It was a beautiful day on Privet Drive. The summer birds were singing merrily, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, neighbors were happily lying in the shade with the paper and a glass of lemonade, the temperature was a comfortable eighty-two degrees, and best of all, there was no Harry Potter.
Life was good for Petunia Dursley. With her troublesome nephew gone for good, the end of summer was filled with relaxing, magic-free days. Ever since that teacher, Dumbledore, had told them that Harry would be leaving their home as soon as he was seventeen, Petunia had been inwardly squirming with anticipation. Nothing but trouble had come to Privet Drive for the sixteen long years Harry had lived at Number Four. Not having to keep track of him any longer felt very... nice. Yes. Very nice, indeed.
Petunia stood in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the night’s dinner, a magnificent roast pork, and fruit salad for dessert, for Dudley. Despite his rigorous diet, he wasn’t losing any weight, and Petunia had a suspicion that whatever the Polkisses were feeding him at tea every day had something to do with it.
She slid the pork into the oven, adjusted the heat, then surveyed the room with her sharp eyes. Her husband Vernon was out mowing the lawn but, peering out the window, Petunia suspected he wasn’t getting much work done. He was talking with one of their neighbors at the same time, leaning heavily on the mower. Harry’s absence had been good for him, too. He had grown much more relaxed, and he didn’t get into a full-blown rage as often. The neighbors had noticed a distinct change inVernon, and a few had even asked Petunia about it.
Petunia smiled and stopped in the middle of her kitchen, getting a bottle of water and a dustrag from a cabinet. Then, just as she was re-sterilizing the kitchen counters, dreaming happily about what a great life she’d had ever since Harry Potter walked out her door... five dirty teenagers suddenly materialized on her polished floor with a loud cracking sound.
Petunia dropped the rag and spray-bottle and screamed. She didn’t care that the window was open, that she sounded like she was dying. Perhaps that would get Vernon in here. Even when she finally recognized the boy in front, she wouldn’t stop screaming. For the boy was the one she had wiped her hands clean of, the one she had hoped never to see again.
Harry Potter.
Harry didn’t know quite what to do when he and his friends Apparated into the kitchen of Number Four Privet Drive and his aunt had immediately begun to scream. Her eyes traveled to his face, and she appeared to recognize him, but then she screamed all the louder.
“Aunt Petunia!” Harry exclaimed, but he couldn’t make himself heard over her shrieks. “Aunt Petunia!” he said a bit louder. No luck. He’d just given up, and decided to let her wear herself out, when suddenly Ron plugged his ears and roared, “What the bloody hell is the matter?!”
Aunt Petunia stopped screaming and goggled at him. Ron winced and, forcefully shaking his head, looked sheepishly at Harry. “Sorry,” he said.
Harry frowned at him. After a moment of staring silently at the five friends, Aunt Petunia found her voice and shrieked, “What are you doing here? You ” you ”” She pointed a shaking finger at Harry, mouth hanging open.
“Er, Aunt Petunia,” Harry said, “this is Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Neville Longbottom, and Luna Lovegood... They’re some friends from school and we’re just dropping in, I swear we’ll be gone really soon.”
A tortured squeak squeezed through Aunt Petunia’s lips. Her eyes kept flicking between Harry and his friends, as though she couldn’t believe that five young wizards had suddenly and quite unexpectedly dropped into her kitchen. Ron was already looking around in interest, inspecting a nearby coffee grinder. Harry grinned as he realized that this was Ron’s first time in a muggle kitchen. Luna was glancing about with a vague interest, and so was Neville, but Hermione looked completely at home. Of course she would, she’s grown up in a house like this all her life, Harry thought.
Aunt Petunia seemed to get over her initial shock and was staring at Harry. There was a mixture of fear, anger, and surprise on her face. “You! How did you ” Why are you back here again?” she sputtered. She looked as if she was going to scream for Uncle Vernon at any moment. Harry quickly said, “Please don’t call Uncle Vernon, I really don’t want to get him mixed up in all this.”
“All... All what?” Aunt Petunia said faintly. She had collapsed in a chair and turned very pale. Apparently Harry had been the last person she was expecting to see.
