Harry Potter: Pandora's Box

Chapter 3: The Letter and a Trip

Summary: Harry's Hogwarts letter arrives and he takes a shopping trip!

Chapter 3: The Letter and a Trip

Harry Potter sighed in relief as he managed to slip away with his letter without any of the Dursley's noticing. Not that they could have done anything about it. But the uneasy truce that had been struck over the last few years was better left without additional provocation. Entering his bedroom, he focused hard on the door, lifting his hand toward it. The liquid heat of his magic flowed through the channels in his arm, escaping from his fingertips, and the wood of the door shimmered. The locking spell wouldn't last long...but it would be long enough to ensure at least a few minutes of privacy. He fell into the chair of his worn, second-hand desk and quickly opened the letter.

His skimmed its contents with soaring joy. His Hogwarts Acceptance letter reading much as he'd been told it would. He'd known that it would arrive today, on this thirteenth birthday. The magical number being the day that a young witch or wizard had their magic fully stabilize. Yet, being told about it and having it here in his hands were two entirely different things. This was real in a way that not even his clandestine visits to Diagon Alley and Godric's Hollow had been. He read every number and letter in detail, even the attached book and supply lists...though he did roll his eyes at the assumption that he would be able to reply.

"Looks like I lost that bet, huh Pandora?"

A feeling of amusement tickled through the back of his mind, even as a tiny spark of magic flashed from his left hand and the five-inch tall form of his mother's greatest creation sprung to life on his desk. Pandora's sprite form was cast in many shades of silver and blue, looking like a diminutive-but-proportional girl a year or two older than Harry himself. Her reasoning for that difference having been a blunt-but-amusing declaration of 'I want boobs, damnit.' Her 'avatar' was, he supposed, quite pretty.

"I told you they were going to be stupid about it. From everything we've seen, they've been treating you like you know all about the magical world. Even if I don't know why, I calculated 99.79% odds that they would continue to act that way."

Harry couldn't help but chuckle and shake his head, even as he looked fondly down at Pandora's half-transparent sprite-form. He still wasn't quite used to being able to physically see it, not after years of her being stuck as a voice in his head, with physical form only inside his mind-palace. She'd only become able to project like this within the last few weeks, as his magic rapidly stabilized, with Pandora no longer having to focus part of herself on smoothing out the flows of magic to help with his control. Even now, he couldn't help but be in awe of just what his mother, along with her best friend, had managed to achieve.

"To be fair, Pan...I do know all about the magical world!"

Pandora huffed, puffing her cheeks out and crossing her arms.

"Only because you have me! And they bloody well don't know about me, now do they? I'm telling you, there's a lot of stuff that's just off in regards to you. Like the fact that we still can't figure out what the hell happened to Siri!"

Harry sighed, eyed the door and the fading locking spell, and quickly put away the letter.

"I know, Pan. You know I agree with you. But you yourself have pointed out that we don't know how much, if any, of the weirdness is malicious. The Potter accounts have been well managed. No one is sitting the Potter Proxy. Heck, someone even forced all those idiots making money off my name to pay royalties. Aside from my isolation here, it seems like I've been rather well done by."

Pandora grumbled, frowned for a moment, then shrugged.

"You're right, of course. Not making sure you were trained properly to navigate in the Wizarding World is still a massive oversight by someone. But the rest of it honestly does seem like someone, probably Dumbledore, has been looking out for you. I still don't trust him though, not given the ward issues and the meddling with your mother's protection."