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HRA# CHAPTER 100
🕑 Added 2025-04-16 20:01:42 +0000 UTCThe ground trembled as ten thousand pigs thundered across the field, their hooves kicking up clouds of dust that swirled into a choking haze. The cacophony of their squeals and snorts was deafening, a primal roar that froze Uncle Vernon in place. His eyes squeezed shut, and he turned away, bracing himself as if surrendering to fate, certain the stampede would sweep him away.
A foul gust battered his face, thick with the stench of swine and the gritty sting of dirt pelting his back. Vernon stood rigid, heart pounding, waiting for the inevitable collision—waiting, waiting, waiting.
Nothing came.
The uproar of the pigs faded, their hoofbeats growing distant yet unrelenting. Not a single beast brushed against him. Vernon’s eyes snapped open, and he whirled around, trembling. His jaw dropped at the sight before him. At his nephew’s feet, a modest suitcase gaped like a ravenous void, swallowing the frenzied pigs one after another. The seemingly ordinary case devoured the entire herd with impossible ease.
At last, the five hundred piglets Harry had purchased vanished into the suitcase’s depths. With a satisfied click, Harry snapped it shut and secured the clasp.
Perfect.
Harry grinned, already envisioning the piglets thriving in the suitcase’s hidden world, growing strong and filling their niche at the base of its food chain.
Wild little boars, tamed at last.
Vernon, meanwhile, was incoherent, his face a mask of shock. “S-so… they—it—” he stammered, jabbing both hands toward the suitcase, unable to form a complete thought.
“They’re fine,” Harry said, arching an eyebrow at his uncle with a playful smile. “Think of it as a pocket dimension inside the case. I’d love to give you a tour, Uncle, but I’m still landscaping in there. It’s a bit… chaotic. Best to wait until summer, when it’s ready to impress.”
The suitcase’s interior was a work in progress, to put it mildly. Harry’s recent projects—reshaping mountains, rerouting rivers, transplanting trees, and carving out lakes—had left the place looking like a patchy, half-finished quilt. Bald spots and churned earth weren’t exactly inviting.
“Oh… right, right,” Vernon muttered, still dazed. “This is… something else.”
He nearly said magic, but decades of aversion to the word choked it back.
As they left the farm, Vernon remained in a stupor, trailing Harry like a man sleepwalking. Behind them, the farmer peered into the empty pen, his face slack with disbelief. Five hundred pigs—gone. These two had arrived empty-handed and left the same way, without so much as a livestock truck in sight.
The farmer’s mind spiraled into wild theories—alien abductions, UFOs, the kind of lurid tales that gripped the imagination in this era. “Hey, sir?” Harry’s voice cut through his panic, and the farmer spun around, legs wobbling like jelly.
“Look, mate, I’ve got nothing to do with you lot coming to Earth—” the farmer blurted, hands raised in surrender, only to freeze mid-sentence.
Harry had drawn his wand with a casual flick. In seconds, the farmer’s terror melted away, replaced by a placid smile. Harry tucked his wand back into his pocket, leaving the man serene and untroubled.
In the farmer’s altered memory, everything was perfectly ordinary. Mr. Vernon Dursley, a generous client, had arranged for the pigs’ transport, and the farmer had simply come to bid them farewell.
“No need to see us off,” Harry said politely. “Your pigs are top-notch. Here’s to your farm’s continued success.”
“Er, thanks,” the farmer replied, waving cheerfully as Harry and Vernon headed toward the car Vernon had parked nearby. “Come back anytime!”
Vernon, meanwhile, moved like a malfunctioning automaton, his steps jerky and misaligned, one hand swinging in sync with the wrong foot. He wheezed, then blurted, “So, you… you hexed that man’s brain with your witchcraft?”
“Not at all,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I just nudged his memory so he wouldn’t fret about the missing pigs. We didn’t exactly bring a fleet of trucks, and that’d raise questions.”
Vernon’s brows knitted so tightly they nearly merged. “So that’s how you wizards operate? Something goes wrong, and you just wave your little sticks to fix it?”
