Harry Rotter

by Gerrard Wllson

towards it.

  Standing outside, he peeped through the crack in the door, trying to get a glimpse of the mysterious radio that had taken so long to assemble. He looked but he saw no sign of it, he saw nothing at all. Pushing the door cautiously inwards he tried to get a better look. As the door slowly creaked open it revealed his son’s workbench – and the new fangled wand sitting so innocently atop it.

  Looking around, to make sure the coast was clear, that no one was watching him, Mr Privet crept surreptitiously into his son’s inner sanction, the room that he had promised never to enter on his own. A floorboard creaked. He stopped, frozen to the spot. No one heard it; no one came rushing up the stairs to catch him red-handed. He ventured further into the room, wondering where the radio could be.

  Seeing nothing of any more interest than a peculiar steel rod on the workbench – the new electro magical wand – Mr Privet picked it up and began waving it. “Hmm,” he whispered, “this doesn’t look like a radio.” Then studying it closer, he spotted some buttons at one end. “Now, what are these?” he said, “Might be on/off switches, I suppose, and radios do come in all sorts of shapes and sizes nowadays.” He pressed the first button. There was a slight click, but nothing happened.

  Waving it again, Mr Privet said, “I wish I could understand what’s been going on around here.” And he did. He suddenly understood everything that his son and Harry had been up to in that room. He laughed, Mr Privet laughed thinking his mind was playing tricks on him and his imagination was running into overdrive, and he said, “Hold it together, Laurel, or they’ll be carting you off to the loony bin, and sharpo.”

  Waving the rod again, this time like a conductor’s baton, Mr Privet imagined he was conducting an orchestra. Then he heard music playing. Surprised by this, he stopped waving it. The music also stopped. Looking carefully at the rod, he thought that perhaps it really was a radio. That it had simply taken a while for it to warm up, and now that it had it was beginning to play music on the station it was last tuned into.

  He pressed a second button. It clicked, but unlike the first one this button produced an immediate result, a very unfortunate result indeed. Flames, huge searing flames shot out from the wand, scorching the wallpaper in front of him. “No, no!” Mr Privet gasped, in fright, directing the wand away from the burning wallpaper, to his son’s wardrobe which the flames began attacking in earnest. “No, no!” he shouted again.

  Hearing the commotion upstairs, Harry and Box dashed out from the kitchen, scorched down the hallway and leapt up the stairs two steps at a time. Arriving on the landing they found the door of Box’s bedroom now fully open, with huge flames shooting out through it.

  Smiling with satisfaction, Harry said, “Well, at least we know that it works!”

  “What about my room?” Box hollered, unable to see into it, for all the flames and smoke billowing out.

  On reaching the landing, Mrs Privet began crying loudly, “Laurel, what have you done? Laurel, can you hear me? Laurel, where are you?”

  Harry knew that something had to be done – and it had to be done fast – but stunned by the Muddlesome meddling of her uncle, she hesitated, unable to decide on what.

  Box, however, had no such qualms and he sprang into action like he had been dealing with such things all of his life. Shouting in through the doorway, to his father, he said, “Point it out the window!”

  “What?” his father yelled. “What did you say?”

  “I said point it out through the window! Aim the flames out through it!”

  “But the window’s shut!”

  “Don’t worry about that – JUST DO IT!” he ordered.

  Following his son’s instructions, Mr Privet pointed the wand at the window, and no sooner had he done this did the huge flames shatter the glass into a million red-hot pieces that rained onto the ground below.

  With the charred doorway free of flames, Box, followed closely by Harry, entered the room. His father was still holding the wand; pointing the huge flames that showed no signs of abating, out through the window.

  “Help, help!” he shouted, “This radio has gone berserk. All that I wanted to do was change the station.”

  “Hang on a minute, Harry will stop it,” Box shouted. Then turning to her, he said, “It’s up to you now, cousin. This is your department.”

  “It seems a waste,” she replied dryly, “stopping such a fine flame.”

  “HARRY!”

  “Oh, all right,” she said, uttering some words that Box failed to hear let alone understand, quenching the flames.

