Harry Potter and the Heart of Darkness

Chapter One: Letters and Nightmares

Life at Number 4 Privet Drive one might imagine by looking at it, was normal, boring and ordinary. On the outside was a display of the usual flowers, shrubs and other flora that surrounded any nice suburban home, completed by a respectable company car in the driveway and a slightly weather-beaten brass number hung just in sight of the street to proclaim to all passerby that yes, this was in fact Number 4, Privet Drive. On the inside, respectable furnishings and all the normal rooms and working appliances of the family home could be found in every nook and cranny. Even it's inhabitants seemed to be the epitome of average. There was Vernon Dursley, a great, loud tomato-faced man with no neck, his wife Petunia, thin and boney with a marked interest in the doings of their neighbors, their son Dudley who was fat and blonde and finally Harry Potter, their dark-haired, bespectacled nephew who had arrived to stay with them after his parents had died. No, none of this seemed to be at all out of the ordinary to plain sight.

But Number 4 Privet Drive contained a secret that was far from being normal, boring and ordinary. It was the Dursley's (who prided themselves on being normal, boring and ordinary) deepest darkest and most shameful secret that they were related to a Wizard. It did not make it any better that this one in particular was quite possibly the most famous living Wizard, and it certainly did not make it easier that he was forced to live with them every summer.

The rest of the year, Harry Potter attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Truth be it told, he usually liked it far better there, as the Dursleys made it their mission to make life truly miserable for the 3 and a half months he spent with them. Harry always kept a calendar on which he ticked off the days until he would head back to school, and his only comfort were the letters, sweets and birthday gifts that he received via owl in the middle of the night from his friends, along with his school books and summer homework that were all hidden under a very convenient loose floor board beneath his bed. Needless to say, unlike most other boys his age, Harry found that bedtimes were the best parts of the summer holidays.

This year they were also the busiest, as Harry had to make up for a lot of lost time. He had been exempted from his final exams last year thanks to his participation in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, but this year he would not be so lucky. Not that being a part of the Tri-Wizard Tournament had been any of his finest hours as it stood. Because of him, a fellow student had lost his life at the hands of Lord Voldemort. It was an image that had always, even before the events of last year, refused to leave him. He had not seen Cedric Diggory die, but the green blast from the unforgivable Avarda Kedarvra curse had penetrated his shut eyelids, bringing with it the earliest memories he had ever experienced. Dreams of a similar green haze which up until 5 years ago, he had believed were his infantile recollections of being in a car crash -- the story the Dursleys had always fed him regarding his parents death.

Harry often found himself reliving the events of last year, usually at inopportune times. It wasn't the dreadful realization that Voldemort was alive nor the recollection of his duel where he saw his mother and father's spirit “echoes” come tumbling out of his brother wand that caused him grief however. It was afterwards that stood out clearly. Over and over again he seemed to watch the fake Professor Mad-Eye Moody's transformation into the young son of Barty Crouch, Professor McGonagall's rage as she told an entire wing of hospital patients and visitors of the dementor's kiss, Cornellius Fudge refusing to believe the truth about the rebirth of Voldemort and Headmaster Dumbledore's somber end-of-school speech about Cedric. Most of all however, Harry was forced to think about his Godfather Sirius Black and although he would have rather not, about Professor Snape doing whatever horrible task that Dumbledore had asked him to perform. For one horrible moment, Harry almost wished that he could stay here with the Dursleys in safety.

Feeling rather depressed now, Harry stared for a few moments at the large splotch of ink that had dripped down onto the empty parchment that was supposed to have been a Herbology essay on mandrakes. Eventually, he rolled the parchment up and returned it to the floorboards under his bed. In five minutes, it would be his fifteenth birthday, and as the Dursleys always forgot it, he decided to take a break from homework for one night and try and get a full night of undisturbed sleep as an early present to himself. Forcing himself to think the happiest thoughts he could Harry Potter drifted off into a dreamless sleep, the only one this summer not haunted by the memories of the previous year.

When morning rolled around, Harry awoke feeling very refreshed, and headed downstairs to find the Dursleys going about their usual morning business. Uncle Vernon was reading the morning paper as always, and Aunt Petunia was fixing breakfast. Dudley was looking miserable over his continuing diet, and none of the three even acknowledged Harry's presence at all, with the exception of Aunt Petunia who set down a small bowl of fruit in front of him. Both the older Dursleys had long given up on trying to emulate their son's diet, but Aunt Petunia had insisted on Harry continuing with it, saying that Dudley 'needed the support of someone his own age'. Harry might not have minded, except for the fact that Dudley always managed to steal a good portion of whatever Harry was served, to devour for himself when his parents weren't looking, leaving Harry to start the day with nothing in his stomach.

The conversation was non-existent, with the exception of Dudley describing an awful nightmare he'd had last night, and Aunt Petunia simpering over his supposed bravery against the great cruel giant he'd dreamed up. It was little wonder that Dudley feared giants, as his first encounter with even a half-breed one had been a nasty experience wherein he had ended up with a curly pig's tail. This spark of discussion notwithstanding, it looked as though Harry's fifteenth birthday was going to be very dull. When Uncle Vernon went out to get the post, Dudley wrestled Harry's breakfast away from him just as a loud, resounding crash came from out in the hall. Aunt Petunia turned away from the dishes she had been washing up, and raced out to see what had happened. At the first sound of shouting, Dudley and Harry exchanged glances and followed suit.

“Please Vernon!” Petunia begged, “Please stop, the neighbors will hear!” and she looked around as though she expected every person on the block to have their noses to the glass right that minute. The crash it had turned out, had been a decorative vase perched on a table in the hall. Uncle Vernon had knocked it over as he waved the letter around, refusing to take heed of Aunt Petunia's words.

