“Get the mail, Dudley.”

“Make Harry get it.”

“Get the mail, Harry.”

“Make Dudley get it.”

“Poke him with your Smelting Stick, Dudley.”

Harry dodged the stick and went to get the mail. On the doormat was three things- a postcard from Aunt Marge, a brown paper envelope that looked like a bill, and…

He paused, studying the heavy parchment envelope with the purple wax seal. It was addressed to his cupboard… with no stamp.

“Hurry up, boy,” Vernon called from the kitchen. “What are you doing, checking for letterbombs?”

Harry snorted. “Yup, and found one, too.” He carried it all back to the kitchen. “Looks like Marge is ill,” he informed Vernon, handing him all of the mail. “Not sure what the brown envelope is, but the last one seems to be for me.”

Vernon spat out his orange juice. “Who’d be writing to you?” he demanded.

Harry shrugged. “No idea. But they can’t be bothered to get my name right, so I figure they’re not worth my time.”

He glared at the parchment envelope, then looked up. “What do you mean, they can’t get your name right?”

He grinned. “I mean, my name’s Freak Ishness, isn’t it?”

“It’s Harry and you know it!”

He shrugged. “Not to anyone that can send a hand-addressed letter to my cupboard without a stamp and not think anything’s wrong it’s not.”

The silence held for about two seconds.

“Let me read it!” Dudley demanded.

“There’s another one! Mr. H Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, Four, Privet Drive-!”

Vernon leaped from his seat and charged down the hall towards Dudley, who was getting the mail.

Harry only looked up. “Does it have a stamp?” he called.

There was a lot of scuffling from down the hall, then Vernon finally emerged back into the kitchen with a parchment envelope held high out of Dudley’s reach, evidently trying to decide what to do with it.

“Does it have a stamp?” Harry asked.

Vernon turned to glare at him. “What does it matter to you?”

Harry shrugged. “Does it have one?”

He looked at it. “... No.”

“Burn it,” Harry opined. “If they can’t be bothered to send it properly, I can’t be bothered to read it.”

Vernon snorted.

The next morning, the mail arrived right into Vernon’s lap while Harry was serving him ‘breakfast in bed’- he’d camped out on the doormat with a sleeping bag.

He had to raise his eyebrows. There were three parchment envelopes now, each addressed in green ink. “Do they have stamps?” he asked, even as Vernon started ripping them to shreds.

Vernon paused to check. “No.”

“Burn ‘em,” Harry opined.

Vernon was stoking the letter fire in the grate when Harry walked into the kitchen.

“Found these in the bathroom,” Harry informed him, flicking two more letters into the blaze. “No stamps.” He sighed. “I guess nailing up the mail slot won’t stop them.”

“Good morning,” Harry greeted. “No eggs today, I’m afraid- the whole two dozen of the things contained letters rather than yolks and whites.”

“Wha-!?” Vernon began.

Harry pointed at the pile on the counter. “No stamps, but I haven’t lit the fire yet.” He sighed. “I guess boarding up all the cracks won’t stop them either.”

“Why is there a fire lit?” Vernon asked.

Harry looked at the grate. He’d closed the glass doors across the front of the fireplace to contain the heat. “Well, Friday saw one dozen letters, then yesterday saw two dozen, so today I’m expecting three or four, and I want the fire ready for when they get here.” He shrugged. “And once they’re gone, maybe we can make s’mores.”

“I want S’mores,” Dudley demanded suddenly from behind Vernon.

“No post on Sundays,” Vernon reminded Harry. “No damn letters today.”

They all twitched at the sound of breaking glass, then turned to look at the grate.

“Well crap,” Harry muttered. “Run for it!”

It seemed the letters were being sent down the chimney- which would have been a rather amusing case of self-immolation, except that they also seemed to be being sent down with enough force to destroy the fireplace door.

Harry only barely made it out of the room before the door finally shattered and the first letter-firebomb crossed the kitchen to explode all over the cabinets.

Within minutes, the flames were leaping out the windows towards the sky, and the whole family was packed in the car and speeding towards the highway.

Harry waited until they were cruising comfortably down the motorway before he spoke up. “I didn’t see if they had stamps on them,” he mused, “but they probably didn’t.”

Petunia let out a snort of laughter.

“ ‘Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H Potter? Only I’ve got about an ‘undred of these at the front desk.”

Harry looked up from his breakfast at the hotel owner, who was holding up a single parchment envelope addressed in green ink. “Ninety-six, probably,” he observed. “Do they have stamps?”

She blinked. “Uh, no.”

“Burn ‘em,” Harry opined.

Vernon rose from his seat. “I’ll take them.”

“Could do with some of those letters now, eh?” Vernon chuckled good-naturedly, as he watched the empty chip bags smoke and shrivel up in the grate. He’d relocated them to a shabby little hut on a rock out at sea for the night, though Harry wasn’t sure why he’d gone here instead of to another hotel.

It wasn’t like he’d tried to grab any of the letters, after all.

And besides.

“What’s in that bag you brought?” he asked politely, gesturing towards a large bag Vernon had loaded into the car at the hotel, then brought into the rowboat with them to the hut.

Vernon looked at it. “... Right,” he muttered. He then opened the bag, removed a handful of letters, tossed them into the grate, and set them on fire.

“Couldn’t make us a cup of tea, could yeh? It’s not been an easy journey.” The giant that had just knocked down the front door at midnight strode over to the sofa and chased Dudley off of it. “And here’s Harry.”

Harry raised an eyebrow, and let the giant’s description of the last time he’d seen Harry wash over him.

“I demand that you leave at once, Sir,” Vernon said, rather bravely, brandishing his rifle at the giant. “You are breaking and entering.”

“Ah shut up Dursley, yeh great prune,” the giant said, and destroyed Vernon’s weapon with dismissive ease. Then he sighed. “Anyways, Harry, it’s about time you read your letter.” He reached into one of the many pockets on his overcoat for a letter, then handed it to Harry.

Harry took it, then inspected it. It was hand-addressed to him on the floor of the Hut on the Rock, The Sea.

There was no stamp.

He flicked it sideways, straight into the gently flickering flames still occupying the grate from the last of the letters earlier. The fire was only still burning because he’d willed it to last all night, but that was beside the point.

The silence was absolute.

“Why did you do that?” the giant eventually asked.

Harry shrugged. “It’s not worth reading.”

“O’ course it is,” the giant grumbled. “It’s from ‘Ogwarts, and yer a Wizard.”

Harry snorted derisively. “You must have missed a memo, Sir. I’m a mage, not a wizard. Unlike wizards, mages know how to function. And unlike mages, wizards wear long robes and pointed hats, don’t have a lick of sense, and follow a crackpot old fool named Albus Dumbledore like lovesick puppies.”

The giant leaped to his feet, plunging his head into the ceiling that wasn’t quite tall enough for him, and smashed up the rest of it with a battered pink umbrella as he waved it over his head, showering the room with splinters- except for Harry, he was standing, grinning, in a small circle where absolutely nothing fell. “NEVER,” the giant roared. “INSULT. ALBUS. DUMBLEDORE. IN. FRONT. OF-!”

Smack.

Author's Note

This is the only un-charactered section in the entire story, and that mostly because it felt wrong, to me, to apply a character perspective to it. Don't worry, there are other sections coming.

Patreon, Discord.

Smack.