Harry sighed. Before he searched the house for the Ravenclaw Horcrux, he would obviously have to tell her everything ” or at least most of it. If she knew too much, Voldemort might go after her next. Even though he had no real love for the house or its inhabitants, he couldn’t bear to be the cause of more death. No, Harry thought, The less they know of this, the better.
Harry started looking round, making sure nobody else was listening. “Erm... Everything been alright around here?” he asked awkwardly.
Aunt Petunia shook her head in disbelief. “Everything’s... Everything’s been fine. Nothing has happened really, since you left. We did get some new neighbors, but that’s all.”
“New neighbors? Are they nice?” Harry murmured carelessly. But the answer quickly caught his attention.
“Well, we haven’t really met them, but some of the other neighbors have. They say they’re not very hospitable, mostly ignoring everyone. They’ve been spying a lot, too. Mrs. Andrews said she found one, a man, crouching just outside her window, wearing heavy black robes. Very suspicious. Vernon said he wouldn’t be surprised if they were thieves.”
“Spying?” Harry asked. He felt cold all over. Ignoring everyone... spying... black robes... Is Voldemort watching this place already? So much for secrecy...
“What exactly is going on, Harry?” Aunt Petunia said, suddenly suspicious. “Why did you come here of all places? And do you know who those neighbors are? When I told you about them, you froze.”
Harry bit his lip. What to say? The less he told her, the less she’d be able to tell Voldemort if he got to her... But she wouldn’t be satisfied with a too-watered-down version...
He glanced back at Hermione. She would know how much was too much. Seeing him look at her, however, Hermione frowned and shook her head. Harry sighed. He’d obviously have to do this himself.
“You see...” Harry said evasively. “I’m after something Voldemort had, something very important to him, and I have reason to think that it’s here. Something that could change everything. And, er... He might be keeping an eye on it, making sure no one finds it too...”
Aunt Petunia went even paler. “You mean... Our new neighbors... are his?! B-but... What could he want that is so important, so valuable? How do you know that it ” whatever it is ” is here?”
“I don’t,” Harry said wearily. “I’m just saying there’s a good chance it is here, and if it is, he’s not going to give it up without a fight. If your new neighbors are his followers... Things could get pretty messy, that’s all. Is there any chance you can keep Uncle Vernon and Dudley out of the house until we leave? I don’t want them thrown into the mix as well.”
Aunt Petunia nodded, eyes wide. “I ” I’ll try. What are you...?”
“Right,” Harry said, cutting off his aunt. He looked back at his friends. “Let’s get to work, shall we? And I don’t really want to have to go through the whole house, so Ron, Hermione, Neville ” not you, Luna, I don’t want you getting in trouble ” Summoning Charm on the count of three?”
Ron nodded, raising his wand. Hermione and Neville soon followed suit. “One... Two... Three!”
At the same time, the four of them all shouted, “Accio Horcrux!”
Nothing happened. Crap, Harry thought, It must have a charm on it. Guess we’ll have to do it the hard way, then.
Ron voiced his disappointment. “Ugh. Rotten luck. Must have a spell on it or something. You want us to split up, Harry?”
Harry frowned. “Yeah, I guess so. Not much else we can do, is there?” He didn’t say what they must all have been thinking, that maybe the Horcrux wasn’t there at all. Optimism is the key to success... as long as it works.
Aunt Petunia buried her face in her hands as Harry and his friends started going through her tidy home, giving it the ramshackle look of a tornado site. Harry felt a little sorry for her, but not enough to stop looking. She’ll thank me one day, for this, if this turns out to be it.
Harry headed upstairs while Ron went through the kitchen, Hermione through the living room, and Neville and Luna in the rest. He briefly checked Dudley’s two rooms and wasn’t at all surprised to see that the Dursleys had already converted the one that had belonged to him into a storage room. They had left no signs that a teenage boy had once spent whole summers locked away in there.
Apart from quick glances, Harry didn’t even bother to search those rooms. He doubted that Dudley would have something special enough to be used as a Horcrux, and if he did, he had either squashed or smashed it by now.
Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon’s bedroom, though... That provided some interesting possibilities. The room was very neat, but there were many places that could easily have hidden a small object, like Voldemort’s other Horcruxes. Halfway through a cabinet Harry heard Aunt Petunia rush in and say, “No! No, what are you doing, you little ”” She remembered Harry’s wand, however, and stopped before she could give him a reason to do anything with it. She sat primly on the edge of the bed, wearing a frown that betrayed how upset she was by her nephew’s rummaging.
“Don’t worry, I won’t steal anything,” Harry muttered. Like there was anything he even wanted to steal in here. It was Horcrux or nothing.
After a half-hour of this, Harry was getting discouraged. Trying to take his mind off his lack of success, he asked, “How’d you stop Uncle Vernon from getting in?”
“I told him I was getting a surprise ready for him,” Aunt Petunia murmured. She frowned again. “It certainly will be a surprise if you’re not gone within the hour. Vernon isn’t a patient man.”
“Sorry.”
Ten minutes later, Harry had looked everywhere except for one small drawer in Aunt Petunia’s chest-of-drawers. Opening it carefully, his heart sank. There seemed to be nothing inside it apart from some moth-eaten sweaters, but he routinely dug through them anyway. He had just shut the drawer again... when he heard a loud clunking sound.
Harry turned back. There hadn’t been anything hard inside that drawer ” was there? He hadn’t felt anything...
He pulled it out and sifted through the cloth. And there, hidden at the back of the drawer, was a small, ornamental jewelry box. Harry drew it out and stared at it.
It was very small, easy to overlook, yet there was something distinctly special about the box. Ornate wooden vines crept around the sides, and it was dyed a brilliant mahogany color. Beautifully detailed roses clung to different points of the vines. But it was the engraving on the top that made Harry catch his breath. A large, dark bird was clearly carved, wings outspread in flight. But it wasn’t just any bird.
More importantly, it was a raven.
“Where did you get this?” Harry whispered, not trusting himself to speak aloud. The raven engraving burned into his memory. Rowena Ravenclaw... The sign of a raven in flight...
“That’s strange,” Aunt Petunia said slowly, gazing intently over Harry’s shoulder at the jewelry box. “I haven’t seen that old box in years. Beautiful, isn’t it? I’m not even quite sure where it came from. It arrived here, wrapped in a rag, just a year or so after you were left here. Very coincidental...”
“You don’t even know where it came from?” Harry asked incredulously. He knew exactly where it had come from ” Either another Death Eater had been entrusted with a precious piece of Voldemort’s soul, then panicked like Lucius Malfoy had, or Voldemort himself had wanted the Horcrux planted right under Harry’s unsuspecting nose.
Harry sat there on the floor in disbelief, just staring at the box. All these years... I’ve been living right next to a piece of the person who murdered my parents. And I had no idea... Not a clue... But here it is... How can it be so simple?
This last thought brought Harry down to earth. Voldemort was sure to have left some guards for his precious soul. If the “neighbors” who were behaving so strangely were really Death Eaters... They would have heard Aunt Petunia’s shrieks when Harry and his friends had Apparated into her house. They know...
“It’s not safe here anymore,” Harry said, quickly standing and slipping the jewelry box into his robes pocket. Aunt Petunia looked startled. “Wha ”?”
“No time to explain,” Harry said, ushering his aunt out of the room. “We’ve got to get out of here. They might already be downsta ””
As if on cue, a resounding CRACK echoed throughout the house. A jet of bright green light shot just over Harry’s head, and he ducked quickly, bringing Aunt Petunia down with him. Someone downstairs screamed, and Harry heard Ron bellow, “Stupefy!”
There was a smashing noise, and Harry assumed that whoever Ron had tried to curse had dodged it. A high-pitched cackle of glee reached his ears, and he recognized it immediately. A shiver of both fear and hatred went through his spine.
Bellatrix Lestrange was in Number Four Privet Drive. The woman who had killed Sirius, then attempted to kill Harry, was standing downstairs. How many had she brought with her?
Harry stood up as if in a trance. Aunt Petunia, who was still crouched on the floor, hissed at him, “Get down, Harry!” He didn’t even hear her. All he heard was the cold, merciless laugh of the woman he had sworn to kill... And all he saw was Sirius’s face as he fell to his death, again and again...
Harry gripped his wand tightly and lunged down the steps to face Sirius’s murderer.