Harry couldn't sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all.

Five minutes to go. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although he might be warmer if it did.
Four minutes to go.
Three minutes.
Two minutes.
One minute to go and he'd be eleven. Thirty seconds... twenty ... ten... nine -- maybe he'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him -- three... two... one...
BOOM.

James, Remus and Lily gasped, but Harry grinned. The person who was about to enter would be his first real friend.

"Who's there?" Vernon 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, it 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.

"Bloody hell, it's Hagrid!"

"Hagrid's here to save the day. You know Harry, we are quite close friends with him."

"Really?" Harry asked.

"Merlin's left tit, you hardly know anything about us Harry," exclaimed Sirius.

"Well, it not my fault though, is it?"

Lily smiled sadly at her son.

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.

"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.

"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," said the giant. "Yeh look a lot like yet dad, but yeh've got yer mum's eyes."
"I demand that you leave at once, sir!" Vernon commanded.
"Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune," said the giant.

He reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Uncle Vernon'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. Uncle Vernon made a 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 mighta sat 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. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing. Harry looked up at the giant. He meant to say thank you, but the words got lost, and what he said instead was, "Who are you?"
The giant chuckled.
"True, I haven't introduced meself. 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?"

His eyes fell on the empty grate with the shrivelled chip bags and snorted. He bent down over the fireplace, and a second later, there was a roaring fire. It filled the whole 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 teapot, several 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 smell of sizzling sausages.

"He's got the whoooole world, in his pocket," Sirius began to sing.

"Shut it, Sirius!"

"Okay, what about a different song? He's taller than a skyscraper and deeper than a submarine," he carried on singing.

Everyone looked at him.

"What? He is a giant. That was just a metaphor to describe his height."

"Oh, shut up you," Remus giggled.

"- And wider than the universe-"

"Sirius, you can't say that about Hagrid! That's rude!" said Lily.

"But-"

"SIRIUMTIOUS OPTIMA BLACK!" she yelled.

"Bleeding hell Evans! Alright, alright," and he stopped.

He passed the sausages to Harry, who couldn't take his eyes off the giant. Finally, as nobody seemed about to explain anything, he said, "I'm sorry, but I still don't really know who you are."

"Call me Hagrid," The giant 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 the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows. "It' s them who should be sorry! I knew yeh weren't gettin' yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn't even know abou'
Hogwarts! Did yeh never wonder where yet parents learned it all?"
"All what?" asked Harry.

James and Sirius burst out laughing at Harry's puzzled expression.
"Guys, you can't blame me," Harry said, very embarrassed.

"ALL WHAT?" Hagrid thundered.
He had leapt to his feet.
"Do you mean ter tell me," he growled at the Dursleys, "that this boy -- this boy! -- knows nothin' abou' -- about ANYTHING?"
Harry thought this was going a bit far. He had been to school, and his marks weren't bad.

At this, Lily started laughing too.
"Harry you idiot, he's not talking about your grades!"

"Muuuum," Harry whined, his face turning a vibrant red.

"I know some things," he said. "I can, you know, do maths and stuff."

At this, a giggle escaped Harry's lips, laughing at his own naiveness.

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.
Uncle Vernon, who had gone very pale.
"But yeh must know about yet mom and dad," he said. "I mean, they're famous. You're famous."
"What? My -- my mom and dad weren't famous, were they?"

James and Lily had their mouths wide open, just as shocked as Harry was.
"We're famous!" James exclaimed, positively ecstatic. "Wow, I'm famous! What, do I actually become a quidditch player or something? I was hoping to be an Auror, but a quidditch career is way more brilliant! Or am I a famous legendary Auror? Or --"

"Oi, shut your babbling mouth Prongsie, Hagrid's talking! Listen," scolded Sirius.

"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.
Uncle Vernon suddenly found his voice.
"Stop!" he commanded. "I forbid you to tell the
boy anything!"
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 Uncle Vernon in panic.
Aunt Petunia gave a gasp of horror.

Sirius, being the dramatic one, started a drumroll, and everyone joined in.

"Harry -- yer a
wizard."

There was silence inside the hut.

"-- 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' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter."

Harry stretched out his hand at last to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr. H. Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock,
The Sea. He pulled out the letter and read:
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc, Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
Dear Mr. Potter,
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.

Questions exploded inside Harry's head like fireworks and he couldn't decide which to ask first. After a few minutes, he stammered, "What does it mean, they await my owl?"

Everyone burst out laughing at this, and Harry could feel the heat rushing to his face once more, and buried his head in his hands.

"Blimey Harry, you were so innocent as an eleven-year-old!" wheezed Remus.

At this point, Harry just wanted to crawl into a hole until the memory was over.

"He's not going," Uncle Vernon said.

Hagrid grunted.

James snorted.

"I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said.
"We swore when we took him in we'd put a stop to that rubbish," said Uncle Vernon, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!"

"Stamp it out of him? Stamp it out of him? This walrus of a man is dumber than a flobberworm!"

"You knew?" said Harry. "You knew I'm a -- a wizard?"
"Knew!" shrieked Aunt Petunia 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, and so had Lily.

