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Chapter 1 – The truth

I, Harry James Potter (Order of Merlin, First Class), former Minister for Magic, Head of the Auror Department, Chief Warlock of the Wizengammot, and Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, do solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In doing so I choose to break the habit of a lifetime: a lifetime as a coward, a liar, a cheat and a total bastard.

Does that surprise you? You will not be alone. Very few wizards know the truth about me, and hardly any Muggles. All they know about me is what I fed them in those saccharine children's books. Had to bowdlerise them like mad, of course. Couldn't have the little tikes reading about how I really discovered the Chamber of Secrets, or any of the other scandalous details of my youth. Still, they made a nice little earner for my retirement. The exchange rate between Muggle and wizarding currency isn't as bad as you'd think. I didn't even have to give that Muggle woman a cut. The Imperius Curse can be a wonderful tool.

Where was I? Ah yes: my true story. As you have probably realised by now, I am not (and never was) the clean-cut, wide-eyed, sanctimonious little pain-in-the-arse you find in my books. Not that I have advertised this fact, of course. In the wizarding world I'm a bloody hero. Do you have any idea how many poor buggers were named Harry after the Second War? Thousands! Most people take my reputation at face value and assume that all my exploits were true. Some of them are, but most of the time I was just unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. My career has been built on my fabulous skills as a liar, my willingness to cheat and manipulate to get what I want and, most of all, taking the credit for the work of better wizards and witches.

So why break my silence now, you ask? Why not take my secrets to the grave, in the knowledge that posterity will remember me as the greatest wizard of the last century? A few reasons. First, secrets are heavy on the soul and I carry some very weighty secrets indeed. It is my hope that writing these memoirs will lift the load a little. Second, I am too old to care anymore. I am reaching the end of the Elixir of Life that I swiped off that old fool Dumbledore. I don't suppose that I have many months of natural life left, not when the Firewhisky and the cigars and the general hell-raising finally catch up with me. And third, even if this does enter the public eye, no one will ever believe it. Wizards will decry it as a hoax and Muggles will simply assume it to be the work of some geeks with too much time on their hands.

It is very easy for Muggles to disbelieve in things. They don't believe in magic, despite all the evidence to the contrary. It is a testimony to the skill of the wizarding community that we have created a culture that actively encourages its members to dismiss anything that does not conform to their worldview. We used to have the very devil of a job hiding ourselves before we came up with the idea of the Enlightenment. Hume, Kant, Locke, Rousseau: some of the finest minds in the history of wizardry. They were so successful that you can now cast a spell right in front of your average Muggle and they will instantly use that feat of mental gymnastics they call 'rationalisation' to dismiss it, rather than face the simple truth that it was magic!

Where was I? Ah yes, my story. You already know how it began: orphaned before my first birthday and dumped on my aunt and uncle's doorstep by the chief prig of the magical world, Albus Dumbledore. Oh yes, that bit is true. The Dark Lord Voldemort murdered my parents and tried to do me in as well but the curse backfired, obliterating him and leaving me with my legendary scar. That scar alone has got me more action than anything I have ever said or done. I never did thank him for that.

Don't misunderstand me: I have done some pretty bad things in my time, but I've never been a Dark wizard. Never even been tempted. Oh I'll bully and manipulate and lie to get what I want, but even a bastard has standards. Torturing people to death just because of who their parents happened to be? It just isn't Quidditch.

So there I was, orphaned and thrust into the unwilling arms of my aunt and uncle, Petunia and Vernon Dursley. A greater pair of spiteful, unpleasant bores never drew breath. They were so painfully middle class that they wouldn't break wind in their own bathroom for fear of what the neighbours might think. But for the potential scandal, they would probably have drowned me in the river like an unwanted pet, knowing that I was both a wizard and an in-law. I'm still not sure which they resented more. As it was they kept me and raised me alongside their equally odious son Dudley, who looked like a blancmange and had the brains to match.

The first seven years of my life were pretty dreadful; sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs, half portions for dinner, hand-me-down clothes, getting beaten up by Dudley. A regular Cinderella upbringing. I am sure Aunt Petunia would have put me to work scrubbing floors, given time. As it was she never had the chance.

It was Dudley's eighth birthday and my aunt and uncle were taking him on a day trip to London Zoo. Unable to foist me on the old bat that lived next door (as they usually did), they were forced to take me along too.

"Just keep quiet," Uncle Vernon warned me as we climbed out of the car, "And don't walk too close. We don't want people to think you're with us."

It did occur to me to point out that I might not look quite so odd if they say, allowed me out of the house more often, fed me properly and bought me clothes that actually fit, but I decided against it.

