Harry had planned to sleep late on his first day of summer vacation. He felt as if he needed to
sleep for a year after what he’d been through during his fourth year of wizarding training. Harry
Potter was possibly the most famous wizard in the world, apart from the dark wizard who had
killed his parents. And now he was probably even more famous, having won the Triwizard
Tournament just a couple of weeks ago. But he was only famous in the wizarding world; in the
non-magical, Muggle world, he was just an annoyance to his aunt and uncle and cousin. He just
wanted to sleep late and try to forget everything that had happened to him during the previous
ten months.
But instead, he awoke at seven-thirty in the morning to the shouts of workmen, the squeal and
grinding of a backhoe, and the shrill voice of his aunt shouting instructions to the workers who
had been hired to relandscape the garden at Four Privet Drive, where Harry felt about as
welcome as an arsonist in a paper factory. It was impossible to continue to sleep with all the
racket, so Harry resigned himself to it and threw back the sheet, sitting on the edge of the bed
and fumbling on his bedside table for his glasses. The room came into focus now, littered with
wizarding paraphernalia that was spilling out of his trunk, which he had not properly unpacked
yet. He rose to walk to the wardrobe and stood looking at his reflection in the mirror on the
inside of the door.
He had grown several inches during the previous year, and the bottoms of his pajama pants
hovered around his shins. He’d been so busy just trying to stay alive through the Triwizard
Tournament that he hadn’t even noticed that he now had a full-blown Adam’s apple. He tried to
sing a little of his school’s song, to see how his voice sounded. Traditionally, at Hogwart’s
School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, everyone sang the school song to a different tune. He was
partial to Loch Lomond and started singing, “I’ll take the high road and you’ll take the low
road....” but it came out sounding rather like a cross between a garden gnome being sat on by a
dragon and a rabid cat being kicked about. He cleared his throat and tried again, managing this
time to produce a recognizable tune in a reedy tenor, causing him to be optimistic, but halfway
through the first verse, his voice cracked and made a noise that was so startling that his snowy
owl Hedwig squawked in her cage and flapped her wings agitatedly.
There was a sudden silence in the garden, and one of the workmen yelled, “What in the hell was
that?” Harry had hoped that the worker was referring to Hedwig, and not to him, but a second
worker now replied, “Cor, Dick, I think it was someone singing.” Harry grimaced into the
mirror; he decided to drop the voice experiments for now and lifted up his hair, examining the
lightening-shaped scar on his forehead, a mark he’d received as a baby on the night Voldemort
killed his parents, and attempted to kill him. He let the hair flop back onto his face. He needed a
haircut. When he was younger, he’d always fought against haircuts (his aunt and uncle were
endlessly frustrated by his hair), but now he was thinking he needed something that made him
look a bit less like a scared little kid (as though it were standing on end because he was afraid)
and a lot more like a wizard that a powerful Dark Lord had to take seriously.
He also noticed that there was a dark, downy haze starting to appear on his chin and upper lip
and along his jawline. Facial hair! At last! Maybe he would be shaving before the summer was
over; he wondered whether there were special charmed razors that wouldn’t ever cut a
person’s skin while shaving. There had to be something; he’d never noticed a single wizard
walking about with little tufts of toilet paper stuck to the shaving cuts on his face, like his Uncle Vernon did every morning. Sometimes they fell off his face at the breakfast table and dropped
into his coffee or his food; Harry never said anything when this happened, trying not to grin
broadly as he watched his detested uncle eat a spoonful of eggs prominently adorned with a
wad of bloody paper, which his uncle did not notice when his face was buried in the morning
news. At times like this he would invariably say to Harry’s Aunt Petunia, “Petunia! What have
you put in the eggs this morning! They’re smashing!” And his aunt would look self-satisfied and
smug, launching into a discourse about a famous chef she’d seen demonstrating recipes on a
chat show. Harry would have to drop his fork and put his head under the table to avoid them
seeing the gleeful look on his face, and once he almost choked on his orange juice, trying not to
laugh.
The facial hair was nowhere near ready to be shaven, though. It looked more like he hadn’t
properly washed his face and a dirty film were still on his skin. He looked at his chest in the
mirror; he never slept with a shirt on anymore; somehow he had developed a phobia about
being strangled in his sleep, and the collars of even V-necked shirts made him feel like his air
was being blocked. His chest was pale and flat and hairless, he was still so thin that his ribs
showed beneath the skim-milk skin. He tried flexing his muscles; he turned his head to look in
the mirror. Ludicrous. In a month he would be fifteen, and he had no muscles to flex.
Then he lowered his arms and examined the other Voldemort-related scar he bore; the cut on
the inside of his right elbow where Wormtail had taken his blood to add to the cauldron where
he was brewing the potion that would resurrect Lord Voldemort. His bloodthe blood of a
foe was the final ingredient needed for Voldemort to get his body back, after bones from his
father’s grave and flesh from a servant (Wormtail had cut off his own hand and had been
rewarded with a new silver one).
