✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ⁺ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ⁺ 　　✦

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟑: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐊𝐞𝐞𝐩𝐞𝐫 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐊𝐞𝐲𝐬

BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake. "Where's the cannon?" he said stupidly.

"THERE IS NO CANNON!" I hollered. 

There was a crash behind them and Dad 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. I jerked next to Harry, holding his shoulder with my deathly grip. 

"Budge up, yeh great lump," said the stranger. 

Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind Mum, who was crouching, terrified, behind Dad.

 "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. 

"Last time I saw you, you were only a baby," said the giant. "Yeh looks a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yer mum's eyes."

Dad made a funny rasping noise.

 "I demand that you leave at once, sir!" he said. "You are breaking!" 

 "Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune," said the giant; he reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Dad'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. Dad 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 might sit 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. I think 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 myself. 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 say no to 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. 

Dad said sharply, "Don't touch anything he gives you, Dudley." 

 The giant chuckled darkly. "Yer great puddin' of a son don' need fattenin' anymore, Dursley, don' worry." He passed the sausages to Harry. 

 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 gulped 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.

 "Sorry?" barked Hagrid, turning to stare at Mum and Dad, 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 yer parents learned it all?"

 "All what?" asked Harry.

 "ALL WHAT?" Hagrid thundered. "Now wait jus' one second!" He had leaped to his feet. In his anger he seemed to fill the whole hut. Mum, Dad, and Dudley 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?" 

 "I know some things," Harry 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. Dad, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like"Mimblewimble." 

Hagrid stared wildly at Harry. "But yeh must know about yer mum and dad," he said. "I mean, they're famous. You're famous." 

 "What? My — my mum 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. 

 Dad suddenly found his voice. "Stop!" he commanded. "Stop right there, sir! 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 Dad in panic. Mum gasped at horror. 

 "Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh," said Hagrid. "Harry — yer a wizard."

 There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard. 

 "I'm 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' dadlike yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's about time yeh read yer letter." 

 Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green toMr. H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read: 

"Impossible," I said, gathering up my courage, my grasp on Harry's shoulder even tighter. "Impossible. Magic - it's impossible." 

After a few minutes, Harry 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 I 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, Dad, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight. 

 "He's not going," he said. 

 Hagrid grunted.

"I'd like to see a great Muggle as you stop him," he said.

 "A what?" said Harry, interested. 

 "A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call non-magic folk like them. 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 Dad, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!" 

 "You knew?" I exclaimed.

 "You knew I'm a — a wizard?" Harry asked. 

"Knew!" shrieked Mum 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 rest of the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! HarryPotter 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 to tell yeh — but someone'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. "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' for 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 were all living, on Halloween ten years ago. You were 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— anywa... 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." 

Harry glanced at me, and I shrugged and got up. 

"NO DIANE DON'T GO NEAR HIM!" Dad shrieked, but I ignored Dad as I patted Hagrid on the back. "It's all right, Hagrid," I whispered to him. 

Hagrid was watching Harry sadly. "Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore's orders. Brought yeh ter this lot... ." 

"Load of old tosh," said Dad. Dad 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 weirdoes, 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 leaped from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat. Pointing this at Dad 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, Dad'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. 

I touched the handkerchief of Hagrid's and it suddenly became clear again. 

That moment, a huge barn owl flew into the room. I jumped back to Harry just as a small envelope flew into Hagrid's hands. 

"My - who's Diane?" 

"Me . . ." I said as my hand shot up. 

Hagrid handed me a letter. 

Dear Ms. Dursley,

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 

Word count: 2792