Harry Potter and the Illusion of Doom
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, I just enjoy thinking about what could happen next to Harry, and writing about it.
*******************************************
Chapter One: Escape from Privet Drive
It seemed every summer the little town of Surrey ever saw was always profoundly hot. The sun beat upon the little town so unsparingly that the grass dried out quicker than the muggles could water it. The trees take the water away from the grass and even then the trees become too dry. One residence, however, stood out from the others. Number 4 of Privet Drive was known to have a impeccable yard which could compare easily with its perfect looking interior. In Harry Potter's opinion, they wasted too much time worrying about their bloody house.
Harry Potter was laying face up on his bed as the sweltering June air settled around him like an irremovable blanket. The only relief from the heat was a pathetic little fan that hardly blew warm air, let alone cool air onto his body. He lay on his bed in only his boxer shorts, but even with the lack of clothing, his body was still saturated with a thick sheath of perspiration that continued to collect on his skin. Harry felt groggy and dirty, but wasn't shocked since he hadn't really moved from that spot since the end of his last term at Hogwarts School of Magic.
Harry wasn't too worried about it though, just like he wasn't too worried about much anymore. He looked over at the stack of books that sat on top of his trunk and were sure to be collecting dust by now. Harry could see Hermione's face in his mind, and could see her scolding him for not starting his homework. Thinking of Hermione made Harry think about Ron, and all the other friends Harry had back at Hogwarts and it brought a little happiness to him. Just reminiscing about all the good things that happened at Hogwarts made a smile break through the expressionless face that had plagued him since the day he stepped foot back in the Dursley's annoyingly perfect house.
This summer, for Harry, had been very depressing and quite unproductive. The Dursleys, who usually ordered Harry around like a servant, had left him alone to mope about in his room, pretending that he wasn't even there. Harry didn't mind though. He didn't even bother to listen to the news anymore and the Daily Prophet, for each day he had been here, lay untouched in a messy stack in the corner of his room. Mrs. Figgs came once in a while to check up on Harry, and ask him politely to tea. Each time Harry said no, because he had too much homework, or that he was very tired. Each time he declined he felt a little bad because Mrs. Figgs would always leave with a downcast look as if she had failed somebody, but he quickly learned to not care anymore. No one in the world knew the pains and horrors Harry Potter had to endure. There wasn't a single wizard or muggle who knew the pressure and pain he was under. Harry was all alone, but not very cheerful. It felt almost as though a dementor continually loomed about his room; never to leave him alone. Harry felt as though he could never go back to the moment he found out he was a wizard and found out that he got to leave the Dursleys, before he knew there was a lunatic out to kill him. Those were the days when he found out that magic was real, and there was so much happiness in the magical world. He soon learned that to have so much happiness, there must be an equal amount of evil. Knowing that he either had to be killed, or be a killer, left a bitter feeling in Harry. When the day came where only he or Voldemort would be standing, Harry knew that he would kill Voldemort, but there was always that nagging voice in the back of his mind that told him, it's not that easy. The information Dumbledore unloaded onto Harry at the end of his 5th term both frightened him, and made him furious. Why him? Why did he have to be the bloody wizard whose parents died trying to save him? Why was he the one that had to see Cedric Diggory's dead eyes gaze at him after Voldemort ordered Cedric to be killed? Why was he the reason why Sirius was no longer here?
Harry kicked the wall, making a slight dent in it but he didn't care. He hated the Dursleys and their stupid house. Any normal person's family would welcome their nephew into their house after their sister died. Not the Dursleys. They found it pleasurable to make Harry's life miserable, even if it killed them. Harry knew there were others who cared about him, but he didn't even make an effort to open up Ron and Hermione's letters. He didn't want to hear how much fun Hermione was having vacationing in Greece, or how much money Ron was making as he worked with Fred and George in Diagon Alley at the Weasley`s Wizarding Wheezes. Harry just wanted to crawl into a ball and throw his invisibility cloak around himself and hide from the world. He didn't care anymore.
Suddenly a loud rapping shook his door and he jumped, catching himself before he fell off the bed.
"Get out here boy," came Uncle Vernon's loud voice. "You've got a phone call, but make it quick because they're calling all the way from Westchester so that's long distance."
