allanfearn Road. Somehow the house seemed both elegant and cozy--meticulously maintained, scrupulously clean, and yet filled with comfortable chairs and sofas, numerous mementos that reflected Gran's interesting life, and dozens upon dozens of photographs of family members and friends, including many of Harry and Hermione as younger children. The only drawback to the house, from Harry's point of view, was that it had only two bedrooms, and the guest bedroom had only one bed. So Hermione got the guest bedroom, while he slept on the sofa bed in the living room. Still, that wasn't so bad, he thought. For a sofa bed it was fairly comfortable, and being the only male in the house and sleeping downstairs, he liked to imagine that he was guarding the front door and protecting his grandmother and sister.

The week in Culloden passed very quickly. There was a small flower garden behind Gran's house and every morning before the sun got too high, she went out to weed and tend the garden and pick a few flowers for the crystal vase on her dining table. Harry and Hermione both loved Gran's garden and spent some time each morning helping her with the weeding, watering and other tasks. Gran had rented bicycles for both grandchildren, and each day, after their morning chores, they all set off on their bikes to explore the area. One day they rode up to Alturlie Point on Moray Firth and had a picnic on the beach; on the way home they explored several rock quarries and cairns in the vicinity. Another day they bicycled southeast of the village to Culloden Muir, where they spent the afternoon hiking on the moor. On the last day of their trip, they rode a bus from Culloden to Inverness, then transferred to a touring coach for the twenty-minute ride down the A82 to the Loch Ness Monster exhibition in Drumnadrochit.

"It's totally unsupported by science, of course, but the Loch Ness monster legend is rather fun," Gran proclaimed as they stood in one of the town's many gift shops, thumbing through piles of souvenirs devoted to the lake's most famous inhabitant. "So I just couldn't have my two favorite grandchildren come all the way from Surrey and not visit Loch Ness."

Harry and Hermione both grinned. "We're your favorite grandchildren?" Hermione asked, bemused. "Since when?"

"Since you were both about two years old. I remember when Harry joined our family. I could tell there was something very special about him, just as I always knew there was something very special about you, Hermione."

Harry looked skeptical. "How do you mean, special?" He'd always felt a bit different, but not in any way that would make him special compared to other kids.

"You know, I've never been able to put my finger on it," Gran said thoughtfully. "But you both just seem to have a certain...I don't know, I guess a certain energy that my other grandchildren don't seem to have. Not that I love them any less, mind you, nor would I ever tell them this...but there's just something about both of you that makes you special to me."

Harry felt his eyes sting a bit and noticed that Hermione's eyes looked somewhat watery. "You're very special to us too, Gran," he replied past the lump in his throat. "I think this has been the best holiday I've ever had."

"I know this is the best holiday I've ever had," Hermione sniffled, putting one arm around her grandmother's waist. "Oh, I wish we didn't have to go back to Little Whinging so soon. But Mum and Dad have to reopen the surgery next week, and of course we've got Harry's birthday party on Sunday evening. But we'll miss you so much," she finished, giving Gran a squeeze.

Gran brushed back Hermione's bushy brown hair with one hand and ran her other hand through Harry's messy black hair.

"I'll miss you, too, popkins. I'm so glad we've had this time together. You've been so much better company than you were the last time we did this when you were six years old!"

Gran laughed, and at that moment Harry realized just how much she reminded him of Mum, only a lot older. In his mind's eye he could just begin to imagine what Mum might be like when she reached Gran's age. As the three of them strolled back to the tour bus, he decided she was probably the best grandmother anyone could have.

The next morning, Harry awoke to hazy sunlight and what sounded like a rush of wings. Shoving the covers down, he noticed something lying on the mat just beneath the mail slot in the front door. He shoved a hand through his unruly hair and stumbled over to see what the postman had brought so early.

He found two envelopes of identical shape and size, both of yellowish parchment, bearing the same penmanship in emerald green ink. Neither envelope had either a stamp or a postmark, but both bore an elaborate wax seal on the back. He turned one over and read the front.

The other letter was addressed to:

"Ha, ha, ha, Mum, very funny," he laughed to himself. Who else besides his mum or dad even knew where he was sleeping, or the colour of the guest bedroom? Although, Harry supposed, one of his cousins, Daniel or Eric, might have done it, since they'd both visited Gran recently. Those two are such jokers, he thought, I wonder what they wrote?

