Harry Potter and the Secret Prophecy

Harry Potter
and the
Secret Prophecy

Alternate Universe Remix
fanfiction by Fox in the Stars

Full moon's eye beholds disaster.
Dark Lord's servant rejoins his master.
Wolf of silver, dog of black,
Hidden claws in the Shrieking Shack.
Promise remembered, promises break,
Found too late revenge to take.
The Child shall not regret this night,
But three turns come before the light:
Turns of rescue, turns of pain.
Know the Dark Lord comes again.

Chapter One
Mrs. Figg's Sugar Biscuits

Harry Potter lay on his back in his bed, in the smallest bedroom of the Dursley house at Number Four, Privet Drive in Little Whinging, where he lived on summer holidays away from school. Harry was a thin boy, somewhat tall now that he was at the age for growth spurts, and he had wild black hair that would never lie flat no matter how much trimming and combing it got. He wore round, taped glasses, and behind and above them were his most striking features: brilliant green eyes; and a scar on his forehead, shaped like a lightning bolt. For the moment, he had set everything aside and was listening carefully to the sounds of his Aunt and Uncle moving about the house, waiting to hear them go safely off to bed.

Harry had scarcely been outside his room in weeks. Uncle Vernon never looked in on him, and Aunt Petunia only rarely did. Usually he only saw her hand as she reached through the cat-flap they had installed in his bedroom door. She would put in a bowl of cold tinned soup at mealtimes, pick up the dirty bowl again a half-hour later, and every evening take away the narrow newspaper bags that they made him put his garbage in because those bags would fit through the cat-flap. He knew they would be getting ready for bed soon now, because Aunt Petunia had just taken away the bag.

Maybe, he thought, it was better this way, if they just shut him up in this space all to himself. With the Dursleys never looking in, he could spread his school things around the room and feel a little bit like he was still at school, still in the world the Dursleys hated passionately but that Harry called home: the world of Magic, where Witches and Wizards lived.

The Dursleys were Muggles -- the wizard name for non-magical people --- but Harry Potter was a young wizard, and except for summer holidays, he lived at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, the finest magic school in the world. Where he had been doing his summer homework, it wasn't ruled paper and pencils sitting out, but rolls of parchment and inkpots and quills. His textbooks had names like The Standard Book of Spells in numbered volumes by grade, Intermediate Transfiguration, and Unfogging the Future. Like most boys, he also had books about his favorite sport, but unlike most boys, that sport for Harry was Quidditch, a game in which the players flew on broomsticks and played with four balls of various types, all but one of which moved on its own. With Aunt Petunia looking in so rarely, he had dared to leave his school uniform laying out --- long black robes and a pointed hat, with a necktie and hatkerchief in red-and-gold, the colors of his school House, Griffindor. Even the photo of his long-dead parents that Harry kept by his bedside wasn't a still Muggle photo; his mother and father, James and Lily Potter, moved around in the photo-frame like live people viewed through a window. Out of the corner of his eye Harry often saw them chatting with each other, and they beamed and waved whenever he looked at them.

He only wished there was a way to stay at Hogwarts over the summer. If they held classes then, he knew that Hermione Granger, one of his closest friends, would be there, too --- she never missed a chance to study. His best friend Ron Weasley, however, would probably prefer a vacation from classes, to spend the holiday at "the Burrow," his family's cosy home where all of them were wizards.

Harry agreed that a summer at the Weasleys' would be more fun than a summer of class, but anything would be better than being here with the Dursleys; they had always hated wizards and therefore hated Harry. They had raised him since he was a baby and his parents had died --- killed by a wizard so evil and fearful that most magical people wouldn't dare speak his name --- and Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and their son Dudley had been horrible to Harry for as long as he remembered. He got only cold tinned soup or scraps to eat, only Dudley's outsize castoffs to wear, and until he had become school-age, his "room" had been the spider-infested cupboard under the stairs.

He had his own room now, but other than that, the Dursleys somehow managed to be worse every summer. This year, he had scarcely been home for a week when he had tried to look in on the television news. Uncle Vernon had been watching it anyway, and Harry had done his best to be quiet and inconspicuous, but suddenly his uncle had demanded to know what he wanted to see the news for. "Isn't natural! Goodness knows Dudley couldn't care less what's going on, and what's it matter to your kind, anyway??" Aunt Petunia had then ordered him up to his room---"And stay there until we tell you!" A few days later when he had ventured out, he had found that pronouncement indeed in effect until his Aunt and Uncle said otherwise, and now it had been over a month and they still hadn't.

