Speaker 1: Husu Studios. Hello there, welcome back to Muggle Snuggle Why Nichel,
Speaker 1: And this is a boring Harry Potter podcast to make
Speaker 1: you sleep to night. We are continuing our journey through
Speaker 1: the Chamber of Secrets. We left Harry locked in his
Speaker 1: room at the Dursleys, with the little house elf named
Speaker 1: Dobby sitting on his bed whispering terrible warnings about going
Speaker 1: back to school. So just close your eyes, settle inn.
Speaker 1: There is no rush. We have all night to night.
Speaker 1: Harry gets rescued. Last time we met Dobby, a strange,
Speaker 1: sad little creature who had been hiding in Harry's room
Speaker 1: for months, watching him, worrying about him. Dobby begged Harry
Speaker 1: not to return to Hogwart's. He said there was a plot,
Speaker 1: a terrible dangerous plot, and if Harry went back, he
Speaker 1: would be in mortal Beryl. Harry did not believe him,
Speaker 1: not really, and Dobby, in his desperation, decided to take
Speaker 1: matters into his own hands. He stopped the letters from
Speaker 1: reaching Harry. He made a pudding full on missus Vernon's head.
Speaker 1: He tried everything to make the Dursley so angry that
Speaker 1: they would never let Harry leave, and it worked. The
Speaker 1: Dursleys locked Harry in his room, put bars on the windows,
Speaker 1: and Uncle Vernon stood in the doorway with a terrible
Speaker 1: grin and said, no more of those bloody letters. Harry
Speaker 1: was trapped. Summer had become a prison. The unie window
Speaker 1: was sealed with metal rods. His owl head Wait sat
Speaker 1: in her cage, looking at him with those big amber eyes,
Speaker 1: and there was nothing he could do, or so he believed.
Speaker 1: Now let us drift into the night's story. Chapter two,
Speaker 1: the burrough Harry lay on his mattress, staring at the
Speaker 1: bars on his window. Four metal rods bolted firmly into
Speaker 1: the wood. Outside. The sky was a deep, quiet blue,
Speaker 1: the color of ink just before it dries. The Dursleys
Speaker 1: were downstairs. He could hear the television murmuring its usual drone.
Speaker 1: Aunt Petunia was in the garden, trimming something with her
Speaker 1: pruning shears. The hedgehog Dudley had named sat on the
Speaker 1: lawn like a little gray stone, not moving, not caring.
Speaker 1: Harry sighed three more weeks, three more weeks of this
Speaker 1: room of cold meals pushed through the cat flap in
Speaker 1: the door of Headwig, rattling her cage and hooting softly
Speaker 1: in the dark. He put his hand over his face
Speaker 1: and breathed slowly in and out. The bars cast thin
Speaker 1: shadows across the ceiling in the afternoon light, like the
Speaker 1: stripes of some invisible animal pacing back and forth above him.
Speaker 1: He picked up a magazine from the floor, a Muggle
Speaker 1: magazine und Petunia had left it by accident. He flipped
Speaker 1: through the pages without really seeing them, cars, cooking recipes,
Speaker 1: advertisements for things nobody needed. He let the pages fall
Speaker 1: open on his chest and stared at the ceiling again.
Speaker 1: The house was quiet, too quiet. No Weasley letters, no
Speaker 1: Hermione phone calls, just the hum of the refrigerator downstairs,
Speaker 1: and the occasional creak of the house settling, like an
Speaker 1: old person shifting in a chair. Then something tapped at
Speaker 1: the window. Harry rolled over. There was nothing there, just
Speaker 1: the sky, just the bars. He squinted, and then he
Speaker 1: saw it, a large gray owl sitting on the sill
Speaker 1: outside the bars, tapping one beak against the metal with
Speaker 1: a soft, insistent rhythm, And behind it, further back, bobbing
Speaker 1: gently in the evening air, something was floating, something that
Speaker 1: looked very much like a car. It was orange, a
Speaker 1: battered old forward anglia hovering silently over the back garden.
Speaker 1: The paint was faded and scratched, the headlights flickered, and
Speaker 1: inside it Harry could make out three faces. Man were red,
Speaker 1: guinning faces pressed against the glass like children at a
Speaker 1: sweet shop window. Fred and George Weasley and their brother Ron.