Harry shook himself to clear his head, to rid himself of the horrific image of Wormtail writhing
on the ground, holding his bloody stump of an arm...
The workmen had started up again, yelling to each other, and, like a descant above their chorus,
his aunt harangued them about the way they were doing the work. His uncle’s drill plant was
doing very well, and he had told Aunt Petunia that she could have the garden redesigned so that
she could impress her garden club. She had hired a garden designer, whose plan the workmen
were following, but now she was spending all of her time changing her mind about every detail
at the last possible moment and driving everyone crazy with the resulting chaos.
Harry put on some shorts and a T-shirt, pulled on his socks and sneakers and went out the door
after slipping Hedwig an owl treat. In the kitchen, his uncle was reading the morning paper and
preparing to bite down on a bit of bacon that had the requisite bloody paper sitting on the part
he was about to put in his mouth. Harry stifled a laugh and thrust his head into the refrigerator to
look for food, so no one could see his expression.
Harry sat down at the table with some orange juice and a banana he picked out of a bowl on
the counter, then took a piece of buttered toast from a plate on the table. His cousin Dudley
was sitting at the table already, almost done his frugal breakfast of yogurt and fruit and a rice
cake. He’d been upgraded from grapefruit because he’d actually been pretty good at sticking to
his diet at school the previous year. To Harry’s eyes he did look noticeably smaller, even a little
muscular, rather than like a mound of quivering blanc mange. Since Harry had been home,
Dudley had even been reasonably civil to him, helping him carry his trunk up to his room from
the car, and bragging about all the weight he’d lost. He didn’t ask Harry anything about how his
school year was; just prattled on about this girl he wanted to ask out in September, gushing on about Julia this and Julia that. Harry listened patiently; he wasn’t allowed to use magic outside of
school, and that’s the only thing that probably would have made Dudley shut up. Besides, he
would rather listen to Dudley blither about his girlfriend than be on the receiving end of a
pounding from him, as happened all too often during his early childhood.
His aunt finally sat down to eat her breakfast, having left the workers in the garden alone for the
moment. But the peace of the breakfast table was suddenly shattered by a large barn owl that
came flapping in the open window. It landed on Vernon Dursley’s chair and prodded him to
take two parchments from her right leg, then turned an eye on the rest of his bacon. Annoyed,
his uncle got up and backed away from the large bird of prey, yelling, “Harry! What does it
want?”
Sighing at his uncle’s magic-phobia, Harry went to the owl and removed the parchments,
surreptitiously slipping the owl some bacon as he did so. He looked at the parchments; one was
addressed to his aunt and uncle and seemed to be written in his godfather’s handwriting, and the
other was addressed to him, on official Hogwart’s stationery. The owl hooted. Having
successfully performed her duty and receiving no instructions to wait for a reply to be drafted,
she flew back out the open window. Harry heard the workers outside yell in surprise, as he
realized they’d done when she’d arrived, but he was too preoccupied to notice before.
He handed his uncle the letter from his godfather, Sirius Black, who was a fugitive from justice
in the wizarding world because his former friend, Peter Pettigrew (the silver-handed servant of
Voldemort known as Wormtail) had successfully framed him for his own murder and the
murders of a street full of Muggles (non-magical people). Ever since he had told his aunt and
uncle that he had a fugitive wizard for a godfather, the Dursleys had treated him slightly better.
His uncle opened the letter and read with an expression that started out as annoyance (time
taken out of his day to deal with what he called “Harry nonsense”) moved on to perplexed and
then surprised and even frightened. Harry had not opened his Hogwart’s letter yet; he
wondered what Sirius could have written that would make his uncle respond this way. Uncle
Vernon thrust the letter at Harry, seeming to be cautious about touching him, as though he were
afraid that Harry could do magic on contact. Harry read the letter.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley,
I am writing to you because I am concerned about Harry. I wish I could have him
with me and look after him myself, but as you know, my legal status in the
wizarding community makes that impossible; even if I continue to successfully
elude the authorities, traveling with the most famous young wizard in the world
will make me appear somewhat conspicuous, and will do nothing to enhance
Harry’s safety. The headmaster of Hogwart’s feels that he is safest with you for
the summer, but I want to caution you not to make life unduly stressful for him,
as he has experienced an inordinate amount of stress this year.
Harry may not have told you about this, because he is very modest, but he is the
winner of the Triwizard Tournament that was held at his school this year for the
first time in over a century, and he is the youngest winner ever. Another reason
he may not tell you this is not modesty, however, but because he does not wish to
remember what occurred at the end of the Tournament, when he was transported
to a place where the same dark wizard who betrayed his parents was preparing
to resurrect the Dark Lord who actually killed them.
