Accio Paintbrush

Harry's fingers trembled as he lifted the envelope from the doormat. The parchment felt heavy, expensive – the kind of paper he'd once used for watercolor paintings in his previous life. Emerald green ink spelled out his name and address with elegant precision:

Mr. H. Potter

The Smallest Bedroom

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

Before he could break the wax seal – a beautiful coat of arms that made his artist's soul itch to sketch – Dudley's thundering footsteps descended the stairs.

"Dad! Dad! Harry's got something!"

What followed was chaos. Vernon snatched the letter, his face cycling through shades of red as he read the envelope. The breakfast table became a battlefield, with Harry's protests drowned out by Vernon's bellowing and Petunia's sharp gasps.

"No one is writing to you," Vernon declared, shredding the letter while Harry watched, heart sinking. "And if they are, we won't have any of... of that in this house."

But more letters came. They slipped under doors, squeezed through windows, and even – in a display that made Harry wish desperately for a camera – shot out of the kitchen chimney. Each morning, he'd watch Vernon burn them, those beautiful envelopes turning to ash in the fireplace.

In his room, Harry drew. He sketched the coat of arms from memory, the lion, eagle, badger, and snake dancing across his paper. He drew the elegant script of his address, the mysterious green ink. Each drawing went into his Inventory, a growing collection of memories that couldn't be burned.

As the letters multiplied, Vernon's grip on sanity loosened. He nailed the mail slot shut, boarded up windows, and muttered constantly about "them" watching the house. Harry recognized the fear in his uncle's eyes – it was the same look he'd worn years ago when Harry's art had first gained attention.

On Sunday morning, Vernon sat at the breakfast table, looking distinctly pleased with himself. "No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully, spreading marmalade on his newspaper. "No damn letters today—"

The first letter shot down the kitchen chimney like a bullet, followed by dozens more, then hundreds, until the kitchen looked like it was caught in a paper blizzard. Harry leaped for one, his seeker-quick reflexes (though he didn't know to call them that yet) almost catching it before Vernon grabbed him around the waist.

"That's it!" Vernon roared over the storm of letters. "We're going away! Far away! Where they can't find us!"

They drove for hours, through rain and wind, Vernon taking random turns and doubling back on their route. In the backseat, Harry quietly slipped a few fallen letters into his Inventory when no one was looking. He'd read them later, when they stopped – wherever that might be.

The day dissolved into a blur of increasingly bizarre accommodations: a gloomy hotel on the outskirts of a big city, where letters arrived with the morning milk; a dank cottage in the middle of a forest, where they found envelopes rolled up inside each egg the bewildered owner brought them.

Finally, as a storm began to brew, Vernon drove them to a rickety boat dock. "Out!" he commanded, pointing to a tiny vessel that looked barely seaworthy. "Everyone out!"

The crossing was miserable. Icy spray soaked them to the skin as they made their way to what appeared to be a large rock in the sea, topped with a derelict shack that looked like something out of one of Harry's darker paintings.

Inside, the hut was horrible – it smelled of seaweed, wind whistled through gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. Vernon's attempts to start a fire with empty crisp packets only filled the room with acrid smoke.

As night fell and the storm intensified, Harry lay on the floor under the thinnest, most ragged blanket, watching Dudley's luminous digital watch. In ten minutes, he'd be eleven. He traced his finger through the dirt on the floor, drawing a birthday cake with eleven candles. In his mind, he could almost see them flickering.

BOOM.

The whole shack shivered. Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.

BOOM.

Dudley jerked awake. "Where's the cannon?" he asked stupidly.

There was a crash behind them and Uncle Vernon came skidding into the room, holding a rifle. Now Harry knew what had been in that long, thin package he'd brought.

"Who's there?" Vernon shouted. "I warn you – I'm armed!"

SMASH!

The door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and landed flat on the floor with a deafening crash. A giant of a man stood in the doorway, his silhouette filling the entire frame. Lightning flashed behind him, illuminating a wild mane of hair and a beard that covered most of his face.

Harry's fingers itched. In another life, he'd spent years trying to capture the exact quality of light and shadow that played across dramatic scenes like this. But now, as the giant squeezed his way into the hut, ducking so that his head just brushed the ceiling, Harry could only stare in wonder.

The giant's eyes, glinting like black beetles under all that hair, fell upon Harry.

"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," he said. "Yeh look a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yer mum's eyes."

Vernon made a funny rasping noise. "I demand that you leave at once!" he said. "You are breaking and entering!"

"Ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune," said the giant. He reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of Vernon's hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the room.

Harry watched, fascinated. His artist's eye caught every detail: the way the giant's massive hands moved with surprising gentleness, the subtle shift of muscles under his moleskin overcoat, the way the lamplight caught in his wild hair. This was a scene he would draw later, he knew – one he would keep forever in his Inventory, a moment when his life changed once again.

The giant turned back to Harry. "Well, a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here – I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right."

From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box. Harry opened it with trembling fingers. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.

For a moment, Harry remembered another birthday, decades ago in another life, in a sun-filled New York studio with paint-splattered floors and the smell of oils and turpentine in the air. But this – this moment was real, and it was his, and for the first time in either of his lives, he felt the future opening up before him like a blank canvas, waiting to be filled.