Dudley did not have the capacity to appreciate the beauty of the animals, or the patience to wait for them to do something entertaining. I do not think he understood the difference between a zoo and a circus.

"Why won't it roar?" he demanded, stamping his foot and gesturing at a lion snoozing contentedly in the midday sun.

"It's just having a nap, Duddykins. Maybe if you wait…" Aunt Petunia's explanation tailed off into silence as Dudley raced away towards another, potentially livelier exhibit. So the day passed, with Dudley charging back and forth with his parents following in his wake. I followed them as slowly as I could. Uncle Vernon was getting more and more frustrated with Dudley and when that happened I was the one who got it in the neck. Heaven forbid that darling Dudders should ever be in trouble…

Dudley finally slowed down in the Reptile House, not because the exhibits were any livelier but because it was crowded and we were forced to shuffle along between the rows of glass tanks. I have always hated reptiles; I am scared witless by them. I tried to wait outside but Uncle Vernon was looking for a scapegoat and dragged me through the doors.

"I want to keep you where I can see you," he growled.

It was uncomfortably humid in the Reptile House. I slunk along, head down, trying to avoid attracting Uncle Vernon's attention. Dudley at last found something that appealed to him: a keeper feeding live mice to a tank of rattlesnakes. I was forced to wait while he watched the 'show', hooting triumphantly as each mouse was snapped up. Quite a crowd gathered and I was pushed up against a tank containing the biggest damn snake I had ever seen: a boa constrictor, ten feet long and as thick as a lamppost.

"Horrid thing," I muttered. I tried to move away from the glass but there were too many people. I glanced back at the snake. It was looking straight at me. A snake does not have a very expressive face, but I felt sure this one was looking at me almost inquisitively.

"Are you… are you looking at me?" I stammered. The snake nodded.

I leapt a good two feet into the air, squealing like a kettle and displaying my usual courage and reserve:

"Aaargh! Get away! Get away from me, you brute! Help! He-e-elp!"

I tried to push through the crowd but they just stared at me. I turned to look back. The snake looked hurt.

"Go away!" I shrieked, waving my arms at it. Suddenly the glass front vanished and the snake, all ten feet of it, leapt into the air as if a bomb had gone off underneath it. It span over the heads of the crowd and landed on top of Dudley, bearing him to the ground. Dudley yelled even louder than I had. Uncle Vernon roared and Aunt Petunia fainted. The crowd began screaming and stampeded for the exit. I caught a glimpse of the boa constrictor slithering along between their legs. What happened to it I don't know. I don't think it was ever recaptured.

The keepers questioned Uncle Vernon about what had happened, as the only conscious adult left in the building, but he only answered with insults and threats:

"Rank incompetence… Public menace… Faulty glass… Shoddy workmanship… Should sue you all to hell and back!"

Both Dudley and Aunt Petunia were too shaken to carry on with the visit so, as soon as Petunia could walk unsupported, we headed back to the car park. There Uncle Vernon turned on me. Pinning me up against the car door, he lowered his face until it was inches from mine.

"I know you had something to do with that snake, boy," he snarled, "I don't know how you did it but you set that… that monster on your cousin!"

I can see him now: the red, jowly face filling my vision; spittle dribbling out of the corner of his mouth; the glimmer of fear in those dark, swinish eyes. I saw the fear and I knew what I had to do.

"Yeah, I did," I said, as calm as you like. That stumped him. He had expected pleas, denials; not an admission.

"You what?" he said.

"I set the snake on Dudley," I said, "And that's not all I can do."

The colour drained from Uncle Vernon's face so fast it was like a tap had been opened in his neck: from red, to pink, to ashen white. I kept my face as calm and as serious as I could and tried to suppress the tremors that were running through my whole body. Inside, though, I was grinning. The Dursleys were mine.

I was bluffing like mad, of course. I had no more idea what had happened than Uncle Vernon did. It never occurred to me that I had performed magic, even inadvertent. All I knew was that Uncle Vernon was frightened; frightened of me and of what I might be able to do. As long as I could convince the Dursleys that I had more control over my 'powers' than I actually had, they would live in terror of me.

It didn't happen overnight, of course. They were afraid of me now but I had to feed that fear. I don't think they truly believed that I could do magic until I turned all of Uncle Vernon's hair a brilliant blue just by staring at him. After that, it was simple. A lot of bluffing and the occasional fake magical incident (easy enough to do; they were very gullible) was all that was needed. No more sleeping in a cupboard for Harry. I got Dudley's bedroom and he was forced to decamp to the spare room. I had first pick of the portions at meal times; the finest clothes; anything and everything I wanted.

At the age of eleven I was packed off to Uncle Vernon's old school, Smeltings, as a boarder. My aunt and uncle did consider trying to enrol me at St. Brutus's Academy for Incurably Criminal Boys but I was eavesdropping on their conversation. At breakfast the next morning, I gave them the shock of their life.

