To change the future

COS-2

Not for the first time, an argument had broken out over breakfast at number four, Privet Drive. Mr. Vernon Dursley had been woken in the early hours of the morning by loud, hooting noises from his nephews Harry and Jason's room. "Third time this week!" he roared across the table. "If you two can't control those owls, they'll have to go!"

"Oh god we start with them." Theo groans under his breath

Harry tried, yet again, to explain.

"They're bored," he said. "They're used to flying around outside. If we could just let them out at night—"

"Do I look stupid?" snarled Uncle Vernon, a bit of fried egg dangling from his bushy mustache. "I know what'll happen if those owls' are let out." He exchanged dark looks with his wife, Petunia.

"Yes." everyone says when Vernon asks if he looked stupid

Harry and Jason tried to argue back but their words were drowned by a long, loud belch from the Dursleys' son, Dudley.

"I want more bacon."

"There's more in the frying pan, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia, turning misty eyes on her massive son. "We must build you up while we've got the chance... I don't like the sound of that school food..."

"Nonsense, Petunia, I never went hungry when I was at Smeltings," said Uncle Vernon heartily. "Dudley gets enough, don't you, son?"

Dudley, who was so large his bottom drooped over either side of the kitchen chair, grinned and turned to Harry, still slightly afraid of Jason, since he knew the other boy wasn't afraid and quite capable of knocking him on his ass

"That is not a healthy weight." Pomfrey says with a frown "He's even bigger now." Jason informs her

"Pass the frying pan."

"You've forgotten the magic word," said Harry irritably.

The effect of this simple sentence on the rest of the family was incredible: Dudley gasped and fell off his chair with a crash that shook the whole kitchen; Mrs. Dursley gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth; Mr. Dursley jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples. Jason sighs beside him.

"Oh what is their problem now?" Toni asks in irritation

"I meant 'please'!" said Harry quickly. "I didn't mean—"

"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU AND YOUR BROTHER," thundered his uncle, spraying spit over the table, "ABOUT SAYING THE 'M' WORD IN OUR HOUSE?"

"But I—"

"HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!" roared Uncle Vernon, pounding the table with his fist.

"I just—"

"I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!"

"What an unpleasant man." Pepper says and Toni says, though with her notes she's taken so far she'll get both of them in a lot of legal trouble.

Harry stared from his purple faced uncle to his pale aunt, who was trying to heave Dudley to his feet. Jason just shook his head at him

"All right," said Harry, "all right..."

Uncle Vernon sat back down, breathing like a winded rhinoceros and watching Harry and Jason closely out of the corners of his small, sharp eyes.

Ever since they had come home for the summer holidays, Uncle Vernon had been treating them like bombs that might go off at any moment, because Harry and Jason Potter weren't normal boys. As a matter of fact, they were as not normal as it is possible to be.

"That's true." Jason says, remembering all the stuff they had gone through the last four years.

Harry and Jason Potter were wizards—a wizard fresh from their first year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if the Dursleys were unhappy to have them back for the holidays, it was nothing to how they felt.

"You guys don't live there still right?" Steve asks "We live with Sirius and Remus now, though we have to stay there for a few days every summer." Jason says