MANIA - HJP

CHAPTER II

The minute hand on the alarm clock reached the number twelve and, at that precise moment, the street lamp outside the window went out.

Harry awoke as though the sudden darkness were an alarm. Hastily straightening his glasses and unsticking his cheek from the glass, he pressed his nose against the window instead and squinted down at the pavement. A tall figure in a long, billowing cloak was walking up the garden path.

Oh, shit. 

He had forgotten that Dumbledore was coming to collect him. 

Harry sprang up, knocked over his chair, and began seizing anything within reach from the floor and flinging it into the trunk as if he had received an electric shock. The doorbell rang as he tossed robes, spellbooks, and clasps across the room. Downstairs in the living room, his Uncle Vernon shouted, "Who the blazes is calling at this lime of night?"

With a brass telescope in one hand and a pair of trainers in the other, Harry came to a halt. He'd completely forgotten to alert the Dursleys to the possibility of Dumbledore's arrival. He scrambled over the trunk and yanked open his bedroom door, feeling both panicked and on the verge of laughing, just in time to hear a baritone voice say, "Good evening. You must be Mr. Dursley. I daresay Harry has told you I would be coming for him?"

Harry dashed down the stairs two at a time, stopping abruptly a few steps from the bottom, as he had learned from previous experience to stay out of his uncle's reach whenever possible. 

A tall, slender man with waist-length grey hair and a beard stood in the doorway. He was dressed in a long black travelling cloak and pointed hat, with half-moon spectacles perched on his crooked nose. Vernon Dursley, who wore a puce dressing gown and had a bushy moustache like Dumbledore's but was black, was staring at the guest as if he couldn't believe his little eyes.

"Judging by your look of stunned disbelief, Harry did not warn you that I was coming," said Dumbledore pleasantly. "However, let us assume that you have invited me warmly into your house. It is unwise to linger overlong on doorsteps in these troubled times. "

He crossed the threshold deftly and shut the front door behind him.

"It is a long time since my last visit," said Dumbledore, peering down his crooked nose at Uncle Vernon. "I must say, your agapanthus are flourishing. "

Vernon Dursley remained silent. Harry was confident that his uncle's speech would return soon—the vein pounding in his uncle's temple was approaching dangerous levels—but something about Dumbledore seemed to have briefly robbed him of breath. It could have been his outward wizardry, but it could also have been the fact that even Uncle Vernon sensed he was dealing with a man who would be tough to bully.

"Ah, good evening Harry," said Dumbledore, looking up at him through his half-moon glasses with a most satisfied expression. "Excellent, excellent. "

Uncle Vernon appeared to be roused by these words. It was obvious to him that any man who could look at Harry and say "excellent" was a man with whom he could never agree.