"Uncle Vernon," I said, very casually, "I don't think I would like St. Brutus's."

Uncle Vernon turned white and nearly spilt his coffee.

"W-what did you say?"

If he had had an ounce of brains, he would have realised that I had been eavesdropping on his private conversations and given me a clip round the ear but, when people suspect that you have magic powers, they automatically assume that you have been reading their thoughts or some such nonsense. I was more than happy to play on this.

"You've been talking about sending me to St. Brutus's," I said, fixing him with my best 'piercing stare', "I don't want to go to St. Brutus's."

"B-but…"

"I want to go to Smeltings, with Dudley," I said, in the same deadpan tone, "You will send me to Smeltings, won't you Uncle?"

I tell you, Damien had nothing on me.

So Smeltings it was and I am sure my Aunt and Uncle were mighty glad to get rid of me for three months at a stretch. For myself, I had never had so much fun in my life. One public demonstration of my 'powers' was all that was needed to place me exactly where I wanted to be in the school pecking order.

To begin with, of course, I was right at the bottom: a first former, short, skinny, with glasses (albeit highly fashionable ones) and not particularly talented at sports. In my second week I was jumped by a gang of fifth formers on my way back to the dorms and bundled off to the toilets for the traditional Smeltings 'baptism'. This charming ritual involves holding the unfortunate boy by his ankles and ceremonially dunking his head into each of the twelve lavatory bowls. If the boy is lucky, the said bowls have been emptied beforehand. If not, well there is a shop in the village that sells very large bottles of shampoo. All part of the great British public school tradition.

I have never been one to bow meekly to tradition. I latched hold to one of the sink units, bawling my lungs out, as six of the brutes tried to haul me into the first cubicle. They won and I was dragged, my heels skidding on the wet tiles, towards my 'baptism'. They were just about to turn me upside down when I felt the twinge; the powerful wrenching in my gut that I had come to associate with manifestations of my 'power'. I ceased my wailing and said, as calmly as I could manage:

"Put me down. Now."

The older boys paused, exchanging puzzled looks. They were used to pleas, screams, even threats from their victims, not this calm, almost eerie confidence. Their hesitation did not last. The leader of the gang, a boy named Smithers who resembled a poorly-shaved gorilla, cuffed me round the head and urged his fellows to get on with it. Two of them seized my ankles and were just about to turn me upside down when the toilet bowl gave a shake.

That made them pause. The toilet shook again. There was a skittering sound, of tiny claws scrabbling over porcelain, and the biggest black rat you ever saw poked its nose over the rim of the seat. It sniffed the air for a moment, slipped down to the floor and made a dash for the door. Some of older boys yelped as it passed between their legs but Smithers was made of sterner stuff.

"You poofs!" he snarled, "It's only a bloody rat!"

The toilet bowl gave another shake, more violent than the last. It began to tremble. The seat rattled up and down like a pair of chattering teeth. Suddenly, a wave of black rats was vomited out of the bowl. Dozens of them, black as sin and big as cats, came pouring out of the toilet. The older boys shrieked and fled before the tide of rodents but I stood my ground. I knew how important it was to capitalise on this moment.

"Go, my minions!" I cried, thrusting my arms towards the fleeing fifth formers, "Go, I command you, and wreak my vengeance!"

And that was that. The story went through Smeltings faster than a dose of clap through a Quidditch team. Naturally it became embellished with the telling, and soon I was credited with inflicting all manner outlandish torments on my victims. I did not care. I was now feared at school as well as at home; a fear I gleefully fed with rumour mongering and some carefully staged 'incidents'.

Soon I had the whole institution wrapped around my little finger. The toughs did my bidding out of fear of my 'powers'. I used them to form a protection racket among the younger boys, taking a weekly toll in sweets and tuck money. The nerds and swots I intimidated into doing my homework for me. That, combined with some judicious cheating in the exam hall, ensured my popularity with the teachers. Oh, I was living the high life indeed: hardly any work to do, and almost all my time devoted to fun and mischief. As I grew older I took up smoking, more to maintain my image as a rebel than a genuine liking for it, and regularly led parties of my cronies down to the local off-licence to acquire cheap booze. And while I paid very little attention to my academic studies, the sixth form girls at Smeltings's sister school gave me some very valuable lessons in practical biology.