“Relax, Uncle,” Harry said, giving his arm a reassuring pat, sensing the unease beneath Vernon’s bluster. “I swear, your memories—and Aunt Petunia’s and Dudley’s—are untouched. No magic’s meddling with our family.”
Vernon didn’t look convinced, his frown deepening as he scoured his memories for proof. He latched onto fragments—locking Harry in the cupboard as punishment, feeding him stale bread, sending him to fetch the paper or mow the lawn. With a long, relieved exhale, he decided those moments were too petty, too real, to be the work of magic.
“Fine,” Vernon grunted, mollified. “That’s that, then, boy. I’d best be off.”
A flash of firelight and a clear, melodious cry announced Fawkes’ return, the phoenix perching on Harry’s shoulder. The pigsty’s stench had driven the fastidious bird to wait outside, far from the muck.
“Want a lift, Uncle?” Harry asked, glancing at the phoenix. “Fawkes could probably teleport your car through space. Right, Fawkes?”
Harry could’ve sworn the phoenix shot him a withering, almost offended look, as if to say, I’m not Dumbledore’s errand bird.
Vernon, however, was having none of it. “Good heavens, no!” he spluttered, scrambling into his car as if fleeing a curse. “Imagine the neighbors’ faces if a car just popped up in the driveway! Embarrassing! Unnatural! Downright ghastly!”
“Alright, drive safe, Uncle,” Harry said with a resigned chuckle.
“You too, boy!” Vernon called, honking the horn as he peeled out. “See you in the summer! And tell that owl of yours to stop swooping in like it owns the place!”
“I’ll pass it on to Gianna,” Harry replied, waving. “Summer, then!”
As Vernon’s car vanished down the road, Harry shook his head with a faint smile. He and his uncle’s family had come a long way, but the journey was far from over. Still, compared to the past, this was progress.
He pulled a handful of dittany leaves from his pocket and offered them to Fawkes, who nibbled contentedly as Harry stroked the phoenix’s silken feathers. “Time to get me back, Fawkes.”
With a radiant burst of flame and a soaring cry, the phoenix whisked Harry back to Hogwarts.
Before Fawkes could depart, Harry hurriedly produced another handful of herbs—rarer ones this time, including prized mandrake leaves. The phoenix devoured them with gusto.
“Ever thought about lending a hand in your spare time?” Harry asked, running a finger along Fawkes’ gleaming tail. “Must get dull, cooped up in the headmaster’s office all day, yeah?”
He was half-seriously plotting to poach Dumbledore’s phoenix. With Fawkes at his side, Harry would have a master key to the world—a mage’s ultimate shortcut, bypassing even Hogwarts’ anti-Apparition wards. Who could resist that kind of freedom?
“Plus, you’d get these herbs daily,” Harry pressed, sensing Fawkes’ interest. “I’m a shaman priest, you know, and I’ve got a knack for herbology. I could cultivate new varieties, give you some fresh flavors to try.”
Fawkes let out two soft chirps.
“What, you don’t want to be roped into Dumbledore’s chaos?” Harry interpreted, grinning.
The phoenix nodded.
“No worries, I’d only ask you to ferry me around now and then,” Harry assured him. “No grunt work in the suitcase world, I promise.”
At that, Fawkes loosed a long, trilling cry that sounded suspiciously like laughter. The phoenix dipped its head, giving Harry’s ear a gentle peck, then vanished in a swirl of fire.
Harry smiled, undeterred. That final gesture told him all he needed to know—Fawkes was in.
The dragon was growing at an alarming rate. In just a week, it had tripled in size, though it still couldn’t breathe proper flames, only puffing out plumes of acrid smoke. Hagrid, meanwhile, was in his element, neglecting his groundskeeper duties to dote on the creature. When Harry, Ron, and Hermione visited his hut, they found him disheveled, surrounded by empty brandy bottles and scattered chicken feathers.