So for weeks, practically his only sights of Privet Drive had been through his window, but then, the white fences and manicured lawns weren't very interesting to him. There was no reason he would want to see Uncle Vernon set off in the car for the office at his drill-making firm, or Aunt Petunia walking along the street, craning her long neck over all the neighbors' fences so she could tell smug gossip about what she'd seen. The sight of Dudley coming and going with his increasingly-thuglike gang of friends --- one of the older ones had a car now --- only made Harry throw himself back onto the bed in disgust.

The only thing worse than that had been the time Mrs. Figg, the batty old cat lady from two streets over, had come walking along. She had noticed Harry in the window and not long afterward had come over and insisted on seeing him. Her visit was the one time in the past month that he had been allowed out of his room, but that was no prize when it meant being stuffed with Mrs. Figg's lemony-baking-powder flavored sugar biscuits and something she called zucchini bread --- it tasted to Harry like slices of foam rubber with a hint of sweetness too weak to drown out the cabbage-and-catbox scent of her house that lingered on it. Mrs. Figg had fetched a photo-album from her house and had made Harry look at page after page of snaps of her newest cat, Little Miss Footie-Socks, "but you can just call her Soxie, she doesn't mind it a bit, bless her heart..." She had needled Harry with questions about school that were doubly awkward under Aunt Petunia's watchful eye, and he had babbled out a story about a summer assignment for St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys, which the Dursleys claimed was the name of his school. He had to do "ten feet of parch--- er, ten reams of paper," he had said, tracing the history of the British correctional system with specific examples, and when Mrs. Figg had asked if he could bring it by for her to read, he had rushed to tell her that he had to send it in by post as soon as it was done, so no, sorry, he couldn't. Otherwise, he was sure that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would make him actually write such a paper to show Mrs. Figg. He thought angrily to himself that the Dursleys would have gotten a whole chapter.

But the part of that visit he couldn't get out of his mind was when Aunt Petunia had gone to answer the phone and Mrs. Figg had leaned over to him. "By the way, Harry," she had whispered, "have you been seeing a great black dog about?" Harry was still shocked by that because such a dog might have been the only family he had left. His godfather, Sirius Black, was an Animagus: a wizard who could transform himself into an animal, in Sirius's case a huge black dog. In a way Harry would have been overjoyed if Sirius were that close, but he had more reason to be frightened by the thought. Sirius was a fugitive who had been framed for a terrible crime and spent twelve harrowing years in the wizard prison Azkaban. Now he had been sentenced to the worst death imaginable if the Ministry of Magic caught him, so Harry said no, he hadn't seen any dogs about, and he should really get back to that paper, if Mrs. Figg would excuse him...

With that, he had run back up to his room, and he'd been there ever since. Now if he was looking out the window and happened to see Mrs. Figg, he ducked out of sight.

All that just for wanting to see the news and not saying why! He couldn't tell the Dursleys why; the reason was Voldemort, the evil wizard whose very name was so feared, who had killed Harry's parents, who had lost his powers when he tried to kill baby Harry but only left him with the lightning-scar on his forehead, whose defeat every Wizard and Witch had celebrated that night.

Harry knew something very few others, even in the Magical world, knew: Voldemort was back.

At last he heard the flick of his Aunt and Uncle's bedroom lights switching off. Still he waited until he heard Uncle Vernon snoring before he knew that it was safe. He got up on his knees and opened his window, letting the cool night air flow in, but what he was looking for were owls.

Presently a brown spotted post-owl flew into the now-open window with a newspaper in its talons --- the Wizard newspaper, The Daily Prophet. The owl dropped the paper on Harry's bed and held out its leg where it wore a little pouch. Harry dropped a few copper knuts into the pouch to pay for the paper, then the owl hooted politely and took off out the window again.

Harry unfolded the paper and looked at the front page, filled with moving photos. The headline read "Goblins Want Ministry Out of Setting Rates;" There was a photo of one of the goblins who ran Gringotts, the wizard bank, shaking a long finger at Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge in his lime-green bowler hat and pinstriped suit. If that was the biggest story of the day, then they didn't know of anything Voldemort had done, but that didn't mean much. The Ministry and the Daily Prophet had spent most of the past year trying to make Harry look unbalanced. Once they had thought him a hero, but now that Voldemort was back --- having returned at the end of the past school year before Harry's very eyes, killing another student, Cedric Diggory, and nearly killing Harry, who barely managed to escape --- they refused to believe it. Even when Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts, the greatest and most respected wizard in the world as far as Harry was concerned, had told Harry's story to the whole school, Minister Fudge had insisted it couldn't be true. The Daily Prophet had only reluctantly run a story about the tales all the Hogwarts students had come home with; they said that Dumbledore was getting too old, starting to dodder, and thus he'd been drawn into "Potter's hysterical ploys for attention" and seen fit to frighten all their readers' children with stories about "You-Know-Who."

