Investigations and Revelations
“It has been for you and me as one who watches a storm come in over the water…”
July, 1991
Over the years, Persephone remained cunning enough to enact her own revenge while keeping to herself. Every now and then she would be caught or suspected and thrown in her cupboard, but the girl decided that every momentary success was worth the punishment. The Dursleys never really changed. They still scorned her. Petunia was still either very angry or very odd whenever Persephone was present. Uncle Vernon still yelled, and Dudley still had his gang chase her. But she was in a separate class from him, so only had to worry on the playground or on the way home. Aunt Petunia eventually left the girl to her chores and ignored her presence. After long enough, everything settled down.
Before she knew it, she was about to move onto secondary school, which meant an even further distance from her cousin. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon’s old private school, Smeltings. Persephone, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public school, which Dudley apparently thought was very funny.
“They stuff people’s heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall,” he told her. “Want to come upstairs and practice?”
“All right,” Persephone said swiftly, smoothly turning to look at him with innocent eyes. Then, she continued in a sweet voice, “But I heard that sometimes snakes can find their ways up toilets. Want me to go talk to the toilet to make sure?”
Dudley shook his head frantically, waddling off—likely assuming she’d be more likely to summon snakes than ward them off. The girl smiled in triumph. Only recently, Dudley and Piers Polkiss had caught her talking to a snake at the zoo and next thing she knew, the glass had disappeared and Dudley was insisting she had set the snake upon him. That had been the cause of her longest stint in the cupboard yet.
Luckily, she knew Dudley wouldn’t go whining to Aunt Petunia because Dudley wasn’t supposed to be threatening to shove her head down toilets either (respectable little boys weren’t supposed to beat up little girls, after all). It was a lovely gray area where they could both torment the other as much as they liked as long as Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon weren’t around.
Not too long after, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Persephone at Mrs. Figg’s as usual. Unlike usual, Mrs. Figg wasn’t as cat-obsessive. 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 Persephone watch television and gave the girl a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she’d had it for several years.
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.
As he 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. Persephone didn’t trust herself to speak. She thought two of her ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh, seeing as her cousin looked more like a stuffed pig than anything to be proud of.
The next morning, Uncle Vernon came to the table and opened his newspaper as usual after sitting himself down comfortably. Dudley banged his Smelting stick down the hall and on the table to announce his arrival.
Moments later, 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.
“Make Persephone get it.”
“Get the mail, girl.” Uncle Vernon never called her anything other than girl. Persephone got the distinct impression that he thought her name was too abnormal to say aloud. Sometimes she wondered what her parents were thinking when they named her. This was usually at the times when the kids at school, after reading her name-tag, called her “Per-se-phone” rather than “Per-seh-pho-nee.” Mostly, though, she liked it because it was different and the Dursleys hated it.
Persephone didn’t look at them as she deposited sausages on the table and said evenly, “Make Dudley get it.”
“Do as you’re told!” Dudley shouted; his mouth full of eggs.
“Atta boy, Dudley,” Vernon muttered, still not paying them close attention in favor of reading the paper. Dudley noticed, for he smiled evilly and swung his Smelting stick at the girl to encourage her to get moving.
Persephone dodged the Smelting stick with practiced ease—she was always dodging something or another in this house, it seemed—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 Persephone.
The girl 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:
Ms. P. Potter
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
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, Persephone saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.
“Hurry up, girl!” shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. “What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?” He chuckled at his own joke.
The sound of his voice put the girl in a hurry to obey. Persephone went back to the kitchen, still staring at her letter. She handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard and slowly began to open the yellow envelope as she drifted away from the table. Unfortunately, she didn’t get terribly far.
As Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, no doubt preparing to snort in disgust, a chubby hand reached out and ripped the envelope from the girl’s hands.
“Dad!” said Dudley suddenly. “Dad, Persephone’s got something!”
“That’s mine!” the girl shouted angrily, trying to snatch it back as Vernon quickly removed it from his son’s graces.
“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. She turned a very peculiar shade of white as she froze, staring at the envelope without saying a word.
Uncle Vernon stared at Aunt Petunia, and Aunt Petunia stared at the letter, beginning to look as though someone had died. They both seemed to have forgotten that Persephone 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.
“I want to read it,” said Persephone quietly, her deep-green eyes glittering darkly, “as it’s mine.” Aunt Petunia sent her a withered and world-weary look.