Harry didn't consider why neither envelope had a stamp. He carefully peeled the wax seal off the envelope addressed to him, pulled up the flap, and pulled out the note inside. He read it through five times, shook his head, then burst out laughing at the contents.

Convulsed with laughter, Harry fell back onto the sofa bed just as Hermione and Gran appeared on the stairs in their dressing gowns. Both wore puzzled expressions.

"Harry, what's going on here?" Gran questioned.

"This letter I got, Gran," he choked out, "it's dead funny!"

Harry swallowed his laughter long enough to hand the other letter to Hermione. Other than the salutation, her letter was identical to his, but her reaction was completely opposite. A look of terror passed over her face, a whimper escaped her lips, and she collapsed on the mattress, shaking with fear.

Hermione's reaction stopped Harry in his tracks. She seemed almost as scared and shocked as when the boa constrictor escaped at the zoo. It dawned on him that perhaps the letters weren't merely a joke.

"I'm sorry, Hermione, I didn't mean to scare you or make you cry," he consoled her, moving next to her on the sofa bed.

She wiped her face on her sleeve and swallowed hard. "You didn't scare me, Harry. But these letters are so strange. There's no stamp or postmark on them, so they couldn't have arrived by regular post. And nobody really knows we're here except Mum and Dad and Mrs. Figg--"

"Who is Mrs. Figg?" Gran asked.

"She's an elderly lady who lives on the next street," Harry explained. "Mum and Dad have known her since Hermione and I were little. Whenever we go on holiday, Mrs. Figg keeps an eye on our house--you know, brings the post in and feeds our fish. Sometimes I help her out too. When she broke her leg last month, I mowed her lawn a couple of times. She wanted to thank me with some tea and biscuits but I always begged off. She's got a bunch of cats who kind of make me nervous, and her house always smells like she's been cooking cabbage." Harry scrunched his nose, remembering the smell.

"I like Mrs. Figg's cats," Hermione pouted.

"I usually like cats too," Harry said, "but those cats creep me out sometimes. But enough about Mrs. Figg. What about these letters, Gran?"

Gran had pulled her dressing gown close around her and settled into her favorite chintz armchair near the bay window. She was silent for a few minutes, apparently lost in thought. Suddenly she seemed to snap out of her reverie.

"We'll do nothing about these letters at the moment. As far as I can tell, there's nothing to do. Obviously this man Dumbledore has made some kind of mistake. Anyway, we've got to get ready to go back to Edinburgh to meet your parents." She glanced at the mantel clock above the fireplace. "Edinburgh! Oh bugger, the train leaves in less than three hours!" Hermione appeared scandalized by Gran's expletive. "Up, you two, up! Right now! Get some clothes on and get your things packed. I'll get dressed and fix us a spot of breakfast. We'll need to catch the bus on the A96 by 9:30 to get to the train station in time."

Harry just sat there. Hermione didn't get up either. Apparently she was as reluctant to leave the wonderful world of Gran Pratt as he was.

Gran rose from her chair and, arms akimbo, glared the "Pratt women glare" that Mum gave them so often. "Well? What are you waiting for? Unless you want to skip breakfast before we leave."

Harry shook his head no; he wanted one last taste of Gran's glorious bangers, scrambled eggs and fried tomatoes.

"And don't forget to bring those letters with you," she advised in a more serious tone as she headed up to her bedroom. "Your parents need to see them so we can get to the bottom of this."

Four hours later, Harry, Hermione and Gran were on a train hurtling south through Aberdeenshire toward Edinburgh. Harry purposely chose a compartment on the left side of the train so the view would be toward the east. He really wanted to see that castle again, and he wanted to give Gran another chance to try to see it too. He positioned himself on the rear seat of the compartment so that he could keep a lookout for the castle, while Hermione and Gran carried on an animated conversation on the other bench. Harry checked his watch. If he'd calculated the travel time correctly, he ought to be able to see the castle in a few minutes.

He cleared this throat. "Erm, Hermione. May I speak to you for a moment?"

Hermione looked at him expectantly. "Yes?"

"No, I mean, in private. Over here." He nodded toward the seat next to him.

Hermione excused herself to Gran and moved over to Harry's side. "What's this all about?" she whispered. "Something about the letters?"

"No," Harry whispered back. "But I think that castle is coming up soon and I wanted to make sure you could see it again."

"Ohhhhh," Hermione replied quietly, patting his arm. "That would be great."

