Chapter 8
18 July 1991 Thursday
I can't believe it's been so long since I've written. I knew it had been a while, but it's been over two weeks! Oops.
So, erm, what have I been doing the last two weeks? First off, Piers got a new Genesis and a bunch of new games for it, so Dud's been over there for most of his waking hours and when he's not there, all he talks about is Sonic the Hedgehog and if AP & UV will buy him a Super NES when they come out even though it will be long after his birthday so he'll have a newer and better system than Piers. With the Dud out of the way, AP has been teaching me a lot of cooking and I'm making just about all the lunches now. And I'm eating a lot better because AP says that a cook has to taste things as they're cooking and know what things are supposed to taste like, otherwise nothing will come out right, and there's no point in spending good money on good ingredients if you're just going to ruin them. It's been a lot of fun, because I've gotten to taste things I've never tasted before and AP also had me burn a couple of things on purpose so I'd know what they smelled and tasted like "for future reference". Burned garlic is nasty! And beetroot is fairly disgusting even when not burnt, but I've learned to do a number of things with it anyway. AP says my beet root coleslaw is quite passable.
I've also learned to make mayonnaise and some of the other classic sauces from scratch. If this keeps up, I'm going to have amazing forearms from all this egg whipping. Saturday at dinner, I overheard UV complimenting AP on some of the dishes that I had actually made, so I know I'm learning. And any time I do anything well enough that UV notices, AP makes sure there are a few leftovers for me for later.
But anyway, the reason I sat down to write was that something interesting happened today. My birthday is in a couple of weeks, and Mrs. Figg always sends me a postcard or something a week or two before. At first they were from real places like Stonehenge or the Salem Witch Museum over in the States (Mrs. Figg's favorite niece lives near there), but then she started sending me these brilliant fake postcards from some of the places in her stories, like Godric's Hollow and Hogsmeade) and last year her niece took a laminated picture of me that they called "Flat Harry" along when she and her family went on vacation, and they took pictures of Flat Harry at a bunch of lighthouses on the coast of Maine and near a tower on the tip of Cape Cod and on a carousel by a beach in Massachusetts and next to a giant bluefish her husband caught and all sorts of stuff, with a map with numbers on it to show where all the pictures were taken. That last one didn't come in the mail, though, cos it was too big. Mrs. Figg gave it to me while I was visiting and I keep most of it there. I have one picture that her niece took of her daughter holding Flat Harry so he/I was riding their dog that I think is really funny and she sent duplicates so I have one at home. The dog is a Schipperke, and I have decided that is my favorite sort of dog. His name is Sgt. Pepper. The niece and her husband are Evelyn and Bill Davenport and her daughter is Jamie.
Anyway, she warned me to keep an eye on the mail when I saw her on the first, so I have been, and today I got a wicked cool letter, that says I've been accepted to Mrs. Figg's pretend wizard school. I walked over to her house after breakfast and told her, and she had me write a letter of acceptance and said she'd owl it right out. Mrs. Figg is the greatest, I swear. I wonder how much of it she has planned out. I can't wait to see.
19 July Thursday
Today was a day. I made scones and chicken salad. Nothing further from Mrs. Figg, but if I knew what to expect and when, it wouldn't be half as much fun.
I think I like chicken salad with grapes better than with cranberries.
20 July Friday
Wow. Just wow. It wasn't a joke after all. I'm a wizard.
It was morning. I was helping clear up breakfast. UV was already off to work and Dud off to Piers' and someone knocked on the door. I heard AP arguing with whoever it was and then she called me in from the kitchen. There was a tall woman who looked like the scary kind of librarian in the front hallway, looking around her like she didn't really approve.
"Go change out of you work clothes, Harry. You're going out with Professor McGonnagle for the day."
I hurried and put on the best clothes I could find, which weren't much. I was really curious what this was all about.
"Good morning, Mr. Potter. I am Professor McGonnagle, deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"Oh! Are you a friend of Mrs. Figg's? She said she'd owl my response for me, but I didn't expect to hear back so soon. This is brilliant. Where are we going?"
I swear to whatever I thought she was a friend of Mrs. Figg's who was going along with the joke! I mean, really, if I'd known she was a real professor, I would have been more respectful. I think I actually asked a dozen or so questions in a minute or two, and I didn't stop until she put up her hand.
"Mr. Potter, if you will take my arm and hang on, that should answer a few of your questions."
So I did, of course. I felt this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach and suddenly we were somewhere else. It was a busy bustling street, with all sorts of odd people in odder clothing rushing about. After I picked myself up off the ground, I just stood and stared at the professor until she suggested I shut my mouth before I started attracting flies.
I'm pretty sure after that I started babbling, because my memory of that conversation is a bit blurry. But. Magic. It's real, and that's how we got to Diagonal Alley (which was where we were) and Hogsmeade and Godric's Hollow are real too and I was BORN in Godric's Hollow and I lived there with my parents.
