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Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 8:50am On Jan 19, 2016 |
Hey guys, I know that a lot of you are fans of the Harry Potter franchise and most of you may not have read the books, as at such I have decided to give you all the stories at no charge, I'll start with sorcerers stone till the last entry in the franchise. My uploads will start tomorrow but if you can't wait you can visit http://Hillscraper. and start reading. 1 Like 1 Share |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by sunkieisland(m): 10:07am On Jan 19, 2016 |
Are u sure you're not breaking any copyright laws by pasting J. K. Rowling's books here. Make enough research before u begin or get authorisation |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 11:33am On Jan 19, 2016 |
sunkieisland: I sent a mail to J. K. Rowling and according to her, if I have a paid copy of her books I am free to post it( don't think it was her, maybe a staff) , so I don't think there's anything to worry about 1 Like |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 9:45am On Jan 20, 2016 |
THE BOY WHO LIVED
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number
four, Privet
Drive, were proud to say that they were
perfectly normal, thank you very much.
They
were the last people you’d expect to be
involved
in anything strange or mysterious,
because they
just didn’t hold with such nonsense.
Mr. Dursley was the director of a
firm called
Grunnings, which made drills. He was a
big, beefy
man with hardly any neck, although he
did have a
very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was
thin and
blonde and had nearly twice the usual
amount of
neck, which came in very useful as she
spent so
much of her time craning over garden
fences,
spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys
had a
small son called Dudley and in their
opinion there
was no finer boy anywhere.
The Dursleys had everything they
wanted,
but they also had a secret, and their
greatest
fear was that somebody would discover
it. They
didn’t think they could bear it if anyone
found
out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was
Mrs.
Dursley’s sister, but they hadn’t met for
several
years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended
she didn’t
have a sister, because her sister and her
good-
for-nothing husband were as
unDursleyish as it
was possible to be. The Dursleys
shuddered to
think what the neighbors would say if
the
Potters arrived in the street. The
Dursleys knew
that the Potters had a small son, too, but
they
had never even seen him. This boy was
another
good reason for keeping the Potters
away; they
didn’t want Dudley mixing with a child
like that.
When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up
on the
dull, gray Tuesday our story starts, there
was
nothing about the cloudy sky outside to
suggest
that strange and mysterious things would
soon
be happening all over the country. Mr.
Dursley
hummed as he picked out his most
boring tie for
work, and Mrs. Dursley gossiped away
happily as
she wrestled a screaming Dudley into his
high
chair.
None of them noticed a large, tawny
owl
flutter past the window.
At half past eight, Mr. Dursley picked
up his
briefcase, pecked Mrs. Dursley on the
cheek, and
tried to kiss Dudley good-bye but missed,
because Dudley was now having a
tantrum and
throwing his cereal at the walls. “Little
tyke,”
chortled Mr. Dursley as he left the house.
He
got into his car and backed out of
number four’s
drive.
It was on the corner of the street that
he
noticed the first sign of something
peculiar — a
cat reading a map. For a second, Mr.
Dursley
didn’t realize what he had seen — then
he jerked
his head around to look again. There
was a
tabby cat standing on the corner of
Privet Drive,
but there wasn’t a map in sight. What
could he
have been thinking of? It must have
been a trick
of the light. Mr. Dursley blinked and
stared at
the cat. It stared back. As Mr. Dursley
drove
around the corner and up the road, he
watched
the cat in his mirror. It was now reading
the sign
that said Privet Drive — no, looking at
the sign;
cats couldn’t read maps or signs. Mr.
Dursley
gave himself a little shake and put the
cat out of
his mind. As he drove toward town he
thought
of nothing except a large order of drills
he was
hoping to get that day.
But on the edge of town, drills were
driven
out of his mind by something else. As he
sat in
the usual morning traffic jam, he
couldn’t help
noticing that there seemed to be a lot of
strangely dressed people about. People in
cloaks. Mr. Dursley couldn’t bear people
who
dressed in funny clothes — the getups
you saw
on young people! He supposed this was
some
stupid new fashion. He drummed his
fingers on
the steering wheel and his eyes fell on a
huddle
of these weirdos standing quite close by.
They
were whispering excitedly together. Mr.
Dursley
was enraged to see that a couple of them
weren’t young at all; why, that man had
to be
older than he was, and wearing an
emerald-green
cloak! The nerve of him! But then it
struck Mr.
Dursley that this was probably some silly
stunt
— these people were obviously collecting
for
something… yes, that would be it. The
traffic
moved on and a few minutes later, Mr.
Dursley
arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his
mind
back on drills. 1 Like |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 9:47am On Jan 20, 2016 |
Mr.
Dursley
arrived in the Grunnings parking lot, his
mind
back on drills.
Mr. Dursley always sat with his back
to the
window in his office on the ninth floor.
If he
hadn’t, he might have found it harder to
concentrate on drills that morning. He
didn’t see
the owls swoop ing past in broad
daylight,
though people down in the street did;
they
pointed and gazed open- mouthed as owl
after
owl sped overhead. Most of them had
never
seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr.
Dursley,
however, had a perfectly normal, owl-
free
morning. He yelled at five different
people. He
made several important telephone calls
and
shouted a bit more. He was in a very
good mood
until lunchtime, when he thought he’d
stretch
his legs and walk across the road to buy
himself
a bun from the bakery.
He’d forgotten all about the people in
cloaks
until he passed a group of them next to
the
baker’s. He eyed them angrily as he
passed. He
didn’t know why, but they made him
uneasy. This
bunch were whispering excitedly, too,
and he
couldn’t see a single collecting tin. It was
on his
way back past them, clutching a large
doughnut
in a bag, that he caught a few words of
what
they were saying.
“The Potters, that’s right, that’s what I
heard yes, their son, Harry”
Mr. Dursley stopped dead. Fear
flooded him.
He looked back at the whisperers as if he
wanted
to say something to them, but thought
better of
it.
He dashed back across the road,
hurried up
to his office, snapped at his secretary not
to
disturb him, seized his telephone, and
had
almost finished dialing his home number
when
he changed his mind. He put the
receiver back
down and stroked his mustache,
thinking… no,
he was being stupid. Potter wasn’t such
an
unusual name. He was sure there were
lots of
people called Potter who had a son called
Harry.
Come to think of it, he wasn’t even sure
his
nephew was called Harry. He’d never
even seen
the boy. It might have been Harvey. Or
Harold.
There was no point in worrying Mrs.
Dursley;
she always got so upset at any mention
of her
sister. He didn’t blame her — if he’d had
a sister
like that… but all the same, those people
in
cloaks…
He found it a lot harder to
concentrate on
drills that afternoon and when he left the
building at five o’clock, he was still so
worried
that he walked straight into someone just
outside the door.
”Sorry,” he grunted, as the tiny old
man
stumbled and almost fell. It was a few
seconds
before Mr. Dursley realized that the man
was
wearing a violet cloak. He didn’t seem at
all
upset at being almost knocked to the
ground.
On the contrary, his face split into a
wide smile
and he said in a squeaky voice that made
passersby stare, “Don’t be sorry, my dear
sir,
for nothing could upset me today!
Rejoice, for
You-Know-Who has gone at last! Even
Muggles
like yourself should be celebrating, this
happy,
happy day!”
And the old man hugged Mr. Dursley
around
the middle and walked off.
Mr. Dursley stood rooted to the spot.
He
had been hugged by a complete stranger.
He
also thought he had been called a
Muggle,
whatever that was. He was rattled. He
hurried to
his car and set off for home, hoping he
was
imagining things, which he had never
hoped
before, because he didn’t approve of
imagination.
As he pulled into the driveway of
number
four, the first thing he saw — and it
didn’t
improve his mood — was the tabby cat
he’d
spotted that morning. It was now sitting
on his
garden wall. He was sure it was the
same one; it
had the same markings around its eyes.
”Shoo!” said Mr. Dursley loudly. The
cat
didn’t move. It just gave him a stern
look. Was
this normal cat behavior? Mr. Dursley
wondered.
Trying to pull himself together, he let
himself
into the house. He was still determined
not to
mention anything to his wife.
Mrs. Dursley had had a nice, normal
day. She
told him over dinner all about Mrs. Next
Door’s
problems with her daughter and how
Dudley had
learned a new word (“Won’t!”). Mr.
Dursley tried
to act normally. When Dudley had been
put to
bed, he went into the living room in time
to
catch the last report on the evening
news:
”And finally, bird-watchers
everywhere have
reported that the nation’s owls have
been
behaving very unusually today. Although
owls
normally hunt at night and are hardly
ever seen
in daylight, there have been hundreds of
sightings of these birds flying in every
direction
since sunrise. Experts are unable to
explain why
the owls have suddenly changed their
sleeping
pattern.” The newscaster allowed himself
a grin.
“Most mysterious. And now, over to Jim
McGuffin with the weather. Going to be
any more
showers of owls tonight, Jim?”
”Well, Ted,” said the weatherman, “I
don’t
know about that, but it’s not only the
owls that
have been acting oddly today. Viewers as
far
apart as Kent, Yorkshire, and Dundee
have been
phoning in to tell me that instead of the
rain I
promised yesterday, they’ve had a
downpour of
shooting stars! Perhaps people have been
celebrating Bonfire Night early — it’s not
until
next week, folks! But I can promise a
wet night
tonight.”
Mr. Dursley sat frozen in his
armchair.
Shooting stars all over Britain? Owls
flying by
daylight? Mysterious people in cloaks all
over
the place? And a whisper, a whisper
about the
Potters…
Mrs. Dursley came into the living
room
carrying two cups of tea. It was no good.
He’d
have to say something to her. He cleared
his
throat nervously. “Er — Petunia, dear —
you
haven’t heard from your sister lately,
have
you?”
As he had expected, Mrs. Dursley
looked
shocked and angry. After all, they
normally
pretended she didn’t have a sister.
”No,” she said sharply. “Why?”
”Funny stuff on the news,” Mr.
Dursley
mumbled. “Owls… shooting stars… and
there
were a lot of funny-looking people in
town
today…”
”So?” snapped Mrs. Dursley.
”Well, I just thought… maybe… it was
something to do with… you know… her
crowd.”
Mrs. Dursley sipped her tea through
pursed
lips. Mr. Dursley wondered whether he
dared tell
her he’d heard the name “Potter.” He
decided he
didn’t dare. Instead he said, as casually
as he
could, “Their son — he’d be about
Dudley’s age
now, wouldn’t he?”
”I suppose so,” said Mrs. Dursley
stiffly.
”What’s his name again? Howard,
isn’t it?”
”Harry. Nasty, common name, if you
ask
me.”
”Oh, yes,” said Mr. Dursley, his heart
sinking horribly. “Yes, I quite agree.”
He didn’t say another word on the
subject
as they went upstairs to bed. While Mrs.
Dursley
was in the bathroom, Mr. Dursley crept
to the
bedroom window and peered down into
the front
garden. The cat was still there. It was
staring
down Privet Drive as though it were
waiting for
something. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 9:48am On Jan 20, 2016 |
It was
staring
down Privet Drive as though it were
waiting for
something.
Was he imagining things? Could all
this have
anything to do with the Potters? If it
did… if it
got out that they were related to a pair of
—
well, he didn’t think he could bear it.
The Dursleys got into bed. Mrs.
Dursley fell
asleep quickly but Mr. Dursley lay
awake, turning
it all over in his mind. His last,
comforting
thought before he fell asleep was that
even if
the Potters were involved, there was no
reason
for them to come near him and Mrs.
Dursley.
The Potters knew very well what he and
Petunia
thought about them and their kind…. He
couldn’t
see how he and Petunia could get mixed
up in
anything that might be going on — he
yawned
and turned over — it couldn’t affect
them….
How very wrong he was.
Mr. Dursley might have been drifting
into an
uneasy sleep, but the cat on the wall
outside
was showing no sign of sleepiness. It was
sitting
as still as a statue, its eyes fixed
unblinkingly on
the far corner of Privet Drive. It didn’t so
much
as quiver when a car door slammed on
the next
street, nor when two owls swooped
overhead. In
fact, it was nearly midnight before the
cat
moved at all.
A man appeared on the corner the
cat had
been watching, appeared so suddenly
and silently
you’d have thought he’d just popped out
of the
ground. The cat’s tail twitched and its
eyes
narrowed.
Nothing like this man had ever been
seen on
Privet Drive. He was tall, thin, and very
old,
judging by the silver of his hair and
beard, which
were both long enough to tuck into his
belt. He
was wearing long robes, a purple cloak
that
swept the ground, and high-heeled,
buckled
boots. His blue eyes were light, bright,
and
sparkling behind half-moon spectacles
and his
nose was very long and crooked, as
though it
had been broken at least twice. This
man’s name
was Albus Dumbledore.
Albus Dumbledore didn’t seem to
realize
that he had just arrived in a street where
everything from his name to his boots
was
unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in
his cloak,
looking for something. But he did seem
to
realize he was being watched, because
he looked
up suddenly at the cat, which was still
staring at
him from the other end of the street. For
some
reason, the sight of the cat seemed to
amuse
him. He chuckled and muttered, “I
should have
known.”
He found what he was looking for in
his
inside pocket. It seemed to be a silver
cigarette
lighter. He flicked it open, held it up in
the air,
and clicked it. The nearest street lamp
went out
with a little pop. He clicked it again —
the next
lamp flickered into darkness. Twelve
times he
clicked the Put-Outer, until the only
lights left
on the whole street were two tiny
pinpricks in
the distance, which were the eyes of the
cat
watching him. If anyone looked out of
their
window now, even beady-eyed Mrs.