Harry experienced horrible things that day, including seeing a fellow schoolmate killed before his very eyes. He dueled with Lord Voldemort himself and escaped
with his life, returning with his schoolmate’s body so that his parents could
mourn over him and give him a proper burial. He did more than many adult
wizards could haveor would havedone, and has made me very proud of him,
for his moral strength and integrity as much as his magical ability. All signs point
to Harry one day being a very powerful and formidable wizard. Please treat him
wellhe won’t be in school forever.
I will come to accompany Harry to do his school shopping near the end of the
summer, and to deliver him to the school train on September the first.
Sirius Black
His uncle looked at him through narrowed eyes. “And just how exactly would everyone
recognize you as being the famous Harry Potter?” Harry drew his lips into a straight line and
lifted his hair from his forehead to reveal his scar. Vernon drew his own lips into a straight line
and muttered, “Oh, right.” He sat down in his chair again, now that the owl was no longer sitting
on it, and sneered at Harry, “So! You’re the hotshot tournament winner! You must think you’re
God’s gift to magic!” Harry was surprised; normally, his uncle avoided the M word. But then,
he shouldn’t be surprised that his uncle was trying to needle him. It was as though he hadn’t
read the parts of the letter about modesty and trying to forget about Cedric...
Cedric Diggory had been the other Hogwarts champion, The Real Hogwarts Champion,
proclaimed buttons that some of the students had worn the year before, buttons that, when
pressed, proclaimed POTTER STINKS in bilious green letters that were supposed to be
reminiscent of his eyes (which were more like emeralds). He and Diggory had gone into the final
round of the tournament tied for first place. It had been so recent that Harry could still feel the
weight of Cedric’s lifeless body, could still see the staring expression on his frozen face, the blue
eyes forever vacant and unseeing...
Harry grimaced at his uncle but didn’t dare say anything; he was biting back rude responses
could mean his being imprisoned in his room for the summer with his magic supplies locked in
the cupboard under the stairs again. Just because his uncle was full of himself and never missed
an opportunity to brag, he thought everyone was that way. Harry saw that Dudley was actually
looking at him with something like grudging respect.
“Well!” his uncle said at last. “Just stay out of my way this summer is all I ask!” He thrust the
letter at his wife and left for work, just short of having steam coming out of his ears, as though
he had decided after all to take Sirius’ advice and had been biting back some choice words of
his own. Dudley managed to get the letter from his mother, who had gone to the open window
to yell something to the workers again.
Harry suddenly remembered that he was holding a letter of his own and he opened it, unable
stop a grin from creeping across his face as he read:
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump,
International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Potter,
As your head-of-house, I am pleased to inform you that I have named you to be a
prefect, effective when the new term begins on September the first. This is a
responsibility that I know you will not take lightly, as your record speaks for
itself. You will be responsible for other students’ conduct when professors are not
present and you will be expected to uphold all school rules and regulations to the
letter. This is an important leadership position. We expect nothing but the best
from our prefects. Both of your parents were prefects, and I know they would be
proud of you.
As a prefect, you will have access to certain school facilities that are not
available to the general student population, and you will be required to attend
regular meetings of all of the prefects in the fifth, sixth and seventh years, which
are led jointly by the Head Boy and Head Girl, who will be Roger Davies of
Ravenclaw House and Alicia Spinnet of our own Gryffindor House.
Congratulations, Harry! I look forward to welcoming you as a prefect on
September the first.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
Harry looked at the accompanying list of new fifth-year prefects.
Gryffindor
Hermione Granger
Harry Potter
Hufflepuff
Hannah Abbot
Ernie MacMillan
Ravenclaw
Mandy Brocklehurst
Evan Davies
Slytherin
Millicent Bulstrode
Draco Malfoy
Malfoy! Harry groaned; he should have known it, though. Of course Snape would pick Malfoy
to be a prefect! Severus Snape was the Potions Master and head of Slytherin House. He
thought Malfoy could do no wrong; he thought Harry could do nothing right. He wasn’t too
surprised about the Hufflepuff prefects; he knew Hannah and Ernie from Herbology class, but
he didn’t know Mandy Brocklehurst at all and only knew that Evan Davies was Roger Davies’
brother and also on the Ravenclaw Quidditch team.
“I’m a prefect,” he said simply to his aunt and cousin, trying not to sound too pleased. His aunt
grunted.
“You! A prefect!”
Harry could not keep the hurt out of his voice. “My mum and dad were prefects. In fact, my
mum and dad were Head Girl and Head Boy.”
His aunt looked stern. “I don’t want to hear about your parents. Or thatthatschool of
yours,” she said, as though she didn’t think school were the right word at all.