We didn't have that whole conversation right there and then, though. Professor McGonnagle figured out pretty fast that I was starting to freak out and she took me to a little pub where we got a small private room and she got me tea and scones and we sat and talked.
My parents were wizards. There was a war on, against this National Front type who called himself Lord Voldemort, and my parents were part of the group who were fighting against them. My father was apparently someone important and the bad guys were mad at him for not joining their side, and even madder at him for marrying my mom.
And that's a whole other thing. People with magic call people without magic "muggles" and don't know much about us - or them, I guess, since I'm supposed to be one of them. They don't know how electricity or cars work or go to movies or watch telly or anything. And people with magic are only supposed to marry other people with magic, at least so far as the NLF-types think, and it really offends them that people without magic sometimes have magical children. My mother was one of those. My grandparents didn't have magic, and AP doesn't, but my mother did, and she went to Hogwarts and met my father there.
My dad really was an arrogant, irresponsible berk, though. I asked the professor, and she paused and said that he was always a very charming and intelligent young man, and he got much more sensible as he got older. Doesn't take a genius to work out what that means.
Once I got calmed down, the professor took me shopping for all my school supplies. We started with a trunk and a school bag, so we could put our other purchases in them, and she explained to me about shrinking and weightlessness charms. After that, we went to Madame Malkin's for clothes, which took bloody forever. I needed school robes, of course, but she said that wizarding fashions were very different from non magical ones, so I needed to get clothes beyond just my uniform. I was worried about who was going to pay for all this (I probably should have thought about hat when we were getting my trunk, but I was still trying to take it all in then), but she told me that my parents had left money to see me through school, and that making sure I was properly dressed was part of what the money was for, so I just let it drop and stuck to telling Madame Malkin what my favorite colors are and which fabrics I preferred. Just about the time I was thinking I would grow old and die in there, the professor declared us done and that it was time to pick up potions supplies.
The apothecary was gross but fun. I got all the stuff I needed, plus a Beginner's Guide to Ingredient Preparation and extras of some of the more common ingredients just in case, then we picked up my telescope and a really neat thing called an astrolabe, which she said I wouldn't need quite yet, but with my interests I ought to find it useful.
And then we went to the bookstore.
Wow. Wow wow wow. So many cool books. Books on runes. Books on astrology. Books on wizarding customs and history and etiquette and even cookery! Books on how to talk to mermaids and how to make friends with unicorns. Books on how to do magical art and music and even magical embroidery. I ended up getting all my textbooks, plus a copy of the 1914 edition of Hogwarts, a History (Professor McGonnagle said the later versions had some rather unfortunate changes made to them, and the 1980 version was definitely the worst), a book on wizarding customs and etiquette, a book on the history and alliances of the major wizarding families over the last three centuries (and she warned me that wizards live to be quite old, so it was quite possible I might meet people who remembered the American Revolutions as a bit of unpleasantness from their childhoods), three different books on runes, one primer on writing with a quill, and one big thick book an astrology. The professor warned me that she didn't put a lot of stock in it herself, although I might find some aspects interesting to discuss with Professor Sprout, but since I'd already made a study of it, I ought to have a good source on it from the wizarding perspective, so I could compare and contrast.
I could have spent forever in there. The last thing I bought there was a new journal, cordovan with gold tooling and a privacy spell so that only I could read it.
After that, we went for my wand. That was creepy. The whole time we were shopping, the professor referred to me as "Mr. Evans" and I wore a hat to cover up my scar, but Mr. Ollivander recognized me anyway, and told me about my parents' wands. It seemed like I tried every wand in the place, and after all that I ended up with a wand with the same core as the man who murdered my parents. Seems I'm destined for great things. Oh joy.
Our last four stops were an oculist for new glasses (I picked a nice light pewter frame and it and the lenses were charmed unbreakable and unsummonable), Gambol and Japes for a few games to play with my friends once I had made some, Eeylops' Owl Emporium where we met up with Mr. Hagrid, a giant man who is the school groundskeeper and knew me when I was a baby and who bought me the most beautiful owl anywhere (I named her Hedwig, out of one of the books I read at the bookstore), and then back to Madame Malkin's to drop off my trunk. The professor said once my clothes were ready, the whole thing would be waiting for me at the train station. All I brought home with me were my new books and some parchment, quills, and ink in my new book bag.
The day wasn't done being weird yet, though. When I came in the front door, AP sent me upstairs to my room, with a look that said I'd better not act like anything was off. When I got upstairs, Dudley's toy room was mostly cleared out of his stuff, and I had a bed, wardrobe, and desk of my own. And then I got to sit at the table and eat with the family.
After dinner, AP told me to clear all my stuff out of the closet and get settled in my new room, and Dudley didn't say a word. So now I'm all moved in and trying to be comfortable and I feel like I may never sleep again. I keep trying to think and I don't know what to think.
I think I'm going to reread my runes and my horoscope and then try to sleep.