Harry was extremely surprised. Absolutely, completely extremely surprised.
Uncle promised to take him to London at the end of the week and even drive him to Charing Cross Road. Moreover, instead of anger, his face showed: "How are you holding up?" And this despite the fact that Vernon Dursley had never shown him any affection. Never. Harry took a deep breath and decided to experiment further.
"Um... may I read something?"
***
"It seems Uncle Vernon was surprised that I can read at all," thought Harry, turning the second page of the Muggle book with the intriguing title "The Mystery of the Twelve"*. And this was his last thought before he plunged into a world of intrigue and secrets, manipulations by "Madame," terrible and mysterious murders... He flipped page after page and didn't think to be surprised that he was reading so fast... He didn't think at all, only absorbed.
The well-mannered (well, as the adults thought) Dursley family watched the unhealthy flush of their nephew, who had dragged himself to the table clutching a book. The cursed child, having proceeded to his place and automatically sitting down, wildly squinted at the text, drank his soup over the edge and tried to do the same with the potato casserole. When this didn't work, the boy, without looking away from the book, felt for the piece lying on the plate with his hand, and, hearing neither the weak objections of Petunia who had finally found her voice, nor Vernon's loud shout, nor Dudley's surprised hiccupping, stuffed it into his mouth. And swallowed. Almost without chewing.
Silence fell. In superstitious horror, Petunia cut a small piece of seconds and placed it before her nephew. Husband and son watched silently. He apparently didn't realize immediately, but after about five minutes, without taking his eyes off the text, he carefully reached out and felt for the piece, which met the same fate.
Dudley looked thoughtfully at his mother. He didn't much like potato casserole...
Harry finished what his cousin had given him and belched contentedly, carefully licking his fingers. In the silence, Dudley's dropped spoon clanged loudly. Harry emerged from the book, jumped up, looked around the kitchen with wild eyes... A light breeze passed, the boy shrank and headed under the table. Actually, he climbed under it, only sticking his hand out for the book. By which he was caught by Vernon and hoisted back up.
Fidgeting in the chair that had suddenly become terribly uncomfortable, Harry struggled not to open the book again. He had already returned to reality and, however much he wanted to leave it by diving into the text, he was afraid. First of all for the book: for Vernon to tear it up or take it away would be nothing... After all, he seemed to have done magic, and he was going to get it for that, oh yes!
Petunia Dursley looked around her own kitchen in amazement, gleaming with such perfect cleanliness as she had never been able to achieve, either by herself or with her nephew's help, with any of the newest and best cleaning products. Finally she opened her mouth:
"Well I'll be..."
"What cat, Mum?"
"What?" Petunia was slowly coming to her senses. "I said 'well I never.' So this is also magic, Harry? And you can do this without a wand? Not explode, not set fire, not spray... Not spill..."
Harry pressed into his chair and looked at his aunt in horror. He didn't grasp what immediately dawned on the practical-to-the-bone housewife: with magic, an ordinary kitchen could be brought to a state of absolute perfection in a couple of moments. If this was magic... why the hell should she spend money on all these newfangled super-cleaners and mega-fresheners? And the time that was always spent on tidying up one thing or another, with no end in sight, she would find something to spend on. And her nephew was a real idiot—fancy him fussing with a rag when he could do this!
Finally, the other Dursleys thought to look around. Vernon whistled. The kitchen set looked completely new. Now his wife wouldn't be looking through catalogs and slipping them under his nose with meaningful expressions...
"Wicked," drawled Dudley, looking around following his parents' example. "Potter, that was cool. Did they teach you this at your school?"
And he glanced sideways at his mother.
Petunia squinted appraisingly, examining her nephew. He shrank again and was about to reach for the dishes, but they were already gleaming with pristine cleanliness. The boy gulped loudly.
"Let's go to the living room, dear," his aunt sang in a sweet voice, and Harry's hair stood on end everywhere it was or even just beginning to be...
He was terrified, as it turned out, completely in vain.
He was simply asked to do the same thing in the living room as in the kitchen.
Politely asked.
"Wandless... I really did clean the kitchen wandlessly," thought Harry, recovering from another bout of amazement, "so I need to try to remember what I was thinking... feeling... I just wanted everything to be perfect!"
His cousin, sniffing, stuck the book in his hand. The book!!!
A light breeze walked through the living room for a whole minute, and then Harry slowly sank to the floor and no longer heard his aunt's scream:
"Tampons! Quick, get me tampons! The first aid kit!"
And the loud stomping of uncle and cousin, who rushed in competition for the home first aid kit...
***
Harry came to and immediately decided that all this was a dream.
He was lying... on the formal sofa in the living room, which he wasn't always allowed near even to clean. Something was bothering him in his head and nose. He felt for the tampon and carefully pulled. It hurt a little.
"Don't pull it off, Harry," he heard his aunt's voice, "it's stuck. Otherwise blood will flow again. Now I'll drop some so it soaks, then you'll pull it out. Are you hungry?"
He stared with wide eyes as she carefully guided a pipette to his nose, and squeezed his eyes shut, feeling the coolness of the drops. It turned out not to hurt. Not at all.
"Thank you, Aunt," he squeezed out of himself. His stomach rumbled loudly, making him blush, and his aunt... carefully removed something from his forehead.