He took his letter up to his room, bringing some smuggled bacon for Hedwig, and wondering
with whom he could share his good news. He thought of his best friend, Ron Weasley, but then,
Ron hadn’t been named a prefect, so perhaps that wouldn’t be especially tactful. He had pretty
much forgotten the part of Sirius’ letter that mentioned his modesty; he was just bursting, and wanted to tell somebody who would actually be happy about it. He could send a letter to
Hermione, who was visiting the Greek Islands with her parents, but she would be getting her
own prefect letter and know all about it, if she didn’t already. After Greece, the Grangers would
all be going up to visit Viktor Krum and his family in Bulgaria. She had met Viktor when he had
come with his headmaster from another wizarding school, Durmstrang, to compete in the
Triwizard Tournament. Viktor had been the champion from his school, and had rescued
Hermione from the lake on the school grounds during one of the tournament tasks. Harry would
write to Hermione later, on the pretense of congratulating her on being named a prefect.
Then it hit him: Hagrid! He pulled some parchment and a quill and some ink from his messy
trunk and sat down at his desk to write a quick note to Hagrid to tell him he was going to be a
prefect; he knew Hagrid wouldn’t think he was crowing or putting on airs, he would be
genuinely happy for him. Hagrid was one of his best friends, a large half-giant who had been
expelled from Hogwarts in his third year because he was thought to have opened the Chamber
of Secrets (he was framed by Voldemort himself, who fifty years earlier had simply been the
student Tom Riddle). After that, he landed the job of gamekeeper at the school, where he’d
been ever since. It had been Hagrid who had come to fetch him to Hogwarts when he was
eleven and had no idea that he was famous or a wizard or even that his parents had been
assassinated by a Dark Lord, not killed in a car accident, as he’d always been told by his aunt
and uncle (in an extremely nasty tone of voice, as though it were all their own fault and they
richly deserved it).
He finished the note to Hagrid and tied it onto Hedwig’s leg, giving her the rest of the bacon
before she flew off, hearing another shout go up as the landscapers were alarmed by yet another
owl flying about in the daytime. Oops, thought Harry. I shouldn’t have done that. Aunt Petunia’ll
be having kittens...
He wasn’t exactly sure where Hedwig was going to find Hagrid, but he was certain that
wherever he was she would in fact find him. Harry knew that Dumbledore had sent him to the
continent on a diplomatic mission to speak to giants about uniting against Voldemort, now that
he was back in power. Voldemort was counting on the giants being on his side, and
Dumbledore knew he had better do something to guarantee their loyalty before Voldemort got
to them. Dumbledore was also worried that Voldemort would find a way to get to the
Dementors and turn them to his side; they were the guards at the wizarding prison Azkaban,
where his godfather had been incarcerated (without a trial) for twelve years before his
unprecedented escape. Dementors were eerie and had given Harry nightmares at one time; in
his third year, when he was learning to fight boggarts (which always turned into whatever the
person feared most) his boggart always turned into a dementor. He had learned to fight it by
conjuring a Patronus. He had a feeling that these days, if he encountered a boggart, it would no
longer turn into a dementor...
He had also inquired whether Hagrid had heard anything about his own mother, Fridwulfa, a
giantess with a bloodthirsty reputation who had left him and his father when Hagrid was very
young. Giants in general had a very bad reputation, and were credited with some of the worst
mass Muggle killings during Voldemort’s reign of terror. Harry hoped Dumbledore could in fact
make allies of the giants, although he was not so sure that they should be on the same side as
such murderous creatures. Better than having them on Voldemort’s side, he supposed.
After he had sent Hedwig off with Hagrid’s letter, he stared around his room, at a loss for what
to do, since he wasn’t sleeping late after all. He heard another noise in the garden and went over to the window to look out. The backhoe was digging a rather large hole in the garden for an
artificial pond. Harry watched for a few minutes, then decided that he would go out to have a
better look. Watching the landscapers seemed like a better idea than just moping around his
room wishing he could run and shout, “I’m a prefect! I’m a prefect!” at the top of his lungs.
He went out the kitchen door and found an unobtrusive place to sit against the wall of the house
while the workmen moved rocks and used surveyor’s equipment and consulted lists and other
paperwork. They’d been working for about two weeks, according to his aunt and uncle. The
garden already looked completely transformed to Harry. After a while, he became restless, and
asked Dick, the boss, whether they needed another pair of hands. He felt Dick appraising his
thin pale arms. He said, “Ye sure ye’re up to it? ‘Tis hard work.”
Harry assured him he was indeed up to it and set to work moving and lifting whatever they told
him to, enjoying the camaraderie of just engaging in manual labor with men he didn’t know, who
treated him at first as a frail, laughable kid, and then soon gave him a surprising respect, after
seeing how hard he was willing to work, and also being surprised at his wiry strength, and by
what he was able to do. Maybe I have some muscles after all, thought Harry, carrying a large
rock across the garden.