  Mr Privet, his face, hands and clothes all sooty black, carefully placed the ‘radio’ onto the workbench, close to where a small fire was still burning. Wetting two of his fingers, he extinguished the flames with them, and muttered, “You know, I only wanted to change the station – that was all, just the rotten station...”

  Outside, on the landing, his wife called out, “Laurel! Are you all right?”

  “Holly, where are you?”

  When his wife entered the room and saw the utter devastation within it, she burst out crying.

  “It’s all right, Holly,” said her husband. “It’s not that bad. I just put it on the wrong station, that’s all… It was just a silly mistake…”

  Mr Privet mumbling incoherently and his wife crying inconsolably left the smouldering room, on their way to their own bedroom, where they closed the door, trying to forget everything had just witnessed.

  “Phew, that was close,” Harry said with a wink.

  “Close?” Box yelled. “We could have all been burned to a crisp!”

  “Might have, but didn’t,” she replied, hurt that her cousin’s faith in her abilities was so lacking.

  With the help of her newly tested wand, Harry soon had the room returned to its former condition, down to the very last detail including a cobweb hanging from a corner of the ceiling.

  Nothing more was said about this unfortunate incident, Mr and Mrs Privet preferring to believe that it had all been some sort of a bad dream, for how could it be anything other than that, when there wasn’t even the slightest sign of fire or damage to be seen anywhere?

  Are you Coming?

  A week later to the very day, in the morning, early, before it was even light, Box heard someone tapping on his bedroom door.

  “Who’s there?” he whispered, fumbling for his glasses, to see what time it was.

  “It’s me, Harry.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk with you.”

  “Can’t it wait until morning, when I get up?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Silence.

  “I said, why not?”

  “Let me in.”

  By now Box knew only too well when his cousin, Harry, had something on her mind she persisted, until she got what she wanted. In this case it was an ear. So climbing out of warm bed, he unbolted the door and let her in. Jumping back in bed, he asked, “Well, what’s so important that it couldn’t wait until later?”

  Remaining uncharacteristically quiet, Harry searched for words, the best words to use. Finding them, she said, “I am leaving.”

  “Leaving? When?”

  “Today,” said Harry, “And I wanted to ask…if you would consider coming along with me?”

  “Me? Why? Where are you going?”

  “To Hagswords…”

  “Hagswords!” he said, absolutely stunned by this revelation. “I thought you had escaped from there? I never thought for one instant that you’d ever want to return.”

  Again searching for words, enough to tell him what she was doing but not so many as to divulge her plan, Harry said, “It’s only a matter of time until the school authorities find me… If I take the initiative, if I leave before that happens, I am in with a chance to find it...”

  “To find what?”

  “Something that I forgot, that I left there…”

  “And you must return for it?�
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  “Yes.”

  “It’s that important?”

  “Yes.”

  “What is it?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “Can you give me a clue?”

  “No.”

  There was another silence, much longer than the previous one. The sound of Mr and Mrs Privet’s snoring in the other room could be plainly heard.

  Although Box knew only too well what his cousin was like, that her own agenda always took precedence over everything else, that she was most certainly hiding a great deal more than she was telling him, he had actually grown used to her in a peculiar sort of way. Because of this, and also because he wanted to see what the new electro-magical wand was really capable of doing, he agreed, saying, “All right, I will come along. But I am not going to do anything that’s illegal – is that clear?”

  Smiling, Harry nodded. She was happy; for the first time in her life she was happy to be with someone, even a tall, whimpishly thin Muddle such as Box.

  “Can’t we say goodbye?” Box asked, as he stepped through his bedroom window, onto the trelliswork supporting the white flowering rambling rose bush.

  “No. I’ve already told you!” Harry whispered. “The less your parents know the safer they will be. Now hurry up, I’ve a bad felling…”

  Stopping halfway down the trelliswork, pricking a finger on a thorn, and then sucking it, Box whispered, “A bad feeling? What sort of a bad feeling?”

  “I can’t explain,” she said, following him. “It’s something that I learned to do, during my time at Hagswords.” She laughed a little sardonically, before continuing; “At least I learned something useful while I was there.” Then looking down to