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Harry was picked up in a flying car by Wes's three brothers: Fred, George, and Ron.
As Uncle Vernon's furious roar echoed from the window behind him, Harry rolled it down with a grin, letting the evening breeze whip through his hair.
He could hardly believe it — he was free.
"See you next summer!" he shouted gleefully, sticking his head out and calling to Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley, who stood frozen in shock by the window.
The Weasley brothers burst out laughing, and Harry leaned back in his seat, grinning from ear to ear.
"Harry, can you tell us what happened during the holidays?" Ron asked eagerly once they were safely flying through the night sky. "You didn't reply to a single letter! I was really worried. At first, I thought something happened to Errol…"
"Who's Errol?" Harry asked.
"Our owl," Ron explained. "He's really old and half-blind. Delivering letters tires him out. I wanted to borrow Hermes—"
"Who's Hermes?" Harry interrupted again.
"The owl Percy got when he became a prefect," Fred answered from the driver's seat, glancing back over his shoulder. Harry flinched, nervous that he might crash the car.
"But Percy wouldn't lend him to me," Ron continued bitterly. "Said he needed Hermes himself."
"Percy's acting strange this summer," George added with a frown. "Sending loads of letters and always locking himself in his room. I mean, how many times does a prefect badge need to be polished? Fred, you're flying too far west."
He pointed at a little compass on the dashboard.
Fred quickly adjusted the wheel.
"So… you just took the car out. Does your dad know?" Harry asked, though he'd already guessed the answer.
"Oh, no," said Ron. "He's working late tonight. We're hoping to sneak it back into the garage before Mum finds out. Otherwise, Dad's going to be in big trouble because of us…"
Harry mentally offered a two-second moment of silence for Mr. Weasley.
Then Ron suddenly looked sharply at him, eyes wide.
"…Hang on. Were you just changing the subject?" he asked suspiciously.
"Uh—I wasn't—" Harry turned away, clearly caught, and stared out at the big moon outside the window.
"You were changing the subject!" Ron said triumphantly. "Come on, tell us—what did happen during the holidays?"
Harry hesitated. He instinctively didn't want to talk about the diary, or Tom. So he decided to leave that part out.
"They locked up Hedwig... sort of a punishment, I guess, after I ruined some important business deal of Uncle Vernon's," he muttered. "Then they basically locked me in my room. Just two meals a day and only two bathroom breaks…"
"That's horrible!" Fred exclaimed, clenching his fists.
Startled, George quickly reached for the wheel to keep it steady.
"If they had Hedwig locked up, then no wonder you couldn't send a letter," Ron said, frowning. "But why couldn't Errol find you either?"
"What? He couldn't?" Harry blinked in surprise.
"Nope. I thought maybe Errol had drowned in the lake or something. But then Hermione told me her owl couldn't find you either. That's when Fred and George figured something was wrong."
"That's right," said George from the passenger seat. "The reason owls couldn't find you is probably because of a charm called the Avoidance Curse. Fred and I once tried it to block Mum's howlers—didn't work though."
He looked a little disappointed.
"It's a pretty advanced spell," Fred added. "Wizards use it when they don't want to be disturbed by letters or found by others. But to use it in the Muggle world, and for it to be active for a whole month? That's really suspicious."
"Anyway, it's lucky Fred and George figured it out!" Ron said cheerfully. "If they hadn't, I wouldn't have known you were locked up until we got back to school."
A genuine smile spread across Harry's face.
The flying car soared forward. As they neared their destination, a faint blush of red tinged the eastern horizon.
The rising sun slowly turned the clear, cloudless sky into the soft pink of a blooming rose. It was the kind of sky that promised a beautiful day ahead.
They had arrived—Ottery St. Catchpole.
Fred expertly landed the car next to a battered old garage. It was obvious this wasn't his first time taking Mr. Weasley's enchanted car for a spin.
The garage sat beside a small yard. The crooked house beside it looked like it had once been a large stone pigpen, gradually transformed by adding rooms here and there, some stacked almost impossibly high.
No sensible architect would ever design such a home. Its angles were all wrong, its walls uneven. In the Muggle world, such a house couldn't exist — not even the Leaning Tower of Pisa bent physics this much, and certainly not taste.
