Chapter 3 - The Visit

                                        

                                              
The Visit
                              
Harry woke up with a start when he heard the front door slam. Uncle Vernon had come home from work. He looked at his clock and it was the usual time for him to come home. He sat up. His hand was still clasped around his mother's gift. He searched around for his glasses and found them on the floor after almost stepping on them. He realized it was probably the longest he had slept since he got back. He yawned and looked over at his door. A sandwich had been pushed under it. He was hungry, so he summoned up the energy and went to get it. He ate half of it and set the plate down on the desk. He had left the box on the bed, and when he saw it, he began to think about it again. 
                              
Instead of wallowing in grief, he thought about the photos. He took them over to the bed and sat back down. He searched for the one that moved, the one with his parents. It was in the middle of the pile. He looked at it again. They seemed so happy, but he wondered why there was a dance at Hogwarts. The only ball he had gone to there was during the Triwizard Tournament, which had not been held in over a hundred years. He flipped it over to the back and read the message again. 
                              
He could tell by the photo and message that she really liked his father. They were already planning to live together. This detracted from his earlier notion that his father might have forced her to be with him, because of.... the clattering of plates downstairs shattered his train of thought. 
                              
"Dudley are you finished?" he heard his aunt say.
                              
"Yeah," Dudley grunted.
                              
"Petunia..." Uncle Vernon started in a slightly loud and irritated voice, "...why do you keep taking meals up to that boy? If you stop, he'll come down to eat like a normal person! People will start getting the wrong ideas."
                              
"Vernon, I don't think he'll come down," his aunt said, uncertainly.
                              
"So, let him starve!" his uncle said, apathetically. 
                              
"Oh, Vernon, what will the neighbors say then?" his aunt retorted.
                              
"It doesn't mean we have to be his servants and bring him his food!" Uncle Vernon growled.
                              
Aunt Petunia lowered her voice and Harry had to strain his ears to listen, "Vernon something happened to him. He's really depressed, and I am not going to withhold him meals because it seems too demeaning!"
                              
This seemed to end the discussion. Uncle Vernon was probably very disgruntled, now. He had probably never thought Aunt Petunia would act this way. It took Uncle Vernon completely by surprise last year when she overrode his decision to kick Harry out. The tapping on the plates eventually stopped and he heard footsteps coming up the stairs. She shoved a plate of food through the cat flap. 
                              
He had just eaten, but Aunt Petunia fought Uncle Vernon over that plate of food and it seemed wrong not to eat it. So, he jumped up, snatched it up and ate again. When he had finished, he put it on the desk, too, and turned his chair toward the window. He looked out and the sun still lit up the sky. As he mulled over his presents, he got lost in his thoughts. He never heard the car pull up into the driveway or the slamming of its doors, but the ringing of the doorbell broke his train of thought.
                              
"HARRY!!!" Uncle Vernon's loud voice roared through the whole house. 
                              
He wondered if the Weasleys sent another letter, again, and it was the mail carrier at the door. He opened his door and started down the stairs. His uncle was at the foot of the stairs. His face was beet red and showed a mixture of fear and intense anger, and as Harry looked by the front door, he knew why. Three people were standing there and looking up at him: a portly man in a crisp black suit, who looked odd without his traditional lime green boiler hat, a women with a square jaw, short gray hair and a very professional business suit on, and a second young man, wearing horn-rimmed glasses and had a respectable navy blue suit on that clashed tremendously with his flaming red hair and freckles. Three people he knew as Cornelius Fudge, Amelia Bones, and Percy Weasley.