Chapter 704

The next day, as expected, the television broadcast created a buzz.

A series of fresh news bounced out of the press like slices of freshly baked bread, eagerly waiting to be buttered and jammed and stuffed into people’s bellies. Fred and George’s private radio station was once again put to use, picking out interesting news to broadcast each morning after reading newspaper clippings for “those who still have a child’s heart”.

Fred reads “Utopian Society: Progress or Backwardness?” After reading the news article, Fred asked his listeners for help: “Does anyone know if utopia is a swear word or not? I can’t figure it out after reading the whole thing. This guy who calls himself an anthropologist thinks that wizards are a bunch of freaks who practice some big social experiment in accordance with some philosophy of theirs, which gives me the illusion of working for free. Listen to this: when there is great material abundance and individual survival reaches its peak, the social structure of humanity will inevitably move from strict to loose, at which point the concept of the nation will be weakened and individuals will come together because of commonly shared beliefs…”

Naturally, no one responded to him. After George had read out an exclusive advertisement for Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, it was left to Lee Jordan to introduce the audience to the world outside Britain as he had heard it from relatives abroad.

“It’s not promising.” He said on his latest radio show, “My cousins of who knows how many generations back have scoffed at my haircut, and their family loved to look at people with their nostrils instead of their eyes, which gave me the bad impression that people like them would never seek out their poor relatives and choose to live under their roof unless they absolutely had to, and I happen to have ample sources of information to prove that people recently fleeing from their countries –I believe the term “sojourners” — is becoming more and more common.”

“I would also like to remind you young listeners that if you happen to have strangers in your home, but your parents insist on claiming that you are related to them, you must persuade them to register their presence at the Ministry of Magic and comply with local laws; offenders will pay a hefty fine and an occasional Azkaban Experience package – -given the number of Death Eaters already packed in there, this is really not a good time to show your individuality or courage.”

Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s voices occasionally appeared on the radio, and Ron found pleasure in this, appearing so happy about getting his voice across that he even forgot the real purpose of his return to the Burrow.

“The wedding, Ronald Weasley, your big brother’s wedding!” Mrs. Weasley glared at him intently, “I didn’t call you back to loiter.”

“Mum, I’m doing important stuff – I have every right to do that.” Ron protested loudly.

“Yeah, but you have a right to do household chores too,” Mrs. Weasley said slightly snarkily, “Now go clear the gnomes from the garden, they’re getting bolder and bolder and one day they’ll climb up on the dining room table and demand for me to switch the magic radio channel.”

“Which perfectly proves one point,” Ron said, in a hushed voice, “everyone would get tired of listening to the same song all the time.”

With that Harry and Ron went out to the garden and bent down to search through the grass for gnomes, a creature that looked like mutated potatoes and had inherited the same intelligence as when it was still planted in the dirt, so it was purely a physical task and Hermione was invited to go with Ginny to pick out colours for presents, ribbons, and flowers for decoration, but of course, the flowers currently hadn’t brought home yet since Mrs. Weasley had left that task to Fred and George.

“You went back to Dursleys last night?” Ron questioned with surprise in the garden, “Tell me more details!”

“To get something.” Harry said with mixed emotions, it was hard for him to put into words the visit with the Dursleys, it was the first time he had visited them since the wizarding world had been exposed, he had previously only sent letters, to which the Dursleys were clearly dissatisfied.

This dissatisfaction festered over time and exploded fully the first moment he appeared, Uncle Vernon hollered like a giant frog, questioned loudly the purpose of the Ministry of Magic casting spells in his house, and claimed he hadn’t slept well for a month, and when Harry asked him why he hadn’t asked the Ministry staff while they were still present, Uncle Vernon’s expression looked like he wanted to rush over and punch someone.

“It’s for your protection, and with that protection the neighbours around here, while they’ll still remember that you have a nephew who lives at boarding school -” Harry paused and said with a grimace, ” but will subconsciously ignore my face, and my name. That’s the reason. Basically, all students from Muggle families are protected in this way.”

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia exchanged a look, this answer evidently cleared up a long-standing doubt in their minds about the reason why no neighbours came to their door to harass them despite Harry’s attendance at the Queen’s afternoon tea. They prayed from the bottom of their hearts that their neighbours would become delirious – though the hope was slim since their neighbours all shared Petunia’s natural keenness for trend-setting topics and willingness to spend vast amounts of time probing for details.