Dursley, they
wouldn’t be able to see anything that
was
happening down on the pavement.
Dumbledore
slipped the Put-Outer back inside his
cloak and
set off down the street toward number
four,
where he sat down on the wall next to
the cat.
He didn’t look at it, but after a moment
he
spoke to it.
”Fancy seeing you here, Professor
McGonagall.”
He turned to smile at the tabby, but
it had
gone. Instead he was smiling at a rather
severe-
looking woman who was wearing square
glasses
exactly the shape of the markings the cat
had
had around its eyes. She, too, was
wearing a
cloak, an emerald one. Her black hair
was drawn
into a tight bun. She looked distinctly
ruffled.
”How did you know it was me?” she
asked.
”My dear Professor, I ‘ve never seen
a cat
sit so stiffly.”
”You’d be stiff if you’d been sitting
on a
brick wall all day,” said Professor
McGonagall.
”All day? When you could have been
celebrating? I must have passed a dozen
feasts
and parties on my way here.”
Professor McGonagall sniffed angrily.
”Oh yes, everyone’s celebrating, all
right,”
she said impatiently. “You’d think they’d
be a bit
more careful, but no — even the Muggles
have
noticed something’s going on. It was on
their
news.” She jerked her head back at the
Dursleys’
dark living-room window. “I heard it.
Flocks of
owls… shooting stars…. Well, they’re not
completely stupid. They were bound to
notice
something. Shooting stars down in Kent
— I’ll
bet that was Dedalus Diggle. He never
had much
sense.”
”You can’t blame them,” said
Dumbledore
gently. “We’ve had precious little to
celebrate
for eleven years.”
”I know that,” said Professor
McGonagall
irritably. “But that’s no reason to lose
our
heads. People are being downright
careless, out
on the streets in broad daylight, not even
dressed in Muggle clothes, swapping
rumors.”
She threw a sharp, sideways glance
at
Dumbledore here, as though hoping he
was
going to tell her something, but he
didn’t, so
she went on. “A fine thing it would be if,
on the
very day YouKnow-Who seems to have
disappeared at last, the Muggles found
out
about us all. I suppose he really has
gone,
Dumbledore?”
”It certainly seems so,” said
Dumbledore.
“We have much to be thankful for.
Would you
care for a lemon drop?”
”A what?”
”A lemon drop. They’re a kind of
Muggle
sweet I’m rather fond of”
”No, thank you,” said Professor
McGonagall
coldly, as though she didn’t think this
was the
moment for lemon drops. “As I say, even
if You-
Know-Who has gone -”
”My dear Professor, surely a sensible
person
like yourself can call him by his name?
All this
‘You- Know-Who’ nonsense — for eleven
years I
have been trying to persuade people to
call him
by his proper name: Voldemort.”
Professor
McGonagall flinched, but Dumbledore,
who was
unsticking two lemon drops, seemed not
to
notice. “It all gets so confusing if we
keep saying
‘You-Know-Who.’ I have never seen any
reason
to be frightened of saying Voldemort’s
name.
”I know you haven ‘t, said Professor
McGonagall, sounding half exasperated,
half
admiring. “But you’re different. Everyone
knows
you’re the only one You-Know- oh, all
right,
Voldemort, was frightened of.”
”You flatter me,” said Dumbledore
calmly.
“Voldemort had powers I will never
have.”
”Only because you’re too — well —
noble to
use them.”
”It’s lucky it’s dark. I haven’t
blushed so
much since Madam Pomfrey told me she
liked
my new earmuffs.”
Professor McGonagall shot a sharp
look at
Dumbledore and said, “The owls are
nothing
next to the rumors that are flying
around. You
know what everyone’s saying? About
why he’s
disappeared? About what finally stopped
him?”
It seemed that Professor McGonagall
had
reached the point she was most anxious
to
discuss, the real reason she had been
waiting on
a cold, hard wall all day, for neither as a
cat nor
as a woman had she fixed Dumbledore
with such
a piercing stare as she did now. It was
plain that
whatever “everyone” was saying, she
was not
going to believe it until Dumbledore told
her it
was true. Dumbledore, however, was
choosing
another lemon drop and did not answer.
”What they’re saying,” she pressed
on, “is
that last night Voldemort turned up in
Godric’s
Hollow. He went to find the Potters. The
rumor
is that Lily and James Potter are — are —
that
they’re — dead. ”
Dumbledore bowed his head.
Professor
McGonagall gasped.
”Lily and James… I can’t believe it…
I didn’t
want to believe it… Oh, Albus…”
Dumbledore reached out and patted
her on
the shoulder. “I know… I know…” he
said
heavily.
Professor McGonagall’s voice
trembled as
she went on. “That’s not all. They’re
saying he
tried to kill the Potter’s son, Harry. But
— he
couldn’t. He couldn’t kill that little boy.
No one
knows why, or how, but they’re saying
that when
he couldn’t kill Harry Potter, Voldemort’s
power
somehow broke — and that’s why he’s
gone.
Dumbledore nodded glumly.
”It’s — it’s true?” faltered Professor
McGonagall. “After all he’s done… all the
people
he’s killed… he couldn’t kill a little boy?
It’s just
astounding… of all the things to stop
him… but
how in the name of heaven did Harry
survive?”
”We can only guess,” said
Dumbledore. “We
may never know.”
Professor McGonagall pulled out a
lace
handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes
beneath her
spectacles. Dumbledore gave a great sniff
as he
took a golden watch from his pocket and
examined it. It was a very odd watch. It
had
twelve hands but no numbers; instead,
little
planets were moving around the edge. It
must
have made sense to Dumbledore, though,
because he put it back in his pocket and
said,
“Hagrid’s late. I suppose it was he who
told you
I’d be here, by the way?”
”Yes,” said Professor McGonagall.
“And I
don’t suppose you’re going to tell me
why
you’re here, of all places?” |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 9:50am On Jan 20, 2016 |
”Yes,” said Professor McGonagall.
“And I
don’t suppose you’re going to tell me
why
you’re here, of all places?”
”I’ve come to bring Harry to his aunt
and
uncle. They’re the only family he has left
now.”
”You don’t mean — you can’t mean
the
people who live here?” cried Professor
McGonagall, jumping to her feet and
pointing at
number four. “Dumbledore — you can’t.
I’ve
been watching them all day. You
couldn’t find
two people who are less like us. And
they’ve
got this son — I saw him kicking his
mother all
the way up the street, screaming for
sweets.
Harry Potter come and live here!”
”It’s the best place for him,” said
Dumbledore firmly. “His aunt and uncle
will be
able to explain everything to him when
he’s
older. I’ve written them a letter.”
”A letter?” repeated Professor
McGonagall
faintly, sitting back down on the wall.
“Really,
Dumbledore, you think you can explain
all this in
a letter? These people will never
understand
him! He’ll be famous — a legend — I
wouldn’t be
surprised if today was known as Harry
Potter
day in the future — there will be books
written
about Harry — every child in our world
will know
his name!”
”Exactly,” said Dumbledore, looking
very
seriously over the top of his half-moon
glasses.
“It would be enough to turn any boy’s
head.
Famous before he can walk and talk!
Famous for
something he won’t even remember!
CarA you
see how much better off he’ll be,
growing up
away from all that until he’s ready to
take it?”
Professor McGonagall opened her
mouth,
changed her mind, swallowed, and then
said,
“Yes — yes, you’re right, of course. But
how is
the boy getting here, Dumbledore?” She
eyed
his cloak suddenly as though she thought
he
might be hiding Harry underneath it.
”Hagrid’s bringing him.”
”You think it — wise — to trust
Hagrid with
something as important as this?”
I would trust Hagrid with my life,”
said
Dumbledore.
”I’m not saying his heart isn’t in the
right
place,” said Professor McGonagall
grudgingly,
“but you can’t pretend he’s not careless.
He
does tend to — what was that?”
A low rumbling sound had broken
the silence
around them. It grew steadily louder as
they
looked up and down the street for some
sign of
a headlight; it swelled to a roar as they
both
looked up at the sky — and a huge
motorcycle
fell out of the air and landed on the road
in front
of them.
If the motorcycle was huge, it was
nothing
to the man sitting astride it. He was
almost
twice as tall as a normal man and at least
five
times as wide. He looked simply too big
to be
allowed, and so wild – long tangles of
bushy
black hair and beard hid most of his
face, he had
hands the size of trash can lids, and his
feet in
their leather boots were like baby
dolphins. In
his vast, muscular arms he was holding a
bundle
of blankets.
”Hagrid,” said Dumbledore, sounding
relieved. “At last. And where did you get
that
motorcycle?”
”Borrowed it, Professor Dumbledore,
sit,”
said the giant, climbing carefully off the
motorcycle as he spoke. “Young Sirius
Black lent
it to me. I’ve got him, sir.”
”No problems, were there?”
”No, sir — house was almost
destroyed, but
I got him out all right before the Muggles
started swarmin’ around. He fell asleep
as we
was flyin’ over Bristol.”
Dumbledore and Professor
McGonagall bent
forward over the bundle of blankets.
Inside, just
visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep.
Under a tuft
of jet-black hair over his forehead they
could see
a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of
lightning.
”Is that where -?” whispered
Professor
McGonagall.
”Yes,” said Dumbledore. “He’ll have
that
scar forever.”
”Couldn’t you do something about it,
Dumbledore?”
”Even if I could, I wouldn’t. Scars
can come
in handy. I have one myself above my
left knee
that is a perfect map of the London
Underground. Well — give him here,
Hagrid —
we’d better get this over with.”
Dumbledore took Harry in his arms
and
turned toward the Dursleys’ house.
”Could I — could I say good-bye to
him,
sir?” asked Hagrid. He bent his great,
shaggy
head over Harry and gave him what
must have
been a very scratchy, whiskery kiss.
Then,
suddenly, Hagrid let out a howl like a
wounded
dog.
”Shhh!” hissed Professor McGonagall,
“you’ll
wake the Muggles!”
”S-s-sorry,” sobbed Hagrid, taking
out a
large, spotted handkerchief and burying
his face
in it. “But I c-c-can’t stand it — Lily an’
James
dead — an’ poor little Harry off ter live
with
Muggles -”
”Yes, yes, it’s all very sad, but get a
grip on
yourself, Hagrid, or we’ll be found,”
Professor
McGonagall whispered, patting Hagrid
gingerly on
the arm as Dumbledore stepped over the
low
garden wall and walked to the front
door. He laid
Harry gently on the doorstep, took a
letter out
of his cloak, tucked it inside Harry’s
blankets,
and then came back to the other two. For
a full
minute the three of them stood and
looked at
the little bundle; Hagrid’s shoulders
shook,
Professor McGonagall blinked furiously,
and the
twinkling light that usually shone from
Dumbledore’s eyes seemed to have gone
out.
”Well,” said Dumbledore finally,
“that’s that.
We’ve no business staying here. We may
as well
go and join the celebrations.”
”Yeah,” said Hagrid in a very
muffled voice,
“I’ll be takin’ Sirius his bike back.
G’night,
Professor McGonagall — Professor
Dumbledore,
sir.”
Wiping his streaming eyes on his
jacket
sleeve, Hagrid swung himself onto the
motorcycle and kicked the engine into
life; with
a roar it rose into the air and off into the
night.
”I shall see you soon, I expect,
Professor
McGonagall,” said Dumbledore, nodding
to her.
Professor McGonagall blew her nose in
reply.
Dumbledore turned and walked back
down
the street. On the corner he stopped and
took
out the silver Put-Outer. He clicked it
once, and
twelve balls of light sped back to their
street
lamps so that Privet Drive glowed
suddenly
orange and he could make out a tabby
cat
slinking around the corner at the other
end of
the street. He could just see the bundle
of
blankets on the step of number four.
”Good luck, Harry,” he murmured.
He turned
on his heel and with a swish of his
cloak, he was
gone.
A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of
Privet
Drive, which lay silent and tidy under
the inky
sky, the very last place you would expect
astonishing things to happen. Harry
Potter rolled
over inside his blankets without waking
up. One
small hand closed on the letter beside
him and
he slept on, not knowing he was special,
not
knowing he was famous, not knowing he
would
be woken in a few hours’ time by Mrs.
Dursley’s
scream as she opened the front door to
put out
the milk bottles, nor that he would spend
the
next few weeks being prodded and
pinched by his
cousin Dudley… He couldn’t know that at
this
very moment, people meeting in secret
all over
the country were holding up their
glasses and
saying in hushed voices: “To Harry Potter
— the
boy who lived!” End of Chapter one |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 9:52am On Jan 20, 2016 |
I believe chapter one should serve you all through the day, but if you wish to continue reading you're free to visit http://Hillscraper. to continue reading |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by boladex1: 5:38pm On Jan 20, 2016 |
following bumper to bumper |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 11:32am On Jan 21, 2016 |
THE VANISHING GLASS
Nearly ten years had passed since the
Dursleys had woken up to find their
nephew on
the front step, but Privet Drive had
hardly
changed at all. The sun rose on the same
tidy
front gardens and lit up the brass
number four
on the Dursleys’ front door; it crept into
their
living room, which was almost exactly
the same
as it had been on the night when Mr.
