thing to be
back in his bed with his hot-water bottle. The problem was that his legs didn't
seem to want to move. As he stood there shaking and trying to master himself, the
cold voice switched abruptly to English again.
"Nagini has interesting news, Wormtail," it said.
"In-indeed, My Lord?" said Wormtail.
"Indeed, yes," said the voice, "According to Nagini, there is an old Muggle
standing right outside this room, listening to every word we say."
Frank didn't have a chance to hide himself. There were footsteps and then the door
of the room was flung wide open.
A short, balding man with graying hair, a pointed nose, and small, watery eyes
stood before Frank, a mixture of fear and alarm in his face.
"Invite him inside, Wormtail. Where are your manners?"
The cold voice was coming from the ancient armchair before the fire, but Frank
couldn't see the speaker. the snake, on the other hand, was curled up on the rotting
hearth rug, like some horrible travesty of a pet dog.
Wormtail beckoned Frank into the room. Though still deeply shaken, Frank took a
firmer grip on his walking stick and limped over the threshold.
11
The fire was the only source of light in the room; it cast long, spidery shadows
upon the walls. Frank stared at the back of the armchair; the man inside it seemed
to be even smaller than his servant, for Frank couldn't even see the back of his
head.
"You heard everything, Muggle?" said the cold voice.
"What's that you're calling me?" said Frank defiantly, for now that he was inside
the room, now that the time had come for some sort of action, he felt braver; it had
always been so in the war.
"I am calling you a Muggle," said the voice coolly. "It means that you are not a
wizard."
"I don't know what you mean by wizard," said Frank, his voice growing steadier.
"All I know is I've heard enough to interest the police tonight, I have. You've done
murder and you're planning more! And I'll tell youthis too," he added, on a sudden
inspiration, "my wife knows I'm up here, and if I don't come back --"
"You have no wife," said te cold voice, very quietly. "Nobody knows you are here.
You told nobody that you were coming. Do not lie to Lord Voldemort, Muggle,
for he knows...he always knows..."
"Is that right?" said Frank roughly. "Lord, is it? Well, I don't think much of your
manners, My Lord. Turn 'round and face me like a man, why don't you?"
"But I am not a man, Muggle," said the cold voice, barely audible now over the
crackling of the flames. "I am much, much more than a man. However...why not? I
will face you...Wormtail, come turn my chair around."
The servant gave a whimper.
"You heard me, Wormtail."
Slowly, with his face screwed up, as though he would rather have done anything
than approach his master and the hearth rug where the snake lay, the small man
walked forward and began to turn the chair. The snake lifted its ugly triangular
head and hissed slightly as the legs of the chair snagged on its rug.
And then the chair was facing Frank, and he saw what was sitting in it. His
walking stick fell to the floor with a clatter. He opened his mouth and let out a
scream. He was screaming so loudly that he never heard the words the thing in the
chair spoke as it raised a wand. There was a flash of green light, a rushing sound,
and Frank Bryce crumpled. He was dead before he hit the floor.
Two hundred miles away, the boy called Harry Potter woke with a start.
12
CHAPTER TWO - THE SCAR
Harry lay flat on his back, breathing hard as though he had been running. He had
awoken from a vivid dream with his hands pressed over his face. The old scar on
his forehead, which was shaped like a bolt of lightning, was burning beneath his
fingers as though someone had just pressed a white-hot wire to his skin.
He sat up, one hand still on his scar, the other hand reaching out in the darkness
for his glasses, which were on the bedside table. He put them on and his bedroom
came into clearer focus, lit by a faint, misty orange light that was filtering through
the curtains from the street lamp outside the window.
Harry ran his fingers over the scar again. It was still painful. He turned on the
lamp beside him, scrambled out of bed, crossed the room, opened his wardrobe,
and peered into the mirror on the inside of the door. A skinny boy of fourteen
looked back at him, his bright green eyes puzzled under his untidy black hair. He
examined the lightning-bolt scar of his reflection more closely. It looked normal,
but it was still stinging.
harry tried to recall what he had been dreaming about before he had awoken. It
had seemed so real...There had been two people he knew and one he didn't ...He
concentrated hard, frowning, trying to remember...
