The Letter
Harriet had always been aware that she was different. At first, she had believed it was because her parents had died when she was young, but later she concluded that that was not the reason she felt so… strange. After all she was not the only orphan in the world. She wasn’t even the only orphan in her class.
She simply felt as if she were different. Unlike the Dursleys or even her classmates. As if, there were something separating her from the people around her. Harriet didn’t know how to explain these feelings correctly. She felt disconnected from everyone else. Sometimes it felt like she was speaking a different language than the people around her.
When she was four years old, she met a little garden snake in the backyard of the house. It was during this encounter that she found out that she could speak to snakes. Ever since then whenever she met a serpent, they never tried to attack her. Harriet would instead have little conversations with them. Admittedly, most snakes weren’t the best conversationalists out there. Mostly they would talk about their next meal or where to find a particularly nice, warm rock. The snakes weren’t unintelligent, they simply had different priorities. Still, it was nice to have someone to talk to. Her relatives never wanted to talk to her. Even stranger was that she had learned that some of the snakes she came across were venomous and known to be easy to agitate. Yet they never attacked her and were always very excited when they noticed that she could understand them. Having the ability to converse with snakes was certainly not something anyone else she had ever met had had.
At five years old she discovered that she could let some things happen at her will. For example, she could make things float to her that were out of her reach. Sometimes, when her relatives had locked her inside the cupboard without food again, she would be able to unlock it. One time, she even managed to make her hair grow longer, after her aunt had cut it off.
When Dudley’s gang invented the game Harry-hunting, she found out that she could make herself invisible at will – or rather make herself take on the pattern and colour of whatever was behind her. So, when they followed her, she would run into an alley and hide there until they gave up, all the while desperately wishing that no one would be able to see her. They normally gave up quite soon, since they got easily bored. Once she had gotten a bit of control over this ability, they had never managed to catch her again.
At the age of eight she befriended a baby snake, which she later named Dusa. The serpent had been abandoned by her former owner. From what Harriet figured out from a book later, Dusa was an eastern kingsnake. Usually, they didn’t live in Britain, but the little snake told her that she had been stuffed into a box with many other snakes and rattled around for a long time until she had gotten fed up and eaten some of the others. Yes, eastern kingsnakes apparently liked to eat other snakes. Dusa always told Harriet that if people were annoying her, then she should just eat them. The little snake was quite single-minded at times, but she was her only friend and she loved her.
When Harriet turned ten, she discovered her ability to teleport herself from one place to another. She had been running from Dudley’s gang again and terrified of being caught when suddenly she had felt as if she were being pulled through a thin tube. Then she had been sitting on the roof of a random house. Thankfully, she had been able to get down before the Dursleys found her.
Now, it was her eleventh birthday, and she had the strange feeling that on this day something important would happen – something that would change her future and herself.
“Girl! Wake up!” rang the shrill voice of her aunt through the cupboard door. Harriet opened her one visible eye and slowly sat up. Then she knocked twice on the door as a sign that she was up and would come out in a few seconds. Every day was the same. First, she would wake up to the annoyingly shrill voice of her aunt Petunia, and then get ready for the day. After that she would go into the kitchen and make breakfast for the Dursleys. If she were lucky, she would get some fruit or an old piece of bread as breakfast. Sometimes Uncle Vernon or Dudley refused to eat any of the prepared fruit in the morning. In that case, she would get to eat some of those too. Afterwards she would either go to school or begin with her chores if it was a school-free day. At the end of the day, she would go back into her cupboard, talk to Dusa for a while, and then fall asleep.
On this day Harriet was determined not to do anything wrong, so that at least her birthday would be a good day, without any unnecessary chores added onto the usual. She hissed in a quiet voice: “Dusa? Where are you? Come out.”
In response the still rather small black snake with white chain-like rings slithered up her arm and onto her shoulder. “Good morning, snakeling. Happy hatching day.”
Amused at the way her snake always spoke, Harriet shook her head. “Thanks, Dusa. I hope it will be a happy day.”
“Can I come with you today, or do I have to stay here again?” asked Dusa in slightly whiny tone. In so far as a snake could sound whiny.
“You can come with me if you are silent and stay hidden.” While she really loved the snake, she could be a bit rude sometimes and liked to comment on people’s appearances.
After she put on fresh clothes, Harriet checked if the bandage over her right eye had slipped in the night – she did not want that to happen again. One time she had forgotten to check and accidentally opened her right eye. She had had a headache for days afterwards. Harriet then went into the kitchen to make breakfast for her relatives. Which would take a long time, because of the amount of food her dear uncle and cousin ate. Honestly, hadn’t anyone ever told them that not every meal was a competitive eating contest?
“Get the post, girl.” ordered Vernon. He always ordered her around and if she ever talked back, he would get Dudley to poke her with his new Smeltings stick. What the knobbly stick was actually supposed to be used for was a mystery to Harriet. It couldn’t be a cane; it was too short for that. She also didn’t think that its official purpose was to hit other students with it. That seemed stupid.
Harriet resignedly went to get the post. She had long ago come to terms with living like this until her seventeenth birthday. Or until she finally decided to run away from them. Currently running away didn’t seem like a great idea, because the likelihood of getting caught by someone was too high.