He took lunch with the workers, some of whom removed their shirts in the hot noon sun, or laid
back on the ground to absorb the sun’s warmth. Harry decided to do the same, leaving himself
open to some good-natured jibes about blinding them all with his pallor. In a week, however,
his pallor was a thing of the past, and his lack of visible muscles was starting to be a thing of the
past, too, as the work began to have a defining effect on his body.
After he’d been working with the landscapers for a week, he was startled by a small garden
snake slithering past him while he leaned back and soaked up some sun after lunch. The snake
caught his attention because she was talking, and he could understand every word she said.
The snake was muttering, “Find a perfectly good home and the next thing you know, it’s being
rent asunder, great yahoos tromping all over the place, digging up my favorite flower beds...”
Even though he had known since he was in his second year in school that he was a Parselmouth
(someone who can understand and speak snake language) he didn’t often think of it. He seldom
had any contact with snakes. He spoke to the snake now, though.
“Sorry about all this. It was my aunt’s idea. It may be going on for a few more weeks, I’m
afraid.”
The snake stopped moving and lifted her head and seemedif it was possible for a snake to do
thisthat she had a shocked expression on her face. “What did you say?”
“I said that it was my aunt’s idea. Messing up your home like this. If you like, maybe I could
help you find some other garden to live in.”
“No,” the snake said. “What I meant was, I’ve never been spoken to by a human in my own
language before. I hear humans speak Human language. But never mine.”
“Oh,” Harry said, hissing. “I’m a Parselmouth. I’m going into my fifth year of wizarding school.
When I was a baby, a very powerful wizard who was also a Parselmouth tried to kill me and
failed, and some of his abilities transferred themselves to me. But I don’t get to be around
snakes much, so I tend to forget I can do it.”
“I have heard of wizards, and I have heard legends of wizards who could speak Parseltongue,
but I never believed it.”
“Well, it’s pretty rare. One time I talked to a boa constrictor. He told me he’d never been to
Brazil. He lived in the zoo, but I accidentally freed him.” “What is a boa constrictor?” she asked. She paused. “ They are looking at you,” the snake
suddenly informed him, before she went slithering off into a bush. Harry looked up to see the
entire crew gaping at him as though he’d gone mad. After a minute, he realized that they hadn’t
actually heard what he’d been saying to the snake; they’d only heard hissing. Even to his own
ears, when he spoke in Parseltongue, it sound like just so much hissing, although his brain then
converted the hissing sounds into words. He could only actually speak Parseltongue when he
was confronted with a snake. He smiled sheepishly at them.
“Well, you’ve got to speak to them in their own language,” he said, shrugging. There was
perplexed silence at first, then Dick rearing back his head in unrestrained laughter, which was
the signal for the others that they were allowed to do that too. Harry laughed with them. Well,
he was telling the truth; he was speaking to the snake in her own language. While he was
working that afternoon, he kept an eye out for her, but didn’t see her. He was sleeping soundly
every night, rolling into bed exhausted from the work, his muscles aching, but at least now he
had some muscles. And his skin wasn’t the color of parchment anymore, either. He was glad to
have the physical activity to take his mind off Voldemort.
Very early the next morning, before anyone was up, he finally gave in to the temptation to write
to Hermione about being a prefect, and she apparently had also succumbed to this temptation,
as her owl arrived in Harry’s bedroom about five minutes after Hedwig left to give his letter to
her.
Dear Harry,
Congratulations on being a prefect! Of course I had really hoped that I would get
to be one, and I had a feeling that, out of the fifth-year boys, it would be you.
Harry hoped she didn’t tell Ron that; he was very touchy about competing with his older
brothers, two of whom had been prefect and then Head Boy.
Mum and Dad and I are having a great time in the Greek Islands. In a couple of
weeks we’re going up to Bulgaria to visit Viktor’s family. They live in Sofia, the
capital. Maybe Viktor can help me improve my broomstick technique. He’s
gotten a job as reserve Seeker withguess what team? The Chudley Cannons!
Ron should be pretty happy about that!
Harry strongly suspected that Ron would be torn about that; he had been pretty agitated about
Hermione and Viktor Krum going to the Yule Ball the previous Christmas, and only at the end
of the term had he given in to his impulse to ask Krum for an autograph. Krum had been the star
of the Quidditch World Cup the previous summer. Quidditch was a wizarding sport played on
broomsticks, and Harry played Seeker on his house team at school. He looked down and
finished reading Hermione’s letter.
So, since Viktor will be working in England, he can meet me in Hogsmeade on
weekends when we’re allowed to go down to the village. You don’t think they’ll
cancel Hogsmeade visits now that You-Know-Who is back, do you?
