The Bolthole

Chapter 3

Harry had gone back to Privet Drive once: after eighth year, after he'd bought his cottage. The Dursleys had moved away—sold the house. It was Dudley who wrote to let him know. His handwriting was chunky, like the pen had been held in the wrong hand. In it he'd written, I thought maybe there was something you wanted to come pick up, but there was nothing of yours I could find.

There'd never been anything of his, in that house. Not a single item that he wouldn't stuff into a trunk at the start of term, not a crumb of himself that he'd leave behind when he went to school.

He wrote back to Dudley, sent it by owl: Is it empty now?

Dudley had given the owl a note in return, a back of an empty government-stamped envelope: No another family lives there now. Lilian asked about the owl. What do I say?

Lilian was his girlfriend. He'd moved in very with her and her parents, all very suddenly. They lived in a flat in north London.

Tell her your cousin is a weirdo, Harry answered, and the next day went by Privet Drive for no reason he could discern. Curiosity? Nostalgia? He couldn't say. A frazzled young woman opened the door, and kids screamed behind her, and one of them seemed to hang from her trousers—was chewing on the fabric.

"Hello," he said. "I'm so sorry to bother you, I—"

"Yes?" she said, half closing the door. She seemed to think he wanted to sell something.

"I used to live here," he said. "Could I—would it be all right if I were to, ah. Have a look around?"

She'd paused, taken off-guard. He was a stranger but he knew he looked very young with his face shaven, drowning in his clothes. And he had a way with young parents. It was like they sensed something about him, and that he pushed something tender at them: the slump of him, the need of him.

She let him in. He walked around, dazed, while she tried to get the children to calm down. There were toys everywhere, now. A crayon drawing on a wall that wouldn't scrub off. The kitchen was painted a light teal, the counter was a mess, the furniture seemed burrowed, mis-matched. Barney & Friends was blaring out of the TV room.

The door to the cupboard under the stairs stood wide open. Dangerous, it seemed: one of the kids could barrel right into it. Harry bent to look in, and realised he had to bend, and realised how small the space was: the frame of it reached his chest. Inside: a bare bulb, big bags of dog food on the shelves, canned goods, a vacuum cleaner. The nozzle slumped sideways and knocked something off the shelf to the floor. It was cramped. Nothing else could fit there.

Where's my bed, the question came to him panicked and strange—he had no bed here. And yet he thought it again, Where's my bed? Where's my—

He got away from the cupboard and walked quickly to the door and stood outside, trying to make the air get into his lungs more efficiently. It wouldn't, lingered at his throat, at his nose. The air wouldn't go in. The shrubs he hid in, the curb where Sirius came to him, the diamond-inlaid second-floor window: Fred and George, the car. Hedwig.

The woman, Nadia, came to him with a glass of water. Put her hand right between his shoulder blades and left it there until he'd calmed down.

"How long did your family live here?" she asked, softly.

"I wasn't family," he said. Drank a little more. "I don't know. I was sent away a lot."

She breathed a sad sigh. He stared into his glass.

That night at the cottage, he found an old desk in the shed, and broke it to use the pieces to board up the cupboard under the stairs. He knew, while he was doing it, how mad he must seem—how mad he was. But the only thought he had was, it's too small and nothing should be in a place so small. Not boxes, or pets, or food for the pets, or food at all, or anything alive. Not children. Especially not children.