The Cupboard Series 5: United We Stand ...

Chapter 1

"Are you sure you want you do this?"

Harry Potter looked sidewards at the girl whose fingers were interlocked with his own as the two of them walked down the middle of the street.

Hermione was his rock, his anchor and the fact that she had a look of concern and uncertainty on her face made him second-guess their purpose there. Knowing the fact that the two of them, a witch and a wizard, were in the middle of this muggle neighbourhood, where, if the nice, normal everyday people behind the neat, cardboard cut-out homes knew what they were would send them into a panic, made him question his decision.

The fact that those very same people would never know, or be able to tell, was actually some comfort. For, even though Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were magical, they could pass for 'normal' in the non-magical world.

They knew how to dress. They knew how to blend in. They even knew to keep their magical wands in the disillusioned holsters strapped to their arms unless it was an emergency.

The reason that the two of them knew how to blend in so well was because neither had known that they were magical until their eleventh birthday. That was when their whole world changed in the guise of a green-inked envelope inviting them to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry as students.

That was the start of the most amazing four years of their lives so far.

They'd walked through brick walls into hidden alleys filled with magical shops that sold everything from wands to cauldrons to pet toads. They'd discovered a whole new currency at the great marble bank run by goblins. They'd lived in a magic school hidden inside an ancient castle. Harry had become a Quidditch sports star, a game played on brooms with six goal posts and four balls.

And then there were the people and creatures that they'd met during those four years.

The first magical person that Harry'd met was the half-giant, Hagrid – a more gentle person he'd never met, even if he did have a fixation with large dangerous animals. Currently, Hagrid was living in a dragon preserve in Romania.

The first person that Hermione'd met happened to be their current Headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, who had the ability to turn herself into a tabby cat with the barest thought.

Of course, they'd made plenty of friends their own age, too. Their best friend, Neville, had grown up in the magical world and would be as lost out in the non-magical world as Harry and Hermione had been when they'd first entered the magical world. But put him in a greenhouse filled with magical plants that wanted to eat you and he'd be right at home.

Beside the greenhouses back at the manor where their new school used to be housed was an enormous domed area filled with magical creatures. The pride of the school were the pair of diricawl, otherwise known in the non-magical world as 'dodos'. Then there were the garden gnomes, real life creatures that looked like potatoes; the burrowing nifflers who loved anything that glitters; and all the rest.

Even after all this time, both Harry and Hermione still found so much to be amazed about.

All of that was, obviously, a long, long way from where they currently were, which, incidentally, was on the very street that Harry had grown up on.

This street, Privet Drive by name, in the village of Little Whinging in the district of Surrey, held no good memories for Harry. After his parents had been murdered on that fateful Halloween when he was only fifteen months old, he'd been dumped on the doorstep of his mother's sister and her husband in the middle of the night.

That was the start of ten long years for Harry, years filled with an unending supply of chores, everything from gardening to cleaning to cooking, all from the age that he could reach or hold the needed utensils. Those years had been incredibly dark, literally so at night, when he'd been locked inside the cupboard under the stairs. That cupboard had been his bedroom until his Hogwarts letter had come.