They didn't have to wait long. Rounding a small bend in the track, Harry saw the majestic castle rise suddenly on the horizon. "Gran, Hermione, there it is again!" he exclaimed. "That castle! I just knew I wasn't seeing things."

Hermione flashed a bright grin. "I see it too! It's so beautiful. I wish we could go there. It must be wonderful to w--"

"Harry, Hermione, what are you talking about?" This time Gran sounded impatient. "What castle? There is no castle on the horizon. Just a musty old ruin, from what I can see."

Harry sighed and looked sadly at Hermione. He bet she was thinking the same thing he was: Either they'd both gone nuts, or Gran had. Neither alternative was good.

A few hours later, after they'd arrived in Edinburgh and Gran had caught the return train to Inverness, Harry and his family sat in a tea shop, eating sausage rolls and chatting happily before beginning their drive back to Little Whinging. In the excitement of seeing their parents again, he'd forgotten to mention anything about the strange letters, until...

"What's that in your jacket pocket, Harry?" Dad inquired.

"Oh, this?" Harry pointed to the parchment envelope. He looked at Hermione, who appeared a bit nervous. "It's a letter that arrived at Gran's this morning. Hermione got one just like it. Bit odd, actually--whoever sent it knew exactly where each of us was sleeping in Gran's house."

Mum's eyes narrowed a bit. "Really? That is odd. May we see the letters, please?"

Harry gave his letter to Dad, while Hermione handed hers to Mum. All four sat in silence for a few minutes while the two adults read the letters. Dad turned Harry's letter over several times and held it up to the light. Mum inspected the remains of the wax seal on Hermione's envelope very closely and stared at the handwriting on the envelope for what seemed like ages.

"Erm," Harry cleared his throat. "What do you think?"

"I think," Dad said very slowly, "that someone is having you on. What else could it possibly be? 'Hogworms School of Witchcraft and Wizardry'? Totally preposterous, if you ask me."

"Hogwarts, Dad," Hermione corrected him. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"Hogwarts, Snogwarts!" Dad rolled his eyes in Mum's direction. "Harry, Hermione, be reasonable. You don't honestly believe you've been accepted into a school for witches and wizards?" he huffed.

Harry frowned and swallowed. "Well...no...I guess not...I mean, when I first read it I laughed my head off. But Hermione was very upset about it. Now I don't really know what to believe."

"I don't know what to believe either," Hermione said anxiously. "These letters look very official, in an old-fashioned way, of course. And there's no stamp on them, so they couldn't have come through the regular post. So I can't figure out how they were delivered, or who could have sent them to us."

Mum sat back in her chair and seemed as lost in thought as Gran had been that morning, Harry noticed. "I say we should just ignore the letters. They're obviously a prank of some kind. Don't bother yourselves about them. In fact, let's just tear them up."

Hermione looked horrified. "Tear them up? Are you sure?"

"Yes," Dad said. Harry could tell Dad was backing Mum up, as each of them often did for the other when making important decisions. "Yes, let's just tear them up. It's just a prank. Whoever did this already got a big laugh out of giving you the mickey. Let's not give him any more satisfaction by attempting to reply." He took Harry's letter between his hands and tore it into several pieces. Mum did the same with Hermione's.