Dursley
had seen that fateful news report about
the
owls. Only the photographs on the
mantelpiece
really showed how much time had
passed. Ten
years ago, there had been lots of pictures
of
what looked like a large pink beach ball
wearing
different-colored bonnets — but Dudley
Dursley
was no longer a baby, and now the
photographs
showed a large blond boy riding his first
bicycle,
on a carousel at the fair, playing a
computer
game with his father, being hugged and
kissed
by his mother. The room held no sign at
all that
another boy lived in the house, too.
Yet Harry Potter was still there,
asleep at
the moment, but not for long. His Aunt
Petunia
was awake and it was her shrill voice
that made
the first noise of the day.
”Up! Get up! Now!”
Harry woke with a start. His aunt
rapped on
the door again.
”Up!” she screeched. Harry heard her
walking toward the kitchen and then the
sound
of the frying pan being put on the stove.
He
rolled onto his back and tried to
remember the
dream he had been having. It had been a
good
one. There had been a flying motorcycle
in it. He
had a funny feeling he’d had the same
dream
before.
His aunt was back outside the door.
”Are you up yet?” she demanded.
”Nearly,” said Harry.
”Well, get a move on, I want you to
look
after the bacon. And don’t you dare let it
burn, I
want everything perfect on Duddy’s
birthday.”
Harry groaned.
”What did you say?” his aunt
snapped
through the door.
”Nothing, nothing…”
Dudley’s birthday — how could he
have
forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed
and
started looking for socks. He found a pair
under
his bed and, after pulling a spider off
one of
them, put them on. Harry was used to
spiders,
because the cupboard under the stairs
was full
of them, and that was where he slept.
When he was dressed he went down
the hall
into the kitchen. The table was almost
hidden
beneath all Dudley’s birthday presents. It
looked
as though Dudley had gotten the new
computer
he wanted, not to mention the second
television
and the racing bike. Exactly why Dudley
wanted a
racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as
Dudley
was very fat and hated exercise — unless
of
course it involved punching somebody.
Dudley’s
favorite punching bag was Harry, but he
couldn’t
often catch him. Harry didn’t look it, but
he was
very fast.
Perhaps it had something to do with
living in
a dark cupboard, but Harry had always
been
small and skinny for his age. He looked
even
smaller and skinnier than he really was
because
all he had to wear were old clothes of
Dudley’s,
and Dudley was about four times bigger
than he
was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly
knees, black
hair, and bright green eyes. He wore
round
glasses held together with a lot of Scotch
tape
because of all the times Dudley had
punched him
on the nose. The only thing Harry liked
about his
own appearance was a very thin scar on
his
forehead that was shaped like a bolt of
lightning.
He had had it as long as he could
remember, and
the first question he could ever
remember
asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had
gotten
it.
”In the car crash when your parents
died,”
she had said. “And don’t ask questions.”
Don’t ask questions — that was the
first rule
for a quiet life with the Dursleys.
Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as
Harry
was turning over the bacon.
”Comb your hair!” he barked, by way
of a
morning greeting.
About once a week, Uncle Vernon
looked
over the top of his newspaper and
shouted that
Harry needed a haircut . Harry must
have had
more haircuts than the rest of the boys
in his
class put
together, but it made no difference,
his hair
simply grew that way — all over the
place.
Harry was frying eggs by the time
Dudley
arrived in the kitchen with his mother.
Dudley
looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a
large
pink face, not much neck, small, watery
blue
eyes, and thick blond hair that lay
smoothly on
his thick, fat head. Aunt Petunia often
said that
Dudley looked like a baby angel — Harry
often
said that Dudley looked like a pig in a
wig. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 11:33am On Jan 21, 2016 |
Harry
often
said that Dudley looked like a pig in a
wig.
Harry put the plates of egg and bacon
on the
table, which was difficult as there wasn’t
much
room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting
his
presents. His face fell.
”Thirty-six,” he said, looking up at
his
mother and father. “That’s two less than
last
year.”
”Darling, you haven’t counted Auntie
Marge’s present, see, it’s here under this
big
one from Mommy and Daddy.”
”All right, thirty-seven then,” said
Dudley,
going red in the face. Harry, who could
see a
huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began
wolfing
down his bacon as fast as possible in
case
Dudley turned the table over.
Aunt Petunia obviously scented
danger, too,
because she said quickly, “And we’ll buy
you
another two presents while we’re out
today.
How’s that, popkin? Two more presents.
Is that
all right”
Dudley thought for a moment. It
looked like
hard work. Finally he said slowly, “So I’ll
have
thirty … thirty…”
”Thirty-nine, sweetums,” said Aunt
Petunia.
”Oh.” Dudley sat down heavily and
grabbed
the nearest parcel. “All right then.”
Uncle Vernon chuckled. “Little tyke
wants
his money’s worth, just like his father.
‘Atta
boy, Dudley!” He ruffled Dudley’s hair.
At that moment the telephone rang and
Aunt Petunia went to answer it while
Harry and
Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap
the racing
bike, a video camera, a remote control
airplane,
sixteen new computer games, and a VCR.
He was
ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch
when
Aunt Petunia came back from the
telephone
looking both angry and worried.
”Bad news, Vernon,” she said. “Mrs.
Figg’s
broken her leg. She can’t take him.” She
jerked
her head in Harry’s direction.
Dudley’s mouth fell open in horror,
but
Harry’s heart gave a leap. Every year on
Dudley’s birthday, his parents took him
and a
friend out for the day, to adventure
parks,
hamburger restaurants, or the movies.
Every
year, Harry was left behind with Mrs.
Figg, a mad
old lady who lived two streets away.
Harry hated
it there. The whole house smelled of
cabbage
and Mrs. Figg made him look at
photographs of
all the cats she’d ever owned.
”Now what?” said Aunt Petunia,
looking
furiously at Harry as though he’d
planned this.
Harry knew he ought to feel sorry that
Mrs. Figg
had broken her leg, but it wasn’t easy
when he
reminded himself it would be a whole
year
before he had to look at Tibbles, Snowy,
Mr.
Paws, and Tufty again.
”We could phone Marge,” Uncle
Vernon
suggested.
”Don’t be silly, Vernon, she hates the
boy.”
The Dursleys often spoke about Harry
like
this, as though he wasn’t there — or
rather, as
though he was something very nasty that
couldn’t understand them, like a slug.
”What about what’s-her-name, your
friend —
Yvonne?”
”On vacation in Majorca,” snapped
Aunt
Petunia.
”You could just leave me here,”
Harry put in
hopefully (he’d be able to watch what he
wanted
on television for a change and maybe
even have
a go on Dudley’s computer).
Aunt Petunia looked as though she’d
just
swallowed a lemon.
”And come back and find the house
in
ruins?” she snarled.
”I won’t blow up the house,” said
Harry, but
they weren’t listening.
”I suppose we could take him to the
zoo,”
said Aunt Petunia slowly, “… and leave
him in the
car….”
”That car’s new, he’s not sitting in it
alone….”
Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact,
he
wasn’t really crying — it had been years
since
he’d really cried — but he knew that if
he
screwed up his face and wailed, his
mother
would give him anything he wanted.
”Dinky Duddydums, don’t cry,
Mummy won’t
let him spoil your special day!” she cried,
flinging
her arms around him.
”I… don’t… want… him… t-t-to
come!”
Dudley yelled between huge, pretend
sobs. “He
always sp- spoils everything!” He shot
Harry a
nasty grin through the gap in his
mother’s arms.
Just then, the doorbell rang — “Oh,
good
Lord, they’re here!” said Aunt Petunia
frantically
— and a moment later, Dudley’s best
friend,
Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother.
Piers
was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat.
He was
usually the one who held people’s arms
behind
their backs while Dudley hit them.
Dudley
stopped pretending to cry at once.
Half an hour later, Harry, who
couldn’t
believe his luck, was sitting in the back
of the
Dursleys’ car with Piers and Dudley, on
the way
to the zoo for the first time in his life.
His aunt
and uncle hadn’t been able to think of
anything
else to do with him, but before they’d
left,
Uncle Vernon had taken Harry aside.
”I’m warning you,” he had said,
putting his
large purple face right up close to
Harry’s, “I’m
warning you now, boy — any funny
business,
anything at all — and you’ll be in that
cupboard
from now until Christmas.”
”I’m not going to do anything,” said
Harry,
“honestly..
But Uncle Vernon didn’t believe him.
No one
ever did. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 11:34am On Jan 21, 2016 |
”I’m not going to do anything,” said
Harry,
“honestly..
But Uncle Vernon didn’t believe him.
No one
ever did.
The problem was, strange things
often
happened around Harry and it was just
no good
telling the Dursleys he didn’t make them
happen.
Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry
coming
back from the barbers looking as though
he
hadn’t been at all, had taken a pair of
kitchen
scissors and cut his hair so short he was
almost
bald except for his bangs, which she left
“to
hide that horrible scar.” Dudley had
laughed
himself silly at Harry, who spent a
sleepless
night imagining school the next day,
where he
was already laughed at for his baggy
clothes and
taped glasses. Next morning, however,
he had
gotten up to find his hair exactly as it
had been
before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off
He had
been given a week in his cupboard for
this, even
though he had tried to explain that he
couldn’t
explain how it had grown back so
quickly.
Another time, Aunt Petunia had been
trying
to force him into a revolting old sweater
of
Dudley’s (brown with orange puff balls)
— The
harder she tried to pull it over his head,
the
smaller it seemed to become, until finally
it
might have fitted a hand puppet, but
certainly
wouldn’t fit Harry. Aunt Petunia had
decided it
must have shrunk in the wash and, to
his great
relief, Harry wasn’t punished.
On the other hand, he’d gotten into
terrible
trouble for being found on the roof of the
school kitchens. Dudley’s gang had been
chasing
him as usual when, as much to Harry’s
surprise
as anyone else’s, there he was sitting on
the
chimney. The Dursleys had received a
very angry
letter from Harry’s headmistress telling
them
Harry had been climbing school
buildings. But all
he’d tried to do (as he shouted at Uncle
Vernon
through the locked door of his cupboard)
was
jump behind the big trash cans outside
the
kitchen doors. Harry supposed that the
wind
must have caught him in mid- jump.
But today, nothing was going to go
wrong.
It was even worth being with Dudley and
Piers to
be spending the day somewhere that
wasn’t
school, his cupboard, or Mrs. Figg’s
cabbage-
smelling living room.
While he drove, Uncle Vernon
complained to
Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about
things:
people at work, Harry, the council,
Harry, the
bank, and Harry were just a few of his
favorite
subjects. This morning, it was
motorcycles.
”… roaring along like maniacs, the
young
hoodlums,” he said, as a motorcycle
overtook
them.
I had a dream about a motorcycle,”
said
Harry, remembering suddenly. “It was
flying.”
Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the
car in
front. He turned right around in his seat
and
yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic
beet with
a mustache: “MOTORCYCLES DON’T FLY!”
Dudley and Piers sniggered.
I know they don’t,” said Harry. “It
was only
a dream.”
But he wished he hadn’t said
anything. If
there was one thing the Dursleys hated
even
more than his asking questions, it was
his
talking about anything acting in a way it
shouldn’t, no matter if it was in a dream
or even
a cartoon — they seemed to think he
might get
dangerous ideas.
It was a very sunny Saturday and the
zoo
was crowded with families. The Dursleys
bought
Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice
creams at
the entrance and then, because the
smiling lady
in the van had asked Harry what he
wanted
before they could hurry him away, they
bought
him a cheap lemon ice pop. It wasn’t
bad, either,
Harry thought, licking it as they watched
a gorilla
scratching its head who looked
remarkably like
Dudley, except that it wasn’t blond.
Harry had the best morning he’d had
in a
long time. He was careful to walk a little
way
apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley
and
Piers, who were starting to get bored
with the
animals by lunchtime, wouldn’t fall back
on their
favorite hobby of hitting him. They ate
in the
zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a
tantrum
because his knickerbocker glory didn’t
have
enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon
bought
him another one and Harry was allowed
to finish
the first.
Harry felt, afterward, that he should
have
known it was all too good to last.
After lunch they went to the reptile
house. It
was cool and dark in there, with lit
windows all
along the walls. Behind the glass, all
sorts of
lizards and snakes were crawling and
slithering
over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and
Piers
wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras
and thick,
man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly
found the
largest snake in the place. It could have
wrapped
its body twice around Uncle Vernon’s car
and
crushed it into a trash can — but at the
moment
it didn’t look in the mood. In fact, it was
fast
asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed
against
the glass, staring at the glistening brown
coils.
”Make it move,” he whined at his
father.
Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but
the snake
didn’t budge.
”Do it again,” Dudley ordered. Uncle
Vernon
rapped the glass smartly with his
knuckles, but
the snake just snoozed on.
”This is boring,” Dudley moaned. He
shuffled
away.
Harry moved in front of the tank and
looked
intently at the snake. He wouldn’t have
been
surprised if it had died of boredom itself
— no
company except stupid people drumming
their
fingers on the glass trying to disturb it
all day
long. It was worse than having a
cupboard as a
bedroom, where the only visitor was
Aunt
Petunia hammering on the door to wake
you up;
at least he got to visit the rest of the
house.
The snake suddenly opened its beady
eyes.
Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head
until its
eyes were on a level with Harry’s.
It winked.
Harry stared. Then he looked quickly
around
to see if anyone was watching. They
weren’t. He
looked back at the snake and winked,
too.
The snake jerked its head toward
Uncle
Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes
to the
ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said
quite
plainly:
”I get that all the time.