"Blown up? You told me they died in a car crash!"
"CAR CRASH!" roared Hagrid, jumping up so angrily that the Dursleys scuttled back to their corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! Harry Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!"
"But why? What happened?" Harry asked urgently.

The marauders were also watching intently, as they didn't know what would happen next.

"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 ter 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... 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?"

"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.

"All right -- Voldemort. " Hagrid shuddered. "Don' make me say it again. Anyway, this -- this wizard, about twenty years ago now, started lookin' fer 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. All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Halloween ten years ago. You was just a year old.

He came ter yer house an' -- an' --"
Hagrid suddenly pulled out a dirty 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 -- anyway..."
"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.

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' you was only a baby, an' you lived."

Something very painful was going on in Harry's mind. As Hagrid's story came to a close, he saw again the blinding flash of green light, more clearly than he had ever remembered it before -- and he remembered something else, for the first time in his life: a high, cold, cruel laugh.

Lily already knew this of course, since Harry had already told her the majority of things, but she still found this interesting to watch. The marauders, on the other hand, were so shocked, that they couldn't speak. Their eyes were glued to memory Harry and Hagrid, as if they were watching a movie.

"Bloody hell," Sirius whispered, his eyes wide.

"But what happened to Vol--, sorry -- I mean, You-Know-Who?"

"Good question, Harry. Disappeared. Vanished. Same night he tried ter kill you. Makes yeh even more famous. That's the biggest myst'ry, see...
he was gettin' more an' more powerful -- why'd he go?

"Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die. Most of us reckon he's still out there somewhere but lost his powers.

"That ruthless noseless git is still alive in your time?" James was surprised.

"Unfortunately."

"--Too weak to carry on. 'Cause somethin' about you finished him, Harry.
There was somethin' goin' on that night he hadn't counted on -- I dunno what it was, no one does -- but somethin' about you stumped him, all right."

"But how?" wondered Remus.

"You'll see," Harry replied.

Harry, instead of feeling pleased and proud, felt quite sure there had been a horrible mistake. A wizard? Him? How could he possibly be? He'd spent his life being clouted by Dudley, and bullied by Aunt Petunia and
Uncle Vernon; if he was really a wizard, why hadn't they been turned into warty toads every time they'd tried to lock him in his cupboard?

"Because Harry, that's not how magic works!" chuckled Remus, and the other marauders also joined in. Even Harry was laughing at the innocence of his own younger self now.

"Hagrid," he said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake. I don't think I can be a wizard."
To his surprise, Hagrid chuckled.

All the marauders doubled up laughing.

"Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?"

Now he came to think about it... every odd thing that had ever made his aunt and uncle furious had happened when he had been upset or angry... Chased by Dudley's gang, he had somehow found himself out of their reach... and the very last time Dudley had hit him, hadn't he got his revenge, without even realizing he was doing it?

Harry looked back at Hagrid and saw that he was beaming at him.
"See?" said Hagrid. "Harry Potter, not a wizard -- you wait, you'll be right famous at Hogwarts."

But Uncle Vernon wasn't going to give in without a fight.
"Haven't I told you he's not going?" he hissed. "I've read those letters and he needs all sorts of rubbish -- spell books and wands and --"

"If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won't stop him," growled
Hagrid. "Stop Lily an' James Potter' s son goin' ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name's been down ever since he was born. He's off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won't know himself. He'll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an' he'll be under the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had Albus Dumbled--"

"I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL To TEACH HIM
MAGIC TRICKS!"
yelled Uncle Vernon.

"Bad move," muttered Remus.

"Never insult Dumbledore in front of Hagrid. Oi Sirius, you remember how mad Hagrid got, when you cracked that little joke about Dumbledore?"

"Yup. This is not good. Oh deer," said Sirius.

"Merlin, now is not the time for animorfimaphagus puns, you idiot!"

"It's animagus for crying out loud! When will you ever learn!"

Vernon had gone too far. Hagrid seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head, "NEVER," he thundered, "- INSULT- ALBUS- DUMBLEDORE-
IN- FRONT- OF- ME!"
He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley -- there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig's tail poking through a hole in his trousers.

"YES HAGRID!" James cheered.

A/N
Guys, I'm planning to put this book on hold... I'm really sorry.

At least it's a rlly long chapter, right?

And I posted two chapters today...

Okay, that isn't really a great excuse, but still...

But with my GCSEs coming up soon (which are similar to OWLs), there simply is not enough time to carry on with this book. And there are going to be rlly rlly rlly slow updates from now on.

Sorry guys...

22/09/2018

IMPORTANT EDIT:

Hey everyone, quite a few people have asked me when I'm gonna update my story, 'Harry Potter travels to the past, so pls read this if you're wondering.

Initially, I was planning to keep it on hold forever, but don't wanna disappoint u all and I love u all too much to abandon my story!

So yeah, I have started working on it again!

But its gonna take a while though, so I
won't be updating any time soon. But u can hope to expect an update boom
nearing Christmas, where l'll post a load of chapters all at once, to make up for the gap. It's my Christmas present for u all.

Sorry for the long wait, I hope you'll stick around until Christmas for the updates!

03/12/18

~ Rav