Dedicated to readers — all readers, not just mine.
Harry was extremely surprised. Completely and utterly extremely.
His uncle had just promised to take him to London at the end of the week and even drive him all the way to Charing Cross Road. And his face, instead of its usual fury, wore an expression that read: You going to hold together until then? This from Vernon Dursley, who had never once shown him any warmth. Not ever. Harry drew in a long breath and decided to push the experiment further.
"Could I… could I have something to read?"
Uncle Vernon looked surprised that I can read at all, Harry thought, turning the second page of a Muggle book with the intriguing title The Great Impersonation. That was his last coherent thought before he fell headlong into a world of intrigue and secrets, of a sinister Madame's manipulations, of frightening and baffling murders. He turned page after page and never thought to be surprised by how fast he was reading. He wasn't thinking at all — only absorbing.
The supposedly well-bred Dursley family watched the feverish flush on their nephew's cheeks as he dragged himself to the table still clutching his book. The wretched child made his way to his place, sat down entirely on autopilot, squinted wildly at the text sideways, drank his soup straight from the bowl, and attempted to do the same with the potato bake. When that failed, he felt around in the plate with his hand without lifting his eyes from the page — deaf to Petunia's belated feeble protests, to Vernon's loud shout, and to Dudley's astonished hiccup — and crammed the piece into his mouth. And swallowed it. Barely chewing.
Silence fell. In superstitious horror, Petunia cut a small extra portion and slid it onto her nephew's plate. Her husband and son watched without a word. He apparently didn't register it immediately, but some five minutes later, not lifting his gaze from the text, he carefully reached out his hand, found the piece, and it met the same fate.
Dudley looked thoughtfully at his mother. He didn't much like potato bake anyway.
Harry finished what his cousin had pushed over and let out a satisfied belch, licking his fingers clean. In the silence, Dudley's dropped spoon rang out loudly. Harry surfaced from the book, lurched upright, stared around the kitchen with wild eyes — a soft breeze swept through the room, the boy cringed and made for under the table. He actually got under it, only his hand reaching back out for the book. That hand was caught by Vernon and he was deposited back in his seat.
Squirming on a chair that had suddenly become terribly uncomfortable, Harry fought the urge to open the book again. He was back in reality, and much as he wanted to escape it by diving into the text, he was afraid. Mostly for the book — Vernon could tear it apart or confiscate it without a second thought. He must have used magic just now, and that was going to cost him badly.
Petunia Dursley stared around her own kitchen in bewilderment. It gleamed with a spotless perfection she had never once managed, not by herself, not with her nephew's help, not with any of the latest and greatest cleaning products. At last she opened her mouth.
"Well I ne—"
"What cat, Mum?"
"What?" Petunia was slowly coming back to herself. "I said never. So this is also some kind of magic, Harry? And without a wand, you… can do this? Not explode, not set fire, not scatter things everywhere. Not spill anything."
Harry stared at his aunt in horror. What had dawned instantly on the most practical woman in the house hadn't reached him at all: with magic, in a matter of moments, you could bring an ordinary kitchen to a state of absolute perfection. If this was magic — then why in the blazes was she spending money on all these trendy super-cleansers and mega-fresheners? And the time that eternally went into tidying one thing or another, with no end in sight — well, she'd find something to spend that on. And her nephew was a complete idiot for having scrubbed everything with a cloth when he could have done this.
At last the rest of the Dursleys thought to look around. Vernon let out a low whistle. The kitchen units looked brand new. Now his wife wouldn't be leafing through catalogues and leaving them out for him with that meaningful look.
"Wicked," Dudley said slowly. "Potter, that was brilliant. Did they teach you that at your school?"
And he glanced sideways at his mother.
Petunia narrowed her eyes appraisingly at her nephew. He shrank again and moved to take care of the dishes, only to find them already sparkling. The boy swallowed audibly.
"Come along to the sitting room, dear," his aunt sang in a honeyed voice, and Harry's hair stood on end in every place it existed or had ever aspired to.
As it turned out, he had been frightened for absolutely nothing.
He was simply asked to do in the sitting room what he had done in the kitchen.
Asked politely.
Without a wand… I actually managed the kitchen without a wand, Harry thought, recovering from his latest astonishment. So I need to try and remember what I was thinking then… what I was feeling.
His cousin, breathing noisily through his nose, pressed the book into his hand. The book.
A soft breeze moved through the sitting room for a full minute, and then Harry slowly sank to the floor and no longer heard his aunt cry:
"A cotton pad! Get me a cotton pad! The first aid kit!"
Nor the thundering footsteps of his uncle and cousin, racing each other to the medicine cabinet.
Harry came to and immediately decided that all of this was a dream.
He was lying… on the formal sofa in the sitting room — the one he wasn't always permitted to approach even to dust it. Something was in the way on his face, stuffed into his nose. He felt around, found the cotton pad, and tugged it carefully. It hurt a little.
"Don't pull it off, Harry," he heard his aunt's voice. "It's stuck. It'll bleed again otherwise. I'll put a few drops on to loosen it, then you can take it out. Are you hungry?"
He stared with wide eyes as she carefully brought a dropper toward his nose, then squeezed his eyes shut when he felt the coolness of the drops. It didn't hurt at all. Not in the least.