“Get out, both of you,” croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope. Persephone didn’t move. She stared at the envelope, trying to calculate a way to figure out what was going on.
“Let me see it!” demanded Dudley.
“OUT!” roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Persephone and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. The girl and her cousin promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Persephone ended up lying 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?”
“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 —”
Persephone 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?”
That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vernon did something he’d never done before; he visited Persephone in her cupboard.
“Where’s my letter?” the girl asked, 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,” the girl protested 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.
“Er—yes, Persephone”—he also looked like he was in pain when he forced her name out—“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?” the girl shot back.
“Don’t ask questions!” snapped her uncle. “Take this stuff upstairs, now.”
The Dursleys’ house had four bedrooms: 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 Persephone one trip upstairs to move everything she owned from the cupboard to this room.
The girl sat down on the bed and stared around at all of Dudley’s broken old junk he had discarded here. 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…”
Persephone sighed and curled up on the bed. She felt oddly exposed and desperately wished to be back in her cupboard with that letter.
We have stood from year to year
before the spectacle of our lives
with joined hands
At breakfast the next morning, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock after all his attempts to get his way had failed. Persephone was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing she’d opened the letter in the hall. Now she felt rather stupid about letting anyone else see it. She should have known Dudley would be too nosy to let it slide. Now, she was stuck moping as she stood by the counter and munched on her toast.
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 Persephone, 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! ‘Ms. P. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive —’”
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Persephone 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 Persephone had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind.
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 his niece’s letter clutched in his hand.
“Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom,” he wheezed at the girl. “Dudley — go — just go.”
Persephone 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 repaired alarm clock rang at six o’clock the next morning. Persephone turned it off quickly and dressed silently. In order to avoid waking her relatives, the girl 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—
“AAAAARRRGH!”
The girl leapt into the air. She’d stood on something big and squashy on the doormat— something alive. Her heart began sinking as she began backing away.
Lights clicked on upstairs and to her horror, the girl found herself face to face with her uncle. Her uncle, whose face she had just trodden on. Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Persephone didn’t do exactly what she’d been trying to do. He shouted at the girl for about half an hour and then told her to go and make a cup of tea. Persephone slunk off into the kitchen, fuming. By the time she got back, the mail had arrived—right into Uncle Vernon’s lap. Persephone could see three letters addressed in green ink.
“I want—” she started, 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.”
“I’m not sure that’ll work, Vernon.”
“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. Persephone was certain that it was Uncle Vernon’s mind that worked in strange ways.
On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Persephone. 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.
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Ms. P. Potter 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.
Persephone had no idea who was sending these letters, but she was beginning to grow quite fond of them.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy. Persephone was plotting by the window. She had no idea how the letters would be sent next time. Due to Uncle Vernon’s interventions, the letters were being sent in increasingly inventive ways. The girl decided to simply keep her eyes peeled and hope for a good opportunity.
“No post on Sundays,” he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, “no damn letters today —”
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Suddenly, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. Instantly, they were everywhere—in the air, on the counters, on the floor…
The Dursleys ducked. Persephone saw her chance. The girl rolled under the table and grabbed a handful of letters. Vernon attempted to reach her under the table, but couldn’t quite manage it. She ignored him, even as he began to get to his feet. With one hand, she tucked one into her waistband. Her other fist clutched the rest and she bolted.
Uncle Vernon seized Persephone around the waist, essentially plucking her out of the air and wrenching the letters from her hand. She was thrown into the hall. Moments later, 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,” he huffed, 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.
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.
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city.
Dudley and Persephone shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. While Dudley snored, Persephone climbed into the windowsill and ever so carefully pulled the letter out of her waistband. She stared down at it with glittering, covetous eyes. This letter had been through so much to get to her. She wanted to know why someone wanted her to see it so desperately.
She glanced furtively at Dudley’s form, but needn’t have. He was snoring loud enough to wake the dead. The girl returned her gaze to the envelope she held in her hand. Carefully, she peeled it open.
Dear Ms. Potter,
It said.
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 September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.
Yours sincerely,
Minerva McGonagall,
Deputy Headmistress
Persephone stared.
And stared. And stared. It didn’t make sense. A school wasn’t all that odd, but for Witchcraft and Wizardry? She would have thought it was a joke, if not for how her relatives had reacted. They certainly seemed to take this whole thing seriously. And what did it mean, they awaited her owl? She didn’t have an owl.
