Harry could not remember when he had fallen asleep the night before. All he remembered was that the moon outside his windowsill had finally climbed out from behind the clouds before his consciousness blurred-a cloud so bloated it was daunting to look at. An apt comparison would have been his cousin Dudley's backside, which had grown another size over the holidays.
By rights, Harry should have felt tired after a night in which he was not even sure he had slept, but right now, his whole body and mind were buzzing with excitement-because today was the wonderful day he left the Dursley family, moved into 12 Grimmauld Place, and went to live with his godfather, Sirius!
Although he would still have to return to the Dursley family in a little over a month, move back into this suffocating house, and wait longingly for school to start-which would certainly be a sad, dispiriting business-that was something for the Harry Potter of over a month from now to worry about.
Harry smiled into the freshly cleaned mirror, put on his glasses, and turned to push open his bedroom door-this had originally been Dudley's spare bedroom, but for now, it belonged to Harry Potter, who "could use magic and had a murderer for a godfather."
As he walked downstairs, Harry was thinking, If only I suddenly heard a big dog barking outside-a big black dog. He wanted so badly to see Sirius soon. By contrast, the people who least wanted to see Sirius were probably his aunt and uncle.
There was a reason for that, of course. Ever since Sirius had deliberately dressed like a murderer and paid them a visit last time, those two adults Harry disliked had been thrown into a horrified fluster. After a family meeting, they had launched their