Harry heard Hermione gulp across the table. She can't really believe there's such a school, can she? Or that we're...? Harry wouldn't let himself finish the thought. Dad's right. The whole idea is nuts.

~~~*~~~*~~~

Eight hours later, the Grangers arrived home in Little Whinging. After Dad pulled the car into the driveway, Harry helped him unload the boot while Hermione and Mum opened the house up. It was almost 11 p.m., considerably past their usual bedtime, but Harry knew that neither he nor his sister would be able to get to sleep just yet. His mind was still racing from the events of the past week, especially the arrival of the mysterious letters. As he carried his suitcase into the house, he noticed a tabby cat sitting serenely under the nearest street lamp. The cat had odd, square markings around its eyes.

Harry had barely gotten into the house and taken his jacket off when he thought he heard a rush of wings and a thump against the door. When he saw Mum and Hermione crane their necks toward the door, he realized that he wasn't imagining things. Harry glanced at the doormat and his eyes went wide with shock. There on the mat were two more envelopes almost identical to the ones they'd torn up earlier in the day. He picked them up and read the addresses aloud.

"This one says, 'Mr. Harry Potter Granger, The Living Room, Number Twelve Victoria Crescent, Little Whinging, Surrey.'" He noticed that Hermione had moved farther back in the house and he let out a low whistle. "The other one says, "Miss Hermione Granger, The Dining Room, Number Twelve Victoria Crescent, Little Whinging, Surrey.' Hermione, I think somebody's got our number," he joked weakly.

Mum moved in on him quickly, grabbed the letters out of his hands and tore them open. Her eyes looked wild as she scanned the contents. "Identical to the first letters, I think, except these say that this McGonagall woman 'will visit you in the immediate future.' This is a load of tosh, if you ask me." She looked searchingly at Harry and then Hermione. "Do either of you have any enemies at school? Anyone who would want to play a prank like this on you?"

Harry gulped and squirmed. "Erm, I guess you could say Dudley Dursley is my enemy," he began. "Dudley's always had it in for me, ever since we first started primary school." Hermione nodded. "He's picked on me and threatened me and chased me around the playground so many times I've lost count. Once near the end of last term he and Piers Polkiss tried to stick my head down the toilet." Mum looked concerned.

"And let's not forget the incident at the zoo," Hermione added.

Dad jumped in. "Of course. That's it. Dudley must be trying to get back at you for when that boa constrictor escaped at the zoo last month. How could we have missed that? I bet his fool father put him up to it. Vernon Dursley is a very mean, petty man. He probably thinks his ickle Duddykins has scared the pants off you."

"I wouldn't put this past Vernon Dursley or that obnoxious son of his," Mum replied. "I don't think the acorn has fallen very far from that tree." Suddenly looking and sounding very tired, she sank into the closest armchair in the living room. "If it weren't eleven o'clock on Saturday night, I'd ring that man up and give him a good piece of my mind," she muttered angrily.

"Don't worry about the Dursleys, Mum," Harry said softly, putting his hand on her shoulder. "It doesn't matter who sent these stupid letters. Let's forget about them and get some rest." Yawning mightily, he leaned over and kissed her forehead. "I'm going to bed now. Goodnight, Mum. Goodnight, Dad. I'm glad we're home. Pleasant dreams."

Harry was two steps up the stairs when the doorbell rang. He turned back and saw wondering looks on the faces of his parents and sister.

"It's awfully late. That couldn't be Mrs. Figg," Dad remarked. "I don't think she'd stop by so late just to bring over the week's post."

The bell rang again. This time the sound was almost insistent.

"Harry, would you get that please?" Mum asked.

"Yes, Mum." He opened the door wide. Standing on the doorstep was a tall, distinguished-looking older woman in a long, dark dress with a tartan shawl on her shoulders. She also wore a tall, tartan-plaid, pointed hat and dark, square-framed eyeglasses. The woman gave him a stern, appraising look.

"Harry Potter?" she inquired.

Harry felt the hair on the backs of his arms stand up. "Erm, well, that was the name I was born with, ma'am. My name has been Harry Granger since I was about two years old."

The woman's face softened as she smiled at him. "Yes, of course," she said, with a hint of a Scottish brogue. "It's very late. May I come in?"

Dad came up behind Harry and looked at the visitor at the door. "Pardon me, ma'am, but it is very late and we don't know you. Do you need some kind of assistance?" Harry could tell that Dad didn't want to sound impolite, but he also seemed rather wary of the stranger.

"Yes, I do, thank you," she replied. "I'm here to see Harry. And of course, Hermione too. I believe you've received our letters by now?"

Harry's eyes widened. He looked back toward his family and saw the same look of surprise in their eyes.

"Your letters?" he asked in a very small voice.

"Yes, our letters. Surely you've received them by now? The letters from Hogwarts. I'm Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

Harry looked at his parents. Dad was standing near the door, and Mum was still sitting in her armchair. Both of them appeared to be frozen, as still as statues, with their jaws hanging open.

"Please come in, Professor McGonagall," Hermione said in an awestruck tone. "May I take your shawl? Please have a seat."