They thought it might be because the neighbours’ attention had been drawn away by the wealthy wizard professor who led the students. Thinking of it they became secretly glad about that for a while.

“So … you’ve given up and returned now? How long will you be staying this time?” Uncle Vernon asked in exasperation.

“I didn’t return to stay,” Harry said, “I came over to pack up my things.” The pan in Aunt Petunia’s hand fell to the floor, the hard metal put a small pockmark on her favourite wooden floor, and Dudley, who was on summer holiday, grimaced as if trying to think through the complexities of why Harry had to pack as soon as he returned.

Harry could almost hear Dudley’s rusty brain struggling to function. Harry tried not to look at him, if any member of the family made him feel the slightest hint of a refreshing change in the last few years, it was Dudley who seemed to have developed a slight interest in magic.

Uncle Vernon sprang to his feet, startling everyone, and frowned as he paced around the living room, occasionally sizing up Harry with a witty, deep gaze that made one wonder if he had studied Legilimency.

“Is there anything else?” Harry asked impatiently as the two pairs of eyes met once more for a moment, and then he made his way to leave.

“Don’t be in such a hurry to leave, I still have something to ask!” Uncle Vernon said, and Harry stopped to look at him, but Uncle Vernon became hesitant again, the colour on his face constantly changing, which made Harry click his tongue in wonder. Finally, he spoke up before he got himself suffocated alive, “Is there a war coming?”

“Vernon-” Aunt Petunia shouted shrilly.

“Don’t interrupt, Petunia.” Vernon growled. His face turned a saucy purple.

Harry stared at him, even though they had lived together for eleven years and spent a few more summers together, he couldn’t understand what was going through Uncle Vernon’s brain at the moment.

“What makes you assume that?”

“Why else would you suddenly decide to move away?” Uncle Vernon said, and his small eyes shone with a sly gleam, “You must have known something in advance, didn’t you? The negotiations weren’t going well, yeah, that’s right – it was all over the newspapers, I should have seen it coming.” He pounded his fist, his expression turned bitter.

“Boy, we’re your relatives, you shouldn’t run away alone!”

“You guessed wrong, that’s not the reason.” Harry said stiffly.

“Then it’s because of what!?”

“I’m an adult.” Harry said, feeling a pang of relief inside, “I’m an adult!” he repeated, with a slight rise in the tone of his voice, “so I’m moving out of here and none of you will have to worry about me showing up at home and causing gossip in the future, you’ll just have to tolerate an occasional card from an owl for something like Christmas Day …”

There was an eerie silence in the room.

“Well,” Uncle Vernon mumbled after a moment, “since that’s the reason -”

“Wait, you’re not an adult yet,” Aunt Petunia said with a certain shrewdness in a tone that she has honed while bargaining with people in shops, ” there are still a few days to go.”

“It doesn’t matter anymore.” Harry said.

He looked at Petunia, expecting her to say something else, but her mouth was tightly pursed together, so Harry shrugged and went upstairs to pack his things, and not long after, he came back down with a suitcase containing all traces of his life in this house. He took one last look at the Dursleys, who looked at Harry with an odd expression, and Harry whispered, “Goodbye.” With that, he walked towards the door.

His hand gripped the doorknob tightly, the glare of the sunlight through the window was a little harsh, and behind him, there was a sudden creak of a sofa heard, as if a giant beast had awoken from a deep sleep, followed by the sound of footsteps, and Harry turned slowly as Dudley stood in front of him, hesitantly extending a hand.

“Did those magic books change you this much?” Harry looked at him in amazement.

“I don’t know,” Dudley whispered, “Goodbye, Harry.”

“Okay.” Harry shook Dudley’s hand, “Bye, Dudley.”

Seeing Dudley struggle to squeeze a smile out of his face, a thought popped into Harry’s mind, one that turned very tempting as it went round and round in his head, he knew what he was about to say would provoke a violent response from both Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, but he couldn’t resist the urge to say it, in half jokingly and half seriousness

“Hey, Big D, if you ever fail to find a job that appeals to you, you might as well consider selling magical merchandise aimed at ordinary people. What if your future children turn out to be wizards, we share part of the same bloodline, so you can’t rule that out …” n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Shut up, boy!” Uncle Vernon yelled grumpily. “How dare you-” it was Aunt Petunia’s voice. Harry pulled open the door of 4 Privet Drive with a pleasant background sound, the sunlight showered down on his face and Harry turned his head and shouted, “Oh yes, Dudley, I’ve left something in a place we both know, you would probably like it!”

