Hyacinth Potter Reading the Books - edited version

The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Hyacinth her longest-ever punishment. By the time she was allowed out of her cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.

"What is wrong with those mortals!?" Hera and Hestia shout enraged. Hestia being outraged at the concept of children being treated terribly as they fall under her domain of 'home' and Hera being outraged because she feels certain... pity? No.... more .. affection, towards the little one,

Hyacinth was glad school was over, but there was no escaping Dudley's gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader. The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Dudley's favorite sport: Hyacinth Hunting.

"Such barbaric actions towards a maiden." Artemis seethes, the boy's actions only feeding into the Huntresses hatred towards the male population.

This was why Hyacinth spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where she could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came, she would be going off to secondary school, and for the first time in her life, she wouldn't be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there, too. Hyacinth, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.

"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Hyacinth. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"

"That little...." The Weasley twins start before grinning and say,"I'm glad that we 'dropped' those sweets, isn't it Gred - right, you are Forge,"

"What sweets?" Sirius questions an impish grin on his face.

"Time will tell," Fred and George say in unison, matching grins on their faces. The majority of the gods and goddesses turn to Hermes as in asking, 'Are they your children?'

"Not every mischievous child is mine." Hermes groaned but quickly did a double check to be sure.

"No, thanks," said Hyacinth. "The poor toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it - it might be sick." Then she ran before Dudley could work out what she'd said.

"Hyacinth! Why weren't you like this with us?-" George mourns.

"You could have been our sass buddy," Fred joins in.

One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Hyacinth at Mrs. Figg's. Mrs. Figg wasn't as bad as usual. It turned out she'd broken her leg tripping over one of her cats, and she didn't seem quite as fond of them as before. She let Hyacinth watch television and gave her a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she'd had it for several years.

People imagining the taste grimaced. It was not a flavor anyone wanted.

That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings' boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.

"They are immature boys, and they're getting given sticks that will most likely be used as weapons." Athena stated dryly, unimpressed with the school's lack of forethought.

As she looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins. He looked so handsome and grown up. Hyacinth didn't trust herself to speak. She thought two of her ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh.

"Who can blame her," Percy calls through laughs, along with multiple others at the events.

There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Hyacinth went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. She went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray water.

"What's this?" she asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if she dared to ask a question.

"And how else is the child supposed to learn!" Athena roared, looking every inch of her father.

"Your new school uniform," she said.

Hyacinth looked in the bowl again.

"Oh," she said, "I didn't realize it had to be so wet."

"Prongslet, you can be taught," Sirius tears up, proud, dramatically wiping away, said tears.

"Don't be stupid," snapped Aunt Petunia.

"I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things grey for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished."

Hyacinth seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. She sat down at the table and tried not to think about how she was going to look on her first day at Stonewall High - like she was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably.

Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Hyacinth's new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual, and Dudley banged his smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.

They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

"Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.

"He actually made his son do something?" Draco snarks with a 'shocked' tone.

"Make Hyacinth get it."

"Get the mail, Hyacinth."

"That sounds more right," Draco sighs at how his 'cousin' is being treated.

"Make Dudley get it."

"Poke her with your smelting stick, Dudley."

"That fat oaf!" Remus yells angrily.

Hyacinth dodged the smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and - a letter for Hyacinth.

"... Is it - what we think it is?" The twins say with matching grins.

Hyacinth picked it up and stared at it, her heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in her whole life, had written to her. Who would? She had no friends, no other relatives - she didn't belong to the library, so she'd never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:

Miss. H. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
𝟦 Privet Drive
Little Whining
Surrey

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.

Turning the envelope over, her hand trembling, Hyacinth saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.

"Yes!" All the wizards in the room cheer, leaving the rest confused over what would be happening.

"Hurry up, girl!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke."

"He might have a worse sense of humor than you, brother mine," Poseidon says to Zeus with a grin.

Hyacinth went back to the kitchen, still staring at her letter. She handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the yellow envelope.

Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard.

"Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk...."

"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Hyacinth's got something!"

Most groan at Dudley's words, "Can't keep his mouth shut," Draco sneers

Hyacinth was on the point of unfolding her letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of her hand by Uncle Vernon.

"That's mine!" said Hyacinth, trying to snatch it back.

"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it."

His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds, it was the grayish white of old porridge.

"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.

Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment, it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.

"Vernon! Oh my goodness - Vernon!"

"Oh my Gods, they are siriusly melodramatic," Sirius jokes, and Remus just sighs, having heard this joke multiple times throughout their years at hogwarts.

They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Hyacinth and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his smelting stick.

"I want to read that letter," he said loudly.

The more maternally inclined goddesses sigh at the proof of poor parenting. Sally just wonders how anyone can allow their son to reach such a point.

"I want to read it," said Hyacinth furiously, "as it's mine."

"...Remus, don't tell me... she has that..." Sirius whispers horrified to Remus, hoping he's wrong. Those close by and those with godly or enhanced hearing just look confused, wondering what he could be on about.

"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.

