Harriet Potter was counting down the days until she could get out of Stonewall High. The place was a dump for the kids in the 'wrong' part of Little Whinging. While most middle class families committed fraud, bribed officials and faked their address to get their children into a better state secondary, the Dursleys seemed to have done everything they could to make Harriet's life miserable. Not only for the last six years that she'd been at this school, but every day since she had been left on their doorstep at a year old. She didn't have a single memory of them trying to make her smile. Then again, Aunt Petunia rarely did smile, and neither did Harriet. She got told she was sullen, but she didn't know how the Dursleys could possibly be surprised.

Anyway. She only had a year to go until she finished her A-Levels and could go... Somewhere. The Dursleys were chucking her out the minute she turned eighteen next year. Harriet had no idea where she was going, but anything was better than Privet Drive.

She took the walk home slowly, dreading the moment she'd have to step over the threshold of the house. Wash the floor, scrub the bathroom and the kitchen, cook the dinner and only have the scraps for yourself. Make sure Dudley gets the most food and don't you dare say anything to upset him. She scowled at the thought but she'd return anyway, just as she did every night. It wasn't like Harriet had anywhere else to go.

Sometimes when she'd been younger she'd imagined a long forgotten family member coming to take her away, to give her a loving home. She'd dreamed of men on motorbikes telling her she was magic, and of worlds bursting with light and excitement that the Dursleys would have condemned to their last breath. No one had ever come for her, though. Sometimes she thought she saw someone watching her, people in funny cloaks and hats, but they always disappeared when she blinked.

The snakes were weird though. They kept hanging out in the Dursleys' garden, which drove Aunt Petunia mad. She always found a way to blame Harriet, but it wasn't her fault snakes showed up. Her aunt seemed to think Harriet had summoned them, which was an entirely ridiculous thought. If Harriet did have the power to summon snakes to the Dursleys' house, she would have summoned something that could actually hurt them. Of course she would undoubtedly get the blame and if any of them survived they'd see her thrown in jail for life, and no one would believe her innocence. A scrawny, hard-faced girl with ginger hair that was too wild and green eyes that were too bright. She had always been too wild for Privet Drive, but no one had let her out of her cage.

She was scuffing her shoes on the ground as she made her way down Wisteria Walk, waving at Mrs Figg as she passed with one of her many, many cats. She'd always liked Mrs Figg; she was a very boring woman, but she'd always been kind to Harriet, or at least kinder than the Dursleys had ever been. The air around them was unusually cold for the time of year, creeping over them. Harriet met Mrs Figg's eyes - she looked nervous - and then hurried onwards with her head down back to the Dursleys.

"Hurry up, girl," Aunt Petunia snapped when she let herself in. "Dudley got back ten minutes ago."

"Sorry, Aunt Petunia," she said, hurrying to take her shoes off and then hurrying into the kitchen to wash her hands.

"You're making a chicken pie for dinner! Dudley's favourite. My special boy got a C in his Maths test today!"

"Well done, Dudley," Harriet said quietly as she stood by the sink. There was a snake hovering on the windowsill, eyes on her, watching. It was creepy. Most snakes weren't that creepy. She hissed at it when Aunt Petunia wasn't paying attention, and the snake's eyes glinted red. With a shiver, Harriet turned back around, watching as Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon fawned over Dudley, who looked deeply frustrated by this behaviour and clearly just wanted to get out the house, probably to beat up another ten year old.

"Oh, he's ever so smart," Aunt Petunia cried. Harriet rolled her eyes. "Our little Dudley."

Harriet had gotten an A on her Maths GCSE, but the Dursleys had just called her a swot for that. She hadn't tried very hard with her others, apart from English, but Maths had been important if she wanted to do anything with her life, and she did. Getting good grades was her way out, and while she'd gotten only gotten three As in her GCSEs - Maths, English and PE - she was determined that she'd do well in her A-Levels, get a job somewhere that paid her decent enough she could rent a flat that didn't reek of damp, maybe go to university later in life if she wanted to. Aunt Petunia seemed to want Dudley to go to university, deluding herself that he might have a chance at Oxford. Still, he went to Smeltings. Anything was possible when you went to a school like Smeltings.

Very little was possible when you went to a school like Stonewall. It was probably why her aunt and uncle had been so determined to send her there. "Girl," Uncle Vernon shouted, jolting Harriet out of her thoughts. "Dinner!"

She nodded quickly and got to work on the pie, listening to her aunt and uncle fuss over her cousin. It didn't bother her anymore, not really. It wasn't like she expected anyone to praise her or appreciate her. It just would have been nice.

The school term wore on and came to a close. Harriet was pleased with her mock results - Bs in Maths and Physics and a C in Chemistry. They weren't brilliant, no, but they were good enough for her.

July was a strange month. On the one hand she had to put up with Dudley all the time, which she didn't like, but she also had the relative freedom of going where she pleased. Plus, it was her birthday at the end of the month. She'd be turning seventeen. It wasn't a major birthday, but it brought her one year closer to eighteen and the opportunity to leave this place forever.

She was on one of her daily walks around the town, debating on whether of not to head to the park and risk bumping into Dudley's gang, when she felt someone watching her. Not in a predatory way necessarily, but definitely watching her. She crossed the street and turned slowly to get a look, but saw only the bottom of shoes that vanished in an instant. Odd.

The whole month seemed odd, actually. It was cold, and a strange mist seemed to hang over everything despite the fact that it should be the hottest month. There were more snakes, too. She kept getting funny looks from people when she walked down the street, because they would be tailing her, slithering along on the tarmac, and no matter how she hissed at them, they refused to go away.

One time she swore she saw a girl in a witch's hat stare at her and whisper, "Not yet," but she was gone in an instant. It could easily have been a trick of the mist. Maybe she was getting delusional.

But on the lead up to her birthday, Harriet realised there was definitely something strange happening. Mrs Figg disappeared and her house was reinhabited by two strange men who stared at Harriet every time she passed, almost like they knew her. She started avoiding Wisteria Walk, but then she met a scarred man with a fake blue eye on Magnolia Crescent who told her to be vigilant, and a ginger woman who stung her hands nervously when Harriet looked at her and hurried away, whispering strange words like 'Muggle' and 'Squib'.

All in all she wasn't that excited for her seventeenth birthday. She'd put aside some money from her job in the local newsagent's, telling the Dursleys that they'd had to make wage cuts for the month, and had planned to get herself ice cream or lunch as a treat. God knew no one else would be treating her.

Harriet lay awake in bed that night watching her alarm clock tick onwards toward the number twelve. It was almost July 31st. She was almost seventeen. The clock ticked over and she had only a moment of feeling great, great unease before the conservatory downstairs shattered.