Here’s a photo of me and my parents at the Parthenon. Next we’re going on to
Corfu. Please take care of yourself and tell Dumbledore and Sirius right away
about your scar hurting or anything else that could indicate dark magic. Missing
you.
Love from Hermione
Harry looked at the photo she had enclosed; it was a Muggle picture, no moving people in it.
Hermione stood with her parents in front of a large Greek temple, both of them with their arms around her, their little girl who was not so little anymore. She was wearing a very tight sleeveless
white top and a matching skirt that was very brief. Her exposed arms and legs were already
very brown, and then he noticed that she’d cut her hair; it was rather short, curling all over her
head in a free and yet much more orderly way than it usually did. The shorter haircut seemed to
work much better with her hair’s natural wave, and he almost didn’t recognize her at first. But
after squinting at it for a moment, he could tell from the nose and shape of the face and the way
she smiled that it was her. She wore dark glasses against the glaring Greek sun and looked quite
happy, enjoying a trip to the Greek Islands with her folks. Harry caught his breath for a moment
and thought, I just hope they’re safe. What if Voldemort tries to get to her while she’s traveling?
Harry had mentioned to Sirius that he was concerned that Voldemort would try to coerce him
to do his bidding by coming after Ron and Hermione. Sirius agreed that that was a danger, but
he took a wait-and-see attitude, and promised to discreetly check in on each of them during
summer vacation.
Then he looked up in surprise as Ron’s owl, Pigwidgeon, flew in with a letter. Ron’s owl was
very small and could be held in the palm of one’s hand, and he was also very excitable, yet not
dreadfully useful for owl post because he couldn’t handle anything really big. Pig fluttered
frantically around the room for a minute, while Harry tried to snag him and grab the letter he was
delivering. When he finally had the letter in his hand he sat down on the bed to read it.
Dear Harry,
Well, congratulations on being a prefect. Hermione wrote and told me. Can you
believe Malfoy got chosen too? He’ll be even more of an insufferable git than he
was beforeif that’s possible.
Did you know that Hermione is going to visit Krum? And that he’s going to play
for the Cannons? I feel like I’m in prison; we never go anywhere. That trip to
Egypt a couple of years ago was a contest we won. And now we don’t even have
the excuse of going to Romania or Egypt to visit Charlie or Bill because they’re
taking time off work and staying here for a while. Dumbledore thought it would
be a good idea. And yet SHE gets to flit around the Greek Islands and visit a
wizard who just graduated from a school where they actually TEACH the dark
arts!
Anyway, Sirius said he’s going to fetch you at the end of the summer and bring
you here on the Knight Bus. Then we can go shopping from here using floo
powder. Dad’s getting Ministry cars to take us to the train on September first. I
can’t believe you have to stay with the Muggles until then! But Dumbledore says
that’s for the best too.
I haven’t heard from Hagrid, have you? I’m not sure whether I want him to find
his mum or any of the other giants. I’d settle for them to just stay in the
mountains and not get involved in a wizard war at all. How’s your scar? No pain,
I hope. Write to me and tell me what you want for your birthday. See you in
August. -Ron
Harry put the letters away and propped the photo on a shelf. He gave Pigwidgeon an owl treat
and sent him on his way. It was early in the morning and he needed to get dressed and down to
the garden to get back to work. It was very satisfying, somehow, the way the landscaping was
coming together. Harry could have been quite happy to go into work like this, if he had never
discovered he was a wizard. He tried to imagine a life of being a Muggle, being completely ignorant of the wizarding world...but he couldn’t. His life was so different now from the way it
was before his eleventh birthday, it was as though those pre-magic years were lived by
someone else.
After grabbing a quick breakfast, Harry went out into the garden. It was very early, so no one
else had shown up yet, and Harry started moving rocks about. After about half an hour, Dick
came walking up the path from the street, alone. Harry looked up in surprise.
“Morning, Harry.”
“Morning, Dick. Where’s everyone else?”
Dick looked about sixty, but Harry was just guessing; he was as brown and leathery as you
could hope a gardener to be, with silvery hair swept back from his face and kind blue eyes.
Harry was sometimes reminded of Dumbledore when he saw him. Dick put his hand on his chin
now and looked as if he were reluctant to deliver some bad news.
“Well, the thing of it is, we’ve gotten another job, and they’re payin’ double for it to be done
quick. Plus, your aunt haswell, made my men reluctant to work here anymore.” He paused
and looked around the incomplete garden. “But, we do have a contract, so I’ll stay on here and
continue this job, and a few times a day I’ll check in with my men on the other job. You still
want to help me, Harry?”
Harry smiled at him and nodded. “Of course. I’ve been enjoying myself.”
Dick sighed and looked his age for once. “Some’s have the right to do it just for enjoyment;
some’s have to do it to make a living.”
