had to fight down a laugh. Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a square inch on the front, into which Mrs Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys’ address in minute writing.
‘She did put enough stamps on, then,’ said Harry, trying to sound as though Mrs Weasley’s was a mistake anyone could make. His uncle’s eyes flashed.
‘The postman noticed,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That’s why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was funny.’
Harry didn’t say anything. Other people might not understand why Uncle Vernon was making a fuss about too many stamps, but Harry had lived with the Dursleys too long not to know how touchy they were about anything even slightly out of the ordinary. Their worst fear was that anyone would find out that they were connected (however distantly) with people like Mrs Weasley.
Uncle Vernon was still glaring at Harry, who tried to keep his expression neutral. If he didn’t do or say anything stupid, he might just be in for the treat of a lifetime. He waited for Uncle Vernon to say something, but he merely continued to glare. Harry decided to break the silence.
‘So – can I go, then?’ he asked.
A slight spasm crossed Uncle Vernon’s large, purple face. The moustache bristled. Harry thought he knew what was going on behind the moustache: a furious battle as two of Uncle Vernon’s most fundamental instincts came into conflict. Allowing Harry to go would make Harry happy, something Uncle Vernon had struggled against for thirteen years. On the other hand, allowing Harry to disappear to the Weasleys’ for the rest of the summer would get rid of him two weeks earlier than anyone could have hoped, and Uncle Vernon hated having Harry in the house. To give himself thinking time, it seemed, he looked down at Mrs Weasley’s letter again.
‘Who is this woman?’ he said, staring at the signature with distaste.
‘You’ve seen her,’ said Harry. ‘She’s my friend Ron’s mother, she was meeting him off the Hog— off the school train at the end of last term.’
He had almost said ‘Hogwarts Express’, and that was a sure way to get his uncle’s temper up. Nobody ever mentioned the name of Harry’s school aloud in the Dursley household.
Uncle Vernon screwed up his enormous face as though trying to remember something very unpleasant.
‘Dumpy sort of woman?’ he growled finally. ‘Load of children with red hair?’
Harry frowned. He thought it was a bit rich of Uncle Vernon to call anyone ‘dumpy’, when his own son, Dudley, had finally achieved what he’d been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall.
Uncle Vernon was perusing the letter again.
‘Quidditch,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘Quidditch — what is this rubbish?’
Harry felt a second stab of annoyance.
‘It’s a sport,’ he said shortly. ‘Played on broom—’
‘All right, all right!’ said Uncle Vernon loudly. Harry saw, with some satisfaction, that his uncle looked vaguely panicky. Apparently his nerves wouldn’t stand the sound of the word ‘broomsticks’ in his living room. He took refuge in perusing the letter again. Harry saw his lips form the words ‘send us your answer in the normal way’. He scowled.
‘What does she mean, the normal way?’ he spat.
‘Normal for us,’ said Harry, and before his uncle could stop him, he added, ‘you know, owl post. That’s what’s normal for wizards.’
Uncle Vernon looked as outraged as if Harry had just uttered a disgusting swear word. Shaking with anger, he shot a nervy look through the window, as though expecting to see some of the neighbours with their ears pressed against the glass.
‘How many times do I have to tell you not to mention that unnaturalness under my roof?’ he hissed, his face now a rich plum colour. ‘You stand there, in the clothes Petunia and I have put on your ungrateful back —’
‘Only after Dudley finished with them,’ said Harry coldly, and indeed, he was dressed in a sweatshirt so large for him that he had had to roll back the sleeves five times so as to be able to use his hands, and which fell past the knees of his extremely baggy jeans.
‘I will not be spoken to like that!’ said Uncle Vernon, trembling with rage.
But Harry wasn’t going to stand for this. Gone were the days when he had been forced to take every single one of the Dursleys’ stupid rules. He wasn’t following Dudley’s diet, and he wasn’t going to let Uncle Vernon stop him going to the Quidditch World Cup, not if he could help it.
Harry took a deep, steadying breath and then said, ‘OK, I can’t see the World Cup. Can I go now, then? Only I’ve got a letter to Sirius I want to finish. You know – my godfather.’
He had done it. He had said the magic words. Now he watched the purple recede blotchily from Uncle Vernon’s face, making it look like badly mixed blackcurrant ice-cream.
‘You’re – you’re writing to him, are you?’ said Uncle Vernon, in a would-be calm voice – but Harry had seen the pupils of his tiny eyes contract with sudden fear.
‘Well – yeah,’ said Harry, casually. ‘It’s been a while since he heard from me, and, you know, if he doesn’t, he might start thinking something’s wrong.’
He stopped there to enjoy the effect of these words. He could almost see the cogs working under Uncle Vernon’s thick, dark, neatly parted hair. If he tried to stop Harry writing to Sirius, Sirius would think Harry was being mistreated. If he told Harry he couldn’t go to the Quidditch World Cup, Harry would write and tell Sirius, who would know he was being mistreated. There was only one thing for Uncle Vernon to do. Harry could see the conclusion forming in his mind as though the great moustached face was transparent. Harry tried not to smile, to keep his own face as blank as possible. And then –
‘Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy … this stupid … this World Cup thing. You write and tell these – these Weasleys they’re to pick you up, mind. I haven’t got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your – your godfather … tell him … tell him you’re going.’
‘OK then,’ said Harry brightly.
He turned and walked towards the living-room door, fighting the urge to jump into the air and whoop. He was going … he was going to the Weasleys’, he was going to watch the Quidditch World Cup!
Outside in the hall he nearly ran into Dudley, who had been lurking behind the door, clearly hoping to overhear Harry being told off. He looked shocked to see the broad grin on Harry’s face.
‘That was an excellent breakfast, wasn’t it?’ said Harry. ‘I feel really full, don’t you?’
Laughing at the astonished look on Dudley’s face, Harry took the stairs three at a time, and hurled himself back into his bedroom.
The first thing he saw was that Hedwig was back. She was sitting in her cage, staring at Harry with her enormous amber eyes, and clicking her beak in the way that meant she was annoyed about something. Exactly what was annoying her became apparent almost at once.
‘OUCH!’
