I lay flat on my back,  breathing hard as though I hadbeen running. I had awoken from a vivid dream withhis hands pressed over his face. The old scar on my forehead, whichwas shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath my fingersas though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.

Harry was panting a bed beside me.

 He sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other reaching out inthe darkness for his glasses, which were on the bedside table. Heput them on and his bedroom came into clearer focus, lit by a faint,misty orange light that was filtering through the curtains from thestreet lamp outside the window. 

Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful for me too. Heturned on the lamp beside him,I scrambled out of bed, crossed theroom, opened my wardrobe, and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny girl of fourteen looked back at me, my hazel eyes  puzzled under my Black-Scarlet head .

 I examined the lightning-bolt scar of my reflection more closely. It lookednormal, but it was still stinging. I tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before hehad awoken. It had seemed so real. . . . There had been two peoplehe knew and one I didn't. . . .I concentrated hard, frowning,trying to remember. . . . 

The dim picture of a darkened room came to me. . . . Therehad been a snake on a hearth rug . . . a small man called Peter,nicknamed Wormtail . . . and a cold, high voice . . . the voice ofLord Voldemort. I felt as though an ice cube had slippeddown into his stomach at the very thought. . . . I closed my eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like, but it was impossible. . . .

 All I knewwas that at the moment when Voldemort's chair had swungaround, and we, Harry and me, had seen what was sitting in it, I had felta spasm of horror, which had awoken me and Harry too . . . or had that been thepain in our scar? 

And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been anold man; I had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused. I put my face into his hands, blocking outhis bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of that dimly litroom, but it was like trying to keep water in my cupped hands; thedetails were now trickling away as fast as U tried to hold on tothem. . . . 

Voldemort and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though I could not remember thename . . . and they had been plotting to kill someone else . . . us! I took my face out of my hands, opened my eyes, and staredaround my bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. 

As it happened, there were an extraordinary number of unusual things in this room. 2 large wooden trunks stood open at thefoot of our  respective beds, revealing cauldrons, broomstick, black robes, andassorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment littered that part of harry's desk that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which our snowy owl, Hedwig, usually perched. My desk was neat enough. 

 On the floor beside his bed abook lay open; Harry must have been reading it before he fell asleep lastnight. The pictures in this book were all moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on broomsticks,throwing a red ball to one another.Harry walked over to the book, picked it up, and watched oneof the wizards score a spectacular goal by putting the ball througha fifty-foot-high hoop. He placed Flying with theCannons on his bedside table, crossed to the window, and drewback the curtains to survey the street below. I joined him

Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban streetwould be expected to look in the early hours of Saturday morning.All the curtains were closed. As far as Harry and I could see through thedarkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not even a cat.And yet . . . and yet . . . 

I went restlessly back to the bedand sat down on it, running a finger over my scar again. It wasn'tthe pain that bothered me; I was no stranger to pain and injury. neither was Harry; He had lost all the bones from his right arm once and hadthem painfully regrown in a night. my arm had been piercedby a venomous foot-long fang not long afterward. Only last yearHarry and I had fallen fifty feet from an airborne broomstick and a stand respectively. We were used to bizarre accidents and injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and had aknack for attracting a lot of trouble.

 No, the thing that was bothering me was that the last time my scar had hurt me this bad, it had been because Voldemort had been closeby. . . . But Voldemort couldn't be here, now. . . . The idea ofVoldemort lurking in Privet Drive was absurd, impossible. . . .

 I listened closely to the silence around us. Was I half-expecting to hear the creak of a stair or the swish of a cloak? Andthen I jumped slightly as I heard our cousin Dudley give atremendous grunting snore from the next room.

 I shook myself mentally; I was being stupid. There wasno one in the house with me and Harry except Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia,and Dudley, and they were plainly still asleep, their dreams untroubled and painless.Asleep was the way Harry and I liked the Dursleys best; it wasn't asthough they were ever any help to us awake.

 Uncle Vernon, AuntPetunia, and Dudley were Harry and my only living relatives. They wereMuggles who hated and despised magic in any form, which meantthat Harry and I were about as welcome in their house as dry rot. Theyhad explained away Harry and mine long absences at Hogwarts over the lastthree years by telling everyone that we went to St. Brutus's SecureCenter for Incurably Criminal Boys and Girls. 

They knew perfectly wellthat, as underage wizards, Harry and I weren't allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but they were still apt to blame us for anythingthat went wrong about the house. Harry and I had never been able toconfide in them or tell them anything about our life in the wizarding world. The very idea of going to them when they awoke, andtelling them about our scars hurting us, and about our worriesabout Voldemort, was laughable.

Harry kneaded his forehead with his knuckles. What we reallywanted (and it felt almost shameful to admit it to myself) wassomeone like — someone like a parent: an adult wizard whose advice we could ask without feeling stupid, someone who cared abouthim, who had had experience with Dark Magic. . . .

