Diamonds at Night

Dudley Dursley pushed Harry down onto the ground and made his way into Harry's room. "Where are they?" he demanded to Harry, looking around in all sorts of boxes.

"Where are what?" Harry asked, just letting Dudley have his way, knowing it wouldn't do anything to complain.

"Those little soldier things of yours. I want them." He pulled some trinkets out of a small bag and threw them down on the floor in his search.

"But you have some of your own," said Harry, leaning against the dresser, watching Dudley pry into all of his things.

"They're broken," Dudley lied, continuing to look for the soldiers, now trying to shove himself under Harry's bed, at which he would have succeeded had be not been too big.

"They aren't under there," said Harry, slightly amused with the entire scene.

"Then where are they?" Dudley screamed and looked Harry in the eye. "I want them now!" Harry paid him no attention and lied down on the bed. "Are you listening to me? I said I want them now!" He got up on Harry's bed and started to jump up and down.

"Alright alright," Harry said, wanting to save his bed from an untimely demise. "They're in here." He pulled out an old rusty biscuit tin from a drawer in his bedside table and handed it to Dudley.

"Give me that!" Dudley snatched it and opened it up. "That can't be all of them," he said, sifting through the little metal soldiers. "You're hiding the rest!" he put the tin down and cornered Harry again.

"That's all of them!" Harry said, "why don't you just combine them to your own? Or use something else to play with?"

"I'll just get Mum to buy me new ones tomorrow, but until then these will have to do." He looked at Harry's soldiers with a bit of distaste and made his way out into the corridor, slamming Harry's door shut behind him.

He heard Dudley clamber downstairs and then return, with what sounded like something heavy in hand. For a long while there was silence while Dudley was probably doing something he really shouldn't be doing. Harry went to the door and looked out the keyhole. He searched around the corridor, as much as he could see of it, but couldn't find anything. Then a large mass rose in front of his eyes and Harry found himself staring at Dudley's giant bottom. He averted his eyes quickly and went back to sit on the bed.

"There's only twelve of them, I can take them all!" Dudley talked to himself as he set up several of the toy soldiers at the end of the corridor. He had put a pot on his head and was pretending to be a general leading his loyal troops into a battle in India. Harry was listening from inside his bedroom and could only imagine the display Dudley must have been causing. He also couldn't help but feel that the only battle Dudley could lead troops into was the Battle of Vindaloo. "There is no way you can defeat me!" Dudley shouted as he drew a fake sword and made like he was riding an elephant. "Alright Corporal, march!"

Dudley ran to the opposite end of the corridor (as fast as someone his size could run), and prepared himself for the attack. "Right..." he mumbled under his breath, spying the little soldiers who were eyeing him back with metallic looks of contempt. Harry had become used to Dudley's purloining of his belongings by now, and felt more sorry for the fact that they were going to get damaged, rather than that he was going to be losing something of his. He for one would hate to be crushed to death by a beluga in Sunday dress. "Prepare to be killed!" Dudley snorted and then readied himself for the battle.

Harry heard Dudley's stamping come down the hallway and a sort of makeshift battle cry as for a moment the footsteps were suspended and he heard and almighty crash, followed by a harrowing scream of apparent defeat which sounded something like "Muuuuum!"

Aunt Petunia bounded up the stairs to find Dudley with his ankles submersed in the floorboards. She shrieked and grabbed her little boy from what looked to her like an almost certain and grotesque death. Harry peeked through the keyhole of his door and tried to stifle his laughter. "What's happened!?" Aunt Petunia screamed, comforting Dudley and pushing away the bodies of the toy soldier victims. "What happened to my little baby?" she kneeled down and looked Dudley in the eye, brushing his hair out of his face as he tried to recount the tale but found himself speechless. Another one of his brilliant bouts of horrible acting.

