Year Seven:: Chapter One:: The Creaky Stair
Midnight. The three members of the Dursley family were sleeping soundly, but a tall, rather lanky sixteen-year-old boy was not. Harry Potter paced around Number Four, Privet Drive, very much awake.
The shock of the past few weeks had worn off slightly and the gravity of his situation was beginning to sink in. Tonight, Harry Potter was a man on a mission.
Where? Harry wondered urgently, as he crept through the parlor. He kicked the oversized sofa, rooted through the drawers of the pigeon-holed writing desk, and overturned a few photographs of his cousin Dudley just for good measure. He was remembering the night nearly two years ago when an owl had flitted through the Dursley’s kitchen window and deposited a Howler on the pristine countertop - a letter to Aunt Petunia from Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard of his age and the former Headmaster at Harry’s magical boarding school. Harry recalled the terrible voice, reverberating off the whitewashed walls -
Remember my last!
This, Harry supposed, meant that there had been previous letters. Tonight, with the Dursleys slumbering peacefully upstairs, Harry was determined to find the letters. For the umpteenth time, Harry asked himself where Aunt Petunia would have put something she wanted to keep hidden? With this in mind, he opened the cabinet of cleaning supplies (for no one but Petunia ever visited there), hoping to find a crumpled letter hidden amongst the dryer sheets or even a flask of dragon’s blood alongside the bottles of ammonia. Nothing. Harry was beginning to think that, if Petunia had ever carried on a correspondence with Albus Dumbledore, the evidence had long since been destroyed.
Upstairs, Uncle Vernon stopped snoring abruptly, and the dead silence engulfed the house. Harry made one last round through the parlor, but to no avail. Feeling defeated, Harry started up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Creak! Harry leapt up three stairs, his heart pounding madly. Just the creaky stair, it’s just the creaky stair, he told himself, chanting it like a mantra. Harry clambered to his feet, and turned back towards the creaky stair…What if…?
He hopped down to the landing and slowly pried the stair open, reveling in his own brilliance. A shaft of moonlight danced across the contents of the stair: dog-eared letters addressed in a slanting scripts, newspaper clippings, photographs. Harry pulled out a wad of letters and sat them on the step beside him, turning his attention to the pictures instead. Here two girls - one blonde and bony, the other a willowy redhead - posing at the beach; there again, two sisters sitting on the front porch eating ice cream. Lily and Petunia Evans. Harry’s fingertips caressed the image of his youthful mother and he felt his eyes burn with tears.
Reluctantly, he put the photographs aside and reached for the letters, turning them over slowly in his hands. The letter at the bottom of the stack was older and more careworn than the rest.
Miss Petunia Evans
The Parlor
485 Somerset Blvd.
Bristol, England
It looked suspiciously like a Hogwarts letter, but he assured himself that it could not be so. Harry slid the letter out of its filigreed envelope --
HOGWARTS SCHOOL
of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Armando Dippet
(Order of Merlin, Second Class)
Dear Miss Evans,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry “
In his excitement, Harry hadn’t noticed the footfalls on the stairs. Now Uncle Vernon thundered towards him, building momentum with each heavy footfall --
“INSOLENT BOY! What do you think you’re doing, rummaging about our house?!” Vernon roared, swinging a candlestick at Harry.
Harry dodged the candlestick, but Vernon’s next assault knocked the letters out of Harry’s hands. They cascaded to the ground and Vernon dived for one.
“PETUNIA!”
Petunia stood frozen at the top of the stairs, watching the scene with unguarded horror.
Vernon’s eyes were watering and his face was purpling; he waved the letter back and forth rather feebly.
“Oh, Vernon! I never - I swore I’d “” Petunia was on the verge of tears.
“No, no! I’ve thrown out my back!” Vernon lay on the floor like a beached whale, oblivious to Petunia’s terrified protestations.
Petunia sunk to her knees, as weak with relief as a Death Row prisoner who’d received a last minute reprieve.
Harry hastily gathered up the letters and tried to catch Petunia’s eye as she lugged Vernon back up the stairs.
* * * * *
Half-an-hour later, Petunia emerged, her hands reeking of Aspercreme. “Shhh!” she hissed at him, “your uncle’s sleeping.” When she saw the look of angry determination on Harry’s face, however, she silenced immediately and veered off towards the kitchen.