No, Harry thought, Voldemort would have to blow up the Daily Prophet's main office before he would make the headline, and then they might claim it had been someone else. He leafed through, skimming the story titles for anything that might really be Voldemort underneath, but he didn't find anything, so he rolled up the paper, stuffed it through the catflap, and threw himself down on the bed again with a heavy sigh.

Surely Voldemort wasn't just sitting around all summer doing nothing. When Aunt Petunia had first sent him up to his room, he had wanted to see the Muggle news in case they might report anything the wizard news didn't, perhaps a "gas main explosion" where people had seen funny pictures in the smoke --- maybe a skull with a snake slithering out its mouth: Voldemort's "Dark Mark" that meant he or his followers, the Death Eaters, had killed someone... But of course, the Dursleys hadn't even let him do that.

He would have thought that his friends would let him know what was going on. Ron's parents, after all, were working with Dumbledore, who was leading the fight against Voldemort just as he had years before. Sirius was with them, too, but Harry was just as glad not to hear from him, in case sending letters might give away his location to the authorities.

But Ron had no excuse --- and neither did Hermione, since her letters said she was spending the holiday with Ron's family. Every time they wrote to him, they acted like nothing was wrong. Hermione had already bought The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 5 and was gushing about Protean Charms; Ron said he was getting pretty good at playing Keeper in backyard Quidditch games, although the one time they had gotten Hermione to play hadn't gone so well. All their sunny notes about a holiday at the Burrow made him furious. He had even sent them letters asking if anything more serious was happening, they just ignored the questions. When his birthday packages had arrived from them, full of Chocolate Frogs and broom polish, the notes had just said "Happy 15th, Harry! Enjoy the Frogs; we think there might be some *ultra-rare* cards in these ones." As if he was interested in Chocolate Frog Cards at a time like this!! He had been so angry that he rolled the whole lot of it in worthless Daily Prophet pages and shoved it through the catflap for Aunt Petunia to take out to the bin.

The last time he'd given letters for Ron and Hermione to his own snowy owl, Hedwig, Harry had told her to stay there and pester them until she could bring back some letters where they told him what was going on. That had been a week ago, and now as Harry watched his window, there still wasn't a trace of Hedwig to be seen.

Harry preferred being shut away from the Dursleys, but he was tired of being shut away from the whole world, Magical and Muggle. If only my room weren't on the second storey, he thought, leaning crossed arms on the sill. If only I was allowed to use magic during holiday! If he could, even the dozen-foot drop from the bedroom window would be no problem, but he had already found out in summers past that the Ministry of Magic knew whenever spells were cast around him.

What about magical items? Harry wondered. At that he turned and looked around the room. It was full of magical items! Some of his textbooks were magical, such as The Monster Book of Monsters that was tied shut on his shelf, still struggling and growling. There was the Pocket Sneakoscope on his desk that would spin like a top to warn him whenever Aunt Petunia was sneaking about and listening at his door, and even all the wizard pictures here were magical items, and apparently legal...

After all, Harry thought, he had taken greater risks and broken bigger rules than that when he was facing something this important. Surely he should know everything he could about whatever Voldemort might be doing. The really important thing about that law was keeping the magic secret, and he certainly would do everything possible to hide it from all the Muggles of Privet Drive...

Harry resolved to try it, and he tucked his wand into his belt just in case --- better to get in trouble with the Ministry of Magic than to get killed if Voldemort or anything else jumped out at him. He crept off the bed, opened his trunk, and took out two of his most prized posessions: his Firebolt, one of the finest racing brooms ever made and the first Christmas gift Sirius had been able to give him; and the silvery Invisibility Cloak that had belonged to his father. He gripped the broomstick and carefully wrapped the Invisibility Cloak around him so that he and the broom would be totally concealed by it, then climbed onto the window sill, leaned out, and kicked off.