It was a compress, Harry remembered the word he had once heard from Madam Pomfrey.
"I'm fine, really," he mumbled, wondering who had replaced his aunt or what they had given her to drink.
"Then get up and march to the kitchen."
On the kitchen table waited sandwiches with brisket, sandwiches with cheese and a large cup of cocoa. The world swayed once again, but Harry managed to grab the edge of the table and sit down.
"Eat and clean up after yourself," ordered Petunia and quickly left. She absolutely didn't want to be alone with her nephew. She felt uneasy for some reason.
***
Having finished all the business in the kitchen, full, probably for the first time in this house, Harry was about to go to his room but was intercepted by his uncle. He habitually shrank and squeezed his eyes shut, but... his left eye began to peek through his lashes on its own, to see where they were leading him. And they were leading him... to the bookshelf. The huge monster occupied almost the entire wall between the windows to the garden.
Harry opened his eyes wide. The Dursleys had books! How had he lived in this house for eleven years and never even noticed? Although... did he care then about what he was dusting? And he didn't know, couldn't even suppose, that the most interesting and fascinating things were hidden inside, behind the seemingly identical dark covers. With a broad gesture, Vernon Dursley invited him to look at... everything in the cabinet! Inside, Harry's heart skipped a beat, but just in case, he decided to clarify.
"Really, may I?"
"You can read any books. At any time."
Uncle Vernon glowed with his own generosity, seasoned with pleasure at the sight of his nephew who had fallen into complete prostration, and had never in his life been so close to having someone throw themselves at his neck with wild screams and try to strangle him—in a fit of gratitude, of course.
"This is for you for cleaning the living room," his aunt tried to justify herself and handed him the very book he had been reading.
"Thank you... Thank you, thank you!" Harry nodded his head, while his hands gripped like a vise into the thick dark gray binding. He immediately remembered where he had left off, and desperately wanted to open it and finally find out how it all ended. And he was deeply grateful to the Dursleys for leaving him alone. And it was then that something began to dawn on him.
He shifted his gaze from the book to the cabinet.
Could it be that Hermione felt something similar when she saw books? Oh... He remembered her delighted and even rapturous face when they first came to the Hogwarts library. How he understood her now! Sister... Harry smiled broadly. No, he would never be offended at her for not writing! She was reading... And he was now... He finally opened the book, landing right on the right page, and disappeared until he reached the epilogue.
***
Harry was sitting on the floor by the cabinet, once again immersed in a detective story. This time he had come across Arthur Conan Doyle's series. Sherlock Holmes became his hero from the very first story...
He didn't notice his cousin approaching and already raising his fist, but...
Dudley wasn't stupid. He saw that his nasty cousin had found something interesting in the pile of small letters. And, judging by how he behaved, terribly interesting. And he, Dudley, wanted it too. The trouble was that such a quantity of text and the word "interesting" just wouldn't connect in his head... He desperately wanted to hit Harry on the head, only it was unlikely that he would tell him anything then. He would fall and moan. Ugh, weakling.
"Hey," the big guy shook the thin shoulder.
Harry emerged from the book and stared at him with cloudy eyes. At another time, his cousin would have, without thinking twice, delivered a blow between the eyes...
"What's interesting?" Dudley managed to connect the incompatible, trying to put both threat and friendliness into his words simultaneously. Well, as he understood it.
Harry flinched.
"Uh... What do you want?" he quickly looked around and realized there was nowhere to run. And his legs somehow didn't want to straighten. That's it. Caught.
"You... Tell me what you read!" demanded Dudley, which quite puzzled Harry. But not for long.
Share what he had just read? Easy! Whole phrases from books surfaced in his head, so Harry spoke quickly and smoothly, as if from a script. Actually, that's almost how it was. And Dudley's expression only added fuel to the fire that already possessed the storyteller.
Vernon, returning from work, found an amazing scene in his own living room. Harry Potter, gesticulating, was telling stories, making faces, sometimes jumping up, while his own son sat primly nearby and listened to the story with his mouth open. "And what is he spinning for him?!" Dursley habitually got angry and listened.
"...An hour after midnight they heard a gentle whistle, and Holmes jumped up sharply and began furiously beating the wall near the bed on which Helen was supposed to sleep with his stick!"
The fragile boyish voice rose and fell, building the right mood, so that his listeners involuntarily held their breath...
"Something rustled, and a minute later a wild cry full of pain and rage came from Mr. Roylott's bedroom..."
Busy with a pie according to a new recipe, Petunia didn't have time to come out to greet her husband, but having finished cooking, she headed to the living room, surprised and slightly offended that he hadn't come to her himself. What she saw she dreamed about several times afterward: her own son and husband, gaping like two idiots, were listening to her nephew.
"...It turned out that the stepfather wanted to get rid of the sisters to take possession of their money. For this he kept a poisonous snake, which he placed in the ventilation pipe at night, and then with the help of candle fire made it crawl into the next room..."
Petunia felt her lower jaw slowly dropping... and carefully sat down in the nearest chair. Her knees bent by themselves.
------
Author — Edward Phillips Oppenheim.
He wrote over 100 novels, more than a third of which were filmed in the first years after the books' publication. He masterfully twisted plots, generously used mystifications, gave secret weapons to heroes, freely moved action around the globe, exposed political intrigues... Useful reading for a thinking Harry ;)