There was another page that seemed to be a supply list of sorts. There were books with odd titles that had words like “magic” and “potions.” But there were other things too, like cauldrons, uniforms, and brooms. There was note about how she wasn’t allowed to bring a broom at the bottom.
Terribly intricate for a joke.
She knew she couldn’t ask about it, though. The girl stared at the letter all night, only shoving it back into her waistband as the sun began to peek over the horizon. She stayed resolutely quiet the next morning as they ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast. She only fidgeted when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
“’Scuse me, but is one of you Ms. P. 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:
Ms. P. Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth
They were still sending them, which meant they must want a response from her. She thought of the line about the owl. Was owl a colloquialism for message? Persephone glared at Uncle Vernon, who looked at her as if daring her to try to snatch this new letter. The woman stared.
“I’ll take them,” said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.
“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.
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.
If it was Monday—and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days the week, because of television—then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Persephone’s eleventh birthday. 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. The only time she ever got anything slightly new was at the beginning of the school year when Aunt Petunia would buy the girl a single dress. Apparently, every girl had to have at least one that fit.
Still, you weren’t eleven every day.
The storm unfolds.
Lightning plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north is placid,
blue in the afterglow as the storm piles up.
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’s 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.
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. Uncle Vernon’s rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. 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. Persephone agreed. She wondered when she should tell them she’d opened one. She hoped she could get away with it forever—her relatives would no doubt be furious she’d tricked them. Perhaps, if she could figure out how to reply…
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 Persephone was left to find the softest bit of floor she could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.
She had trouble sleeping, cold and uncomfortable as she was.
But then, just at midnight, there came a great, booming knock on the door, which continued until the door was battered down entirely. The rain filtered in, hitting the threshold with a light pitter-patter. The noise roused the Dursleys. Dudley ran to a wall as Persephone’s aunt and uncle ran downstairs gibbering. Persephone discovered that the odd package had turned out to be a rifle, which was now clenched in Uncle Vernon’s shaking grip.
A man entered the hut. He was so large, he seemed to take up the entire space. His hair and beard were wild and dripping, but he didn’t look particularly menacing, and he looked expectantly at the girl who stood her ground before him.
“Ah, Persephone!” he smiled. Persephone stared. “Las’ time I saw you; you was only a baby. Yeh look a jus’ like yer mum, but yeh’ve got yer dad’s hair.”
Uncle Vernon made a funny rasping noise. Persephone patted her long, dark hair.
“I demand that you leave at once, sir!” her uncle protested. “You are breaking and entering!”
“Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune,” said the giant; he reached over, jerked the gun out of Uncle Vernon’s hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the room. Uncle Vernon made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on.
“Anyway—Persephone,” said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, “a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here—I mighta sat on it at some point, but it’ll taste all right.”
From an inside pocket of his black overcoat, he pulled a slightly squashed box. Warily, Persephone opened it. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Persephone written on it in green icing. It looked as if the giant had made it by hand, and consequently also ran out of room for her name. The back half of it curled downwards along the cake.
Persephone looked up at the giant. She wanted to asked why he was giving her anything, meant to say thank you, but what her mouth decided on was an accusatory, “Who are you?”
The giant chuckled.
“True, I haven’t introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts.”
He held out an enormous hand and shook Persephone’s whole arm.
“What about that tea then, eh?” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I’d not say no ter summat stronger if yeh’ve got it, mind.”
His eyes fell on the empty grate with the shriveled chip bags in it and he snorted. He bent down over the fireplace; they couldn’t see what he was doing but when he drew back a second later, there was a roaring fire there. It filled the whole damp hut with flickering light and Persephone felt the warmth wash over her as though she’d sunk into a hot bath.
The giant sat back down on the sofa, which sagged under his weight, and began taking all sorts of things out of the pockets of his coat: a copper kettle, a squashy package of sausages, a poker, a teapot, several chipped mugs, and a bottle of some amber liquid that he took a swig from before starting to make tea. Soon the hut was full of the sound and smell of sizzling sausage. Nobody said a thing while the giant was working, but as he slid the first six fat, juicy, slightly burnt sausages from the poker, Dudley fidgeted a little. Uncle Vernon said sharply, “Don’t touch anything he gives you, Dudley.”
The giant chuckled darkly.
“Yer great puddin’ of a son don’ need fattenin’ anymore, Dursley, don’ worry.”