"It was Harry! He did...the M word!" Dudley was on the verge of bringing out the tears by now. The look on Aunt Petunia's face was one of sheer horror. She hustled Dudley into his bedroom for fear of his being affected with emotional scaring, and set him down into bed to rest for a moment. She closed the door behind her and made her way towards Harry's room, and then began to rap on the door. Harry braced himself for a long winded lecture and stood by the door, not wanting it to begin yet.

"Do you hear me, open the door!" she shouted again, banging even harder this time. Harry took a deep breath and then turned the knob to see the seething face of Aunt Petunia.

"What have you been told a million times?" She loomed over his head with his hands on her hips, at the same time trying to hide her own fear of the possible things Harry might be able to change her into, like a coffee table book on Burmese tiger trappers or something as equally revolting.

"No performing magic in the house," said Harry, as if reciting something which had been drilled into his head by a maniacal professor, which in a way was exactly what Petunia and Vernon Dursley were.

For the entire duration of this summer, Petunia and Vernon Dursley had kept Harry in his room with even less of the provision he had received in previous summers. Anytime anything arrived for him it was immediately burned, his food was given to him with the strictest rule that he must eat it in his room, and all of his belongings were fair game for Dudley's amusement.

"And what else?" She was a little taken aback from the use of a certain word.

"Not to use the M word either," he said, putting his arms behind his back. He had received this so many times that it really didn't matter what he did, so he simply stood there and took the verbal beating.

"Indeed," she spat, "now, I expect this little problem to be fixed in a total of one hour, or no supper for you, do you understand me? And I don't mean no supper tonight, I mean no supper for the next three weeks!" she turned on her heel and made her way quickly downstairs to finish fixing dinner for the family. Harry pushed the door closed behind him and went to sit on his bed and stared over at Hedwig. He could hear Dudley down the corridor laughing to himself over the whole incident.

"He won't be laughing soon enough" said Harry to Hedwig, and went out of the room and downstairs to start trying to figure out how to repair the corridor floor.

He found a torch and went into the backyard, trying to spy some sort of wood he could fashion into a floorboard. As his eyes roamed around the bushes he felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned quickly but found there was nobody there. He could still feel the hand on his shoulder and he tried to brush it off, but it wouldn't budge. "W-who's there?" he managed to enquire. The weight on his shoulder was suddenly lifted and Harry fell down to the ground. He heard what seemed like a rustling from the bushes, but then everything returned to its normal silence. He grabbed a piece of discarded wood from a pile by the back of the house and dragged it inside, trying to push the experience from his mind. It was so odd that nothing more happened than what felt like a hand on his shoulder, and then a quick retreat. Usually such occurences were accompanied by a message of some sort, or at least a sort of struggle.

He brought the wood into his room and then meandered down to Uncle Vernon's workshop and dug around for some nails or a saw. Finding the materials he needed, he managed to get back upstairs without disturbing the family, who were all in the kitchen eating and laughing heartily over trivialities. He threw everything down on the floor and started hammering the boards over the massive hole. It was really amazing how much damage Dudley could do when doing something as simple as jumping. It made him think twice about having a second chocolate frog the next time he was offered one. As Harry brought the hammer down again to hit a nail, he heard another sound coming from behind him. He quickly stood up and looked towards his bedroom.

He walked in, holding the hammer firmly in his hand and looked about. There was nothing there. "Hello?" he called into the darkness. He heard what sounded like faint footsteps but they were soon gone. He looked towards the window to see if perhaps whatever had been infiltrating his room had used it as an exit. He went over to it and saw that there was residue from someone's breathing on the window pane. He wiped at it but it was on the outside. He put down the hammer and lifted up the window. He stuck his head out and looked around but was met with nothing but more darkness. There was a sudden slam behind him and he whirled around to see his bedroom door close swiftly and heard footsteps walking down the stairs.