This state of affairs continued until the morning of my sixteenth birthday, when I received a most unwelcome letter. I was sitting at the kitchen table at Privet Drive, it being the summer holidays, when Uncle Vernon brought the post in. Among my numerous birthday cards there was an envelope of yellow parchment, sealed with red wax, and addressed to Mr H. Potter, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. You are probably familiar with its content:

HOGWARTS COLLEGE OF WITCHCRAFT AND WIZARDRY

Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Mr Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts College of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on 1 September. We await your owl by no later than 31 July.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall

Deputy Headmistress

By the by, you may be wondering why I received this letter on my sixteenth birthday and not my eleventh, as in my novels. The answer is quite simple: not even the wizarding community, a community so asinine that they elected Cornelius Fudge as Minister for Magic, would be so stupid as to give pubescent children magic wands. Combining teenage hormones with the power to unravel the very fabric of the cosmos scarcely bears thinking about. Besides that obvious drawback, wizarding children need a basic education just like Muggle children: it's no use having the power to brew a magic potion if you don't have the maths to follow the recipe. So students at Hogwarts College begin at sixteen. I reduced it to eleven because I was writing for the children's market (much more lucrative) and you have to give the little tykes a hero they can identify with; hence, my fictional self starting magic school at eleven.

My true self, receiving this letter on my sixteenth birthday, was in a terrible state. On the one hand, it finally explained my strange 'powers'; I already had my suspicions but this letter confirmed it. I was a wizard and I had been unwittingly performing magic. On the other hand, I recognised this for the terrible news that it was. At Smeltings, my magic had made me omnipotent. There, I was extraordinary. Now these people expected me to enrol in a school for young witches and wizards. I would no longer be extraordinary. Everybody there, from the cleaner right up to the headmaster, would be able to perform magic. I would be ordinary; a nobody. I saw my life of luxurious idling slipping away before my eyes.

My first solution was the simplest: take the letter into the back garden and burn it. That was successful… for about twenty four hours. The next morning, two identical letters dropped onto the welcome mat at Privet Drive. I burnt these without even opening them. The next day, three letters arrived. The more I burned, the more came. I had Uncle Vernon nail the letter slot shut, only for dozens of letters to come flying down the chimney. They started turning up everywhere: in my bedroom, lying in my path on the street, even curled up inside my breakfast egg. It was the egg that pushed me over the edge.

"That's it!" I shouted, leaping up from the table, "I've had it! I've got to get away from these fucking letters."

"Harry dear…" Aunt Petunia said but I cut her off:

"Pack your bags. We're leaving, now!"

"But where will we go?"

"Nowh ere. Anywhere, as long as we get away from these letters."

They tried to reason with me, they tried to plead with me but I was having none of it. I was scared and that made me desperate. I harangued them upstairs. I harangued them as they packed their cases. I harangued them into the car and out of Privet Drive.

We barrelled north up the motorway, Uncle Vernon driving and me dictating directions from the backseat. I had him turn off at random junctions, slaloming through the B-roads to rejoin the motorway a couple of miles along. We drove all day without a break until, early that evening, we reached a remote fishing village on the Scottish coast. I bounded out of the car and down to the jetty, while the Dursleys rushed towards the nearest lavatory. The road atlas showed a tiny island off the coast from this village and I hoped to reach it before nightfall. I seem to remember that I had some daft notion about wizards not being able to cross water.

"How much?" I asked a fisherman, unloading the day's catch from his boat, "How much for your boat?"

"Wuh? Ye cannae be goin' out on the water t'day," he said, pointing to the storm clouds gathering on the horizon.

"I'm only going out there, for Christ's sake!" I said gesturing to the island, which I now saw was little more than an oversized rock with a few wooden huts clinging to it.

"I'm nae givin' yae ma boat. Good day tae ye!" said the fisherman, attempting to pass me by. I seized his shoulder and pressed my wallet, complete with cash and credit cards, into his hand.

"Take it all" I cried, and began untying the boat's mooring rope. Now the Dursleys came up, once more trying to reason with me:

"Harry, can't it wait 'til morning?"

"There's a storm coming! It's too dangerous."

I turned on them. At that moment, with perfect dramatic timing, we heard the first roll of thunder. The Dursleys leapt into the air.

"Get… in… the… boat," I snarled. They hurried down the jetty stair, silent and ashen faced.

We reached the island just as the storm broke over us. Mooring the boat as best we could to a spike of rock, we staggered up the shore in the pouring rain, dragging our suitcases behind us. We entered the first hut we came to. From the smell, I guessed it had once been used by the local fishermen to smoke their catch. You could taste the smell of fish in the air. The hut had no central heating but Uncle Vernon managed to light what passed for a fire using old driftwood and a newspaper. We huddled up to it as close as we could manage and listened to the rain hammering against the walls. For all that it was cold, damp and stinking of mackerel, I was happy there. I was sure that nobody would post letters to me there. Nobody, not even a wizard, could reach me on that god forsaken rock.

There was a knock at the door.