The Aftermath, and a Cute Cat
Harry immediately went to hold his face. He was crying loudly now. “Shut your mouth unless you’re telling me who you were on the phone with!” Harry kept crying. Petunia and Dudley were just sitting there watching him. Vernon whipped him with the belt again, on his stomach this time. Harry had folded over and cried louder. Vernon had enough and grabbed his left arm and squeezed. “Who were you calling, boy!” You could hear the crack as Vernon squeezed harder when Harry wouldn’t answer. And Harry started screaming now. Vernon started shaking him and screaming at him, and Harry couldn’t take it anymore.
Everything blew up with black smoke. That's the only way he could describe what had happened. Harry stopped crying and looked around. It was like a dystopia. There was nothing but rubble. No neighbours, no houses, no park down the street, no Dursleys. Just Harry.
An owl had come to drop off a letter.
Mr. H. Potter, Cupboard Under the Stairs, 4. Privet Drive, Little Whinging, SURREY.
…
Harry was stunned, it wasn’t even Dudley’s birthday yet. Why did the letter come now?
“Hroo.” the owl cooed at him, tilting its head to the side when Harry didn't take the letter. Harry looked at the owl in a dazed sort of way, before he snapped back to reality and carefully untied the letter from the owl’s leg.
“Urm, ple-” Harry wheezed, his voice raspy from screaming, “Please stay for a bit.” The owl didn’t move from its current spot, so Harry thought they must have heard him. He opened the letter and two papers fell out. One his Hogwarts acceptance letter, the other his school list. He turned over his acceptance letter, not bothering to read it, and dragged his hand (the right one, because his left arm is broken) into the ashes and started to write with the ashes on his pinky finger. It was very messy, seeing as he was left handed in the first place and he was shaking from the cold. When he was finished he folded the paper and carefully tied it back onto the owl’s leg. The owl nipped at his hair and flew away into the night.
‘Well what am I going to do now?’ the young boy thought, putting his school list in the pocket of the pants that were way too big for him. Just then he heard police sirens cutting into the eerie silence of the night, and decided that he needed to get out of here. He couldn’t run, because if he did he wouldn’t get far, and if he stayed then he would definitely get taken in by the police and probably get sent to an orphanage, which is not something he is currently looking forward to. So, Harry thought of the only other thing he knew, hide and panic. There wasn’t any place to hide though, so it’s mostly just panicking. He pulled his knobby knees up to his chest, put his head down and started to pull his hair with his working arm.
‘What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?’ The thought repeated over and over in the little boy’s head, his heart rate spiking, the hand tugging his hair pulling harder in an attempt to ground himself. The police cars were just down the street now, any closer and they would see Harry curled up on the ground surrounded by the ashes. Harry’s lungs started to feel like they were closing up, along with his throat. He couldn’t breathe. His whole body started to ache, and he realised he was hyperventilating. The black smoke started to come out again, just a little bit this time compared to before, and it wrapped around Harry’s head, then his chest,his arms, his torso, and then his legs. Harry screwed his eyes shut, afraid of what the smoke was doing to him. And suddenly, he couldn’t hear the police sirens anymore. He opened his eyes slowly to find himself in the back of an alleyway, then promptly passed out.
…
Minerva was getting her class ready, as she usually does before school starts, when an owl comes to one of her windows with an open Hogwarts letter tied to their leg. This is surprising, because all Hogwarts letters are to go into the mail room and sorted magically, and she already went to Hogwarts if her memory isn’t failing her. Nonetheless, she carefully takes the letter from the owl and hands them a few sickles. The first thing she notices is that this letter was addressed to Harry Potter, that right there causes her to be a little worried, since the letter has what she thinks is ash on it, but it's when she opens the letter does her stomach drop. It reads, ‘ not okay in trouble please come get me not a joke send help’ in shaky writing, almost illegible, and written in ash on the back of the paper. Just then, Dumbledore walks in, calmly, too calmly for the words coming out of his mouth. “Privet Drive was blown up last night, and there was no mention of Harry Potter.”
…
Something is poking his face. It’s pretty soft though, they don’t want to wake up. “Meow.” Their eyes shot open at that. Before the Harry incident, they were a huge cat person, they loved animals in general really, but cats were just something that they couldn’t get over. So when they saw a small tortoiseshell kitty, so small they could barely stand yet, they picked it up and looked for a collar. When they didn’t see one, they looked in the alleyway for anywhere that this cat could’ve come from. Seeing a box, they walked over to it on shaky legs, feeling drained. Looking in the box, Harry could see three calico cats in there, all dead.
“You don’t have any family either, do you?” The kitty looked up at Harry with big grey eyes, snuggling into his thin shirt. “I’ll keep you then.” And Harry walked out of the alleyway to try and see where he was.