Harry Potter sighed as he pushed another box toward the attic ladder. It was the fifteenth box that he had moved in the past two hours. His Uncle Vernon had given Harry the chore of cleaning out the attic and cellar to get ready to sell the house. Vernon had gotten a promotion and was moving the family to a townhouse in London. Vernon’s business had merged with another company and Vernon was offered a desk job at the main offices in London. So Harry was forced to clean out everything that Vernon said would not be needed for the new house.

The current box he was pushing was full of his cousin Dudley’s baby clothes. Harry’s Aunt Petunia, his only living blood relative, had argued with Vernon about keeping the baby clothes because Petunia was pregnant. She wanted to keep the clothes until she knew her baby’s gender but Vernon had been adamant that they could buy new clothes for the baby after the move. Vernon had won out and the clothes were going to the dump.

Harry finished pushing the box, stood up and wiped some sweat from his forehead. The attic was always hot but especially in the summer. He looked back at the pile of boxes that still needed to be moved. There were quite a few, mostly filled with Dudley’s broken toys. These boxes he was saving for last, as they were the heaviest. Harry looked around the small attic again. It was then that he noticed a small brown box in a far corner all alone. How could he have missed it when he cleaned out that corner earlier in the day?

The boy walked over to the box and noticed the label on one side. L-School. The contents appeared to have things from his mother, Lily’s school days and Petunia had forgotten about it. He opened the box and discovered Lily’s Hogwarts schoolbooks as well as old quills and parchments. On the bottom was an old photo album. Harry always enjoyed learning things about his parents since he knew so little about them in the first place.

He opened to the first page and saw several Muggle photos. They were of Lily and her parents; Petunia was not in any of the pictures, not a surprise considering how much Petunia hated Lily. The pictures started to change to ones of Lily and various people at Hogwarts. The first one was of Lily trying on the Sorting Hat. Harry continued to flip through, going through his mother’s school years from first to last.

Looking at the photos in the album, Harry noticed that there were no photos of his mother and father alone. They were always with a large group, usually withthe other Marauders.

Another weird thing Harry noticed was that there were several pictures with his mother and Severus Snape. In some pictures, they were holding hands or holding onto each other. There was even a photo of his mother and Snape kissing! What was also weird was that there were photos hidden behind other photos. Several of the hidden pictures were of a wedding and not of the wedding between Lily and James but between Lily and Snape. The subjects in the pictures looked barely old enough to be out of Hogwarts, probably in their late teens.

A voice broke the silence and Harry’s concentration on the photographs.

“Boy, are you finished with those boxes yet? The garbage men will be here any minute!”

Harry looked at all the boxes he still had to move and thought. He would be turning fifteen in a couple days. He would be going into his fifth year at Hogwarts. He was no longer an underage wizard that could get expelled if he did magic during the holidays.

Cursing himself for not thinking of it sooner, Harry pulled out his wand and muttered a spell to make the boxes feather-light. He then shrunk the photo album and stuffed it into his pocket. He picked up a pile of thenow feather-light boxes and headed down the stairs to take them outside. He continued that way until every box was on the curb waiting for pickup. The only box he did not put out was his mother’s, which he shrunk and placed in his trunk, along with the album.

After the attic was cleaned out, Harry started on the basement, glad that he could now use magic to complete his chores. The best part was, if the Dursleys didn’t see, how would they be able to tell the difference? With magic, the job took half the time it would have without magic.

After the basement was done, Harry made his way up to his room only to find a gray and brown messenger owl sitting on his bed. The bird stuck out his leg, showing that it had carried a letter. Harry took the letter from the owl and the bird left through the window.

The letter was addressed to him but did not appear to be from either Hogwarts or the Ministry of Magic. The only thing the address contained was a very basic address:

Harry Potter

C/o Petunia Evans Dursley

Surrey, England

He opened the envelope and skimmed down to the bottom to see who had sent it. His mother’s name appeared at the bottom of the letter.