Speaker 1: Harry scrambled to the window and pressed his face against
Speaker 1: the glass. Ron gave him a big thumbs up. George
Speaker 1: held up a pair of large bliers and waggled them
Speaker 1: like a threat. Fred tapped the side of his nose
Speaker 1: and winked that particular Fred and George wink that meant
Speaker 1: something wonderful was about to happen. They were going to
Speaker 1: break him out. It took a few minutes. George used
Speaker 1: appliers on the bars while Fred kept watch from but
Speaker 1: bolts squeaked and rattled, a high, thin sound that made
Speaker 1: Harry's teeth ache. He heard Aunt Petunia slam something in
Speaker 1: the kitchen. His heart hammered against his ribs like a
Speaker 1: fist on a locked door. But George was strong, and
Speaker 1: the bolts were old, and one by one the metal
Speaker 1: rods came loose and fell unto the carpet. With soft,
Speaker 1: satisfying thuds. Each one landed like a small victory ron
Speaker 1: helped Harry climb through the window. The night air was
Speaker 1: warm on Harry's face, the first real breath of outdoor
Speaker 1: air he had breathed in weeks. It tasted of cut
Speaker 1: grass and distant rain. He sat on the sill for
Speaker 1: just a moment, feeling the breeze on his skin, the
Speaker 1: cool touch of the stone against his palms, and then
Speaker 1: he stepped into the flying car. The back seat was
Speaker 1: lumpy and smelled faintly a frog spawn and old socks,
Speaker 1: which was exactly what you would expect from a car
Speaker 1: that belonged to Fred and George Weasley. Harry settled in,
Speaker 1: and Fred rearthed the engine, and the car tilted upward
Speaker 1: with a lurch, rising above the garden, above the roof,
Speaker 1: above the chimney pots, until the Dursley's house was just
Speaker 1: a small gray shape below them, and the street was
Speaker 1: a ribbon of orange street lights, and the whole world
Speaker 1: was quiet and open and full of sky. Harry laughed,
Speaker 1: He could not help it. The wind whipped his hair
Speaker 1: across his face. The stars were coming out, one by one,
Speaker 1: like tiny silver pins in dark velvet, and below them,
Speaker 1: England rolled out in patchwork fields and dark hedgerows, the
Speaker 1: Muggle world going about its business, oblivious to the car
Speaker 1: full of wizards flying over its rooftops. They flew north.
Speaker 1: The car hummed steadily, the engine making a low, comforting pair,
Speaker 1: like a cat that had found a warm spot on
Speaker 1: the hearth. Rance sat next to Harry and told him
Speaker 1: about his summer, about the ghoul in the attic that
Speaker 1: had been coughing all night, and keeping Ginny awake, about
Speaker 1: Mum being furious when they asked to use the car,
Speaker 1: About Percy, who had been even more insufferable than usual,
Speaker 1: walking around with his head boy badge like it was
Speaker 1: a shield, About Ginny, who had not stopped talking about
Speaker 1: Harry since term ended. He asked me about your owl,
Speaker 1: Ron said, and whether you had got her a new cage,
Speaker 1: and whether you were keeping well, and whether you had
Speaker 1: heard anything about the Chamber of Secrets, and whether you
Speaker 1: were wearing that same old shirt. She asked about everything, Harry, everything.
Speaker 1: Fred and George in the front kept turning around to
Speaker 1: make faces. They told jokes about Professor Snape. They made
Speaker 1: rude noises about Percy. They were completely wonderfully chaotically themselves.
Speaker 1: Harry felt something loosening in his chest, and not he
Speaker 1: had not known he was carrying. It was relief, pure, simple,
Speaker 1: delicious relief. He was not trapped any more, He was
Speaker 1: not alone. He was flying through the night sky with
Speaker 1: three boys who thought he was the most interesting person
Speaker 1: they had ever met, and none of them wandered anything
Speaker 1: from him except his company littles. The clouds parted and
Speaker 1: the moon came through, fat and white and lazy, hanging
Speaker 1: over the fields like a lantern left on by mistake.
Speaker 1: The fields below were silver. The car's head lights cast
Speaker 1: yellow beams across the under side of the cloud. Everything
Speaker 1: felt soft, everything felt safe. The wind was warm, now,
Speaker 1: carrying the smell of sheep and wild flowers and old wood.
Speaker 1: And then Ron pointed down and said, there it is.
Speaker 1: Harry looked below them. Nestled in a valley between two
Speaker 1: gentle hills, there was a house. But it was not
Speaker 1: quite a house. It was more like something that had grown,
Speaker 1: a rambling, lop sided jumble of bricks and chimneys and
Speaker 1: sagging roofs, leaning against each other like old friends supporting
Speaker 1: one another after a long night. There were at least
Speaker 1: five stories, each one added on top of the last
Speaker 1: in a different style, a different shade of brick, a
Speaker 1: different error. The roof tiles were mismatched, some red, some gray,
Speaker 1: some the color of dried mud. A chimney stuck out
Speaker 1: at an angle that seemed physically improbable, defying every rule
Speaker 1: of architecture that Harry had ever ignored. The windows glowed
Speaker 1: with warm yellow light, and the garden was a tangle
Speaker 1: of flowers and herbs, and what appeared to be a
Speaker 1: rubber chicken nailed to the fence. Welcome to the burrow,
Speaker 1: ron said, and he sounded almost shy about it. The
Speaker 1: car landed in the garden with a bump that rattled
Speaker 1: Harry's teeth. A small, round woman came out of the
Speaker 1: back door, wiping her hands on her apron. She had
Speaker 1: red hair like all the Weasley's but hers, was pinned
Speaker 1: up messily, and there was flower on her cheek, and
Speaker 1: her slippers made a soft shuffling sound on the stone step.