Hagrid looked like he’d been through a war. His beard and hair were singed in patches, some spots charred black. A shallow tooth mark marred his finger, but Ron had fared worse—his hand bore a bloody gash from a failed attempt to feed the dragon.
“You were right, Harry,” Ron muttered through gritted teeth as they left the hut. “When can you take Norbert away? I’m dying to see you break him in.”
Ron was already fantasizing about soaring on the dragon’s back, exacting revenge for the bite.
“We’ll have to wait until Hagrid’s hut can’t contain him,” Hermione said, eyeing Ron’s wound with concern. “You saw how attached Hagrid is—he won’t let go anytime soon.”
“Attached?” Ron scoffed, looking ready to chew through steel. “He told me not to scare Norbert after I got chomped! And did you hear him singing lullabies as we left? Merlin’s beard, Charlie was right—dragons are nightmares!”
“Let’s pick up the pace,” Harry said, clapping Ron’s shoulder. “Norwegian Ridgeback teeth are venomous. I’ve got antidote in my trunk back at the dorm.”
Ron’s face paled to a sickly green. “Venomous? Bleeding isn’t bad enough?”
Hagrid, oblivious to their complaints, had fully embraced his role as the dragon’s surrogate mother, cooing over his “little darling” and “fluffy treasure” even as Norbert gnawed through his boots. Until Hagrid relented, Harry had other matters to attend to—like selling the recipe for his shimmering potion.
The Potter family inheritance, while substantial, hadn’t grown in years, and Harry’s spending had spiked this term. Rare herb seeds, potion ingredients, and smuggled herbs for his ritual baths didn’t come cheap. Add to that the occasional bottle of fine wine shared with Hagrid—Harry couldn’t let his friend foot the bill every time—and the costs of shaping his suitcase world into a proper sanctuary, and his vault was feeling the strain.
So when Madam Primpernelle, a Diagon Alley shopkeeper, offered to buy his shimmering potion recipe, Harry jumped at the chance.
He did feel a pang of regret upon learning more about his family’s legacy. The Potters, it turned out, had built their fortune on potions. Linfred of Stinchcombe, the family’s twelfth-century founder, was a quirky healer who tended to Muggle neighbors, earning the affectionate nickname “Potterer,” later simplified to Potter. His inventions, like Skele-Gro and Pepperup Potion, had brought the family wealth and fame.
In modern times, Harry’s grandfather, Fleamont Potter, had created Potter’s Hair Potion, founding a company that made the family a fortune. After retiring, Fleamont sold the business and recipe for a hefty sum, only to welcome a late-in-life son, James Potter, soon after.
Harry wasn’t keen on living off his ancestors’ gold forever. He had ambitions, and the rarer items he coveted didn’t come cheap. Unlike Voldemort, he wasn’t about to steal or kill to get them.
Dumbledore had safeguarded the Potter fortune for years without touching a Knut, his integrity beyond question. With his influence, the headmaster could’ve amassed wealth effortlessly—half the wizarding world, even the Malfoys, would’ve thrown Galleons at him for a nod.
In a cozy corner of the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, Harry and Snape sat across from Madam Primpernelle, who’d proposed the deal. Her Diagon Alley shop specialized in beauty potions, catering mostly to witches but occasionally drawing wizards seeking to banish “warts and worries.”
“Master Snape?” Madam Primpernelle ventured, her voice tight with nerves as she studied the dour professor. “Why are you… here?”
To Hogwarts students, Snape was a terror—greasy-haired, vindictive, and serpentine. But in the wider wizarding world, his name carried weight. A prodigy who’d refined ancient potion recipes and invented his own, Snape was a titan in the field, his brews renowned for their reliability and potency. He held sway in academic circles, a figure no potion-seller dared cross. A single new recipe from him could ruin a shop’s business, and his reputation for pettiness preceded him, whispered by generations of students.
“Harry Potter is an eleven-year-old first-year,” Snape drawled, his voice low and deliberate. “Talented though he may be in crafting a unique potion, he cannot, for obvious reasons, consult his parents.”