"You don't say," Harry replied sarcastically, throwing an oversized worn shirt over his head and walked to the door, leaving his room for the first time to do something other than shower or take a trip to the loo. Harry wondered the entire trip downstairs who could possibly be calling him all the way from Westchester, and then he figured it out and almost dreading to talk to her, knowing she would nag him for not eating anything all summer.
"Hermione?" Harry said into the receiver.
"I suppose you would suspect it was her since I'm calling from her house," Ron replied a bit annoyed.
"Oh, hi Ron," Harry said lazily.
"Hello yourself. I'm glad to hear you're alive, seeing as you haven't returned any of our owls since the end of last term. You should see Hermione, she's practically pulling out her hair she's so worried about you. if you don't send us a letter soon, she might not have any hair the next time you see her," Ron joked.
"Shut up Ronald!" Harry could hear Hermione say in the background which made him a bit upset. They did this to him last year as well, and he felt really left out. Harry could almost feel the steam coming from his ears.
"Oh, so you and Hermione are hanging out again together without me then?" Harry asked Ron sarcastically.
"No! Well...yes, but that's why I phoned you, Harry. Dumbledore, and Hermione's parents of course, said it was okay for the both of us to spend the rest of the summer at Hermione's house. You just have to ask the muggles if it's all right with them." Harry's spirits suddenly rose a bit. Getting away from the Dursley's would be a great start to get him out of this depression.
"All right, hang on," Harry said and covered the receiver with no intentions of actually asking the Dursley's. They knew that going somewhere with a friend would make Harry happy and he knew that they wouldn't want to be the source of his happiness.
"Aunt Petunia," Harry shouted. Harry's bony aunt walked into the kitchen with a sour look on her emaciated face. She was clearly annoyed that he had disrupted her snooping into the next-door neighbour's affairs since she had been trying to get her nose between the cracks of their fence the other night when she thought she heard yelling coming from the Winston's house.
"What do you want?" she asked. Harry put on a phoney smile to try and persuade her that he was serious about this.
"Would you like me to trim your hedges with this new device my friend could send me? He's on the telephone right now and wants to know if you wanted him to order you one?" Harry could almost swear that his aunt was actually contemplating whether to say yes to this offer or not. After all, she and his uncle Vernon were quite fond of their shrubbery.
"It's not...from one of those awful stores, is it?" she asked, suddenly lowering her voice so no one who might just be peaking their heads in the windows might hear. Of course, in Aunt Petunia's mind, the neighbours just so happened to have nothing better to do than sit in their front yard all day and wonder, What might Petunia Dursley be talking about right this moment. Harry just laughed at the thought.
"Oh, yeah," he said dumbly. "It's this new wizarding shop for all sorts of shrubbery and magical plants. I could make your bushes look like garden gnomes if you like," Harry said with a smile, even though he already knew what her reaction would be.
"Absolutely not!" she shrieked. "There will be no...you know whating," she said in a whisper for all those neighbours who might be hanging in the windows, "in this house! No...magic." she said as though magic was a filthy word and marched out of the room in a fit. Harry laughed and turned back to the phone.
"I can come," Harry said into the receiver.
"Brilliant!" Ron shouted a little too loudly over the receiver. "Kingsley Shacklebot and Tonks will pick you up in a car -Ow! Hermione, I'm not done talking to Harry!" Ron whined and Harry could hear the phone being passed over.
"Harry?" Hermione tried to say, but it came out more as a squeak.
"Hi, Hermione," Harry replied a bit relieved to hear her voice.
"Oh, Harry! We've been worried sick! Mrs. Figgs told Dumbledore that you've stayed in that room all summer!" She scolded him and Harry could almost see that her face was pinched much like Professor McGonagall's, but a bit softer since she could never truly get horribly mad at him. "What have you been doing?"
"I dunno," Harry replied half-heartedly. "Sleeping, eating, staying alive."
"It's not funny! I can't believe you, Harry," she said sternly. "I suppose coming to my house ought to do you a bit of good. I hope you've been eating." Harry just laughed at how predictable she was, yet he appreciated her concern.
"Hermione, you're starting to sound like Mrs. Weasley," Harry said with a chuckle and he could hear her sigh over the phone.
"I'm just worried about you is all,' she said a bit less sternly.
"I'll be all right," he said to reassure her. "I'll see you both later.