There could only be one explanation:
This house was held together by magic.
The four of them got out of the car quietly. Harry saw four or five chimneys standing on the crooked red roof. A sign was stuck diagonally in front of the house that read *"The Burrow."*
"It's not that great here, Harry," Ron said uneasily. "I know the construction is... um... a bit crude, but I promise, the house will never suddenly fall down while you're sleeping!"
"What a shame!" Harry shook his head and said excitedly. "On the contrary, this place is great!"
After escaping the prison of No. 4 Privet Drive, he felt that anywhere else was paradise! What's more, this "Burrow" owned by the Weasley family completely matched his yearning for all sorts of strange and magical things.
Hearing Harry's words, the three Weasley brothers who had brought him were very happy.
They decided to go upstairs quietly and wait for Mrs. Weasley to call them for breakfast — then surprise her.
However, in the next moment, Ron's attempt at an introduction got stuck in his throat. His face suddenly turned green, and his eyes widened as he stared toward the house.
Fred and George sensed something was wrong and turned to look in the same direction.
Mrs. Weasley was walking briskly across the yard, causing the old hens and the large roosters to scatter in panic.
What surprised Harry was that this plump, kind-hearted woman could look as fierce as a grinning tigress!
"Not good," Fred said.
"It's not just bad — we're dead," George added.
Mrs. Weasley stopped in front of them, hands on her hips, eyeing the guilty faces of Fred, George, and Ron one by one.
The atmosphere made Harry feel guilty, and he lowered his head silently.
Mrs. Weasley wore a floral apron and had a wand sticking out of her pocket.
"Alright, you three," she said.
"Good morning, Mum," George said, trying to sound cute in what he imagined was a relaxed and endearing tone.
"Do you know how worried I was?" Mrs. Weasley ignored his tone and spoke in a voice low enough to stop your heart.
"I'm sorry, Mum, but we had to—"
Though all three sons were taller than she was, they were too frightened to answer when her temper flared.
"The beds were empty! No note left behind! The car was gone... maybe you had an accident! I was going mad!" she scolded loudly. "Have you ever thought about that? I've got so many children, but you three are by far the most troublesome! Just wait until your father gets home. Bill, Charlie, and Percy have never done anything like this..."
Mrs. Weasley's scolding felt like it lasted an hour. Harry stood nearby, listening nervously.
At some point during her rant, when she seemed to have reached a state of furious rhythm, Fred quietly nudged George's hip with his elbow.
"George, you're 14. You're not cute anymore," he whispered, barely moving his lips — yet the words came through clearly. "That trick won't work. The only one who can save us now is Harry."
George understood immediately. He bumped Harry's left arm with his hip, startling him.
"Harry, our lives are in your hands now!" he whispered. "Say something to Mum. Greet her. Let her notice you."
"Mum will be so glad to see you. She'll forget we even stole the car…"
Harry's lips twitched.
Looking at Mrs. Weasley, who was still fuming like an angry tigress, he hesitated. Would interrupting her make things worse? Was his presence really that useful?
He felt a bit timid.
"Come on, Harry — the sooner you distract her, the sooner we're off the hook," George's voice urged again.
Harry gritted his teeth and made up his mind.
After all, it was the three Weasley brothers who had rescued him from that dreadful cage. What was a little scolding compared to that?
So he stepped forward, as if heading for his doom.
"Um… hello, Mrs. Weasley," Harry said weakly.
His voice instantly drew her attention.
"Oh, Harry, dear, it's lovely to see you!" she said, her tone changing completely. Though her voice was a bit hoarse from shouting, it was now filled with kindness. "Come in and have some breakfast!"
She seemed to have forgotten all about the three boys she had been yelling at, and cheerfully turned back toward the house.
Harry glanced nervously at Ron and the twins, and saw all three of them give him a thumbs-up. Fred and George's eyes sparkled — it was obvious what they were saying:
*"Well done!"*
…
Life at the Burrow was completely different from life at Privet Drive.
The Dursleys liked everything neat and tidy, but the Weasleys' home was full of magic and surprises—
The mirror above the kitchen mantelpiece startled Harry.
