The incident with the strange owl was evidently not forgotten.


Over the next week Harry’s chore list doubled, whilst his food allowance halved. Hunger was suddenly Harry’s constant companion and even filling up on water didn’t seem to help ease the twisting pain in his middle.


At the same time he noticed that his Aunt and Uncle took to waiting until they were inside before they disciplined and punished him, almost as if they thought someone was watching. Harry thought this behaviour was a little odd; he knew well that correcting and curbing his abnormities was something that must be done – nothing to hide.


On a more unpleasant note, Uncle Vernon’s ‘lessons’ seemed to increase tenfold and Harry was soon even more stiff and achy than normal as Uncle repeatedly tried to ‘teach’ the Freakiness out of him. Though he knew it was necessary, Harry wished there were a more effective and less painful method of making him ‘normal’.

………………………………………………………………………………………….

By Wednesday morning, Harry was almost relieved to be back locked in his cupboard.


Although the evidence of Uncle Vernon’s teaching could be both seen and felt plainly; it was obvious to Harry that his Uncle’s best efforts had not succeeded. Odd golden words still shone brightly out of his palm and arm when he focused hard. Even the mass of black and purple bruises failed to obscure the writing in anyway.


It was an ability that Harry had discovered shortly after the start of his silence, when Uncle Vernon had been dealing out a particularly vicious ‘lesson’. The belt had reopened recently healed wounds and Harry had screamed out in agony. Of course no sound actually emerged but instead he had felt a mild burn on the inside of his arm and the words, STOP PLEASE STOP had appeared.


Harry had been so shocked that he had unintentionally fallen to the floor, landing painfully in a small heap. Fortunately Uncle Vernon had taken that action as a sign of defeat and soon flung him back in his cupboard.


Occasionally, Harry briefly toyed with the idea that he might be ‘special’; however the thought that anything special could be an ‘ungrateful’ orphan or living in a cupboard was frankly ridiculous; so such ideas were swiftly discarded.

………………………………..

Many people would consider being locked in a small, dark, enclosed space daunting or frightening. Harry on the other hand found it relaxing; no chores, no trouble, no opportunity to get into trouble. The ultimate escape. Therefore when his Aunt had opened the door suddenly and dragged him out, Harry couldn’t help but worry. His sense of foreboding sky rocketed when she led him towards the Sitting Room – an area of the house he was forbidden to enter, unless to clean. Harry assumed Dudley had somehow made a mess or damaged something in there and blamed it on Harry.


However upon entering the room Harry saw, instead of a terrible chaos, a man. A rather serious looking and deeply, frowning man. Aunt Petunia had thrown a comment about speaking to him before she shut the door firmly, leaving him alone with the foreboding stranger.


From his quick darting glances, Harry could see that, although he hid it quite well, the man was impatient, quite uncomfortable and clearly as glad as Harry to be there. He had thick, rather lank, black hair which hung straight down to his shoulders and covered a large part of his face. Whilst Harry didn’t dare look at the man straight in the eyes, he nevertheless noted that his nose was rather crooked, almost as if it had been broken many times.


Harry wondered if this intimidating man was here to discipline him or perhaps take him to an orphanage –he’d been threatened with that many times, the owl must have been the final straw. He clenched his hands together to cease their trembling and held himself very still.


As the man, Professor Snape, began to speak Harry could feel his cheeks start to flush. He clearly didn’t know that Harry physically couldn’t talk. Worse, the professor seemed to be getting increasingly infuriated by his silence. Desperate not to incur the man’s wrath, simmering so obviously just beneath the surface; Harry snatched up a piece of paper and wrote in clear capitals-


I CAN’T SPEAK, I’M VERY SORRY…
AND WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY LETTER?


The Professor seemed to be extremely stunned and his face reflected this much, the foreboding frown replaced with an almost comical look of wide-eyed shock. He recovered quickly though, returned his face to a slight scowl and sticking his hand inside his jacket pocket, removed a small letter with Harry’s name written on it in bright green ink.


Harry couldn’t help but flinch slightly and lean away as the Professor extended his arm out towards him. From the slightly calculating look on the man’s face, Harry guessed his inadvertent action had been noticed and fixed his attention on the strange letter in order to hide his growing nerves.


As he skimmed through the letter the words ‘wizard’, ‘magic’ and ‘spells’ jumped out in particular at Harry. This was wrong, very wrong; they seemed to have gotten his freakiness mixed up with this magic…stuff. Harry had to correct the Professor, if they found out later just how wrong they were the consequences were likely to be dire.


His next note seemed to have quite an effect on the Professor and he seemed to gaze rather unfocused into the middle distance. As the seconds ticked by Harry got increasingly edgy, when the man finally did focus on him again it didn’t appear that he understood what Harry was trying to say. He even went so far as to invite Harry to sit down for a chat, like one might do with a ‘normal’ individual.


Harry jumped backwards, in case Professor Snape decided to reach out for him and frantically wrote,


YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!


Now that appeared to finally draw the man’s anger out and Harry decided it was best just to show him what he meant. He would surely regret it later but all the same he closed his eyes and focused. Feeling the slight burn on the inside of his arm Harry knew it had worked and stretched his palm out towards the still fuming Professor.


Having now shown all his cards; Harry waited with baited breath for the proverbial axe to fall.