"All right. Bye Harry," Hermione said before Harry hung up the phone. The moment Harry put the receiver down, the phone rang again. He looked around at the sterile kitchen and toward the vacant doorways before he picked it up again.
"Dursley residence," Harry said with a bit of a chuckle since it made him sound like the servant they treated him like.
"Hi," came a female voice. "Is Dudley there?" The girl asked Harry. Harry's lips formed into a smile as he came up with a plan.
"Yes, he is. Oh, are you his girlfriend or something?" Harry asked the girl.
"Actually, no. We're just good friends," the girl replied.
"Ohhhh, yeah," Harry said as the menacing smile on his face grew even wider. "Yeah. Dudykins has told me all about you."
"Excuse me," the girl asked a bit suspiciously, "Dudykins?"
"Oh yeah, that's what his mum calls him. She's got loads of nicknames for him. There's Ickle Dudykins, Mommy's little angel pig, and-" but Harry couldn't finish because two large hands were closed around his neck and strangling life out of him. Harry dropped the phone and pried at Dudley's fingers which seemed to be growing tighter and tighter around his neck.
`Don't you dare talk to my friends!" Dudley shouted as he continued to strangle Harry but eventually let his grip loosen so Harry could breathe. "What else did you tell her?" he demanded.
"Well I forgot to tell her how your mum still reads you bedtime stories and how you have to sleep in their room when the thunderstorms make you wet your b-" but Harry couldn't finish because Dudley's hands found their way back to Harry's neck and continued strangling him.
"Dudley? Dudley?" The girl on the phone said and Dudley let go of Harry, and picked the phone up quickly, trying to regain some composure. That was pretty hard since his face had turned bright shades of purple, reminding Harry of Uncle Vernon.
"Hello? Marina? Oh...no that was my cousin. His brain had to be repaired after a car accident. Yeah, brain transplant...what? Yeah that can happen..." Harry just laughed as Dudley tried to gain his pride back by using his pea-sized brain to make matters worse. Harry chuckled and ran upstairs to his room and began to toss everything he owned into his trunk. Hedwig began to shuffle her feathers frantically in her cage.
"That's right, Hedwig. We're going to see Ron and Hermione." Harry said to his bird as he continued to haphazardly throw his things into the trunk and then shut it once everything had been packed. Harry had plans, but he had to wait until it was dark for his plan to work.
*~@~*
As soon as Harry could hear the obnoxious snoring coming from his Uncle Vernon, Harry grabbed his trunk, Hedwig's cage and his firebolt and headed out of his room. The silence around him was occasionally broken by Uncle Vernon's grating snores and the sound of the wheels on Harry's trunk as he wheeled it down the corridor and down each step carefully as not to make much noise. Once his trunk was down the stairs and he was sure none of the Dursley's had woken up, he returned to the top of the stairs to retrieve Hedwig and his firebolt.
Harry walked out the door and shut it behind him, hearing the lock click into place. He nearly ruined his great escape by laughing a bit too loud. Any noise, however, was carried by the wind away from Privet Drive. Harry knew exactly what he needed to do now to get out of Surrey.
"Lumos," Harry spoke silently and a small light emitted from his wand. He held his wand high above his head and suddenly Harry could hear a loud rumbling coming from down the street. Just as he expected, a large purple triple-decker bus was hurtling toward him at top speed. The knight bus was going to take him to Hermione's house.
The bus made a screeching halt before Harry and he grew impatient as Stan slowly meandered off the oversized bus.
"Well, if it isn't Harry-" but Harry wasn't in the mood for a reunion with him. He had to get to Hermione's house before Kingsley and Tonks set out to get him.
"Hi again," Harry said in a rush. "I have to get to Number 3, Bavaria Lane, Hermione Granger's house." Harry said as he pushed past Stan and ran up the steps of the Knight bus.
Stan scoffed and walked relentlessly to get Harry's trunk, and loaded it onto the bus. The Knight bus started up again and zoomed off to Hermione's house at breakneck speed.
***************************
So tell me what you think. Was it in character, can you see something like this happening. JKR did say that Harry would spend his shortest time at the Dursley's during book 6, so I tried to make that happen, and this is how I see it happening. I'm sure she will come up with something much more brilliant than me since she is such a wonderful writer, but I hope this can somewhat live up to her writing.