The cool night breeze blew over Harry's face and ruffled his hair for the first time in weeks --- there was nothing he loved more than flying. He longed to aim the broom toward the moon and simply soar, to make loops and barrel rolls over the entire neighborhood, but this was a time to stay subtle, so he only wheeled around behind the house and put down in the backyard. He crawled into the tight space between Aunt Petunia's lilac bushes and the white picket fence, then shuffled out of the Invisibility Cloak and left it and the Firebolt hidden there as he emerged from the bushes and dusted off his jeans.

As he went out front to the sidewalk, he scanned the sky for owls; if he had broken the law, the Ministry would send letters almost instantly, but now the sky was clear, and with a sigh of relief he set off walking down the street.

He walked for about a block and a half, just enjoying the cool evening, before he even thought about what to do next. News: where could he find a television or radio, or a newspaper? If he walked into town, most of the shops were closed, but maybe he could find a TV or radio playing in a petrol station or something... A newspaper might be easier to find, but if he came to a newspaper-box, he didn't have any Muggle coins to buy one with. He could probably find one in a bin --- Uncle Vernon got the paper, but he didn't dare look through the bin in the Dursleys' drive as it would be just like them to notice any tampering and blame Harry for it. He glanced at the ones in the neighbors' yards along the street, but he was passing a house with a light on, so he kept walking and waited for it to go out of sight.

He passed a play park where Dudley's gang had pulled down all but one of the swings and carved crude sayings into the wooden beams of the play castle and the fence. Just beyond that began brick walls that sprang directly up from the edge of the sidewalk, dotted with the darkened windows of small shops and offices, and finally he passed an alley where he saw a skip. That was a fairly concealed place, he thought.

As he started down the alley, a butterscotch tabby cat peered out from behind some piled-up crates. Was it one of Mrs. Figg's cats? She had so many, Harry couldn't keep them straight, and no matter anyway, he thought, as it ran off down the alley. When he got to the skip, he saw a bit of pulp paper sticking out; he pulled it free and squinted at it in the wan light from the faraway streetlamps, but it turned out to be only an advertising circular. He threw it aside and started picking carefully through the bin-bags. Sneaking about like this quickened his heartbeat --- especially when the roar and flash of a car's headlamps occasionally passed the alley entrance --- but that felt good to him, like the adventures he and his friends often had at Hogwarts.

Finally he found a paper; straining his eyes in the dimness, it looked like the news, and when a car's headlamps flashed by, it was just enough to confirm it. He heard the tyres squeal, then the alley was lit again; Harry just caught the headline --- "Local Group Protests Foxhunt Ban Initiative" --- before he realised that the headlamps had come upon him this time running backward. The car had reversed back to the alley entrance and stopped there, and Harry looked up and squinted into the light.

"Oy, look what escaped from the zoo!" a voice said, eliciting a chorus of crude laughter. With the lamps glaring on his glasses, Harry couldn't see Dudley and his gang enough to identify them, but he recognised their voices. He just rolled his eyes and turned back to his paper --- the worst Dudley could do was hit him, as he'd been doing since he was old enough to aim his fist. How could Harry be afraid of his bullying cousin after looking into Voldemort's cruel, red, slit-pupilled eyes?

"Just let me off, mates; I'll walk the rest of the way once I'm done here," Dudley was saying.

Why couldn't those gits just keep driving?? Harry wondered, hurriedly skimming the news stories. Nothing serious...

"You want a hand, Studley?"

Harry dropped the paper and choked. 'Studley'!?

"Nah, he's just a little one. I'll take care of him myself." Dudley's broad silhouette started down the alley as the car tore off again, the other boys still whooping and laughing. Harry heard them run down a mailbox a block or so away.

But once they were gone, he turned and faced his cousin with a defiant grin. "'Studley'? Is that what they call you?"

"Have you got a problem with that?" Dudley demanded, threateningly raising one of his thick arms.

"No," Harry said, "I just think 'Dinky Duddydums' fits you better." He was still smiling, but at the same time wished he hadn't left his broomstick back in the Dursleys' yard.

"And what do they call you at that freak school you go to? 'Sparky'!?" Dudley demanded. "Is that what Cedric calls you? Or does he call you 'Darling'??"

Harry jumped. How dare you! How dare Dudley, that spoiled brat, make fun of Cedric, who had earned the right to be the hero of the whole school, who had been callously murdered just when his life should have been starting! But how could he---? "How do you know his name!?"