Speaker 1: Her face was kind, her eyes were sharp. Fred George
Speaker 1: Ronald Weasley, what on earth are you lot up to?
Speaker 1: Molly Weasley's voice could have silenced a thunderstorm. It could
Speaker 1: have made a dragon sit down and behave Fred and
Speaker 1: George froze Rn tried to explain, but Missus Wesley was
Speaker 1: not listening. She pulled them all inside, one by one,
Speaker 1: like a mother duck gathering her ducklings, and she stood
Speaker 1: them in the kitchen, and she gave them all a
Speaker 1: piece of her mind, which was a piece that came
Speaker 1: in several very loud pieces. The kitchen was the heart
Speaker 1: of the burrow. It was warm, it was cluttered, it
Speaker 1: was alive. There were pots and pans hanging from the ceiling,
Speaker 1: some of them gently swaying in a breeze that Harry
Speaker 1: could not feel. A clock on the wall had nine hands,
Speaker 1: each one pointing to a different place. Harry noticed that
Speaker 1: one hand pointed to a small square marked mortal peril.
Speaker 1: He tried not to stare at it. The sink was
Speaker 1: full of dirty dishes. A kettle whistled on the stove,
Speaker 1: a thin, shrill sound that missed wheezily, silenced with a
Speaker 1: tap of her Wand there was a wooden table, scarred
Speaker 1: and stained and full of character, with mismatched chairs around it.
Speaker 1: A cat with a squashed face slept on the window sill,
Speaker 1: its tail twitching in some dream of chase. The air
Speaker 1: smelt of bread and something sweet like cinnamon and butter,
Speaker 1: and the faint ghost of yesterday's roast chicken. A fire
Speaker 1: crackled in the hearth, throwing orange light across the stone floor,
Speaker 1: and then Arthur Weasley appeared. He came in from the doorway,
Speaker 1: thin and balding, with glasses that were slightly crooked, and
Speaker 1: a tie that was slightly crooked, and a look on
Speaker 1: his face like a child who had just been told
Speaker 1: Christmas was coming early. He was wearing a dressing gown
Speaker 1: over his were clothes, and his socks did not match
Speaker 1: Harry Potter, he said, breathing the name like it was
Speaker 1: something sacred, something precious, something he had been waiting his
Speaker 1: whole life to say out loud. I cannot tell you
Speaker 1: how delighted I am to meet you. Tell me what
Speaker 1: is the exact function of a rubber duck? Harry blinked,
Speaker 1: Ron sighed, Fred and George grinned, and Missus Wesley told
Speaker 1: Arthur to stop being ridiculous and sit down for dinner. Honestly, Arthur,
Speaker 1: she said, the boy has just climbed through a window.
Speaker 1: Let him eat first. They ate, Missus Weesley had made
Speaker 1: shepherd's past and there was crusty bread and butter and
Speaker 1: a big pot of tea. The pie was thick and
Speaker 1: hot and full of vegetables that Harry could not quite identify,
Speaker 1: but which tasted wonderful. There was gravy. There was mashed
Speaker 1: potato with a golden crust. There were pickled onions in
Speaker 1: a small jar that George kept reaching for, and Fred
Speaker 1: kept slapping his hand away from Ginny. A small, red
Speaker 1: haired girl with freckles like constellations scattered across her cheeks,
Speaker 1: sat at the end of the table and stared at
Speaker 1: Harry with enormous eyes and went completely red whenever he
Speaker 1: looked her way. She was Ron's little sister, and she
Speaker 1: had apparently had a crush on Harry Potter since the
Speaker 1: age of nine, which was three years longer than Harry
Speaker 1: had known she existed. Harry did not know what to
Speaker 1: do about this, just smiled politely and ate his pie
Speaker 1: and tried not to drop gravy on himself. Percy appeared briefly,
Speaker 1: nodded at Harry with the air of someone who was
Speaker 1: doing him a great favor by acknowledging his existence, and
Speaker 1: then disappeared upstairs to write a letter to his girlfriend.