Hyacinth didn't move.

Draco, Sirius, and the Weasley twins pale, "Oh shit..." they murmur, looking as though a bomb would go off. Others look at them, even more confused at their reactions.

"I WANT MY LETTER!" she shouted.

"The infamous Evans temper..." Sirius mutters terrified, "Her mother was the exact same... It's worse when they're quiet, angry, if you can believe it," Sirius reminisces, scared. Percy just listens to him, wanting to gain any and all information pertaining to his soulmate. Unknown to the mortals, the gods have a faint foreboding feeling of deja vu.

"Let me see it!" demanded Dudley.

"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Hyacinth and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Hyacinth and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Hyacinth, her glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on her stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.

"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, "Look at the address - how could they possibly know where she sleeps? You don't think they're watching the house?"

Remus snorts at Petunia's idea, "Oh dear, your daft,"

"Watching - spying - might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.

"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want -"

Hyacinth could see Uncle Vernon's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.

"No," he said finally. "No, we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer...Yes, that's best... we won't do anything..."

"But -"

"I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took her in, we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?"

"I'm sorry... Stomp?" Both Remus and Sirius ask furiously, all those with magic look horrified at the notion.

"All that would do is make her hate her magic, internalizing it causing it to destroy her soul and make her a ball of pure magic that causes death and destruction all around her and in the end resort to her death!" Sirius rages, a deep growl emanating from his chest. Everyone in the room looks horrified at one of the possibilities of Hyacinth's future.

That evening, when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he'd never done before; he visited Hyacinth in her cupboard.

"He fit in there?" Percy and the weasley twins snark before turning to one another and laughing.

"Where's my letter?" said Hyacinth, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to me?"

"No one. It was addressed to you by mistake," said Uncle Vernon shortly. "I have burned it."

"It was not a mistake," said Hyacinth angrily, "it had my cupboard on it."

"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.

"I bet it was painful. All he ever had was this disgusted look on his face," Remus grimaced.

"Er - yes, Hyacinth - about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking... you're really getting a bit big for it... we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom."

"Why?" said Hyacinth.

"Don't ask questions!" snapped her uncle. "Take this stuff upstairs, now."

"Yet again, how is she supposed to learn if she is forbidden from inquiries?" Athena stressed out the word learn.

The Dursleys' house had four bedrooms:

"They had four bedrooms and still made her sleep in the cupboard under the stairs?!" Hera yells horrified.

one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge), one where Dudley slept, and one where Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom. It only took Hyacinth one trip upstairs to move everything she owned from the cupboard to this room.

She sat down on the bed and stared around her. Nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old video camera was lying on top of a small, working tank Dudley had once driven over the next door neighbor's dog; in the corner was Dudley's first-ever television set, which he'd put his foot through when his favourite program had been canceled; there was a large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Dudley had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all bent because Dudley had sat on it. Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they'd never been touched.

"That ungrateful child, no wonder he can't count when he neglects to read," Athena sneers.

From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother, I don't want her in there...I need that room... make her get out...

Hyacinth sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday, she'd have given anything to be up here. Today, she'd rather be back in her cupboard with that letter than up here without it.

"What, why?" A half blood called out incredulously.

"Think about it, trapped in a cupboard but a letter as a possible way out of this terrible situation, or in a room that's ultimately a jail cell with no letter promising a possible freedom." Sirius explains, his voice carrying a certain level of understanding that only one who'd been in a similar situation would have.

The next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn't have his room back Hyacinth was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing she'd opened the letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.

When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Hyacinth, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one! 'Miss. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive -'"

"He wasn't trying to be nice to you, sweet child. He was making sure you wouldn't get the letter," Hecate sighs.

With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leaped from his seat and ran down the hall, Hyacinth right behind him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Hyacinth had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind.

"Damn, practically wrestling a troll," Sirius jokes with a laugh.

After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the smelting stick, Uncle Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with Hyacinth's letter clutched in his hand.

"Go to your cupboard - I mean, your bedroom," he wheezed at Hyacinth. "Dudley - go - just go."

Hyacinth walked round and round her new room. Someone knew she had moved out of her cupboard, and they seemed to know she hadn't received her first letter. Surely that meant they'd try again? And this time, she'd make sure they didn't fail. She had a plan.

"The plan isn't going to work," Sirius calls out, voice knowing and eyes glittering with amusement.

"It's the Potter luck, unless the plan is dire, any way it could go wrong, it will go wrong," Remus explains with a tired sigh despite the amusement also dancing in his eyes.

The repaired alarm clock rang at six o'clock the next morning. Hyacinth turned it off quickly and dressed silently. She mustn't wake the Dursleys. She stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.

She was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. Her heart hammered as she crept across the dark hall toward the front door -

"AAAAARGH!"

"Please tell me it's Mr Dursley," Percy's eyes glitter in possible revenge.

Hyacinth leaped into the air; she'd trodden on something big and squashy on the doormat - something alive!

Lights clicked on upstairs, and to her horror, Hyacinth realised that the big, squashy something had been her uncle's face.