"Oh, that wall's not too thick; I hear you carrying on in your sleep all the time," Dudley said. He'd come close enough that Harry could see his face, and he showed a smug grin now that he had the upper hand. "Most of it's hard to make out, but I hear that one a lot: 'Cedric! Cedric, no!'"

"Shut up!" Harry hissed. "You don't know what you're talking about!"

"You must go through them fast. Last summer it was 'Sirius! No, don't kill Sirius!' all the time."

That was going too far! If anyone heard Dudley say that, if it got back to the authorities... "Dudley, don't you ever say his name! I mean it!!"

"Oh, I guess that one must have been a messy breakup, eh?" To Harry's horror, Dudley cupped his hands around his mouth and sang out "HARRY LOVES SIRIUS!!" like a schoolyard taunt, so loudly that it echoed all the way up the alley walls and into the darkening sky.

I can make you take me seriously, you---!! Harry snatched his wand from his belt and pointed it straight at Dudley's face. "When I tell you 'don't say his name,' I mean don't say it!!" he snarled.

His cousin stood frozen for a moment before finding his voice. "You--- You can't scare me with that thing!" Dudley stammered. "I know you're not allowed to use magic here!"

"If you go blabbing Sirius's name around, I don't care what I am and am not allowed to do!" The words were half out of Harry's mouth before he realised how much he meant them.

"You wouldn't! You'd get expelled from your freak school!"

Harry noted with satisfaction that Dudley was on the defensive now, grasping at straws.

"Is that what they teach you there? How to nose around in bins? Is that what your Dad used to do!?"

That last jab knocked the smirk off Harry's face completely and sent him into such rage that his wand spit red sparks. "SHUT UP!"

"Mum always said he was a bum!"

The red light of the wand lit both their faces, and Harry viciously locked his eyes with Dudley's. "DON'T YOU EVER TALK ABOUT MY---"

Suddenly, he didn't know why, but Harry could see himself as if in a mirror, see his own face pulled with rage, the red sparks of his wand glinting off his glasses and picking out the scar on his head with their light. What was happening? There was no mirror here...

Then he realised that he was seeing himself through Dudley's eyes --- and he was terrifying! The next moment he was surrounded by snatched reflections of himself, as if his head --- or was it Dudley's head? --- had turned into a carnival house of mirrors. Harry in primary school, leaping on top of a building when Dudley's gang had been chasing him, Harry coming out of his bedroom in the morning with a full head of wild black hair after Aunt Petunia had practically shaved him bald the night before, Harry fighting Uncle Vernon for the owl-borne letters that had turned out to be his acceptance to Hogwarts, Harry's bizarre wizard friends --- the Weasleys --- bursting into the Dursley home through the fireplace...

Every image would have seemed harmless enough to Harry, but here they reflected fear back at him --- Dudley's fear. Dudley was afraid of Harry! That was why he had acted so tough in front of his friends, why he was tormenting Harry now! Dudley had always been afraid of Harry. That had always been why he hit him and picked on him: to prove to himself and anyone watching that he wasn't afraid, but he could never prove that and be done with it because he was afraid, was really utterly terrified...

Harry burst out laughing so hard that he fell back against the skip, catching himself on it with his elbow. After everything, Dudley was just a frightened little brat, and his now-more-desperate protests --- "What did you do!? I'll hit you, I swear!" --- only made him more ridiculous.

But then Harry's laughter began to sound more hollow, feel more hateful; it began to scare even him, and he stopped himself. When he looked up, the air had gone cold. The light from the street was being clouded out. Something was coming, something that sucked all the joy out of everyone it came near... Dementors??

"Stop it! Stop it!" Dudley cried.

"I'm not doing it!" Harry told him.

"It was you! I know it was you!!"

"It's not me anymore!!" Harry glanced back and forth at the two ends of the alley, wand at the ready. He didn't have time for Dudley's blubbering now! They seemed to be coming from the end leading onto the street, but why would Dementors be---?

POW!

Harry felt a massive impact and sparks flew before his eyes as Dudley punched him. He hit the ground and half picked himself up from the grubby alley floor before he shook it off enough to see Dudley fleeing back up the alley toward the street and the Dursley house --- Right toward them!

As Harry looked on in horror, the mouth of the alley closed up with the black shapes of the Dementors' cloaks, and still Dudley ran straight at them "What are you---!?!?" ---Muggles can't see them!--- "THE OTHER WAY, DUDLEY!!" Harry screamed. "RUN THE OTHER WAY!!"

But it was too late. Dudley froze in front of the black shapes, stumbled around blindly for a moment, then collapsed and curled up quivering on the pavement.