”I know,” Harry murmured through
the glass,
though he wasn’t sure the snake could
hear him.
“It must be really annoying.”
The snake nodded vigorously.
”Where do you come from, anyway?”
Harry
asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little
sign next
to the glass. Harry peered at it.
Boa Constrictor, Brazil.
”Was it nice there?”
The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at
the
sign again and Harry read on: This
specimen was
bred in the zoo. “Oh, I see — so you’ve
never
been to Brazil?”
As the snake shook its head, a
deafening
shout behind Harry made both of them
jump.
”DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND
LOOK
AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE
WHAT IT’S
DOING!”
Dudley came waddling toward them
as fast
as he could.
”Out of the way, you,” he said,
punching
Harry in the ribs. Caught by surprise,
Harry fell
hard on the concrete floor. What came
next
happened so fast no one saw how it
happened —
one second, Piers and Dudley were
leaning right
up close to the glass, the next, they had
leapt
back with howls of horror.
Harry sat up and gasped; the glass
front of
the boa constrictor’s tank had vanished.
The
great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly,
slithering
out onto the floor. People throughout the
reptile house screamed and started
running for
the exits.
As the snake slid swiftly past him,
Harry
could have sworn a low, hissing voice
said,
“Brazil, here I come…. Thanksss, amigo.”
The keeper of the reptile house was
in
shock.
”But the glass,” he kept saying,
“where did
the glass go?”
The zoo director himself made Aunt
Petunia
a cup of strong, sweet tea while he
apologized
over and over again. Piers and Dudley
could only
gibber. As far as Harry had seen, the
snake
hadn’t done anything except snap
playfully at
their heels as it passed, but by the time
they
were all back in Uncle Vernon’s car,
Dudley was
telling them how it had nearly bitten off
his leg,
while Piers was swearing it had tried to
squeeze
him to death. But worst of all, for Harry
at least,
was Piers calming down enough to say,
“Harry
was talking to it, weren’t you, Harry?”
Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was
safely
out of the house before starting on
Harry. He
was so angry he could hardly speak. He
managed
to say, “Go — cupboard — stay — no
meals,”
before he collapsed into a chair, and
Aunt
Petunia had to run and get him a large
brandy.
Harry lay in his dark cupboard much
later,
wishing he had a watch. He didn’t know
what
time it was and he couldn’t be sure the
Dursleys
were asleep yet. Until they were, he
couldn’t
risk sneaking to the kitchen for some
food. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 11:35am On Jan 21, 2016 |
Until they were, he
couldn’t
risk sneaking to the kitchen for some
food.
He’d lived with the Dursleys almost
ten
years, ten miserable years, as long as he
could
remember, ever since he’d been a baby
and his
parents had died in that car crash. He
couldn’t
remember being in the car when his
parents had
died. Sometimes, when he strained his
memory
during long hours in his cupboard, he
came up
with a strange vision: a blinding flash of
green
light and a burn- ing pain on his
forehead. This,
he supposed, was the crash, though he
couldn’t
imagine where all the green light came
from. He
couldn’t remember his parents at all. His
aunt
and uncle never spoke about them, and
of
course he was forbidden to ask
questions. There
were no photographs of them in the
house.
When he had been younger, Harry
had
dreamed and dreamed of some unknown
relation
coming to take him away, but it had
never
happened; the Dursleys were his only
family. Yet
sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped)
that
strangers in the street seemed to know
him.
Very strange strangers they were, too. A
tiny
man in a violet top hat had bowed to
him once
while out shopping with Aunt Petunia
and Dudley.
After asking Harry furiously if he knew
the man,
Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the
shop
without buying anything. A wild-looking
old
woman dressed all in green had waved
merrily at
him once on a bus. A bald man in a very
long
purple coat had actually shaken his hand
in the
street the other day and then walked
away
without a word. The weirdest thing about
all
these people was the way they seemed to
vanish
the second Harry tried to get a closer
look.
At school, Harry had no one.
Everybody
knew that Dudley’s gang hated that odd
Harry
Potter in his baggy old clothes and
broken
glasses, and nobody liked to disagree
with
Dudley’s gang. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 11:36am On Jan 21, 2016 |
I believe chapter two should serve you all through the day, but if you wish to continue reading you're free to visit http://Hillscraper. to continue reading |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:06am On Jan 22, 2016 |
THE LETTERS FROM NO ONE
The escape of the Brazilian boa
constrictor
earned Harry his longest-ever
punishment. By
the time he was allowed out of his
cupboard
again, the summer holidays had started
and
Dudley had already broken his new
video camera,
crashed his remote control airplane, and,
first
time out on his racing bike, knocked
down old
Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on
her
crutches.
Harry was glad school was over, but
there
was no escaping Dudley’s gang, who
visited the
house every single day. Piers, Dennis,
Malcolm,
and Gordon were all big and stupid, but
as
Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of
the lot,
he was the leader. The rest of them were
all
quite happy to join in Dudley’s favorite
sport:
Harry Hunting.
This was why Harry spent as much
time as
possible out of the house, wandering
around and
thinking about the end of the holidays ,
where he
could see a tiny ray of hope. When
September
came he would be going off to secondary
school
and, for the first time in his life, he
wouldn’t be
with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted
at Uncle
Vernon’s old private school , Smeltings.
Piers
Polkiss was going there too. Harry, on
the other
hand, was going to Stonewall High, the
local
public school. Dudley thought this was
very
funny.
”They stuff people’s heads down the
toilet
the first day at Stonewall,” he told Harry.
“Want
to come upstairs and practice?”
”No, thanks,” said Harry. “The poor
toilet’s
never had anything as horrible as your
head
down it — it might be sick.” Then he
ran, before
Dudley could work out what he’d said.
One day in July, Aunt Petunia took
Dudley to
London to buy his Smeltings uniform,
leaving
Harry at Mrs. Figg’s. Mrs. Figg wasn ‘t as
bad as
usual. 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 Harry
watch
television and gave him 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. Harry didn’t
trust
himself to speak. He thought two of his
ribs
might already have cracked from trying
not to
laugh.
There was a horrible smell in the
kitchen the
next morning when Harry went in for
breakfast.
It seemed to be coming from a large
metal tub
in the sink. He went to have a look. The
tub was
full of what looked like dirty rags
swimming in
gray water.
”What’s this?” he asked Aunt
Petunia. Her
lips tightened as they always did if he
dared to
ask a question.
”Your new school uniform,” she said.
Harry looked in the bowl again.
”Oh,” he said, “I didn’t realize it had
to be
so wet.”
”DotA be stupid,” snapped Aunt
Petunia.
“I’m dyeing some of Dudley’s old things
gray for
you. It’ll look just like everyone else’s
when I’ve
finished.”
Harry seriously doubted this, but
thought it
best not to argue. He sat down at the
table and
tried not to think about how he was
going to
look on his first day at Stonewall High —
like he
was wearing bits of old elephant skin,
probably.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in,
both with
wrinkled noses because of the smell
from
Harry’s new uniform. Uncle Vernon
opened his
newspaper as usual and Dudley banged
his
Smelting stick, which he carried
everywhere, on
the table.
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 Harry get it.”
”Get the mail, Harry.”
”Make Dudley get it.”
”Poke him with your Smelting stick,
Dudley.”
Harry dodged the Smelting stick 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 Harry.
Harry picked it up and stared at it,
his heart
twanging like a giant elastic band. No
one, ever,
in his whole life, had written to him.
Who would?
He had no friends, no other relatives —
he didn’t
belong to the library, so he’d never even
got
rude notes asking for books back. Yet
here it
was, a letter, addressed so plainly there
could
be no mistake:
Mr. H. 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, his hand
trembling, Harry 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, boy!” shouted Uncle
Vernon from
the kitchen. “What are you doing,
checking for
letter bombs ?” He chuckled at his own
joke. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:07am On Jan 22, 2016 |
He chuckled at his own
joke.
Harry went back to the kitchen, still
staring
at his letter. He handed Uncle Vernon
the bill and
the postcard, sat down, and slowly began
to
open the yellow envelope.
Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill,
snorted in
disgust, and flipped over the postcard.
”Marge’s ill,” he informed Aunt
Petunia. “Ate
a funny whelk. –.”
”Dad!” said Dudley suddenly. “Dad,
Harry’s
got something!”
Harry was on the point of unfolding
his
letter, which was written on the same
heavy
parchment as the envelope, when it was
jerked
sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon.
”That’s mine!” said Harry, trying to
snatch it
back.
”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.
For a moment it looked as though she
might
faint. She clutched her throat and made
a
choking noise.
”Vernon! Oh my goodness —
Vernon!”
They stared at each other, seeming to
have
forgotten that Harry 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.
want to read it,” said Harry furiously, “as
it’s
mine.”
”Get out, both of you,” croaked Uncle
Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its
envelope.
Harry didn’t move.
I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouted.
”Let me see it!” demanded Dudley.
”OUT!” roared Uncle Vernon, and he
took
both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of
their
necks and threw them into the hall,
slamming
the kitchen door behind them. Harry and
Dudley
promptly had a furious but silent fight
over who
would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won,
so
Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear,
lay flat
on his 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 he
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 –”
Harry 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 him 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 Harry in his cupboard.
”Where’s my letter?” said Harry, 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,” said Harry
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, Harry — 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?” said Harry.
”Don’t ask questions!” snapped his
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 Harry one
trip
upstairs to move everything he owned
from the
cupboard to this room. He sat down on
the bed
and stared around him. Nearly
everything in here
was broken. The month-old video camera
was
lying on top of a small, working tank
Dudley had
once driven over the next door
neighbor’s dog;
in the corner was Dudley’s first-ever
television
set, which he’d put his foot through
when his
favorite program had been canceled;
there was a
large birdcage, which had once held a
parrot that
Dudley had swapped at school for a real
air rifle,
which was up on a shelf with the end all
bent
because Dudley had sat on it. Other
shelves
were full of books. They were the only
things in
the room that looked as though they’d
never
been touched.
From downstairs came the sound of
Dudley
bawling at his mother, I don’t want him
in
there… I need that room… make him get
out….”
Harry sighed and stretched out on
the bed.
Yesterday he’d have given anything to be
up
here. Today he’d rather be back in his
cupboard
with that letter than up here without it.
Next morning at breakfast, everyone
was
rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He’d
screamed, whacked his father with his
Smelting
stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his
mother,
and thrown his tortoise through the
greenhouse
roof, and he still didn’t have his room
back.
Harry was thinking about this time
yesterday and
bitterly wishing he’d opened the letter in
the
hall. 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 Harry,
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! ‘Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest
Bedroom, 4
Privet Drive –‘”
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon
leapt
from his seat and ran down the hall,
Harry 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 Harry
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 Harry’s letter clutched in
his hand.
”Go to your cupboard — I mean, your
bedroom,” he wheezed at Harry. “Dudley
— go —
just go.”
Harry walked round and round his
new room.
Someone knew he had moved out of his
cupboard and they seemed to know he
hadn’t
received his first letter. Surely that
meant they’d
try again? And this time he’d make sure
they
didn’t fail. He had a plan.
The repaired alarm clock rang at six
o’clock
the next morning. Harry turned it off
quickly and
dressed silently. He mustn’t wake the
Dursleys.
He stole downstairs without turning on
any of
the lights.
He was going to wait for the postman
on
the corner of Privet Drive and get the
letters for
number four first. His heart hammered
as he
crept across the dark hall toward the
front door
—
Harry leapt into the air; he’d trodden
on
something big and squashy on the
doormat —
something alive!
Lights clicked on upstairs and to his
horror
Harry realized that the big, squashy
something
had been his uncle’s face. Uncle Vernon
had
been lying at the foot of the front door in
a
sleeping bag, clearly making sure that
Harry
didn’t do exactly what he’d been trying
to do. He
shouted at Harry for about half an hour
and then
told him to go and make a cup of tea.
Harry
shuffled miserably off into the kitchen
and by
the time he got back, the mail had
arrived, right
into Uncle Vernon’s lap. Harry could see
three
letters addressed in green ink.
I want –” he began, but Uncle Vernon
was
tearing the letters into pieces before his
eyes.
Uncle Vernon didnt 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. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:09am On Jan 22, 2016 |
said
Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail
with the
piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just
brought
him.
On Friday, no less than twelve letters
arrived for Harry. 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 Harry 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.
”Who on earth wants to talk to you
this
badly?” Dudley asked Harry in
amazement.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon
sat down
at the breakfast table looking tired and
rather ill,
but happy.
”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. Next moment,
thirty or
forty letters came pelting out of the
fireplace
like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but
Harry
leapt into the air trying to catch one.
”Out! OUT!”
Uncle Vernon seized Harry around
the waist
and threw him into the hall. When Aunt
Petunia
and Dudley had run 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,” said Uncle Vernon,
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 Harry shared a room
with twin
beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley
snored
but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the
windowsill, staring down at the lights of
passing
cars and wondering….
They ate stale cornflakes and cold
tinned
tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next
day.
They had just finished when the owner
of the
hotel came over to their table.
”‘Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H.
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:
Mr. H. Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth
Harry made a grab for the letter but
Uncle
Vernon knocked his hand out of the way.
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. Dud ley sniveled.
”It’s Monday,” he told his mother.
“The
Great Humberto’s on tonight. I want to
stay
somewhere with a television. ”
Monday. This reminded Harry of
something.