Harry flushed, thinking of all the gold in his vault at the wizarding bank, Gringott’s. Ron was
touchy about money, too, and was upset with Harry for not telling him that some leprechaun
gold he’d given Harry had disappeared the following day; leprechaun gold was apparently not
permanent.
So he and Dick got to work on the garden, and things slowed down considerably. Harry didn’t
mind, though; he wasn’t especially fond of working with a crowd. After it had been just the two
of them for several days, it seemed like it had always been like that. It was very comfortable
working with Dick; he wasn’t much of a talker. They ate lunch together companionably in the
sunshine, then Dick laid back against a pile of potting soil bags for a little nap. Harry took off his
shirt and leaned back too, basking in the sun. When it was time to get back to work, Harry put
on his shirt again and picked up the trash from the lunch to take it inside. As he was going in the
kitchen door, he heard a hissing voice say, “The rocks will fall. The rocks will fall. The
rocks will fall...”
Harry looked around, perplexed. There was a pile of rocks in the corner of the garden waiting
to be used around the artificial pond. Harry squinted around the garden, looking for the snake
he’d talked to before. He couldn’t see her. Saying, “Hmmm,” to himself, he carried the trash
into the kitchen. As he was coming back outside again, Dick went over near the rock pile to
select a small shrub with sacking around its roots to plant near the back door.
Harry was probably a good fifty feet away when it happened; there was nothing he could have
done. The rocks came clattering down, knocking Dick onto his side and then shattering his left
leg. Harry ran around the various obstacles in his path to try to reach him. Dick was lying on the
ground with a huge mound of stones on him, sweat running down his face, looking like he
wanted to scream and holding it back. Harry reached him, remembering breaking his leg during
the Triwizard Tournament. And once, he’d had to grow back all of the bones in his arm after a
Quidditch match. But he didn’t have access to magical medicine here, or even enough magic to help his friend get out from under the pile of rocks. Harry felt like he was in a trance as he
worked swiftly to move all of the rocks, one by one, off poor Dick, who was looking ashen
under his tan, biting his lip and breathing raspily. Two weeks before, Harry would have had
trouble moving any one of the rocks he was practically tossing aside now, with no regard for
where they were landing (a number of carefully-placed plants were crushed and would have to
be replaced). While he worked, he yelled for his aunt and cousin to call for an ambulance. They
finally appeared at the kitchen door as Harry was removing the last few rocks from Dick’s
body.
Harry grasped Dick’s hand while the paramedics set his leg and rolled him onto a stretcher so
they could carry him to the ambulance. He watched the ambulance drive off, and he tried not to
feel responsible, but it was difficult. He’d heard the warning, and he’d done nothing; he
disregarded it. He was sure it had been a snake’s voice he’d heard, the same snake he’d talked
to before. He didn’t quite hear his aunt complaining bitterly about the work not getting done,
and ranting about the plants Harry had crushed. Harry moved about in a daze, ignoring her at
first, then facing her stonily and said, “I’ll do it.” She looked at him through shrewd, narrowed
eyes, eyes that wondered what he was up to. “If you pay me,” he added. He tried to come up
with an amount he knew his aunt couldn’t refusehe mustn’t get too greedy. “Five pounds a
day,” he said, drawing himself up to his full height of five-feet six-inches, looking her in the eye.
He was as tall as her now.
She narrowed her eyes even more, looking for the catch, but it was a low enough amount that
even she couldn’t argue. She agreed and went back into the house, leaving Harry to look
around the garden helplessly, feeling guilty and alone. He swept his eyes over the entire garden
quickly, but he didn’t see the snake, so he tried calling softly, “Here snake, here snake...” but it
sounded like English; he wasn’t speaking Parseltongue. She must not be nearby, he thought. He
worked for the rest of the afternoon alone, stacking the rocks in the corner more securely, and
assessing the damage from his having thrown them about to remove them from Dick.
He collected five pounds from his aunt at the end of the day, making himself a sandwich for
dinner and then rolling into bed early, aching all over. Now, every day, he got up with the sun,
showered and dressed, and went out to the garden to continue his solitary labor. A few days
after Dick’s leg was crushed, Harry was basking in the sun after eating lunch when he heard a
hissing voice near him.
“How is your friend? Why did you not tell him about the rocks?”
Harry looked around, then saw the snake near his feet. She was about twenty inches long and
dull green, with glittering eyes and vertical pupils, like a cat’s. “He’ll be okay. Idon’t know
why I didn’t tell him. I didn’t realize thatthat”
“That snakes have the Sight?” she hissed softly. Harry nodded. His least favorite class at school
was Potions, because he couldn’t stand Professor Snape. But at least he did feel that Potions
were useful, that he was learning something important. He thought that his most useless class
was Divination. Professor Trelawney seemed to enjoy spending every class predicting Harry’s
untimely death. According to her, he was supposed to have died dozens of times over by now.