The first time he looked into it, the mirror suddenly shouted, "Tuck your shirt in! You look a mess!"
There was also a ghoul living in the attic. Whenever things got too quiet, it would start howling and banging on the pipes.
On top of that, small explosions constantly came from Fred and George's room — something the rest of the family treated as perfectly normal. Harry couldn't help remembering the lofty dream they whispered about during last year's Christmas party — how they wanted to invent a firework big enough to engulf all of Hogwarts Castle.
*'They can't seriously pull that off, right?'* Harry worried for the castle's safety.
But none of that was what struck Harry the most.
To him, the most unusual part of the Weasleys' home wasn't the talking mirror, the howling ghoul, or the explosive bedroom...
It was the fact that everyone here liked him.
Mrs. Weasley carefully mended his socks — even the ones Dudley had stretched and torn. She insisted on piling extra food onto his plate at every meal, fussing that he was far too thin and still growing.
Mr. Weasley loved to have Harry sit next to him at meals and constantly asked him questions about Muggle life — plugs, the post office, and everything in between…
About a week after Harry arrived at the Burrow, on a bright morning, he received a letter from Hogwarts.
"Post from school," Mr. Weasley announced, holding several envelopes delivered by Hogwarts' public owl.
Harry and Ron each received a yellowish parchment envelope with green ink.
"Harry, Dumbledore already knows you're here," Mr. Weasley said, sounding impressed. "Nothing escapes that man."
He handed each letter to its rightful owner and watched them with a proud expression.
No one spoke for a moment — they were all reading.
Harry's letter informed him that he would, as usual, take the Hogwarts Express from King's Cross Station on September 1st.
Attached was the booklist for second-year students:
- The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 2) by Miranda Goshawk
- A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration by Emeric Switch
- One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore
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Aside from Standard Spells by Miranda Gorshak being moved from level one to level two, the rest of the books were basically identical to the first-year reading list, with nothing new to buy.
However, Harry's eyes widened when he reached the final line.
At the very end, it read:
*"Randomly Picked Mistakes from Dark Arts: A Guide to Self-Defense" by Brad Dracula*
The title didn't sound like a proper textbook at all—it felt more like a satire targeting well-known authors. Typically, books like these didn't sell well.
But that wasn't the real surprise.
"Professor Dracula wrote a book?" Harry turned to Ron, completely stunned.
"No way, someone as lazy as him actually wrote a book?" Ron looked just as confused. "He doesn't even grade homework properly. I'm pretty sure he ignored our last assignment entirely."
At Ron's words, Mr. Weasley glanced up from his newspaper with a deep frown.
"So it's another unreliable Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher?" he muttered. "Honestly, Hogwarts hasn't had a decent one in decades."
"That's not true, Dad," Percy interrupted, lowering his letter. "Professor Dracula is the most competent Defense teacher I've seen in five years. He even said in class that The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection had serious errors, and that this new book is meant to correct them."
Mr. Weasley's mouth fell open. "Wait—you mean he's staying another year?!"
All the children in the room nodded in agreement.
He let out a sharp breath. "Merlin's beard... That's a first. I've never heard of a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor lasting more than one year!"
"There's nothing strange about it," Mrs. Weasley chimed in, drying dishes. "I met Professor Dracula once, during Lockhart's tea party at Madam Puddyfoot's. He looked like a truly powerful wizard. And quite charming too!"
Her eyes sparkled.
"It's such a shame I believed that fraud Lockhart for so long," she sighed. "If Dracula hadn't caught him at that tea party, we might've never learned the truth—that Lockhart stole people's memories and claimed their achievements."
"And don't forget," she added, "he told you all to bring the crystal ball we sent to Brown Castle when we visited Charlie in Romania!"
Mr. Weasley suddenly remembered and slapped his thigh. "Of course! That was him too!"
He turned to Ron, excitement on his face. "Then it's wonderful that he's publishing a book!"
"Well, I suppose so," Ron said hesitantly, "but I just don't think writing suits him."
At that moment, Fred and George came walking in together.
"Actually... we know why he published it."
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