Professor McGonagall glided into the room and sat down on the sofa. Harry noticed his parents turn their faces in her direction - but their mouths were still open. Dad regained his voice first. "Pardon my skepticism, 'Professor,' but how do we know you are what you say you are? If you're a...a...witch, prove it," he challenged.

Professor McGonagall sighed loudly. "If you insist, Dr. Granger. May I borrow that?" she asked, pointing to a small, red pincushion in Mum's sewing basket next to the sofa.

"If you must."

The professor pulled a wooden wand from her pocket, pointed it at the pincushion, and muttered something in Latin. In a split-second the pincushion changed into a baby hedgehog. Dad's mouth dropped open again. Mum's eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out in her chair. Harry saw Hermione's jaw drop, then realized there was drool running down his right cheek. He shut his mouth and sat in silence, waiting for his sister to do her usual probing.

"Professor," Hermione began slowly, "are you sure you didn't send the letters to us by mistake? I mean, I always thought witches and wizards were, you know, made up. Fictitious. Mythological."

A kindly smile crept onto the woman's face. "I'm really not surprised, Hermione. Most of the Muggle-born students at Hogwarts grew up believing the very same thing."

"What do you mean, Muggle-born?" she asked.

"Muggle-born refers to a witch or a wizard who was born into a non-magical family," the professor explained. "Muggle is the wizarding word for non-magical people. You, Hermione, are Muggle-born. While none of your blood relatives is magical, you yourself are. Therefore, you are a witch. When you were born, your name was written down in the Great Book at Hogwarts, the book that has recorded the birth of every witch and wizard in the British Isles for almost a thousand years. Likewise, when Harry was born, his name was written in the book. Of course, we had expected that, because both of his parents were magical."

Hermione had been twirling her hair the way she always did when she was trying to figure something out. "Harry's parents were magical? You mean the woman who abandoned him was a witch?"

Harry suddenly realized that Professor McGonagall was talking about his first mother. The woman who had left him on the Social Services doorstep when he was fifteen months old. The woman he'd wondered about for as long as he'd been aware that he hadn't been born into the Granger family.

"My mother was a witch?" he echoed. He suddenly felt like his brain was made of cotton wool. "Did you know her?"

The professor's smile faded somewhat and her eyes clouded over. "Yes, I knew both of your parents very well. Her name was Lily Evans and your father's name was James Potter. They were two of my favourite students in the nineteen seventies. Highly magical, both of them, and exceptional people as well. They were Head Girl and Head Boy in their last year at Hogwarts. They married soon after they finished school, and you were born about two years later."

Harry became silent again, trying to take in this new and unexpected information. He realized that Hermione, ever observant, was watching him carefully and waiting to see his response. Dad had recovered from his shock about the hedgehog (which the professor had quietly changed back into a pincushion) and was reviving Mum, but Harry noticed he was craning his neck toward the sofa, the better to keep an eye and an ear on the conversation.

Harry reckoned the time was ripe to find out as much as he could about his first parents. After all, he might never get a chance like this again.

"Professor," he hesitated, "you said my parents were magical. Do you mean they aren't magical anymore?"

He thought he saw tears in the professor's eyes.

"No," she said quietly. "I didn't mean that. I meant they aren't alive anymore."

Harry felt a stinging in the back of his throat. "Oh. I'm...sorry to hear that," he muttered. He sank back in his chair and heaved a sigh. He hadn't counted on them being dead. He'd always assumed that they were alive, somewhere, and he'd hoped that one day he might have a chance to find them and thank them for leaving him in front of the Social Services building in Little Whinging and not in a park or a public toilet.

"So," he continued, "does that mean they didn't abandon me?" Please say they didn't, he prayed, please say they didn't. Lacking other evidence, he'd spent years believing his first mother had abandoned him. But he'd always hoped she hadn't. He felt sure Professor McGonagall, who knew her so well, could clear up this mystery for him.

Professor McGonagall's chin trembled as she looked directly at him.

"No, Harry, they did not abandon you. They loved you very, very much. They loved you so much they both died trying to save you."

Harry's stomach fell like a lead balloon. He heard gasping sounds in the living room. Hermione burst into tears, Mum put both hands over her mouth in shock, and Dad bit his lip so hard Harry thought it might gush blood. Harry tried to shift in his chair but discovered he couldn't move; his legs had apparently turned to jelly.

"They died...trying to save me?" he questioned, his eyes suddenly feeling moist.

The older woman leaned toward Harry and put one hand gently on his arm. "Yes, Harry, your parents tried to save you from a very evil wizard who wanted to kill you. But he killed James, who was trying to protect his wife and baby, then he killed Lily because she wouldn't hand you over to him. And then he tried to kill you. But somehow, he couldn't."