If it was Monday — and you could
usually count
on Dudley to know the days the week,
because
of television — then tomorrow, Tuesday,
was
Harry’s eleventh birthday. Of course, his
birthdays were never exactly fun — last
year, the
Dursleys had given him a coat hanger
and a pair
of Uncle Vernon’s old socks. Still, you
weren’t
eleven every day.
Uncle Vernon was back and he was
smiling. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:10am On Jan 22, 2016 |
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.
Harry
privately agreed, though the thought
didn’t cheer
him up at all.
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 Harry was left
to find
the softest bit of floor he could and to
curl up
under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.
The storm raged more and more
ferociously
as the night went on. Harry couldn’t
sleep. He
shivered and turned over, trying to get
comfortable, his stomach rumbling with
hunger.
Dudley’s snores were drowned by the
low rolls
of thunder that started near midnight.
The
lighted dial of Dudley’s watch, which
was
dangling over the edge of the sofa on his
fat
wrist, told Harry he’d be eleven in ten
minutes’
time. He lay and watched his birthday
tick
nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would
remember at all, wondering where the
letter
writer was now.
Five minutes to go. Harry heard
something
creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn’t
going
to fall in, although he might be warmer
if it did.
Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in
Privet
Drive would be so full of letters when
they got
back that he’d be able to steal one
somehow.
Three minutes to go. Was that the
sea,
slapping hard on the rock like that? And
(two
minutes to go) what was that funny
crunching
noise? Was the rock crumbling into the
sea?
One minute to go and he’d be
eleven. Thirty
seconds… twenty … ten… nine — maybe
he’d
wake Dudley up, just to annoy him —
three…
two… one…
BOOM.
The whole shack shivered and Harry
sat bolt
upright, staring at the door. Someone
was
outside, knocking to come in. THE END OF CHAPTER 3 |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:11am On Jan 22, 2016 |
. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:11am On Jan 22, 2016 |
I believe chapter three should serve you all through the day, but if you wish to continue reading you're free to visit http://Hillscraper. to continue reading |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by boladex1: 2:32pm On Jan 22, 2016 |
am really enjoying the story after having watched it, but u should post more than a chapter per day |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:43pm On Jan 22, 2016 |
boladex1: I think one chapter should be enough, am typing from my phone and it's really exasperating |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by boladex1: 7:30am On Jan 23, 2016 |
lordseb: Okay then, am glue to my phone waiting for update |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:53am On Jan 23, 2016 |
THE KEEPER OF THE KEYS
BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley
jerked
awake. “Where’s the cannon?” he said
stupidly.
There was a crash behind them and
Uncle
Vernon came skidding into the room. He
was
holding a rifle in his hands — now they
knew
what had been in the long, thin package
he had
brought with them.
”Who’s there?” he shouted. “I warn
you —
I’m armed!”
There was a pause. Then —
SMASH!
The door was hit with such force that
it
swung clean off its hinges and with a
deafening
crash landed flat on the floor.
A giant of a man was standing in the
doorway. His face was almost completely
hidden
by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a
wild,
tangled beard, but you could make out
his eyes,
glinting like black beetles under all the
hair.
The giant squeezed his way into the
hut,
stooping so that his head just brushed
the
ceiling. He bent down, picked up the
door, and
fitted it easily back into its frame. The
noise of
the storm outside dropped a little. He
turned to
look at them all.
”Couldn’t make us a cup o’ tea, could
yeh?
It’s not been an easy journey…”
He strode over to the sofa where
Dudley sat
frozen with fear.
”Budge up, yeh great lump,” said the
stranger.
Dudley squeaked and ran to hide
behind his
mother, who was crouching, terrified,
behind
Uncle Vernon.
”An’ here’s Harry!” said the giant.
Harry looked up into the fierce, wild,
shadowy face and saw that the beetle
eyes were
crinkled in a smile.
”Las’ time I saw you, you was only a
baby,”
said the giant. “Yeh look a lot like yet
dad, but
yeh’ve got yet mom’s eyes.”
Uncle Vernon made a funny rasping
noise.
I demand that you leave at once, sit!”
he
said. “You are breaking and entering!”
”Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great
prune,” said
the giant; he reached over the back of
the sofa,
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 — Harry,” 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. Harry
opened
it with trembling fingers. Inside was a
large,
sticky chocolate cake with Happy
Birthday Harry
written on it in green icing.
Harry looked up at the giant. He
meant to
say thank you, but the words got lost on
the
way to his mouth, and what he said
instead was,
“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
Harry’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
Harry
felt the warmth wash over him as though
he’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.
”Yet great puddin’ of a son don’ need
fattenin’ anymore, Dursley, don’ worry.”
He passed the sausages to Harry,
who was
so hungry he had never tasted anything
so
wonderful, but he still couldn’t take his
eyes off
the giant. Finally, as nobody seemed
about to
explain anything, he 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,” said Harry.
Hagrid looked shocked.
”Sorry,” Harry said quickly.
”Sony?” 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 yet
parents learned it all?”
”All what?” asked Harry.
”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 boy — this boy!
— knows
nothin’ abou’ — about ANYTHING?”
Harry thought this was going a bit
far. He
had been to school, after all, and his
marks
weren’t bad. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:53am On Jan 23, 2016 |
He had been to school, after all, and his marks weren’t bad. ”I know some things,” he said. “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.” ”What world?” Hagrid looked as if he was about to explode. ”DURSLEY!” he boomed. Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like “Mimblewimble.” Hagrid stared wildly at Harry. ”But yeh must know about yet mom and dad,” he said. “I mean, they’re famous. You’re famous.” ”What? My — my mom and dad weren’t famous, were they?” ”Yeh don’ know… yeh don’ know…” Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry 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, sit! I forbid you to tell the boy 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 him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An’ you’ve kept it from him all these years?” ”Kept what from me?” said Harry eagerly. ”STOP! I FORBID YOU!” yelled Uncle Vernon in panic. Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror. ”Ah, go boil yet heads, both of yeh,” said Hagrid. “Harry — yet a wizard.” There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard. ”– a what?” gasped Harry. ”A wizard, o’ course,” said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, “an’ 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.” Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr. H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on- the- Rock, The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read: HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards) Dear Mr. Potter, 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 Questions exploded inside Harry’s head like fireworks and he couldn’t decide which to ask first. After a few minutes he stammered, “What does it mean, they await my owl?” ”Gallopin’ Gorgons, that reminds me,” said Hagrid, clapping a hand to his forehead with enough force to knock over a cart horse , and from yet another pocket inside his overcoat he pulled an owl — a real, live, rather ruffled- looking owl — a long quill, and a roll of parchment. With his tongue between his teeth he scribbled a note that Harry could read upside down: Dear Professor Dumbledore, Given Harry his letter. Taking him to buy his things tomorrow. Weather’s horrible. Hope you’re Well. Hagrid Hagrid rolled up the note, gave it to the owl, which clamped it in its beak, went to the door, and threw the owl out into the storm. Then he came back and sat down as though this was as normal as talking on the telephone. Harry realized his mouth was open and closed it quickly. ”Where was I?” said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight. ”He’s not going,” he said. Hagrid grunted. ”I’d like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him,” he said. ”A what?” said Harry, interested. ”A Muggle,” said Hagrid, “it’s what we call nonmagic folk like thern. 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 him in we’d put a stop to that rubbish,” said Uncle Vernon, “swore we’d stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!” ”You knew?” said Harry. “You knew I’m a — a wizard?” ”Knew!” shrieked Aunt Petunia suddenly. “Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school-and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was — a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!” She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed she had been wanting to say all this for years. ”Then she met that Potter at school and they left and 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!” Harry had gone very white. As soon as he found his voice he said, “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! Harry Potter not knowin’ his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!” “But why? What happened?” Harry 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. Ah, Harry, I don’ know if I’m the right person ter tell yeh — but someone 3 s gotta — yeh can’t go off ter Hogwarts not knowin’.” He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys. ”Well, it’s best yeh know as much as I can tell yeh — mind, I can’t tell yeh everythin’, it’s a great myst’ry, parts of it….” He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, “It begins, I suppose, with — with a person called — but it’s incredible yeh don’t know his name, everyone in our world knows –” ”Who? ” ”Well — I don’ like sayin’ the name if I can help it. No one does.” ”Why not?” ”Gulpin’ gargoyles, Harry, people are still scared. Blimey, this is difficult. See, there was this wizard who went… bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse. His name was…” Hagrid gulped, but no words came out. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:57am On Jan 23, 2016 |
Hagrid gulped, but no words came
out.
”Could you write it down?” Harry
suggested.
”Nah -can’t spell it. All right —
Voldemort. ”
Hagrid shuddered. “Don’ make me say it
again.
Anyway, this — this wizard, about
twenty years
ago now, started lookin’ fer followers.
Got ’em,
too — some were afraid, some just
wanted a bit
o’ his power, ’cause he was gettin’
himself
power, all right. Dark days, Harry. Didn’t
know
who ter trust, didn’t dare get friendly
with
strange wizards or witches… terrible
things
happened. He was takin’ over. ‘Course,
some
stood up to him — an’ he killed ’em.
Horribly.
One o’ the only safe places left was
Hogwarts.
Reckon Dumbledore’s the only one You-
Know-
Who was afraid of. Didn’t dare try takin’
the
school, not jus’ then, anyway.
”Now, yer mum an’ dad were as good
a
witch an’ wizard as I ever knew. Head
boy an’
girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose
the
myst’ry is why You-Know-Who never
tried to get
’em on his side before… probably knew
they
were too close ter Dumbledore ter want
anythin’
ter do with the Dark Side.
”Maybe he thought he could
persuade ’em…
maybe he just wanted ’em outta the way.
All
anyone knows is, he turned up in the
village
where you was all living, on Halloween
ten years
ago. You was just a year old. He came ter
yer
house an’ — an’ –”
Hagrid suddenly pulled out a very
dirty,
spotted handkerchief and blew his nose
with a
sound like a foghorn.
”Sorry,” he said. “But it’s that sad —
knew
yer mum an’ dad, an’ nicer people yeh
couldn’t
find — anyway…”
”You-Know-Who killed ’em. An’ then
— an’
this is the real myst’ry of the thing — he
tried
to kill you, too. Wanted ter make a clean
job of
it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked
killin’ by
then. But he couldn’t do it. Never
wondered how
you got that mark on yer forehead? That
was no
ordinary cut. That’s what yeh get when a
Powerful, evil curse touches yeh — took
care of
yer mum an’ dad an’ yer house, even —
but it
didn’t work on you, an’ that’s why yer
famous,
Harry. No one ever lived after he decided
ter kill
’em, no one except you, an’ he’d killed
some o’
the best witches an’ wizards of the age
— the
McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts —
an’ you
was only a baby, an’ you lived.”
Something very painful was going on
in
Harry’s mind. As Hagrid’s story came to
a close,
he saw again the blinding flash of green
light,
more clearly than he had ever
remembered it
before — and he remembered something
else,
for the first time in his life: a high, cold,
cruel
laugh.
Hagrid was watching him sadly.
”Took yeh from the ruined house
myself, on
Dumbledore’s orders. Brought yeh ter
this
lot…”
”Load of old tosh,” said Uncle
Vernon. Harry
jumped; he 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, boy,” 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 weirdos, 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.
Harry, meanwhile, still had questions
to ask,
hundreds of them.
”But what happened to Vol–, sorry —
I
mean, You-Know-Who?”
”Good question, Harry. 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, Harry. 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 Harry with warmth
and
respect blazing in his eyes, but Harry,
instead of
feeling pleased and proud, felt quite sure
there
had been a horrible mistake. A wizard?
Him?
How could he possibly be? He’d spent
his life
being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by
Aunt
Petunia and Uncle Vernon; if he was
really a
wizard, why hadn’t they been turned
into warty
toads every time they’d tried to lock him
in his
cupboard? If he’d once defeated the
greatest
sorcerer in the world, how come Dudley
had
always been able to kick him around like
a
football?
”Hagrid,” he said quietly, “I think
you must
have made a mistake. I don’t think I can
be a
wizard.”
To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled.
”Not a wizard, eh? Never made
things
happen when you was scared or angry?”
Harry looked into the fire. Now he
came to
think about it… every odd thing that had
ever
made his aunt and uncle furious with
him had
happened when he, Harry, had been
upset or
angry… chased by Dudley’s gang, he had
somehow found himself out of their
reach…
dreading going to school with that
ridiculous
haircut, he’d managed to make it grow
back…
and the very last time Dudley had hit
him, hadn’t
he got his revenge, without even
realizing he
was doing it? Hadn’t he set a boa
constrictor on
him?
Harry looked back at Hagrid,
smiling, and
saw that Hagrid was positively beaming
at him.
”See?” said Hagrid. “Harry Potter,
not a
wizard — you wait, you’ll be right
famous at
Hogwarts.”
But Uncle Vernon wasn’t going to
give in
without a fight.
”Haven’t I told you he’s not going?”
he
hissed. “He’s going to Stonewall High
and he’ll
be grateful for it. I’ve read those letters
and he
needs all sorts of rubbish — spell books
and
wands and –”
”If he wants ter go, a great Muggle
like you
won’t stop him,” growled Hagrid. “Stop
Lily an’
James Potter’ s son goin’ ter Hogwarts!