At the door there were three letters. One from Uncle Vernon’s sister Marge, a brown one that looked like a bill and – a letter for her. For her? She had never gotten a letter before. Who on earth would want to write her? She knew if the Dursleys saw that she had gotten a letter they would take it away from her, so she tucked it safely into her skirt. Hopefully they wouldn’t see it and take it away from her. This was the first time she had ever gotten a letter after all. And especially not such a pretty one with a purple wax seal.
Now she was very glad that she had convinced Petunia to buy her a few second- hand girl clothes. Otherwise, she wouldn’t really have had any way to hide the letter. A few years ago, her aunt had tried to get her to wear Dudley’s old clothes. Harriet simply pointed to the neighbour’s house, where, right on cue, one of the neighbours was peering out the window with a nosy expression. Petunia had instantly reconsidered her decision to dress her niece in boy's clothes, fretting over what the neighbours might think if they saw a girl in oversized, boyish attire. Surprise, surprise, a few hours later she procured a few basic hand-me-downs from a second-hand shop. At least they weren't from Dudley. As long as they were clean, she had no complaints.
After breakfast Harriet had to do her chores – nothing much. Today, she was lucky. There weren’t as many as usual, so she managed to finish in time. Maybe they had remembered it would be her birthday soon? … Unlikely. They never had before. After finishing everything she had to go back into her cupboard.
Finally! This was her chance to open the mysterious letter. She had been anxious the whole day and had wanted to know what was written in it – and who would write to her.
Ms H. Potter
The cupboard under the stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
“They know about my cupboard? Great.” thought Harriet sarcastically. That didn’t really give her a good impression of whoever sent that letter.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed of Wizards)
Dear Ms. Potter
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
Yours Sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
“What is written on this piece of paper?” asked Dusa curiously. The snake had been with her the whole day and had entertained her with the hissed tirades full of insults she bestowed upon the Dursleys. Fortunately, they didn’t hear her. Harriet sometimes marvelled at their sheer stupidity. Despite barely making any effort to hide Dusa, they still never managed to figure out that a snake lived right under their roof. What a bunch of geniuses. Not.
“Well, according to this, I've been invited to some school called Hogwarts. Really, Hogwarts? Did they run out of ideas and just throw darts at a dictionary? The headmaster's name is Dumbledore. At least the Deputy Headmistress is called Minerva, which sounds kind of cool. But seriously, who goes through all this trouble to make a joke and then picks names like these? What's next, a school named Pigpimples?” What self-respecting person listed all their titles in a letter to a possible student? This could only be a joke.
Dusa already knew that Harriet had a similar humour to herself, so she simply asked: “Oh? And what do they teach at this Hogwarts school?”
“The letter say that it is a school of Witchcraft and Wizardry, so I would assume they teach how to use magic. But this can’t be real. I might be able to do a few strange things but that doesn’t mean anything. Who would believe something like this?” It sounded like something straight out of a fairytale. The whole thing reeked of a prank, especially with the mention of sending an owl by 31 July. An owl? Who uses owls to send letters? It was as if someone had thrown every magical cliché into one letter to see if she would believe it.
The only thing she couldn’t figure out is who it was. Only the Dursleys knew about her cupboard and neither Petunia nor Vernon would bother with something like this. Dudley wasn’t smart enough and his handwriting was atrocious, so it couldn’t be him. No one else knew about the cupboard under the stairs.
“I wouldn’t just dismiss it. Maybe it is real. If not, we can just find whoever wrote it and eat them.” Dusa’s solution to any problem was eating someone. Not the most helpful thing sometimes, but at least it was a suggestion. Harriet chose to ignore comments like that.
“They say they await my owl by no later than 31 July. An owl? Who sends letters with owls? I don’t have an owl.” If this really wasn’t a prank, then how did whoever had written this expect her to reply?
“If they sent this letter with one of those feathered mouse-chasers, then maybe it’s still lurking around.” Dusa had an inexplicable dislike for owls. Every other bird she could tolerate, but for some reason, she couldn't stand owls. Maybe because most of them were too big for her to eat.
“You are right. I will write a letter just in case this is not a joke. Would you look, if there is an owl outside, and give it to it?” Harriet still wasn’t sure what to make of this letter, but on the chance that this Hogwarts really existed, then she wanted to go there. If not, writing a reply wouldn’t hurt her.
The snake hissed affirmatively and – after Harriet had finished writing her reply – took the letter outside where there actually was an owl waiting for it.
~Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry~
Deputy Headmistress Minerva McGonagall was sitting in a comfortable wingback chair and reading a book, when suddenly she heard a knocking sound from her window.
Seeing an owl with a letter she opened it and let the animal in. After flying a circle around the room, the bird settled down at the back of a chair and held out its foot to Minerva. A small piece of paper was tied to it.
The transfiguration professor took the letter and read it.
Dear Professor McGonagall,
I'm happy to accept the invitation to Hogwarts! Could you please send someone to help me get my school supplies? I don't know where to find them. If that's not possible, maybe you could give me directions to the right places?
Sincerely,
Harriet Lily Potter