He passed the sausages to Persephone, who was still suspicious, but hungry enough she inhaled the sausage regardless. The whole time, her dark green eyes remained fixed on the giant. She wondered if he had sent those letters. Finally, as nobody seemed about to explain anything, she said, “I’m sorry, but I still don’t really know who you are.”
The giant took a gulp of tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Call me Hagrid,” he said, “everyone does. An’ like I told yeh, I’m Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts—yeh’ll know all about Hogwarts, o’ course.
“Er — no,” the girl responded hastily. She thought it might have been the name of the place on her letter, but didn’t want to admit to her relatives she’d opened one. Hagrid stared at her. She stared back. The giant looked a bit shocked. Quickly, she tacked on, “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” barked Hagrid, turning to stare at the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows. “It’s them as should be sorry! I knew yeh weren’t gettin’ yer letters, but I never thought yeh wouldn’t even know abou’ Hogwarts, fer cryin’ out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yer parents learned it all?”
“All what?” asked Persephone.
“ALL WHAT?” Hagrid thundered. “Now wait jus’ one second!”
He had leapt to his feet. In his anger he seemed to fill the whole hut. The Dursleys were cowering against the wall.
“Do you mean ter tell me,” he growled at the Dursleys, “that this girl—this girl!—knows nothin’ abou’—about ANYTHING?”
Persephone squinted at him, affronted. She thought this was going a bit far. She had been to school, after all, and her marks weren’t half bad.
“I know some things,” she argued defensively. “I can, you know, do math and stuff.”
But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, “About our world, I mean. Your world. My world. Yer parents’ world.”
Now she truly was confused. “What world?”
Hagrid looked as if he was about to explode.
“DURSLEY!” he boomed.
Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something Persephone didn’t quite catch. Hagrid stared at the girl in the meantime, evidently not valuing the other man’s contribution, despite his shouted demands.
“But yeh must know about yer mum and dad,” he said. “I mean, they’re famous. You’re famous.”
“What? My—my mum and dad weren’t famous, were they?”
“Yeh don’ know… yeh don’ know…” Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing the girl with a bewildered stare.
“Yeh don’ know what yeh are?” he said finally.
Uncle Vernon suddenly found his voice.
“Stop!” he commanded. “Stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the girl anything!”
A braver man than Vernon Dursley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.
“You never told her? Never told her what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer her? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An’ you’ve kept it from her all these years?”
“Kept what from me?” Persephone asked eagerly.
“STOP! I FORBID YOU!” yelled Uncle Vernon in panic.
Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.
“Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh,” said Hagrid. “Persephone — yer a witch.”
There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.
“I’m a what?” gasped Persephone.
“A witch, o’ course,” said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, “Magic-user, yer know?”
The girl didn’t know, but she could imagine. There were times strange things had happened around her—her hair growing back when her aunt left her with horrible, crooked bangs to cover her scar, landing on the roof while running away from Dudley, things exploding or changing colors when she was upset…
The giant continued despite her pensive look, going on to say, “Yeh’d be a thumpin’ good ‘un, I’d say, once yeh’ve been trained up a bit. With a mum an’ dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An’ I reckon it’s abou’ time yeh read yer letter.”
The man began fishing in his coat for something, and Persephone knew the jig was up. Sheepishly, she removed her own version just as he pulled out one that said, Ms. P. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. The pair of them stared at each other. Finally, the girl whispered, “I already read it, but…I didn’t really understand. Especially the bit about awaiting my owl.”
“Gallopin’ gargoyles, that reminds me,” the giant suddenly said. He then pulled a live owl out of his coat, along with a piece of paper and a feather. He scratched something down, and then sent the owl out the broken door, which was still allowing rain to fall just inside. Persephone stared.
Uncle Vernon, however, seemed to have recovered his wits.
“She’s not going,” the man said, still looking a bit pale.
Hagrid chuckled.
“I’d like ter see a great Muggle like you stop her,” he said.
“A what?” Persephone queried, interested.
“A Muggle,” said Hagrid, “it’s what we call nonmagic folk like them. An’ it’s your bad luck you grew up in a family o’ the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on.”
“We swore when we took her in we’d put a stop to that rubbish,” said Uncle Vernon, “swore we’d stamp it out of her! Witch indeed!”
“You knew?” the girl protested. “You knew I’m a—a witch?”
“Knew!” shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. “Knew! Of course, we knew! How could you not be, my sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and that dratted boy dragged her away!”