He ran to the door and opened it, and much to his surprise on the other side stood Uncle Vernon, flushed with anger. "What's all this racket, boy?" he boomed, as Dudley hid behind his leg trying to keep from laughing. "Weren't you told to repair the floor? Well, answer me then!" His shadow was cast over Harry's face.

"I'm sorry" he said, "the wind blew the door shut." He hung his head upon noticing that it was a perfectly still evening.

"The wind indeed" Uncle Vernon scoffed, but was somehow too lazy to think of another punishment for Harry, something which would usually delight him so much. "Well, any more of this funny business, boy, and you know what I'm talking about, and you'll have no meals for a month!" He slammed the door leaving Harry alone once again in his room as he bounded down the stairs, the sound of Dudley Dursley's jejune laughter following him.

Harry retreated in resignation to his bed and looked over again at Hedwig. "I wonder who our mysterious visitor was" Harry said, "did you notice anything at all?" The owl just looked straight back at him. "No I don't suppose you did. It'd be hard to see or hear anything what with all this darkness." He reached over and turned on the lamp, "and with all the racket those people make." He sneered. He reached over onto the bedside table once more and picked up a book and then leaned back over onto his side on the bed and flipped it open to a page which had been dog eared.

As he did so Hedwig began to stir in her cage. He ignored her at first, immersing himself in a story about a young witch being tortured in a palace in the South of France. Eventually the noise became too much to concentrate over and he lifted his head to look at her. "What is it?" he asked. The owl was obviously trying to divert his attention to the other side of the room, where on the dresser was a piece of paper which hadn't been there previously. Harry closed his book and got up to walk over to the dresser.

The paper was very ordinary, but folded over so that no words were visible. Harry picked it up and unfolded it. The only words which were written on the paper were the words "I love you, but right now I can't" and there was nothing more. "Can't what?" Harry spoke aloud. "And who on earth was that who put this here?" He racked his brain for a list of possible people who might be playing a joke on him or something, but why would they have been there? Ron was visiting with Charlie in Romania, and Hermione was off on holiday as well, and besides, why would either of them bother to come into his room and leave what looked like some sort of love letter, and then not even bother to say a proper hello? Unless of course it was Dudley, but even then not even Dudley would say something with so much emotion attached to it, even if it was a prank.

He folded the paper back up and put it in between the pages of his book. Maybe he would be given more of the message. What really bothered Harry was the possible end of the sentence. They couldn't what? And what an odd way to start a letter to someone. There wasn't even a Dear Harry, or a Harry followed by a comma. It just started off "I love you". Whoever it was was probably the same person who put their hand on Harry's shoulder earlier in the back yard, and the same person who had breathed on the windowpane. They seemed like they must be quite a large person if their hand had been that heavy. It definitely was neither Ron nor Hermione.

He lay back down in his bed, pulling the covers up to his neck and taking off his glasses. "Goodnight Hedwig" he mumbled.

Even though he was completely overtaken with fatigue, Harry couldn't sleep to save his life. His mind was just brimming with thoughts about this visitor, and the note he'd received. He was almost afraid to go to sleep, because perhaps this person would revisit him, and he'd more certainly need to be awake for that. But then again, what if this person was one of Voldemort's kind, or even Voldemort himself. Harry shivered and wrapped the blankets around him tighter. "I'll send an owl to Hermione and Ron in the morning" he resolved. "If I can manage to sneak Hedwig out without Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon knowing." Hedwig stirred again in her cage and eventually found a position suitable for her own sleeping. Usually she'd spend the night up, but tonight she really felt she ought to get some sleep for fear of what Harry might have in store for her tomorrow. As she did so, Harry thought in his head the words he would use to compose his letter. His wording would have to be concise, but he couldn't tell everything, because there was always the possibility that his letter could be intercepted. There were some days when Harry wished he could just be a normal wizard. These sorts of things never happened to Ron at home, why was he being picked on? Oh yes, that's right, he was the boy who lived...and he couldn't help but hope that he would be the boy who kept on living.