The other end of the alley was still open. Harry could just make a run for it, but then what would the Dementors do to Dudley? Would they drive him insane? Would they "Kiss" him and suck out his soul --- as they would do to Sirius if they caught him? Harry couldn't just leave his cousin, and he knew the spell to save him. All it would take was one happy memory to summon his Patronus, a magical guardian that would chase the Dementors away.

Harry pointed his wand at them. "Expecto Patronum!" His mind was empty; only a little silver whisp came out of his wand. Think of something happy... But whenever he tried, the dismal aura of the Dementors turned it into something bad. Birthday presents --- he'd been angry and thrown them away; his friends wouldn't answer his questions; they were shutting him out... Still he kept his wand pointed at the Dementors and walked determinedly toward Dudley, toward them, saying the spell over and over... "Expecto Patronum!" Another pale whisp. "Expecto Patronum!!" Nothing.

When he'd found out he had a Godfather, that he still had some family --- but then later that evening, he had thought that Sirius was going to be killed, going to have his soul devoured. Somehow Harry had saved him, but in front of the Dementors, it was so hard to remember it... "Expecto Patronum!" His friends at Hogwarts: Ron, Hermione --- Ron's little sister Ginny laying motionless on the floor as Voldemort stood over her laughing, Hermione collapsing as Harry had tried this same spell against an advancing crowd of Dementors, and then as now, what had come out of his wand wasn't enough... He knew he had saved them those times, too, but he couldn't remember it! "Expecto Patronum!!"

He reached Dudley and collapsed over him, clinging even to his cousin's blubbery cowering shape. He was now close enough to hear the rattling breaths inside the Dementors' hoods and feel their putrid clamminess closing in. He could barely see anything except the horrible memories they brought swirling around his head. He was clutching Cedric's lifeless body, Couldn't save him...

"EXPECTO PATRONUM!" He'd cast this spell before, why couldn't he do it now!? I can't do it...

He heard the rushing sound and saw the green flash of the curse that had killed Cedric, the same curse that had killed his father. Now he could hear his mother screaming in his head, clutching the side of his crib as Voldemort bore down on her---

"No, please, not Harry!"

"Stand aside, girl!"

"No! Not Harry! Have mercy, please, not my baby!"

I couldn't save her! Harry couldn't even tell where the Dementors were to point his wand at them anymore. He hugged Dudley in the dark --- can't save him! --- as with another green flash his mother collapsed against his crib, as Sirius and Hermione fell to the ground surrounded by Dementors, as the most terrible moments of his life, the moments when all had seemed lost, crowded in on him with the happy endings that had gotten him through them all messily chopped off and missing.

Harry's voice froze in his throat; he tried to say the words of the spell again, but he couldn't even make them come out. I can't do it... I can't save Dudley... I can't help anybody... His head was spinning; he was about to faint. All he could do was let out a pitiful moan and crush his face into Dudley's fleshy shoulder as the Dementors leaned over him. One of them was reaching for its hood, to lower it for the Kiss...

But then they froze. Harry heard a crisp pattering sound; he felt a light, hard something strike him once on the back, again just above his ear. He heard more of the things hitting the Dementors' cloaks, and whatever the projectiles were, the Dementors shrank back from them. Harry felt the cloying presence lifting, and he raised his head. White discs flew at his attackers, and a familiar voice was shouting from behind Harry...

"Get out of here! Run along! Scat! Go home! You lot don't belong here! Don't make me summon my Patronus!"

The Dementors retreated out of the alley and melted away into the light of the streetlamps. Harry at last disentangled himself from Dudley and tried to stand, but he fell to his knees again. His mind had been blasted bare.

"Now, careful there, Harry sweetheart," said the familiar voice. Soft footsteps came up beside him, and someone handed him something: a white disc of the same kind as the ones now littering the alley. "Eat that, it'll help."

Harry heard the footsteps shuffle around behind him toward Dudley. He pushed the object toward his face and bit down on it so numbly that crumbs fell out of his mouth. It was a biscuit; its texture was brittle and sandy. As he slowly chewed it, it tasted sweet on top, but dry and lemony, baking powdery, with perhaps just a hint as if it had absorbed the scent from boiling cabbages...

The recognition suddenly brought him to himself, and Harry whipped around in surprise at the old lady who was now trying to coax Dudley up from the ground.

"MRS. FIGG!"

to be continued in...
Chapter Two: Aunt Petunia's Heel