“The NERVE of that...woman!” Uncle Vernon growled, shaking the letter in his hand, and clutching it so tightly it seemed as though he was trying to strangle it. “Daring to send a letter here after what happened last year!”

Harry had barely time to wonder if his uncle was talking about the tax collector, when he stormed by with his face as red as a tomato, to thrust the letter into Harry's hands. “Read it aloud boy!” he growled.

Uncle Vernon had always made Harry read his letters aloud, never wanting to miss a chance to yell at Harry for being a 'freak' and an 'abnormality', his favorite terms for wizards. Harry turned the envelope over once in his hands, catching the name “Weasley” on the front, and fighting back a grin. Evidently, Mrs. Weasley had learned something from last year, as this letter only bore one stamp, and properly written addresses. The letter went as follows:

Dear Harry:

I hope you are doing well. We've all been concerned all summer, and my Mum has been writing to Dumbledore every day, asking if you were allowed to come and stay with us yet. She finally got her reply. You can come now if you like. Mum'll be down to pick you up the moment she gets word. Ginny's been wanting to see you really badly, and Fred and George have some great new concoctions they insist on you being the first to try. Hermione wrote me yesterday, and says that she'll send your birthday present along to my house if you get to come. Hope to see you soon,

Your Friend,

Ron.

PS: I hope my mother remembered all of Hermione's instructions about using the Muggle post properly. -- RW

Harry looked up at Uncle Vernon expectantly, hoping for a repeat of last year's performance, in which his Aunt and Uncle had decided to let Harry go to Ron's on account of his threatening them with Sirius Black's wrath. His Godfather's status as an escaped convict had been a wonderful defense against the Dursley's maltreatment of him, yet the look on Uncle Vernon's now purple face told him that there was no way Harry was going anywhere this time, Sirius Black or no.

His suspicions were confirmed with Uncle Vernon's next words. “You tell those...WEASELEYS...or whatever they are...that they are not allowed back in this house! And not another word out of you boy! The subject is closed.”

And so, it was with a heavy heart that Harry finished his chores and went up to bed that night. This one truly had to be the worst birthday ever. He crawled into bed, and listened carefully for the Dursleys to go back to sleep so that he could write the reply to Ron to tell him he wasn't coming. Just after everything had gone quiet, and Harry had dug out the blotched piece of parchment along with a quill, a loud terrified scream came from down the hall. Harry shoved everything back under his bed and took off to see what all the racket was.

By the time Harry had opened his door, it had become clear and obvious that the wails were emanating from Dudley's room. In the short distance from his room to his cousin's a dozen ideas flashed through Harry's mind, not the least of which being that Voldemort had found out where he lived and had come in search of him, only to find Dudley instead. The scene that met his eyes when he flung open the bedroom door was nearly as bad. An enormous menacing Giant that would have almost dwarfed Hagrid in size was towering over a shaking and trembling Dudley. Harry wished immediately that he had brought his wand, but on second thought, what good would it do? He was still an underage wizard, and Cornelius Fudge was probably waiting with bated breath to find some reason to throw him straight out of Hogwarts.

“Over here!” Harry called, doing the first thing that came to mind. He pinwheeled his arms, trying to catch the monster's attention. As the Giant turned to face him however, a most curious thing happened. There was a noise like a whip crack, and almost instantly, the Giant became a hooded and faceless dementor. This was no Giant, Harry realized, it was a boggart.

Boggarts were not necessarily native to the wizarding world, Harry had learned back in his third year. These shape shifters sometimes found their way into muggle houses, and more often than not into the rooms of young children. Because they were fairly weak-minded creatures they easily became confused when adults, awakened by their children's screaming rushed in to see what was the matter. In their confusion they were quickly destroyed, and dismissed by the parents as bad but harmless nightmares. For a Wizard, they were fairly harmless if you figured out what they really were, and banished with a spell called “Ridikulus” along with a little laughter. But Harry didn't have his wand, and he certainly could not get Dudley to laugh in the face of this situation.

Ironically enough, it was Uncle Vernon to the rescue. As soon as he entered the room, the Boggart became confused by seeing two people to scare at once. There was another whip crack noise, and the once fearsome Dementor was replaced with a jet black envelope that seemed to be made out of cloth, which then exploded in a poof of smoke. Harry could only guess that his Uncle's greatest fear were the letters that Harry kept receiving from Hogwarts and all his wizzarding friends, and the Boggart had tried to become a letter and a Dementor at the same time, sapping it's own powers in the process with the confusing double transformation.

Dudley, still sobbing relentlessly in the corner pointed wildly at Harry. “He did it father!” he half cried, half sneered at his cousin. “He sent the Giant! And then he turned it into a black hooded figure!” Dudley was nearly hysterical in his excitement now. “He did it with MAGIC!”

The very word “magic” seemed to light a fire under Uncle Vernon. His cheeks first, then his whole face flamed a brilliant angry red as he wheeled on Harry. “YOU. ARE. TO BE. OUT OF. MY. HOUSE.” He paused to take a deep breath before continuing in a roar. “BY TOMORROW AT NOON!”

Harry could hardly believe his luck. “Can I...go to the Weasley's then?” he asked hopefully.

“I DON'T CARE!” his Uncle roared again, apparently forgetting the earlier scene at breakfast. “JUST AS LONG AS YOU'RE OFF MY PROPERTY TOMORROW!”

Before Uncle Vernon could say another word, Harry had dashed off to his room to write his reply to Ron. The summer was looking up.