Harry could feel hot tears streaming down his face. Closing his eyes, he wished he'd never asked that last question. It almost would have been easier to continue believing they'd abandoned him than to know that he'd caused their deaths.

"He tried to kill me?" he choked out. "Is that how I got this scar?" he asked, pulling back his fringe and pointing to his forehead.

"Yes, that's how you got that scar."

A vague but painful memory flashed through Harry's brain. He recalled a blast of bright green light, but nothing more. Eyes shut tightly, he shook his head slowly, tears dripping down on his jumper and jeans. Except for the green light, he could remember nothing about that night--that terrible night that, he knew now, cost his parents their lives. He wished he could remember more about that night. He knew he couldn't remember ever crying as much as he was crying now. He hoped someone would say something, anything, before his heart burst.

Dad must have been reading his mind. "Professor, I apologize for doubting you. And I'm very sorry to hear about the Potters, but it does make me feel better to know how much they loved our son--their son." Mum, who'd been silent the entire time, shook her head weakly in agreement. Dad's face brightened a bit and Harry could almost see the wheels turning in his head.

"Professor McGonagall," Dad smiled, as if anticipating the answer, "do you have any idea how Harry came to join our family?"

The older woman chuckled and wiped a tear from her eye. "Oh, I daresay do. After Harry's parents were killed, we had to find a new home for him quickly. Our headmaster, Professor Dumbledore, and I initially considered giving Harry to his nearest blood relatives, who also live in Little Whinging. But after observing them, we decided they would not be suitable. I believe you know them; their last name is Dursley." Mum and Dad both coughed loudly at that information, while Hermione stifled a laugh with her fist. Harry sighed with relief. He didn't want to imagine how different his life might have been if he'd grown up with Dudley and his parents.

"Apparently you are acquainted with them," the professor continued dryly. "So you can see why we believed you and Mrs. Granger would be much more suitable parents. We also thought it would be good for Harry to grow up with someone else like him" - here she glanced at Hermione - "and that it would be better for him to grow up loved than with a family who was incapable of loving him. So when Harry was brought to Little Whinging, we left him on the doorstep of the agency responsible for arranging adoptions, and we just hoped for the best. Obviously," she smiled at him, "our plan worked."

Suddenly she looked at her watch and stood up as if to leave. "My goodness, look at the time. I'm sorry I came so late; I had to wait for you to arrive home from Scotland, since I couldn't exactly Apparate into your compartment on the train from Inverness, and I really needed to speak to all four of you together." She turned to Harry and looked at him almost tenderly. "I'm very sorry if what I said tonight caused you pain, Harry. But I decided that since you probably knew nothing about James and Lily, it was my duty to answer any questions you might have about them."

Harry nodded numbly. He reckoned he would have a lot more questions soon enough, but right now his head and heart were struggling mightily to wrap themselves around the information he'd just learned.

Mum approached the professor and held out her hand. "Thank you so much for visiting us," she said with a note of awe in her voice. "I've always thought Harry and Hermione were very special, and they've both shown some unusual abilities since they were very young. We've always wanted to educate them so they could live up to their full potential. If attending the Hogwarts School will release that potential, I think we would be negligent not to send them there."

"Hogwarts is the pre-eminent school of witchcraft and wizardry in Europe," Professor McGonagall replied. "Of course, I was trained there myself, I'm on the faculty and I've been Deputy Headmistress for ten years, so I might have a tiny bit of prejudice on the subject," she noted with a twinkle in her eye. "At any rate, I've overstayed my welcome, I'm sure, so I'll leave you to yourselves now. Term starts September first. Mr. Hagrid from our staff will visit you tomorrow evening, and on Monday the thirty-first he will take Harry and Hermione to London to buy their books and other school supplies. Here is a list of the books and supplies they will need," she concluded, handing a parchment to Dad.

"I have only one request of you," she finished as she opened the door to leave. "Please keep this news to yourselves, at least for now. You may tell the children's grandparents, but no one else. If you do tell anyone else, we'll have to send someone to erase their memories." Dad chuckled, but the look on Professor McGonagall's face made him stop laughing. Harry gulped. I guess she's not joking about that, he marveled.

Harry looked at the clock on the mantel above the fireplace. It was almost midnight. In a little more than twenty-four hours it would be his eleventh birthday. Before then, someone else from Hogwarts would arrive and probably bring even more astonishing tales. Despite the heartbreaking news he'd heard this evening, Harry still thought this had been the most amazing day of his life. Suddenly, every strange thing that he'd ever done or that had ever happened to him flashed through his mind. For the first time, he understood why they'd happened. He was a wizard, and his sister and best friend in the world was a witch.