Speaker 1: The twins made gagging noises behind his back. Missus Weasley
Speaker 1: threw a tea towel at them. After dinner, Missus Weasley
Speaker 1: showed Harry to Ron's room. It was small on the
Speaker 1: top floor under the eaves. The room was warm and close,
Speaker 1: like being inside a blanket, thought. The posters on the
Speaker 1: walls showed racing broomsticks and Shutley Cannon's logos, and a
Speaker 1: poster of a witch in a bathing suit that Harry
Speaker 1: suspected was not official quidditch merchandise. The room was a
Speaker 1: comfortable sort of mess, with clothes on the floor and
Speaker 1: books on the desk, and a quaffle sitting in the corner,
Speaker 1: like it had rolled there and decided to stay. You
Speaker 1: can have my bed, Ron said, pointing to the bottom bunk.
Speaker 1: I will take the camping bed. Harry tried to protest,
Speaker 1: but Ron was already unfolding a camping bed that looked
Speaker 1: far too narrow for a boy of his size, and
Speaker 1: Missus Wesley was already tucking extra blankets around Harry's pillow.
Speaker 1: And the house was warm and full of the sounds
Speaker 1: of the Weasley family. Moving about, creaking floorboards and distant laughter,
Speaker 1: and the soft murmur of the clock on the wall.
Speaker 1: Harry lay in Ron's bed and listened. The house made noises.
Speaker 1: A creek here had grown there, the wind outside pressed
Speaker 1: against the windows gently, like someone testing the glass with
Speaker 1: a finger tip. Hedwig, who had been brought up to
Speaker 1: the room in her cage, rustled her feathers and made
Speaker 1: a soft hooting sound, then settled down. The camping bed
Speaker 1: creaked under Ron as he shifted, trying to find a
Speaker 1: comfortable position in a space that was roughly the width
Speaker 1: of a broomstick. Harry remembered Dobby about the warnings about
Speaker 1: the plot. He remembered the bars on his winter and
Speaker 1: how far away they seemed now, like something from a
Speaker 1: dream he had already started to forget. He remembered Missus
Speaker 1: Wesley's warm kitchen and Arthur's excited questions, and the way
Speaker 1: Fred and George moved through the world like it was
Speaker 1: their personal playground, a place made specifically for their entertainment.
Speaker 1: And he thought about the house itself, the burrow. It
Speaker 1: was not fancy, it was not ground. There was no marble,
Speaker 1: no magic carpets, no enchanted ceiling. It was just a
Speaker 1: house built by a family who loved each other, one
Speaker 1: room at a time, one brick at a time, until
Speaker 1: it leaned and bagged and groaned and felt more like
Speaker 1: a home than any palace ever could. The Weaselas did
Speaker 1: not have much money, but they had this. They had
Speaker 1: the warm kitchen, and the mismatched chairs, and the cat
Speaker 1: and the window sill, and the nine handed clock that
Speaker 1: told you where everyone was and whether they were in
Speaker 1: mortal peril, and that Harry thought was worth more than
Speaker 1: all the gold and grinkots. Harry closed his eyes. The
Speaker 1: mattress was soft beneath him. The blankets smelled of lavender,
Speaker 1: or perhaps that was the sachet Missus Wesley had tucked
Speaker 1: under the pillow. Somewhere downstairs, a door closed. Footsteps went
Speaker 1: up the stairs, light and careful so as not to
Speaker 1: wake anyone. The floor board outside Roun's door gave its
Speaker 1: familiar groan. The car in the garden ticked as it cooled,
Speaker 1: metal contracting in the night air. The moon moved slowly
Speaker 1: behind a cloud, and the room went dark, then light again. Outside,
Speaker 1: somewhere in the distance, an owl gold hedwig answered with
Speaker 1: a soft, sleepy hoot. Harry slept, and in the morning
Speaker 1: there would be toast and tea and the sound of
Speaker 1: Ginny practicing spells in the garden, and Fred and George
Speaker 1: launching fireworks from the roof, and Missus Weasley shouting from
Speaker 1: the kitchen about someone leaving their shoes on the stairs.
Speaker 1: There would be a whole day of being somewhere that
Speaker 1: was not the Dursleys, a whole day of being somewhere
Speaker 1: that was warm and safe and full of people who
Speaker 1: cared about him. But that is for another night, and
Speaker 1: that is where we will leave Harry to night, safe
Speaker 1: in the burrow, warm in a real bed, in a
Speaker 1: house full of love, surrounded by people who know he matters.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the best thing in the world is just being
Speaker 1: somewhere safe, not somewhere grand, not somewhere magical, just somewhere
Speaker 1: warm with people who care. So if you are still awake,
Speaker 1: just close your eyes. Let the sounds of the butter
Speaker 1: settle around you, the creaking wood, the distant wind, the
Speaker 1: soft breathing of a house at rest. There is no rush.
Speaker 1: You are safe here. Just sleep good night.