Don't ask me how I know, we're twins.

 And then the solution came to me. It was so simple, and so obvious, that I couldn't believe it had taken so long — "Sirius." I whispered

Harry and I. Harry leapt up from the bed, hurried across the room, and satdown at his desk; he pulled a piece of parchment toward him,loaded his eagle-feather quill with ink, wrote

 Dear Sirius, thenpaused, wondering how best to phrase his problem, I, still marvelling at the fact that I hadn't thought of Sirius straight away. But then,perhaps it wasn't so surprising — after all, we had only found outthat Sirius was our godfather two months ago. 

There was a simple reason for Sirius's complete absence fromHarry and my life until then — Sirius had been in Azkaban, the terrifyingwizard jail guarded by creatures called dementors, sightless, soul-sucking fiends who had come to search for Sirius at Hogwartswhen he had escaped. Yet Sirius had been innocent — the murdersfor which he had been convicted had been committed by Wormtail, Voldemort's supporter, whom nearly everybody now believeddead. Me, Zoe, Harry, Ron, and Hermione knew otherwise, however; we had come face-to-face with Wormtail only the previous year,though only Professor Dumbledore had believed our story.

 For one glorious hour, Harry and I had believed that we were leavingthe Dursleys at last, because Sirius had offered us a home once hisname had been cleared. But the chance had been snatched awayfrom us — Wormtail had escaped before we could take him tothe Ministry of Magic, and Sirius had had to flee for his life. 

Harry and I had helped him escape on the back of a hippogriff called Buckbeak,and since then, Sirius had been on the run. The home Harry and I mighthave had if Wormtail had not escaped had been haunting us allsummer. It had been doubly hard to return to the Dursleys knowing that he had so nearly escaped them forever. 

Nevertheless, Sirius had been of some help to Harry and me, even if hecouldn't be with us. It was due to Sirius that Harry and I now had all our school things in our bedroom with us. The Dursleys had neverallowed this before; their general wish of keeping Harry and I as miserable as possible, coupled with their fear of our powers, had led themto lock our school trunks in the cupboard under the stairs every summer prior to this. 

But their attitude had changed since theyhad found out that Harry and I had a dangerous murderer for a godfather — for Harry and I had conveniently forgotten to tell them thatSirius was innocent.Harry and I had received two letters from Sirius since we had beenback at Privet Drive. Both had been delivered, not by owls (as wasusual with wizards), but by large, brightly colored tropical birds. 

Hedwig had not approved of these flashy intruders; she had beenmost reluctant to allow them to drink from her water tray beforeflying off again. Harry and me, on the other hand, had liked them; they put me in mind of palm trees and white sand, and I hoped that,wherever Sirius was (Sirius never said, in case the letters were intercepted), he was enjoying himself. 

Somehow, I found it hard toimagine dementors surviving for long in bright sunlight; perhapsthat was why Sirius had gone south. Sirius's letters, which were nowhidden beneath the highly useful loose floorboard under my bed, sounded cheerful, and in both of them he had remindedHarry and me to call on him if ever we needed to.

 Well, we needed tonow, all right. . . .Harry's lamp seemed to grow dimmer as the cold gray light thatprecedes sunrise slowly crept into the room. Finally, when the sunhad risen, when our bedroom walls had turned gold, and whensounds of movement could be heard from Uncle Vernon and AuntPetunia's room, Harry cleared his desk of crumpled pieces of parchment and reread his finished letter which, I dictated.

Dear Sirius, 

Thanks for your last letter. That bird was enormous; itcould hardly get through our window. 

Things are the same as usual here. Dudley's diet isn't goingtoo well. Our aunt found him smuggling doughnuts into hisroom yesterday. They told him they'd have to cut his pocketmoney if he keeps doing it, so he got really angry and chuckedhis PlayStation out of the window. That's a sort of computerthing you can play games on. Bit stupid really, now he hasn'teven got Mega-Mutilation Part Three to take his mind offthings. 

we're okay, mainly because the Dursleys are terrified youmight turn up and turn them all into bats if we ask you to- well, Emma asks you to.A weird thing happened this morning, though.

Our scarhurt again. Last time that happened it was because Voldemortwas at Hogwarts. But we don't reckon he can be anywhere near us now, can he? Do you know if curse scars sometimes hurtyears afterward? we'll send this with Hedwig when she gets back; she's off hunting at the moment.

 Say hello to Buckbeak for us.

Harry and Emma

There was no pointputting in the dream; we didn't want it to look as though we were tooworried. Harry folded up the parchment and laid it aside on his desk,ready for when Hedwig returned. Then he got to his feet, stretched,and opened his wardrobe. Without glancing at his reflection, he started to get dressed, and I went to the bathroom to change before going down to breakfast.