"Thank you, Aunt Petunia," he managed. His stomach growled loudly, making him flush, and his aunt… gently removed something from his forehead.
A compress — Harry remembered the word, heard once from Madam Pomfrey.
"I'm all right, really," he muttered, trying to work out who had replaced his aunt, or what she'd been given to drink.
"Then get up and march to the kitchen."
On the kitchen table waited bacon sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, and a large cup of hot cocoa. The world tilted once more, but Harry managed to grab the edge of the table and sit down.
"Eat, and then clear up after yourself," Petunia instructed, and left the room quickly. She had no desire to stay alone with her nephew. Something made her uneasy, though she couldn't have said what.
Chores done, full for what was perhaps the first time in this house, Harry was heading upstairs when his uncle caught him. By the right elbow. He tensed instinctively and shut his eyes — but his left eye started peeking through its lashes of its own accord, tracking where he was being led. And he was being led… to the bookcase. The enormous thing occupied nearly the entire wall between the garden windows.
Harry opened both eyes wide. The Dursleys had a mountain of books. How had he lived in this house for eleven years and never noticed? Though — had anything he dusted ever once interested him? And he'd had no idea, couldn't even have guessed, that the most interesting and captivating things were hidden inside, behind what looked like identical dark covers. With a sweeping gesture Vernon Dursley invited him to look at… everything in the cabinet. Harry's heart jumped, but he decided to make sure.
"Really?"
"You may read any books you like. At any time."
Uncle Vernon beamed with his own generosity, seasoned by the pleasure of watching his nephew fall into complete stupefaction, and had never in his life come so close to having someone fling their arms around his neck with wild cries and try to throttle him — out of gratitude, of course.
"It's payment for the sitting room," his aunt attempted to explain, and held out the book he'd been reading.
"Thank you… thank you, thank you!" Harry nodded, gripping the dense dark-gray cover in a white-knuckled grip. He immediately remembered where he'd left off and desperately wanted to open it and find out at last how it ended. He was deeply grateful to the Dursleys for leaving him alone. And it was at that moment that something began to sink in.
He moved his gaze from the book to the cabinet.
Could this be how Hermione felt when she saw books? Oh. He remembered her face — enchanted, almost rapturous — the first time they had walked into the Hogwarts library. How well he understood her now. Kindred spirit, he thought, and smiled broadly. No — he absolutely refused to be cross with her for not writing. She was reading. And right now so was he. He opened the book at exactly the right page and was lost until he reached the afterword.
Harry sat on the floor beside the cabinet, having plunged into another detective novel. This time he had come across the Arthur Conan Doyle series. Sherlock Holmes became his hero from the very first story.
He didn't notice his cousin approach and raise a fist —
But Dudley wasn't stupid. He could see that his annoying cousin had found something interesting in that mass of tiny letters. Judging by the way he'd been behaving, something tremendously interesting. And he, Dudley, wanted that too. The trouble was that the concept of "lots of text" and the concept of "interesting" simply refused to connect in his head. He desperately wanted to thump Harry on the skull, only then Harry obviously wouldn't tell him anything. He'd just fall over and moan. Pathetic.
"Hey." The big boy shook the bony shoulder.
Harry surfaced from the book and stared up at him with glazed eyes. At any other time his cousin would have thought nothing of planting one right between them.
"What's interesting?" Dudley managed to fuse the incompatible, trying to pour both threat and friendliness into those two words simultaneously — friendliness as he understood it, at any rate.
Harry flinched.
"Er… What do you want?" He quickly looked around and realized there was nowhere to run. His legs didn't seem inclined to unbend either. That was it. Cornered.
"You… Tell me what you read!" Dudley demanded, which puzzled Harry considerably. But not for long.
Share what he'd just read? Easy. Whole sentences from the books were surfacing in his head, so Harry spoke quickly and fluently, as if reading from the page — because, in essence, he nearly was. And Dudley's expression only poured more fuel onto the fire that had already taken hold of the storyteller.
Vernon, returning from work, found a remarkable scene in his own sitting room. Harry Potter was gesturing, narrating, pulling faces, occasionally leaping up, while his own son sat primly beside him with his mouth open, hanging on every word.
And what is he filling his head with?! Dursley thought, with his usual irritation, and listened.
"…An hour after midnight they heard a soft whistle, and Holmes leapt sharply to his feet and began beating the wall beside the bed furiously with his cane — the bed where Helen should have been sleeping."
The boy's slight voice rose and fell, building exactly the right atmosphere, so that his listeners held their breath without meaning to.
"Something rustled, and a minute later a wild cry rang out from Dr. Roylott's bedroom — full of pain and rage."
Petunia, occupied with a pie she was making from a new recipe, hadn't come out to greet her husband, but once the cooking was done she headed for the sitting room, puzzled and mildly put out that he hadn't come to find her. What she saw haunted her dreams for several nights afterward: her own son and husband, gaping like two idiots, hanging on every word her nephew said.
"…It turned out the stepfather wanted to be rid of the sisters in order to get hold of their money. To that end he kept a venomous snake, which at night he placed into the ventilation duct and, using the flame of a candle, drove it into the adjoining room."
Petunia felt her lower jaw slowly descending — and quietly lowered herself into the nearest armchair. Her knees bent on their own.