The dim picture of a darkened room came to him...There had been a snake on a
hearth rug...a small man called Peter, nicknamed Wormtail...and a cold, high
voice...the voice of Lord Voldemort. Harry felt as though an ice cube had slipped
down into his stomach at the very thought...
He closed his eyes tightly and tried to remember what Voldemort had looked like,
but it was impossible...All Harry knew was that at the moment when Voldemort's
chair had swung around, and he, Harry, had seen what was sitting in it, he had felt
a spasm of horror, which had awoken him...or had that been the pain in his scar?
And who had the old man been? For there had definitely been an old man; Harry
had watched him fall to the ground. It was all becoming confused. Harry put his
face into his hands, blocking out his bedroom, trying to hold on to the picture of
that dimly lit room, but it was like trying to keep water in his cupped hands; the
details were now trickling away as fast as he tried to hold on to them...Voldemort
and Wormtail had been talking about someone they had killed, though Harry could
not remember the name...and they had been plotting to kill someone else...him!
Harry took his face out of his hands, opened his eyes, and stared around his
bedroom as though expecting to see something unusual there. As it happened,
there was an extraordinary number of unusual things in this room. A large wooden
trunk stood open at the foot of his bed, revealing a cauldron, broomstick, black
robes, and assorted spellbooks. Rolls of parchment littered that part of his desk
that was not taken up by the large, empty cage in which his snowy owl, Hedwig,
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usually perched. On the floor beside his bed a book lay open; Harry had been
reading it before he fell asleep last night. The pictures in this book were all
moving. Men in bright orange robes were zooming in and out of sight on
broomsticks, throwing a red ball to one another.
Harry walked over to the book, picked it up, and watched on of the wizards score a
spectacular goal by putting the ball through a fifty-foot-high hoop. Then he
snapped the book shut. Even Quidditch -- in Harry's opinion, the best sport in the
world -- couldn't distract him at the moment. He placed Flying with the Cannons
on his bedside table, crossed to the window, and drew back the curtains to survey
the street below.
Privet Drive looked exactly as a respectable suburban street would be expected to
look inthe early hours of Saturday morning. All the curtains were closed. As far as
Harry could see through the darkness, there wasn't a living creature in sight, not
even a cat.
And yet...and yet...Harry went restlessly back to the bed and sat down on it,
running a finger over his scar again. It wasn't the pain that bothered him; Harry
was no stranger to pain and injury. He had lost all the bones from his right arm
once and had them painfully regrown in a night. The same arm had been pierced
by a venemous foot-long fang not long afterward. Only last year Harry had fallen
fifty feet from an airborn broomstick. He was used to bizarre accidents and
injuries; they were unavoidable if you attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft
and Wizardry and had a knack for attracting a lot of trouble.
No, the thing that was bothering Harry was the last time his scar had hurt him, it
had been because Voldemort had been close by...But Voldemort couldn't be here,
now...The idea of Voldemort lurking in Privet Drive was absurd, impossible...
Harry listened closely to the silence around him. Was he half expecting to hear the
creak of a stair or the swish of a cloak? And then he jumped slightly as he heard
his cousin Dudley give a tremendous grunting snore from the next room.
Harry shook himself mentally; he was being stupid. There was no one in the house
with him except Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley, and they were plainly
still asleep, their dreams untroubled and painless.
Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; it wasn't as though they were
ever any help to him awake. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were
Harry's only living relatives. They were Muggles who hated and despised magic in
any form, which meant that Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot.
They had explained away Harry's long absences at Hogwarts over the last three
years by telling everyone that he went to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably
Criminal Boys. They knew perfectly well that, as an underage wizard, Harry
wasn't allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but they were still apt to blame him
for anything that went wrong about the house. Harry had never been able to
confide in them or tell them anything about his life in the wizarding world. The
14
very idea of going to them when they awoke, and telling them about his scar
hurting him, and about his worries about Voldemort, was laughable.
And yet it was because of Voldemort that Harry had come to live with the
Dursleys in the first place. If it hadn't been for Voldemort, Harry would not have
had the lightning scar on his forehead. If it hadn't been for Voldemort, Harry
would still have had parents...
Harry had been a year old the night that