When Harry arrived back home, Aunt Petunia barely gave him a glance before telling him to sort out the garden. So that was what Harry did, cutting the dead-heads off the flower bushes (and eating them) and trimming the hedge (by eating it).
It was one of his favourite chores, and he sometimes thought it was a bit of a pity that he didn't have that job in winter. The cold had never really bothered him, and nor had the heat, but plants grew more in the summer so there wasn't as much point doing the gardening in the winter.
That done, and with the whole garden looking pristine, Harry moved on to cleaning up the inside of the house. All the things that Dudley had dropped but somehow not broken went up into the smallest bedroom, which currently served as Dudley's overflow for his hoard – or, rather, his possessions, though Harry thought of it as a hoard and had consequently found himself feeling quite empathetic with his larger, less-reptilian cousin.
The things which had actually broken and which weren't repairable, Harry followed a scrupulous pattern with. He took them to his aunt, asked what he should do, and then – when she inevitably told him to throw them away – ate them.
Funny little electronic games were actually quite tasty, with all sorts of flavours, and even a wooden toy could be appetizing. It was probably a valuable supplement to his diet or something, though Harry had never seen a version of the Food Pyramid which applied to dragons so he wasn't quite sure.
Then it was time for dinner to be prepared, and Harry did a lot of that as well – fetching, carrying, stirring for long boring periods, chopping things up with the knife… it only made sense for him to do the chopping, because the knife was sharp and his skin was essentially impervious to damage with a stainless steel knife (Harry had tried an experiment when he was nine, to see if his talons could be trimmed) so he was less in danger than Aunt Petunia would be. He was also learning a lot about cooking, as well, which was nice – even if he didn't use it for himself, being able to eat pretty much anything he'd ever tried, it would be good to be able to provide food for more human friends in future.
That, then, was Harry's general routine. In the holidays there was less school and only the same amount of chores, which usually meant more flying practice; he was quite good at it now, and it was something he was sure other dragons practiced a lot as well so it would be good to stay in shape for it.
...
One fine day towards the end of July, the post clattered to the doormat.
"Get the post," Uncle Vernon grumbled.
Harry was already headed that way when his uncle asked, absently snacking on the empty milk carton, and swallowed it down with a gulp before picking up the letters.
There was one for Dudley – probably a late birthday card of some sort – and two or three others, but at the bottom of the pile was one with an address in green ink.
Harry Potter
The Cupboard Under The Stairs
4, Privet Drive
Little Winging
Surrey.
Tilting his head, Harry looked for a long moment at the very first letter he'd ever received.
Then he headed back to the breakfast table, stuffing the letter under the door of his cupboard on the way past, and handed the other letters out to their recipients.
The green-inked letter was the first time he'd ever got something addressed to him, and he was going to savour it.
It was mid-morning by the time the young drake finally managed to retire to his lair and examine the green-inked letter.
Whatever it was written on seemed to be quite thick, and felt different to the more normal paper he was used to. It also smelled a bit more strongly than paper did, but maybe that was just the way it was made – so Harry ignored that, and opened the letter up to see what it said.
HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,
Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)
At this point Harry frowned, wondering what most of those words meant. He'd heard of witchcraft and wizardry, or at least of witches and wizards, usually in the same books which had dragons in them. But this sounded like it wasn't a story-book thing but a real thing?
Except that Merlin was definitely a story person, and what was a Sorc? He didn't have a clue what a Mugwump was, either…
On the whole, so far the letter was very confusing. So Harry read on.
Dear Mr. Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Well, it was certainly a letter that was meant for him, but he didn't remember doing any tests to be accepted into any schools with that sort of name. There had been the Eleven-Plus, which he'd done earlier that year, but Aunt Petunia had insisted that she wasn't going to pay to send him to a Grammar School after Dudley had failed and so had made sure he wasn't going to one of those.
Harry wasn't sure she understood how a Grammar School worked. But maybe this odd Hogwarts school had picked him because of that?
Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.
Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.
And that was just odd. The list was certainly there, folded up underneath the main letter, but what did the bit about an owl mean?
A quick look at the equipment list did mention an owl, but that was a kind of pet and it was an option. Maybe they had an owl shortage? But if they did, Harry didn't think it would make any kind of sense for them to ask for owl donations from students.
Shrugging his wings, he skipped the signature and read through the list of required equipment.
The uniform seemed simple enough at first, robes and a pointed hat were a bit strange but he'd heard of sillier things in school uniforms, but the gloves made him stop and stare at the paper for a moment.
Dragon hide gloves?
Harry wondered if that meant this was actually a dragon school. It made a lot more sense that they'd be sending him a letter specifically because he was a dragon, but maybe it meant he'd done something wrong?
Last time he'd molted he'd been unsure what to do with it, and after some experimentation and plenty of mistakes the best he'd managed was to make a rain hat that covered his glasses. If he'd been supposed to save the bits that went over his paws, and he hadn't, maybe that would mean he'd be in trouble before even going there?
But that couldn't be right, could it? Molts happened because he needed to have a growth spurt, and all the old bits of molt skin were too small for him now. So maybe it was more complicated than that?
Muttering under his breath about this strange list of what he needed for school, Harry read down the list of course books – memorizing them and making a note of checking the local library later – and then the other equipment sounded even stranger.
Pewter? Well, pewter was sort of nice-tasting, if difficult to get hold of – the only place he'd managed to get any was some old toys Aunt Marge had given Dudley which Aunt Petunia had thrown out once Dudley had managed to break them all. But if this was a real school, especially if it was a real dragon school, then how did they stop the students from eating the cauldrons?
Maybe it was like pencils and pens, where you weren't supposed to eat them until they were no longer useful?
And the last bit of the letter said that students could bring a pet – an owl, or a cat, or a toad.
Harry sat down, thinking about that.
Well, owls were apparently running out anyway, so it wasn't a good idea to catch one of those if there was a shortage. And cats might be a bit better, but that one lady's cats kept freaking out whenever they saw him.
Harry briefly wondered how long it was since he'd actually met her – it felt like years! - but shrugged that off, and pondered briefly whether he should try and find a toad in the garden before deciding against it.
Now he'd finished it, a lot of it didn't really make much sense. Maybe it was some of that junk mail that Uncle Vernon kept talking about, which was always a bit of an odd name for it to Harry because he was fairly sure it was Americans who called letters mail and British people said post. That was why they had postboxes.