There was another flurry of sound like chicken cope heard from the house as Harry closed the door and walked towards Sirius who was waiting at the junction smiling at him.

“So this is how you said your goodbye?” Fred and George asked with interest, both of them leaning against the fence, not bothering to come over and help at all. In their words, they had managed to finish the task they had been given, and now it was their break, and they just happened to pass by as they were about to find Cedric when they saw two oddly shaped bottoms and came over to take a look through the fence.

“Well, what do you guys expect me to do?” Harry muttered without enthusiasm, and the twins threw up their hands in surrender, the corner of the rag they were holding dangled down, shaking out dust that made it hard to keep one’s eyes open, Harry was choked and backed away, Ron was unfortunately caught in the middle, so he cursed loudly.

“Mind your tongue,” Mrs. Weasley said angrily as she followed the voice and came over just in time to hear Ron cursing, “I’ll have your mouth glued shut if I hear any more of that – and you two! ” She crossed her arms towards the twins and asked, “Are the chairs all polished?”

“Wiped clean.” Fred said, raising the rag in his hand again.

Mrs. Weasley stepped back, covering her nose and looking at them with a suspicious look on her face, “You two were able to resist not using magic? Where are the flowers?”

“Ready too. We searched the nearby woods for them.” George said with a groan and as the four watched Mrs. Weasley leave, he added in a whisper, “We did search the nearby woods until we met a florist in the village.”

Harry looked up in shock, “How did you get the shopkeeper to agree to sell you flowers? You guys have money at hand?” Of course, he was referring to Muggle coins.

“Oh, the shopkeeper was a pretty girl, a little too young to be easily persuaded, so we decided to sell our three inches -” Fred said.

“Ended up trading a gift bag of snacks from the joke shop for enough flowers.” George said.

” What kind of snack is that?” Ron’s eyes widened.

“There’s no risk, is there?” Harry said worriedly.

“Don’t worry, it’s all stuff that’s passed the vetting process at the moment.” Fred said, “You should trust our eyes-”

“Or Percy’s vision.” George said.

“Anyway, we lied and claimed to have picked up a package left by the wizard, which contained some multi-flavoured grapes, floating fruit drops, Voldi candy, daydream caramel pudding, vampire pudding, canary biscuits, sticky tongue lollipops …” Fred counted on his fingers.

“In a word, it’s all harmless, friendship-enhancing stuff.” George made a summary.

After the two men left, Harry turned to Ron and asked, “What’s a Voldi candy?” He didn’t feel any semblance of fondness for the name.

“The weirdest Muggle candy-like thing they’ve ever invented, supposedly inspired by Voldemort.” Ron explained, “alternating between bitter and sweet flavours on a single candy bean, you can imagine one second it’s full of sweetness and the next it’s bitter as hell … wrapped in thirteen layers in total.”

Harry couldn’t help but shudder as he imagined it in his head.

The morning of the wedding. In the orchard at the back of the Burrow, Felix and Bill were nominally entrusted to check out the wedding venue, but in fact, they were just walking around the premises. The two saw Hagrid approaching from the distance carrying two logs, followed by the even bigger and larger giant Grawp, like some kind of ugly summoned creature.

“The wedding will be held in the afternoon and Fleur is in the house doing a final check on the guest list,” said Bill, “she decided to do this herself, adding a few invitations she had previously missed by the way, and handing them over personally … “Seeing the look in Felix’s eyes, he added, “It wasn’t just Hagrid’s brother, Sirius brought over a list of some big names too. We didn’t dare tell Mum, her nerves were on edge. You know, because of Fred and George’s proposal.”

Felix’s gaze swept over with a hint of weirdness – well, just last night at Harry’s birthday party, Fred and George had proposed to let Grawp steal Fleur at the wedding, where the groom, Bill, had to show his bravery by playing hero to get his bride back.

Just like some ancient wizards captured the evil-doing dragon with their own hands.

Naturally, Mrs. Weasley rejected this proposal unceremoniously and threatened to turn the two brothers into statues at the door if they dared to say one more word on this subject.

The newly arrived Delacour’ were quite excited about this imaginary heroic play but were shocked and dumbfounded when Ginny pointed out the giant that temporarily lived in the orchard to them through the window.

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