Harry had never seen anything while staring in a crystal ball or at a lump of tea leaves in a
teacup, and he tended to make up things when doing star charts.
Now, though, Harry was confronted by the possibility that the snake was telling the truth. And
since very, very few humans could understand snake language, who would be in a position to
know that snakes could predict the future? Even he hadn’t believed her; he was as sorry as he could be about that.
“If you have the Sight,” Harry said to her, “tell me: will Voldemort be stopped?”
“Who?” the snake hissed. “You do not understand. I can only see a few minutes into the future,
and only what is right around me. I cannot predict events happening far away. And I get only a
glimpse of the future; the larger a snake is, the further into the future her sight reaches, and the
farther distant.”
Harry had a sudden thought. “Would you like to come to school with me in September? It’s up
north, and cold, but I couldI could” Harry floundered, then had a brainstorm. “I could wear
you wrapped around my arm to absorb my body heat! You could be my pet snake!”
She looked at him. “What is ‘pet?’ I do not understand.”
“Well,” Harry said, “humans sometimes choose some animals to take care of and give them
names and bring them into their houses to live with them. Those animals are their pets.”
The snake hissed at him, “I am not a pet. If I go with you, it will be my choosing, not yours.
What is a name?”
“Well,” Harry said again, “my name is Harry Potter. It’s what people call you...” he trailed off,
unable to put the concept of names into words.
“I thought you were called ‘lazy git,’” said the snake. Harry realized she had heard his aunt
addressing him.
“No, no, that’s not the same as my name. That’s called an insult. It’s to be mean. Let’s see, you
predicted the future and I didn’t believe you, so I’ll name youCassandra.”
“Why?”
“Because there was this seeress in Greek mythology named Cassandra who was blessed with
being able to predict everything about the future, but cursed to have no one believe her.” The
snake did not reply; he wondered whether any of what he had just said made sense to her. “But
Cassandra is a little long to say all the time, so I’ll just call you Sandy for short.”
“For short what?”
Harry was starting to get a little impatient with the snake; just because you could talk to snakes,
he thought, didn’t mean you could really talk to them. “For a nickname. A nickname is like a
shorter version of your name.”
“What is your nickname?”
“Well, I guess it’s Harry,” he said, never having considered it before. He’d never seen his birth
certificate. Was his real name Harold? Or Harrison? Or it could be that his whole name was just
plain Harry. He had no idea.
“But that is your name.”
“I know.” Now Harry was really tired of explaining concepts to the snake that every human just
knew. He wanted to get back to work. He put his shirt back on, shivering; some clouds had
passed in front of the sun.
“Harry Potter,” the snake said suddenly.
“Yes, Sandy?” Harry said, trying out her new name.
“I want to try your arm.”
“What?”
“The sun is hidden. I am cold. You talked about wearing me on your arm. I am very cold.”
He picked her up, enjoying the feel of her smooth skin, and carefully wrapped her twice about
his upper left arm. She adjusted her tail and settled her chin on it, letting out an audible sigh.
Harry smiled. She didn’t weigh more than a few ounces; no wonder she can only see a short distance into the future, he thought.
Harry worked the rest of the day with her wrapped about his arm, and they talked every so
often. He tried to speak simply and clearly to her, as though she were a little dim, but he tried
not to be insulting. He didn’t want to confuse her about human concepts she’d never been
exposed to before. She seemed to be trying to speak simply to him too, as though he were not
quite bright enough to understand otherwise. When he was having trouble lifting a very heavy
rocknot one that had fallen on Dickshe told him she had heard the other workers telling
each other to lift with their legs.
Harry looked down at his legs, which were still rather thin, although they were at least tanned
now. “I can’t,” he said. “They’re not strong enough.”
“Make them stronger,” she said simply. Harry thought about this. Yes; he could take up
running. That would make his legs stronger.
But he was far too exhausted to run at the end of the day; he just needed dinner and sleep. So
he decided that first thing in the morning, he would go running, before beginning work in the
garden. He also decided that he knew what he wanted for his birthday: a book about
performing magic using snakes. He had heard that some powerful dark magic could be done
with snakes; maybe some things could be done that weren’t dark magic. He would ask Sirius
about it.
He went to bed that night feeling like this wasn’t such a bad summer after all. He’d spent the
previous year becoming stronger magically, for the tournament, and now he was becoming
stronger physically and also making use of some of his more arcane abilities. And if it helped him
fight Voldemort, maybe he should learn some dark magic; Voldemort wouldn’t be expecting
that, or a snake of his own...
Harry picked up the picture of Hermione and her parents and looked at it while lying in bed,
preparing to go to sleep. I won’t let anything happen to you, he thought fiercely. Or Ron. I
won’t. Voldemort will have to come through me and Sandy to get you.