“Aunt Petunia?” Harry chased after her, shoving the stack of letters into her hands.
Petunia took them, trembling from head to toe. “How did you find these?” she asked weakly.
Harry shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She shook her head slowly and sank into a chair.
“You owe it to me,” Harry said fiercely. “You owe it to her! Tell me you didn’t hate her!”
Harry thrust the faded beach photo before her eyes; Petunia’s shoulders slumped forward.
“What happened between you?” Harry demanded.
Petunia stared blankly at the wall opposite her, and began. Her voice was deadened and raw, “When I was a little girl, just eleven years old, I received a letter from a faraway place…an invitation to attend a school of witchcraft and wizardry. Witchcraft and wizardry!” she spat, shaking her head vehemently, though when she spoke again, her voice was as toneless as before. “I was embarrassed “ what would my parents think? What could I do? I hid the letter -- I never wrote back. I tried to forget what had happened…” she spoke in a rush of words, not daring to feel emotion behind what she was saying. Harry was reminded strongly of Barty Crouch when under the effects of Veritaserum. “And then the unthinkable happened. Lily. Lily got a letter to…to…that school. She said yes, and when I thought our parents would be livid…they were not…Thrilled! They were thrilled! Delighted! Overjoyed! Lily, a witch. It was Lily this and Lily that. It could have been me, had I accepted. Or maybe it couldn’t have been. Lily was always the favorite.”
Harry watched her numbly.
“And, as if her going off to that dump wasn’t enough, she was always bringing home her freaky friends.” Petunia shuddered. “Then, one day, she came home with this awful boy. Awful. Don’t remember his name…not your father, in any case…greasy-haired, not handsome at all. Lily could have had anyone…why this ugly bloke?” To his surprise, Harry detected a note of indignation in Petunia’s voice. “…Snap? Snope?” she groped in the recesses of her memory for the name of the offending young man.
“Snape?” Harry offered, his heart sinking.
“Snape. Severius Snape - that’s the name,” Petunia looked distracted. “Brought him home one summer, and that James Potter the next. They got married soon after…Didn’t hear from her for months. Then she was back. Vernon never would have allowed it, but Dumbledore fashioned some sort of conference on drills for him to attend. He could scarcely refuse. So, just out-of-the-blue, Lily was back.”
“Back?” Harry echoed.
“Said James was off on some mission, but she couldn’t fool me that easily. I knew James Potter was unemployed, never did an honest day’s work in his life. They must have had marital problems; she showed up with the baby and was quite distraught besides. She must’ve stayed about a month. That baby was perfectly behaved too, never fussed, never said a mumbling word.”
She’s speaking about me as though I’m not even here! Harry reflected, listening to his aunt’s ramblings with detached curiosity.
“She had all kinds of visitors too. Weird folks. Then she went away with that Potter boy again. That was the last time I saw her,” Petunia pondered aloud. “She sent me all kinds of letters that next year, but I sent them back unread. I was furious with her for going back to that world, to them. She could have had anything, Lily, but she went back and I could never forgive her for that. Twice she left me, but I never thought…it’s too terrible to say…” Petunia hastily dabbed her moist eyes on the collar of her dress. “…that Voldermord came and blew them all to smithereens and we got landed with…with Harry…with you…I only visited her grave once…that’s all I could risk…what with Vernon and two baby boys in the house…”
Harry obligingly fetched her a handkerchief and Petunia cried noisily into it.
“Where is she buried?” he asked haltingly.
“In-in Godric’s Hollow…just outside of “” she blew her nose ““ Holyhead.”
Harry stood up and smoothed his robes. His senses felt sharpened somehow; the gleaming whiteness of the kitchen blinded his itching eyes, and the sound of his own footfalls as he moved to embrace Petunia echoed loudly in his ears.
“Harry…be careful…”
There was nothing else to be said. Harry hurried upstairs to retrieve his wand and Invisibility Cloak. As he made to leave, his eyes swept over the unkempt room. Spellbooks and dirty socks littered the floor and Hedwig’s empty cage sat atop the wardrobe, illuminated by the orangey light of a single streetlamp. Harry nudged aside his school trunk, the better to lean against the wall, and there he stood, tracing his fingers over five columns of notches in the wall. A rush of bittersweet emotions overcame him. Don’t you remember when you used to count down the days until you could return to the Wizarding World?