Yer
mad. His name’s been down ever since
he was
born. He’s off ter the finest school of
witchcraft
and wizardry in the world. Seven years
there and
he won’t know himself. He’ll be with
youngsters
of his own sort, fer a change, an’ he’ll be
under
the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever
had
Albus Dumbled–”
”I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME
CRACKPOT
OLD FOOL To TEACH HIM MAGIC
TRICKS!” yelled
Uncle Vernon.
But he had finally gone too far.
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, Harry 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.
Hagrid looked down at his umbrella
and
stroked his beard.
”Shouldn’ta lost me temper,” he said
ruefully, “but it didn’t work anyway.
Meant ter
turn him into a pig, but I suppose he was
so
much like a pig anyway there wasn’t
much left
ter do.”
He cast a sideways look at Harry
under his
bushy eyebrows.
”Be grateful if yeh didn’t mention
that ter
anyone at Hogwarts,” he said. “I’m — er
— not
supposed ter do magic, strictly speakin’. I
was
allowed ter do a bit ter follow yeh an’ get
yer
letters to yeh an’ stuff — one o’ the
reasons I
was so keen ter take on the job
”Why aren’t you supposed to do
magic?”
asked Harry.
”Oh, well — I was at Hogwarts meself
but I
— er — got expelled, ter tell yeh the
truth. In me
third year. They snapped me wand in
half an’
everything. But Dumbledore let me stay
on as
gamekeeper. Great man, Dumbledore.”
“Why
were you expelled?”
”It’s gettin’ late and we’ve got lots ter
do
tomorrow,” said Hagrid loudly. “Gotta get
up ter
town, get all yer books an’ that.”
He took off his thick black coat and
threw it
to Harry.
”You can kip under that,” he said.
“Don’
mind if it wriggles a bit, I think I still got
a
couple o’ dormice in one o’ the pockets.” |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 10:59am On Jan 23, 2016 |
I believe chapter four should serve you all through the day, but if you wish to continue reading you're free to visit http://Hillscraper. to continue reading |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 12:36pm On Jan 24, 2016 |
DIAGON ALLEY
Harry woke early the next morning.
Although
he could tell it was daylight, he kept his
eyes
shut tight.
”It was a dream, he told himself
firmly. “I
dreamed a giant called Hagrid came to
tell me I
was going to a school for wizards. When
I open
my eyes I’ll be at home in my
cupboard.”
There was suddenly a loud tapping
noise.
And there’s Aunt Petunia knocking
on the
door, Harry thought, his heart sinking.
But he
still didn’t open his eyes. It had been
such a
good dream.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
”All right,” Harry mumbled, “I’m
getting up.”
He sat up and Hagrid’s heavy coat
fell off
him. The hut was full of sunlight, the
storm was
over, Hagrid himself was asleep on the
collapsed
sofa, and there was an owl rapping its
claw on
the window, a newspaper held in its
beak.
Harry scrambled to his feet, so happy
he
felt as though a large balloon was
swelling inside
him. He went straight to the window and
jerked
it open. The owl swooped in and dropped
the
newspaper on top of Hagrid, who didn’t
wake up.
The owl then fluttered onto the floor and
began
to attack Hagrid’s coat.
”Don’t do that.”
Harry tried to wave the owl out of
the way,
but it snapped its beak fiercely at him
and
carried on savaging the coat.
”Hagrid!” said Harry loudly. “There’s
an owl
”Pay him,” Hagrid grunted into the
sofa.
”What?”
”He wants payin’ fer deliverin’ the
paper.
Look in the pockets.” Hagrid’s coat
seemed to
be made of nothing but pockets —
bunches of
keys, slug pellets, balls of string,
peppermint
humbugs, teabags… finally, Harry pulled
out a
handful of strange-looking coins.
”Give him five Knuts,” said Hagrid
sleepily.
”Knuts?”
”The little bronze ones.”
Harry counted out five little bronze
coins,
and the owl held out his leg so Harry
could put
the money into a small leather pouch
tied to it.
Then he flew off through the open
window.
Hagrid yawned loudly, sat up, and
stretched.
”Best be Off, Harry, lots ter do today,
gotta
get up ter London an’ buy all yer stuff fer
school.”
Harry was turning over the wizard
coins and
looking at them. He had just thought of
something that made him feel as though
the
happy balloon inside him had got a
puncture.
”Um — Hagrid?”
”Mm?” said Hagrid, who was pulling
on his
huge boots.
”I haven’t got any money — and you
heard
Uncle Vernon last night … he won’t pay
for me
to go and learn magic.”
”Don’t worry about that,” said
Hagrid,
standing up and scratching his head.
“D’yeh
think yer parents didn’t leave yeh
anything?”
”But if their house was destroyed –”
”They didn’ keep their gold in the
house,
boy! Nah, first stop fer us is Gringotts.
Wizards’
bank. Have a sausage , they’re not bad
cold — an’
I wouldn’ say no teh a bit o’ yer birthday
cake,
neither.”
”Wizards have banks?”
”Just the one. Gringotts. Run by
goblins.”
Harry dropped the bit of sausage he
was
holding.
”Goblins?”
”Yeah — so yeh’d be mad ter try an’
rob it,
I’ll tell yeh that. Never mess with
goblins, Harry.
Gringotts is the safest place in the world
fer
anything yeh want ter keep safe — ‘cept
maybe
Hogwarts. As a matter o’ fact, I gotta visit
Gringotts anyway. Fer Dumbledore.
Hogwarts
business.” Hagrid drew himself up
proudly. “He
usually gets me ter do important stuff fer
him.
Fetchin’ you gettin’ things from Gringotts
—
knows he can trust me, see.
”Got everythin’? Come on, then.”
Harry followed Hagrid out onto the
rock.
The sky was quite clear now and the sea
gleamed in the sunlight. The boat Uncle
Vernon
had hired was still there, with a lot of
water in
the bottom after the storm.
”How did you get here?” Harry
asked,
looking around for another boat. “Flew,”
said
Hagrid.
”Flew?”
”Yeah — but we’ll go back in this.
Not
s’pposed ter use magic now I’ve got yeh.”
They settled down in the boat, Harry
still
staring at Hagrid, trying to imagine him
flying.
”Seems a shame ter row, though,”
said
Hagrid, giving Harry another of his
sideways
looks. “If I was ter — er — speed things
up a bit,
would yeh mind not mentionin’ it at
Hogwarts?”
”Of course not,” said Harry, eager to
see
more magic. Hagrid pulled out the pink
umbrella
again, tapped it twice on the side of the
boat,
and they sped off toward land .
”Why would you be mad to try and
rob
Gringotts?” Harry asked.
”Spells — enchantments,” said
Hagrid,
unfolding his newspaper as he spoke.
“They say
there’s dragons guardin’ the highsecurity
vaults.
And then yeh gotta find yer way —
Gringotts is
hundreds of miles under London, see.
Deep
under the Underground. Yeh’d die of
hunger
tryin’ ter get out, even if yeh did manage
ter get
yer hands on summat.”
Harry sat and thought about this
while
Hagrid read his newspaper, the Daily
Prophet.
Harry had learned from Uncle Vernon
that people
liked to be left alone while they did this,
but it
was very difficult, he’d never had so
many
questions in his life.
”Ministry o’ Magic messin’ things up
as
usual,” Hagrid muttered, turning the
page.
”There’s a Ministry of Magic?” Harry
asked,
before he could stop himself.
”‘Course,” said Hagrid. “They wanted
Dumbledore fer Minister, 0 ‘ course, but
he’d
never leave Hogwarts, so old Cornelius
Fudge
got the job. Bungler if ever there was
one. So
he pelts Dumbledore with owls every
morning,
askin’ fer advice.”
”But what does a Ministry of Magic
do?”
”Well, their main job is to keep it
from the
Muggles that there’s still witches an’
wizards up
an’ down the country.”
”Why?”
”Why? Blimey, Harry, everyone’d be
wantin’
magic solutions to their problems. Nah,
we’re
best left alone.”
At this moment the boat bumped
gently into
the harbor wall. Hagrid folded up his
newspaper,
and they clambered up the stone steps
onto the
street.
Passersby stared a lot at Hagrid as
they
walked through the little town to the
station. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 12:39pm On Jan 24, 2016 |
Passersby stared a lot at Hagrid as
they
walked through the little town to the
station.
Harry couldn’t blame them. Not only was
Hagrid
twice as tall as anyone else, he kept
pointing at
perfectly ordinary things like parking
meters and
saying loudly, “See that, Harry? Things
these
Muggles dream up, eh?”
”Hagrid,” said Harry, panting a bit as
he ran
to keep up, “did you say there are
dragons at
Gringotts?”
”Well, so they say,” said Hagrid.
“Crikey, I’d
like a dragon .”
”You’d like one?”
”Wanted one ever since I was a kid
— here
we go.”
They had reached the station. There
was a
train to London in five minutes’ time.
Hagrid,
who didn’t understand “Muggle money,”
as he
called it, gave the bills to Harry so he
could buy
their tickets .
People stared more than ever on the
train.
Hagrid took up two seats and sat knitting
what
looked like a canary-yellow circus tent.
”Still got yer letter, Harry?” he asked
as he
counted stitches. Harry took the
parchment
envelope out of his pocket.
”Good,” said Hagrid. “There’s a list
there of
everything yeh need.”
Harry unfolded a second piece of
paper he
hadn’t noticed the night before, and
read:
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT
and
WIZARDRY
UNIFORM
First-year students will require:
1. Three sets of plain work robes
(black)
2. One plain pointed hat (black) for
day wear
3. One pair of protective gloves
(dragon
hide or similar)
4. One winter cloak (black, silver
fastenings)
Please note that all pupils’ clothes
should
carry name tags
COURSE BOOKS
All students should have a copy of
each of
the following:
The Standard Book of Spells (Grade
1) by
Miranda Goshawk
A History of Magic by Bathilda
Bagshot
Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling
A Beginners ‘ Guide to
Transfiguration by
Emetic Switch
One Thousand Magical Herbs and
Fungi by
Phyllida Spore
Magical Drafts and Potions by
Arsenius
Jigger
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find
Them by
Newt Scamander
The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-
Protection
by Quentin Trimble
OTHER EQUIPMENT
wand cauldron (pewter, standard
size 2) set
glass or crystal phials
telescope set
brass scales
Students may also bring an owl OR a
cat OR
a toad
PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT
FIRST YEARS
ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN
BROOMSTICKS
”Can we buy all this in London?”
Harry
wondered aloud.
”If yeh know where to go,” said
Hagrid.
Harry had never been to London
before.
Although Hagrid seemed to know where
he was
going, he was obviously not used to
getting
there in an ordinary way. He got stuck in
the
ticket barrier on the Underground, and
complained loudly that the seats were too
small
and the trains too slow.
”I don’t know how the Muggles
manage
without magic,” he said as they climbed
a
broken-down escalator that led up to a
bustling
road lined with shops.
Hagrid was so huge that he parted
the
crowd easily; all Harry had to do was
keep close
behind him. They passed book shops and
music
stores, hamburger restaurants and
cinemas, but
nowhere that looked as if it could sell
you a
magic wand. This was just an ordinary
street full
of ordinary people. Could there really be
piles of
wizard gold buried miles beneath them?
Were
there really shops that sold spell books
and
broomsticks? Might this not all be some
huge
joke that the Dursleys had cooked up? If
Harry
hadn’t known that the Dursleys had no
sense of
humor, he might have thought so; yet
somehow,
even though everything Hagrid had told
him so
far was unbelievable, Harry couldn’t
help trusting
him.
”This is it,” said Hagrid, coming to a
halt,
“the Leaky Cauldron. It’s a famous
place.”
It was a tiny, grubby-looking pub. If
Hagrid
hadn’t pointed it out, Harry wouldn’t
have
noticed it was there. The people
hurrying by
didn’t glance at it. Their eyes slid from
the big
book shop on one side to the record shop
on
the other as if they couldn’t see the
Leaky
Cauldron at all. In fact, Harry had the
most
peculiar feeling that only he and Hagrid
could
see it. Before he could mention this,
Hagrid had
steered him inside.
For a famous place, it was very dark
and
shabby. A few old women were sitting in
a
corner, drinking tiny glasses of sherry.
One of
them was smoking a long pipe. A little
man in a
top hat was talking to the old bartender,
who
was quite bald and looked like a
toothless
walnut. The low buzz of chatter stopped
when
they walked in. Everyone seemed to
know
Hagrid; they waved and smiled at him,
and the
bartender reached for a glass, saying,
“The
usual, Hagrid?”
”Can’t, Tom, I’m on Hogwarts
business,”
said Hagrid, clapping his great hand on
Harry’s
shoulder and making Harry’s knees
buckle.
”Good Lord,” said the bartender,
peering at
Harry, “is this — can this be –?”
The Leaky Cauldron had suddenly
gone
completely still and silent.
”Bless my soul,” whispered the old
bartender, “Harry Potter… what an
honor.”
He hurried out from behind the bar,
rushed
toward Harry and seized his hand, tears
in his
eyes.
”Welcome back, Mr. Potter, welcome
back.”
Harry didn’t know what to say.
Everyone was
looking at him. The old woman with the
pipe was
puffing on it without realizing it had
gone out.
Hagrid was beaming.
Then there was a great scraping of
chairs
and the next moment, Harry found
himself
shaking hands with everyone in the
Leaky
Cauldron.
”Doris Crockford, Mr. Potter, can’t
believe
I’m meeting you at last.”
”So proud, Mr. Potter, I’m just so
proud.”