Persephone wondered if “that dratted boy” was intended to mean her father.
“That place ruined her! She got married and had you, and of course I knew you’d be just the same, just as strange, just as—as—abnormal—and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!”
Persephone went very white and very livid. As soon as she found her voice she was shouting, “Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!”
“CAR CRASH!” roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. “How could a car crash kill Lily an’ James Potter? It’s an outrage! A scandal! Persephone Potter not knowin’ her own story when every kid in our world knows her name!”
“But why? What happened?” Persephone asked urgently.
The anger faded from Hagrid’s face. He looked suddenly anxious.
“I never expected this,” he said, in a low, worried voice. “I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin’ hold of yeh, how much yeh didn’t know…”
The giant seemed very reluctant, but finally broke down and told the girl everything she had never heard about her parents—about how they were heroes. They had fought a dark wizard, who decided to kill them in retaliation. But inexplicably, he managed to kill all of them but her, a simple baby, despite not lacking in trying. The girl tried to look at him, to listen, but found herself sinking downwards and staring at the floor. She thought it might have been better to hear that her parents were heroes rather than a couple of drunks. Somehow, though, she felt even worse.
By the end of it, Hagrid was looking at her sadly. “Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore’s orders,” he said. “Brought yeh ter this lot… .”
“Load of old tosh,” said Uncle Vernon. Persephone jumped; she had almost forgotten that the Dursleys were there. Uncle Vernon certainly seemed to have got back his courage. He was glaring at Hagrid and his fists were clenched.
“Now, you listen here, girl,” he snarled, “I accept there’s something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn’t have cured — and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdoes, no denying it, and the world’s better off without them in my opinion — asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types — just what I expected, always knew they’d come to a sticky end —”
But at that moment, Hagrid leapt from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat. Pointing this at Uncle Vernon like a sword, he said, “I’m warning you, Dursley — I’m warning you — one more word…”
In danger of being speared on the end of an umbrella by a bearded giant, Uncle Vernon’s courage failed again; he flattened himself against the wall and fell silent.
“That’s better,” said Hagrid, breathing heavily and sitting back down on the sofa, which this time sagged right down to the floor.
Persephone, meanwhile, still had questions to ask, hundreds of them.
“But what happened to Vol-, sorry — I mean, You-Know-Who?”
“Good question, Persephone. Disappeared. Vanished. Same night he tried ter kill you. Makes yeh even more famous. That’s the biggest myst’ry, see… he was gettin’ more an’ more powerful — why’d he go?
“Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die. Some say he’s still out there, bidin’ his time, like, but I don’ believe it. People who was on his side came back ter ours. Some of ‘em came outta kinda trances. Don’ reckon they could’ve done if he was comin’ back.
“Most of us reckon he’s still out there somewhere but lost his powers. Too weak to carry on. ’Cause somethin’ about you finished him, Persephone. There was somethin’ goin’ on that night he hadn’t counted on — I dunno what it was, no one does — but somethin’ about you stumped him, all right.”
Hagrid looked at Persephone with warmth and respect blazing in his eyes, but Persephone, instead of feeling pleased and proud, felt a bit like an imposter. She shrunk in on herself. She was tired. Now that she was warm and fed, all the girl wanted to do was curl up and go to sleep.
But evidently, Uncle Vernon wasn’t going to give in without a fight.
He continued hissing at Hagrid, who continued to growl dangerously back. It was all the same arguments—she won’t go, she will go. Persephone just wanted to leave, or sleep, or both. She had nearly dozed off by the warm glow of the fire when Uncle Vernon screamed, “I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HER MAGIC TRICKS!” yelled Uncle Vernon.
Suddenly, Hagrid seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head,
“NEVER—” he thundered, “— INSULT—ALBUS—DUMBLEDORE — IN — FRONT —OF—ME!”
He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley — there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Persephone saw a curly pig’s tail poking through a hole in his trousers.
Uncle Vernon roared. Pulling Aunt Petunia and Dudley into the other room, he cast one last terrified look at Hagrid and slammed the door behind them. Persephone, who had been nearly unconscious merely seconds prior, forgot everything in the sheer, terrifying hilarity of the moment.
It has been
for you and me
as one who watches a storm
come in over the water.
We have stood
from year to year
before the spectacle of our lives
with joined hands.
The storm unfolds.
Lightning
plays about the edges of the clouds.
The sky to the north
is placid,
blue in the afterglow
as the storm piles up.
