Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (6 page)

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few mouldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door and Harry was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn’t sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. 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, wondering where the letter-writer was now.

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. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he’d be able to steal one somehow.

Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?

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.

The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.

BOOM. They knocked again. Dudley jerked awake.

‘Where’s the cannon?’ he said stupidly.

There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room. He was holding a rifle in his hands – now they knew what had been in the long, thin package he had brought with them.

‘Who’s there?’ he 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 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.

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.

‘Budge up, yeh great lump,’ said the stranger.

Dudley squeaked and ran to hide behind his mother, who was crouching, terrified, behind Uncle Vernon.

‘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 yer dad, but yeh’ve got yer mum’s eyes.’

Uncle Vernon made a funny rasping noise.

‘I demand that you leave at once, sir!’ he said. ‘You are breaking and entering!’

‘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 another 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 with trembling fingers. 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 on the way to his mouth, 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?’ he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘I’d not say no ter summat stronger if yeh’ve got it, mind.’

His eyes fell on the empty grate with the shrivelled crisp packets in it and he snorted. He bent down over the fireplace; they couldn’t see what he was doing but when he drew back a second later, there was a roaring fire there. It filled the whole damp 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 poker, a teapot, several chipped mugs and a bottle of some amber liquid which he took a swig from before starting to make tea. Soon the hut was full of the sound and smell of sizzling sausage. Nobody said a thing while the giant was working, but as he slid the first six fat, juicy, slightly burnt sausages from the poker, Dudley fidgeted a little. Uncle Vernon said sharply, ‘Don’t touch anything he gives you, Dudley.’

The giant chuckled darkly.

‘Yer great puddin’ of a son don’ need fattenin’ any more, Dursley, don’ worry.’

He passed the sausages to Harry, who was so hungry he had never tasted anything so wonderful, but he still 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.’

The giant took a gulp of tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘Call me Hagrid,’ he 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 as should be sorry! I knew yeh weren’t gettin’ yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn’t even know abou’ Hogwarts, fer cryin’ out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yer parents learnt it all?’

‘All what?’ asked Harry.

‘ALL WHAT?’ Hagrid thundered. ‘Now wait jus’ one second!’

He had leapt to his feet. In his anger he seemed to fill the whole hut. The Dursleys were cowering against the wall.

‘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, after all, and his marks weren’t bad.

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

But 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, whispered something that sounded like ‘Mimblewimble’. Hagrid stared wildly at Harry.

‘But yeh must know about yer mum and dad,’ he said. ‘I mean, they’re
famous. You’re
famous.’

‘What? My – my mum and dad weren’t famous, were they?’

‘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. ‘Stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!’

A braver man than Vernon Dursley would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when 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.

‘Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh,’ said Hagrid. ‘Harry – yer a wizard.’

There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.

‘I’m 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:

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?’

‘Gallopin’ Gorgons, that reminds me,’ said Hagrid, clapping a hand to his forehead with enough force to knock over a cart horse, and from yet another pocket inside his overcoat he pulled an owl – a real, live, rather ruffled-looking owl – a long quill and a roll of parchment. With his tongue between his teeth he scribbled a note which Harry could read upside-down:

Hagrid rolled up the note, gave it to the owl, which clamped it in its beak, went to the door and threw the owl out into the storm. Then he came back and sat down as though this was as normal as talking on the telephone.

Harry realised his mouth was open and closed it quickly.

‘Where was I?’ said Hagrid, but at that moment, Uncle Vernon, still ashen-faced but looking very angry, moved into the firelight.

‘He’s not going,’ he said.

Hagrid grunted.

‘I’d like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him,’ he said.

‘A what?’ said Harry, interested.

‘A Muggle,’ said Hagrid. ‘It’s what we call non-magic folk like them. An’ it’s your bad luck you grew up in a family o’ the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on.’

‘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!’

‘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 holiday 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. As soon as he found his voice he said, ‘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! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin’ his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!’

‘But why? What happened?’ Harry asked urgently.

The anger faded from Hagrid’s face. He looked suddenly anxious.

‘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 …’

He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds and then said, ‘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?’

‘Gulpin’ gargoyles, 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.

‘Could you write it down?’ Harry suggested.