"Hell, yes!" Percy cheers with laughter while others lightly chuckle or burst out in laughter at the situation.

Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Hyacinth didn't do exactly what she'd been trying to do. He shouted at Hyacinth for about half an hour and then told her to go and make a cup of tea. Hyacinth shuffled miserably off into the kitchen, and by the time she got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vernon's lap. Hyacinth could see three letters addressed in green ink.

"I want -" she began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before her eyes.

Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.

"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them, they'll just give up."

"They most certainly won't give up," Remus chuckles.

"I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon."

"The only time this woman has had any sense." Bill chortles.

"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.

On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Hyacinth. As they couldn't go through the mail slot, they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.

Uncle Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" as he worked and jumped at small noises."

"He is losing it, isn't he?" Draco asks with laughter in his tone.

On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Hyacinth found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor.

"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Hyacinth in amazement.

On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy."

"There is something up," Annabeth mutters in suspicion at the large lump of a man's happy mood.

"No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today -"

"That explains it," Annabeth retorts.

"That poor muggle...that's not going to stop them," Charlie chuckles

Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Hyacinth leaped into the air, trying to catch one -

"Youngest seeker in the century people," The Weasley twins joke with Draco.

"Out! OUT!"

Uncle Vernon seized Hyacinth around the waist and threw her into the hall.

"Someone needs to have a serious talk with this man about when it's appropriate to lay a hand on children." Hera glares.

"I would be delighted to be the one to do so," Artemis says with a grin, promising pain.

When Aunt Petunia and Dudley ran out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

"That does it," said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"

He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later, they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag.

They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then, Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.

"Shake 'em off... shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this."

"He really is losing it, isn't he!" Clarisse bursts out into laughter at this man's actions.

They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall, Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

"I may not care for this child, but still, to have not eaten or drank all day, that could affect their growth," Hera says.

Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley and Hyacinth shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored, but Hyacinth stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering...

They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day.

Many pulled disgusted faces at that, to have not eaten anything the previous day, only to have to eat that in the morning.

They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.

"'Scuse me, but is one of you Miss. H. Potter? Only I got about an 'undred of these at the front desk."

She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:

Miss. H. Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth

Bill and Charlie laugh at the situation.

Hyacinth made a grab for the letter, but Uncle Vernon knocked her hand out of the way.

"I think I may have to make that visit sooner rather than later," Artemis grounds out before muttering. "How dare he touch a maiden in such a way."

The woman stared.

"I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.

"And that's not strange at all," Percy snarks, earning another grin from the Weasley twins.

"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested timidly hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn't seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off, they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.

"Wow, it took that kid a couple of days to figure out what we found out in what? Half hour?" Draco sasses, Luna airily laughing at the sass.

It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled.

"It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."

Monday. This reminded Hyacinth of something. If it was Monday - and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days of the week, because of television - then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Hyacinth's eleventh birthday.

"Eleventh birthdays are special for those of us that have magic or come from magical families," Sirius says dreamily.

Of course, her birthdays were never exactly fun - last year, the Dursleys had given her a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks.

Percy looks horrified at this. While Gabe hasn't made his birthdays enjoyable, he still has his mum to help lighten his mood. With this in mind, Percy swore to himself that his soulmate's birthday would be the best, and each year, he would make it better than the last.

Still, you weren't eleven every day.

Uncle Vernon was back, and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd bought.

"Found the perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"

It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.

"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman kindly agreed to lend us his boat!"

A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.

"I've already got us some rations," said Uncle Vernon, "so all aboard!"

It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks, and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours, they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.

"My gods, he is really in the deep end," Dionysus chuckles, seeing this mortal man fall deeper and deeper into his domain.

The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.

"That is disgusting!" Aphrodite exclaims, looking personally affronted. Ares just smirks in amusement. He himself thought that it was disgusting but hadn't said anything.

Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas.

"Is this man daft, or just stupid..." Grover asks, in confusion. Percy just laughs at his best friend's words.

He tried to start a fire, but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.

"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully.

He was in a very good mood. Obviously, he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Hyacinth privately agreed, though the thought didn't cheer her up at all.

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut, and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Hyacinth was left to find the softest bit of floor she could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

"I swear - Those muggles are gonna -" Sirius cuts himself off, trying to reign in his anger, the black madness still present.

Dionysus watches this from afar. He knows that he was the reason behind that genetic trait. However, he forgot whether it was a punishment or a blessing. It was hundreds of years ago.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Hyacinth couldn't sleep. She shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, her stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Hyacinth she'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. She lay and watched her birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.

Five minutes to go. Hyacinth heard something creak outside. She hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although she might be warmer if it did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that she'd be able to steal one somehow.

"Don't worry, sweetheart, you will get the letter, I promise," Hecate says to no one.

"Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go), what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?

One minute to go, and she'd be eleven. Thirty seconds...twenty...ten...nine - maybe she'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him - three...two...one..."

"Now that's a marauder in the making," Sirius chuckles.

BOOM!

The whole shack shivered, and Hyacinth sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.."