”Always wanted to shake your hand
— I’m all
of a flutter.”
”Delighted, Mr. Potter, just can’t tell
you,
Diggle’s the name, Dedalus Diggle.”
”I’ve seen you before!” said Harry, as
Dedalus Diggle’s top hat fell off in his
excitement. “You bowed to me once in a
shop.”
”He remembers!” cried Dedalus
Diggle,
looking around at everyone. “Did you
hear that?
He remembers me!” Harry shook hands
again
and again — Doris Crockford kept
coming back
for more.
A pale young man made his way
forward,
very nervously. One of his eyes was
twitching.
”Professor Quirrell!” said Hagrid.
“Harry,
Professor Quirrell will be one of your
teachers
at Hogwarts.”
”P-P-Potter,” stammered Professor
Quirrell,
grasping Harry’s hand, “c-can’t t-tell you
how p-
pleased I am to meet you.”
”What sort of magic do you teach,
Professor
Quirrell?”
”D-Defense Against the D-D-Dark
Arts,”
muttered Professor Quirrell, as though
he’d
rather not think about it. “N-not that you
n-
need it, eh, P-P-Potter?” He laughed
nervously.
“You’ll be g-getting all your equipment, I
suppose? I’ve g-got to p-pick up a new b-
book
on vampires, m-myself.” He looked
terrified at
the very thought.
But the others wouldn’t let Professor
Quirrell keep Harry to himself. It took
almost
ten minutes to get away from them all.
At last,
Hagrid managed to make himself heard
over the
babble.
”Must get on — lots ter buy. Come
on,
Harry.”
Doris Crockford shook Harry’s hand
one last
time, and Hagrid led them through the
bar and
out into a small, walled courtyard, where
there
was nothing but a trash can and a few
weeds.
Hagrid grinned at Harry.
”Told yeh, didn’t I? Told yeh you was
famous. Even Professor Quirrell was
tremblin’
ter meet yeh — mind you, he’s usually
tremblin’.”
”Is he always that nervous?”
”Oh, yeah. Poor bloke. Brilliant
mind. He was
fine while he was
studyin’ outta books but then he took
a
year off ter get some firsthand
experience….
They say he met vampires in the Black
Forest,
and there was a nasty bit o’ trouble with
a hag —
never been the same since. Scared of the
students, scared of his own subject now,
where’s me umbrella?”
Vampires? Hags? Harry’s head was
swimming. Hagrid, meanwhile, was
counting
bricks in the wall above the trash can.
”Three up… two across he muttered.
“Right, stand back, Harry.”
He tapped the wall three times with
the
point of his umbrella.
The brick he had touched quivered
— it
wriggled — in the middle, a small hole
appeared
— it grew wider and wider — a second
later they
were facing an archway large enough
even for
Hagrid, an archway onto a cobbled street
that
twisted and turned out of sight.
”Welcome,” said Hagrid, “to Diagon
Alley.”
He grinned at Harry’s amazement.
They
stepped through the archway. Harry
looked
quickly over his shoulder and saw the
archway
shrink instantly back into solid wall.
The sun shone brightly on a stack of
cauldrons outside the nearest shop.
Cauldrons —
All Sizes – Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver
— Self-
Stirring — Collapsible, said a sign
hanging over
them.
”Yeah, you’ll be needin’ one,” said
Hagrid,
“but we gotta get yer money first.”
Harry wished he had about eight
more eyes.
He turned his head in every direction as
they
walked up the street, trying to look at
everything at once: the shops, the things
outside them, the people doing their
shopping.
A plump woman outside an Apothecary
was
shaking her head as they passed, saying,
“Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an
ounce,
they’re mad….”
A low, soft hooting came from a dark
shop
with a sign saying Eeylops Owl
Emporium —
Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and
Snowy.
Several boys of about Harry’s age had
their
noses pressed against a window with
broomsticks in it. “Look,” Harry heard
one of
them say, “the new Nimbus Two
Thousand —
fastest ever –” There were shops selling
robes,
shops selling telescopes and strange
silver
instruments Harry had never seen
before,
windows stacked with barrels of bat
spleens and
eels’ eyes, tottering piles of spell books,
quills,
and rolls of parchment, potion bottles,
globes of
the moon….
”Gringotts,” said Hagrid.
They had reached a snowy white
building
that towered over the other little shops.
Standing beside its burnished bronze
doors,
wearing a uniform of scarlet and gold,
was –
”Yeah, that’s a goblin,” said Hagrid
quietly
as they walked up the white stone steps
toward
him. The goblin was about a head
shorter than
Harry. He had a swarthy, clever face, a
pointed
beard and, Harry noticed, very long
fingers and
feet. He bowed as they walked inside.
Now they
were facing a second pair of doors, silver
this
time, with words engraved upon them:
Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned,
beware
Of finding more than treasure there.
”Like I said, Yeh’d be mad ter try an’
rob it,”
said Hagrid.
A pair of goblins bowed them
through the
silver doors and they were in a vast
marble hall.
About a hundred more goblins were
sitting on
high stools behind a long counter,
scribbling in
large ledgers, weighing coins in brass
scales,
examining precious stones through
eyeglasses.
There were too many doors to count
leading off
the hall, and yet more goblins were
showing
people in and out of these. Hagrid and
Harry
made for the counter.
”Morning,” said Hagrid to a free
goblin.
“We’ve come ter take some money outta
Mr.
Harry Potter’s safe.”
”You have his key, Sir?”
”Got it here somewhere,” said
Hagrid, and
he started emptying his pockets onto the
counter, scattering a handful of moldy
dog
biscuits over the goblin’s book of
numbers. The
goblin wrinkled his nose. Harry watched
the
goblin on their right weighing a pile of
rubies as
big as glowing coals.
”Got it,” said Hagrid at last, holding
up a
tiny golden key.
The goblin looked at it closely.
”That seems to be in order.”
”An’ I’ve also got a letter here from
Professor Dumbledore,” said Hagrid
importantly,
throwing out his chest. “It’s about the
YouKnow-What in vault seven hundred
and
thirteen.”
The goblin read the letter carefully.
”Very well,” he said, handing it back
to
Hagrid, “I will have Someone take you
down to
both vaults. Griphook!”
Griphook was yet another goblin.
Once
Hagrid had crammed all the dog biscuits
back
inside his pockets, he and Harry followed
Griphook toward one of the doors leading
off
the hall.
”What’s the You-Know-What in vault
seven
hundred and thirteen?” Harry asked.
”Can’t tell yeh that,” said Hagrid
mysteriously. “Very secret. Hogwarts
business.
Dumbledore’s trusted me. More’n my
job’s
worth ter tell yeh that.”
Griphook held the door open for
them.
Harry, who had expected more marble,
was
surprised. They were in a narrow stone
passageway lit with flaming torches. It
sloped
steeply downward and there were little
railway
tracks on the floor. Griphook whistled
and a
small cart came hurtling up the tracks
toward
them. They climbed in — Hagrid with
some
difficulty — and were off.
At first they just hurtled through a
maze of
twisting passages. Harry tried to
remember, left,
right, right, left, middle fork, right, left,
but it
was impossible. The rattling cart seemed
to
know its own way, because Griphook
wasn’t
steering.
Harry’s eyes stung as the cold air
rushed
past them, but he kept them wide open.
Once,
he thought he saw a burst of fire at the
end of a
passage and twisted around to see if it
was a
dragon, but too late – – they plunged
even
deeper, passing an underground lake
where huge
stalactites and stalagmites grew from the
ceiling
and floor.
I never know,” Harry called to
Hagrid over
the noise of the cart, “what’s the
difference
between a stalagmite and a stalactite?”
”Stalagmite’s got an ‘m’ in it,” said
Hagrid.
“An’ don’ ask me questions just now, I
think I’m
gonna be sick.”
He did look very green, and when
the cart
stopped at last beside a small door in the
passage wall, Hagrid got out and had to
lean
against the wall to stop his knees from
trembling.
Griphook unlocked the door. A lot of
green
smoke came billowing out, and as it
cleared,
Harry gasped. Inside were mounds of
gold coins.
Columns of silver. Heaps of little bronze
Knuts.
”All yours,” smiled Hagrid.
All Harry’s — it was incredible. The
Dursleys
couldn’t have known about this or they’d
have
had it from him faster than blinking.
How often
had they complained how much Harry
cost them
to keep? And all the time there had been
a small
fortune belonging to him, buried deep
under
London.
Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it
into a
bag. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 12:48pm On Jan 24, 2016 |
Hagrid helped Harry pile some of it
into a
bag.
”The gold ones are Galleons,” he
explained.
“Seventeen silver Sickles to a Galleon
and
twenty-nine Knuts to a Sickle, it’s easy
enough.
Right, that should be enough fer a couple
o’
terms, we’ll keep the rest safe for yeh.”
He
turned to Griphook. “Vault seven
hundred and
thirteen now, please, and can we go
more
slowly?”
”One speed only,” said Griphook.
They were going even deeper now
and
gathering speed. The air became colder
and
colder as they hurtled round tight
corners. They
went rattling over an underground
ravine, and
Harry leaned over the side to try to see
what
was down at the dark bottom, but Hagrid
groaned and pulled him back by the
scruff of his
neck.
Vault seven hundred and thirteen
had no key hole but when the goblin stroked the door gently with one of his
long
fingers and it simply melted away.
”If anyone but a Gringotts goblin
tried that,
they’d be sucked through the door and
trapped
in there,” said Griphook.
”How often do you check to see if
anyone’s
inside?” Harry asked.
”About once every ten years,” said
Griphook
with a rather nasty grin.
Something really extraordinary had
to be
inside this top security vault, Harry was
sure,
and he leaned forward eagerly, expecting
to see
fabulous jewels at the very least — but at
first
he thought it was empty. Then he
noticed a
grubby little package wrapped up in
brown paper
lying on the floor. Hagrid picked it up
and tucked
it deep inside his coat. Harry longed to
know
what it was, but knew better than to ask.
”Come on, back in this infernal cart,
and
don’t talk to me on the way back, it’s
best if I
keep me mouth shut,” said Hagrid.
One wild cart ride later they stood
blinking
in the sunlight outside Gringotts. Harry
didn’t
know where to run first now that he had
a bag
full of money. He didn’t have to know
how many
Galleons there were to a pound to know
that he
was holding more money than he’d had
in his
whole life — more money than even
Dudley had
ever had.
”Might as well get yer uniform,” said
Hagrid,
nodding toward Madam Malkin’s Robes
for All
Occasions. “Listen, Harry, would yeh
mind if I
slipped off fer a pick-me-up in the Leaky
Cauldron? I hate them Gringotts carts.”
He did
still look a bit sick, so Harry entered
Madam
Malkin’s shop alone, feeling nervous.
Madam Malkin was a squat, smiling
witch
dressed all in mauve.
”Hogwarts, clear?” she said, when
Harry
started to speak. “Got the lot here —
another
young man being fitted up just now, in
fact. ”
In the back of the shop, a boy with a
pale,
pointed face was standing on a footstool
while a
second witch pinned up his long black
robes.
Madam Malkin stood Harry on a stool
next to
him) slipped a long robe over his head,
and
began to pin it to the right length.
”Hello,” said the boy, “Hogwarts,
too?”
”Yes,” said Harry.
”My father’s next door buying my
books and
mother’s up the street looking at wands,”
said
the boy. He had a bored, drawling voice.
“Then
I’m going to drag them off to took at
racing
brooms. I don’t see why first years can’t
have
their own. I think I’ll bully father into
getting me
one and I’ll smuggle it in somehow.”
Harry was strongly reminded of
Dudley.
”Have you got your own broom?” the
boy
went on.
”No,” said Harry.
”Play Quidditch at all?”
”No,” Harry said again, wondering
what on
earth Quidditch could be.
”I do — Father says it’s a crime if I’m
not
picked to play for my house, and I must
say, I
agree. Know what house you’ll be in
yet?”
”No,” said Harry, feeling more stupid
by the
minute.
”Well, no one really knows until they
get
there, do they, but I know I’ll be in
Slytherin, all
our family have been — imagine being in
Hufflepuff, I think I’d leave, wouldn’t
you?”
“Mmm,” said Harry, wishing he could
say
something a bit more interesting.
”I say, look at that man!” said the
boy
suddenly, nodding toward the front
window.
Hagrid was standing there, grinning at
Harry and
pointing at two large ice creams to show
he
couldn’t come in.
”That’s Hagrid,” said Harry, pleased
to know
something the boy didn’t. “He works at
Hogwarts.”
”Oh,” said the boy, “I’ve heard of
him. He’s
a sort of servant, isn’t he?”
”He’s the gamekeeper,” said Harry.
He was
liking the boy less and less every second.
”Yes, exactly. I heard he’s a sort of
savage
— lives in a hut on the school grounds
and every
now and then he gets drunk, tries to do
magic,
and ends up setting fire to his bed.”
”I think he’s brilliant,” said Harry
coldly.
”Do you?” said the boy, with a slight
sneer.
“Why is he with you? Where are your
parents?”
”They’re dead,” said Harry shortly.
He didn’t
feel much like going into the matter with
this
boy.
”Oh, sorry,” said the other,. not
sounding
sorry at all. “But they were our kind,
weren’t
they?”
”They were a witch and wizard, if
that’s
what you mean.”
”I really don’t think they should let
the
other sort in, do you? They’re just not
the
same, they’ve never been brought up to
know
our ways. Some of them have never even
heard
of Hogwarts until they get the letter,
imagine. I
think they should keep it in the old
wizarding
families. What’s your surname, anyway?”
But before Harry could answer,
Madam
Malkin said, “That’s you done, my dear,”
and
Harry, not sorry for an excuse to stop
talking to
the boy, hopped down from the footstool.
”Well, I’ll see you at Hogwarts, I
suppose,”
said the drawling boy.
Harry was rather quiet as he ate the
ice
cream Hagrid had bought him (chocolate
and
raspberry with chopped nuts).
”What’s up?” said Hagrid.
”Nothing,” Harry lied. They stopped
to buy
parchment and quills. Harry cheered up
a bit
when he found a bottle of ink that
changed color
as you wrote. When they had left the
shop, he
said, “Hagrid, what’s Quidditch?”
”Blimey, Harry, I keep forgettin’ how
little
yeh know — not knowin’ about
Quidditch!”
”Don’t make me feel worse,” said
Harry. He
told Hagrid about the pate boy in Madam
Malkin’s.
”–and he said people from Muggle
families
shouldn’t even be allowed in.”
”Yer not from a Muggle family. If
he’d known
who yeh were — he’s grown up knowin’
yer
name if his parents are wizardin’ folk.
You saw
what everyone in the Leaky Cauldron
was like
when they saw yeh. Anyway, what does
he know
about it, some o’ the best I ever saw
were the
only ones with magic in ’em in a long
line 0′
Muggles — look at yer mum! Look what
she had
fer a sister!”
”So what is Quidditch?”
”It’s our sport. Wizard sport. It’s like
— like
soccer in the Muggle world — everyone
follows
Quidditch — played up in the air on
broomsticks
and there’s four balls — sorta hard ter
explain
the rules.” “And what are Slytherin and
Hufflepuff?”
”School houses. There’s four.
Everyone says
Hufflepuff are a lot o’ duffers, but –”
”I bet I’m in Hufflepuff” said Harry
gloomily.
”Better Hufflepuff than Slytherin,”
said
Hagrid darkly. “There’s not a single
witch or
wizard who went bad who wasn’t in
Slytherin.
You-Know-Who was one.”
”Vol-, sorry – You-Know-Who was at
Hogwarts?”
”Years an’ years ago,” said Hagrid.
They bought Harry’s school books in
a shop
called Flourish and Blotts where the
shelves
were stacked to the ceiling with books as
large
as paving stones bound in leather; books
the
size of postage stamps in covers of silk;
books
full of peculiar symbols and a few books
with
nothing in them at all. Even Dudley, who
never
read anything, would have been wild to
get his
hands on some of these. Hagrid almost
had to
drag Harry away from Curses and
Countercurses
(Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle
Your
Enemies with the Latest Revenges: Hair
Loss,
Jelly-Legs, Tongue- Tying and Much,
Much More)
by Professor Vindictus Viridian.
”I was trying to find out how to
curse
Dudley.”
”I’m not sayin’ that’s not a good
idea, but
yer not ter use magic in the Muggle
world
except in very special circumstances,”
said
Hagrid. “An’ anyway, yeh couldn’ work
any of
them curses yet, yeh’ll need a lot more
study
before yeh get ter that level.”
Hagrid wouldn’t let Harry buy a solid
gold
cauldron, either (“It says pewter on yer
list”),
but they got a nice set of scales for
weighing
potion ingredients and a collapsible brass
telescope. Then they visited the
Apothecary,
which was fascinating enough to make
up for its
horrible smell, a mixture of bad eggs and
rotted
cabbages. Barrels of slimy stuff stood on
the
floor; jars of herbs, dried roots, and
bright
powders lined the walls; bundles of
feathers,
strings of fangs, and snarled claws hung
from
the ceiling. While Hagrid asked the man
behind
the counter for a supply of some basic
potion
ingredients for Harry, Harry himself
examined
silver unicorn horns at twenty-one
Galleons each
and minuscule, glittery-black beetle eyes
(five
Knuts a scoop).
Outside the Apothecary, Hagrid
checked
Harry’s list again.
”Just yer wand left – A yeah, an’ I
still
haven’t got yeh a birthday present.”
Harry felt himself go red.
”You don’t have to –”
”I know I don’t have to. Tell yeh
what, I’ll
get yer animal. Not a toad, toads went
outta
fashion years ago, yeh’d be laughed at –
an’ I
don’ like cats, they make me sneeze. I’ll
get yer
an owl. All the kids want owls, they’re
dead
useful, carry yer mail an’ everythin’.” |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 12:50pm On Jan 24, 2016 |
I’ll
get yer
an owl. All the kids want owls, they’re
dead
useful, carry yer mail an’ everythin’.”
Twenty minutes later, they left
Eeylops Owl
Emporium, which had been dark and full
of
rustling and flickering, jewel-bright eyes.
Harry
now carried a large cage that held a
beautiful
snowy owl, fast asleep with her head
under her
wing. He couldn’t stop stammering his
thanks,
sounding just like Professor Quirrell.
”Don’ mention it,” said Hagrid
gruffly. “Don’
expect you’ve had a lotta presents from
them
Dursleys. Just Ollivanders left now – only
place
fer wands, Ollivanders, and yeh gotta
have the
best wand.”
A magic wand… this was what Harry
had
been really looking forward to.
The last shop was narrow and
shabby.
Peeling gold letters over the door read
Ollivanders: Makers of Fine Wands since
382
B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple
cushion
in the dusty window.
A tinkling bell rang somewhere in
the depths
of the shop as they stepped inside. It was
a tiny
place, empty except for a single, spindly
chair
that Hagrid sat on to wait. Harry felt
strangely
as though he had entered a very strict
library; he
swallowed a lot of new questions that
had just
occurred to him and looked instead at
the
thousands of narrow boxes piled neatly
right up
to the ceiling. For some reason, the back
of his
neck prickled. The very dust and silence
in here
seemed to tingle with some secret magic.
”Good afternoon,” said a soft voice.
Harry
jumped. Hagrid must have jumped, too,
because
there was a loud crunching noise and he
got
quickly off the spindly chair.
An old man was standing before
them, his
wide, pale eyes shining like moons
through the
gloom of the shop.
”Hello,” said Harry awkwardly.
”Ah yes,” said the man. “Yes, yes. I
thought
I’d be seeing you soon. Harry Potter.” It
wasn’t
a question. “You have your mother’s
eyes. It
seems only yesterday she was in here
herself,
buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter
inches
long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand
for
charm work.”
Mr. Ollivander moved closer to
Harry. Harry
wished he would blink. Those silvery
eyes were a
bit creepy.
”Your father, on the other hand,
favored a
mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable.
A little
more power and excellent for
transfiguration.
Well, I say your father favored it — it’s
really the
wand that chooses the wizard, of
course.”
Mr. Ollivander had come so close
that he
and Harry were almost nose to nose.
Harry could
see himself reflected in those misty eyes.
”And that’s where…”
Mr. Ollivander touched the lightning
scar on
Harry’s forehead with a long, white
finger.
”I’m sorry to say I sold the wand that
did
it,” he said softly. “Thirteen-and-a-half
inches.
Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and
in the
wrong hands… well, if I’d known what
that wand
was going out into the world to do….”
He shook his head and then, to
Harry’s
relief, spotted Hagrid.
”Rubeus! Rubeus Hagrid! How nice
to see
you again…. Oak, sixteen inches, rather
bendy,
wasn’t it?”
”It was, sir, yes,” said Hagrid.
”Good wand, that one. But I suppose
they
snapped it in half when you got
expelled?” said
Mr. Ollivander, suddenly stern.
”Er — yes, they did, yes,” said
Hagrid,
shuffling his feet. “I’ve still got the
pieces,
though,” he added brightly.
”But you don’t use them?” said Mr.
Ollivander sharply.
”Oh, no, sit,” said Hagrid quickly.
Harry
noticed he gripped his pink umbrella
very tightly
as he spoke.
”Hmmm,” said Mr. Ollivander, giving
Hagrid a
piercing look. “Well, now — Mr. Potter.
Let me
see.” He pulled a long tape measure with
silver
markings out of his pocket. “Which is
your wand
arm?”
”Er — well, I’m right-handed,” said
Harry.
”Hold out your arm. That’s it.” He
measured
Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist
to
elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit
and
round his head. As he measured, he
said, “Every
Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful
magical
substance, Mr. Potter. We use unicorn
hairs,
phoenix tail feathers, and the
heartstrings of
dragons. No two Ollivander wands are
the same,
just as no two unicorns, dragons, or
phoenixes
are quite the same. And of course, you
will
never get such good results with another
wizard’s wand.”
Harry suddenly realized that the tape
measure, which was measuring between
his
nostrils, was doing this on its own. Mr.
Ollivander was flitting around the
shelves, taking
down boxes.
”That will do,” he said, and the tape
measure crumpled into a heap on the
floor.
“Right then, Mr. Potter. Try this one.
Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine
inches.
Nice and flexible. just take it and give it
a wave.”
Harry took the wand and (feeling
foolish)
waved it around a bit, but Mr. Ollivander
snatched it out of his hand almost at
once.
”Maple and phoenix feather. Seven
inches.
Quite whippy. Try –”
Harry tried — but he had hardly
raised the
wand when it, too, was snatched back by
Mr.
Ollivander.
”No, no -here, ebony and unicorn
hair, eight
and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on,
try it
out.”
Harry tried. And tried. He had no
idea what
Mr. Ollivander was waiting for. The pile
of tried
wands was mounting higher and higher
on the
spindly chair, but the more wands Mr.
Ollivander
pulled from the shelves, the happier he
seemed
to become.
”Tricky customer, eh? Not to worry,
we’ll
find the perfect match here somewhere
— I
wonder, now – – yes, why not — unusual
combination — holly and phoenix
feather, eleven
inches, nice and supple.”
Harry took the wand. He felt a
sudden
warmth in his fingers. He raised the
wand above
his head, brought it swishing down
through the
dusty air and a stream of red and gold
sparks
shot from the end like a firework,
throwing
dancing spots of light on to the walls.
Hagrid
whooped and clapped and Mr. Ollivander
cried,
“Oh, bravo! Yes, indeed, oh, very good.
Well,
well, well… how curious… how very
curious… ”
He put Harry’s wand back into its
box and
wrapped it in brown paper, still
muttering,
“Curious… curious..
”Sorry,” said Harry, “but what’s
curious?”
Mr. Ollivander fixed Harry with his
pale
stare.
”I remember every wand I’ve ever
sold, Mr.
Potter. Every single wand. It so happens
that the
phoenix whose tail feather is in your
wand, gave
another feather — just one other. It is
very
curious indeed that you should be
destined for
this wand when its brother why, its
brother gave
you that scar.”
Harry swallowed.
”Yes, thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew.
Curious indeed how these things happen.
The
wand chooses the wizard, remember…. I
think
we must expect great things from you,
Mr.
Potter…. After all, He- Who-Must-Not-Be-
Named
did great things — terrible, yes, but
great.”
Harry shivered. He wasn’t sure he
liked Mr.
Ollivander too much. He paid seven gold
Galleons for his wand, and Mr.
Ollivander bowed
them from his shop.
The late afternoon sun hung low in
the sky
as Harry and Hagrid made their way
back down
Diagon Alley, back through the wall,
back
through the Leaky Cauldron, now empty.
Harry
didn’t speak at all as they walked down
the road;
he didn’t even notice how much people
were
gawking at them on the Underground,
laden as
they were with all their funny-shaped
packages,
with the snowy owl asleep in its cage on
Harry’s
lap. Up another escalator, out into
Paddington
station; Harry only realized where they
were
when Hagrid tapped him on the
shoulder.
”Got time fer a bite to eat before yer
train
leaves,” he said.
He bought Harry a hamburger and
they sat
down on plastic seats to eat them. Harry
kept
looking around. Everything looked so
strange,
somehow.
”You all right, Harry? Yer very
quiet,” said
Hagrid.
Harry wasn’t sure he could explain.
He’d just
had the best birthday of his life — and
yet — he
chewed his hamburger, trying to find
the words.
”Everyone thinks I’m special,” he
said at
last. “All those people in the Leaky
Cauldron,
Professor Quirrell, Mr. Ollivander… but I
don’t
know anything about magic at all. How
can they
expect great things? I’m famous and I
can’t even
remember what I’m famous for. I don’t
know
what happened when Vol-, sorry — I
mean, the
night my parents died.”
Hagrid leaned across the table.
Behind the
wild beard and eyebrows he wore a very
kind
smile.
”Don’ you worry, Harry. You’ll learn
fast
enough. Everyone starts at the beginning
at
Hogwarts, you’ll be just fine. just be
yerself. I
know it’s hard. Yeh’ve been singled out,
an’
that’s always hard. But yeh’ll have a
great time
at Hogwarts — I did — still do, ‘smatter
of fact.”
Hagrid helped Harry on to the train
that
would take him back to the Dursleys,
then
handed him an envelope.
”Yer ticket fer Hogwarts, ” he said.
“First o’
September — King’s Cross — it’s all on
yer
ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys,
send me
a letter with yer owl, she’ll know where
to find
me…. See yeh soon, Harry.”
The train pulled out of the station.
Harry
wanted to watch Hagrid until he was out
of
sight; he rose in his seat and pressed his
nose
against the window, but he blinked and
Hagrid
had gone. |
Re: Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone by Nobody: 12:52pm On Jan 24, 2016 |
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