Did you know that the Dursleys’ first destination to escape the letters was Snape and Lily’s original city?
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the window-sill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering…
They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
‘‘Scuse me, but is one of you Mr H. Potter? Only I got about an ‘undred of these at the front desk.’
She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:
Mr H. Potter, Room 17, Railview Hotel, Cokeworth.
Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.
‘I’ll take them,’ said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her for the dining room.
For people who want to use Snape’s city in fanfictions. By the way, notice the woman’s accent, the poor dish, the “railview hotel” (there’s a train somewhere?) and how the Muggle woman (assuming she’s one) doesn’t like it when Vernon stops Harry from getting his letter. The hotel is gloomy, the city is big, the beds have “damp musty sheets” (hm hm hm reminds me of someone’s memories…)
And because I like trivia:
- The name is a reference to “Coketown,” the fictional industrial centre in which Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times takes place, Coketown. Commentators believe that Coketown was based on Manchester or Preston, but those real-world cities are in Greater Manchester and Lancashire, while Cokeworth is in the Midlands.
- On the original script for the film adaptation of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, this town is referred to as “Mill Town.”
Yes, everytime I read the book I smile at this. It tells a lot about Petunia, but also, I would have loved for Severus to meet Harry there at some point.
There is… so much that I don’t like about Pottermore, but my absolute pet peeve is that Cokeworth is supposedly in the Midlands. *shudder*
He ran.
Fast as he could, fast as he’d ever sprinted with Dudley and his gang after him, or Aunt Marge’s dogs, Harry darted through the dingy streets and alleys of Cokeworth like hell itself was after him—and, technically, he supposed it was, for if his aunt were to catch him, he was in huge heaps of trouble.
It had come to him that morning, listening to the hotel clerk tell Vernon about the “’undred letters for H. Potter” at the desk and wondering what would happen if he were to tell her that he was Harry Potter and the letters were his, that the letters were following them, somehow—following him—and that if he could get away from the Dursleys long enough, maybe they would come to him and he could get one and read it before his uncle took it away.
The thought had formed in his head, and then all but disappeared as he quailed at the thought of what Vernon would do to him after he caught him again. But it didn’t go away, and as he sat there in the parked car by the shore, Dudley whining beside him and Petunia tapping her foot in annoyance and occasionally answering him up front, Vernon gone off to who-knows-where for who-knows-how-long, he turned the idea over in his thoughts.
Vernon was away, and he’d taken the keys with him, and Petunia, who had shrilly refused Dudley’s demand to get out of the car and play outside with a warning about how bad a neighborhood this was, might hesitate to come chasing after him. She was probably faster than Dudley, so he would slow her down; she’d definitely rather risk losing her nephew than leave her son here all by himself.
Harry timed his unbuckling of the seat belt to one of Dudley’s louder complaints, and then did the same with pulling the lock button up. Then there was a long moment when Dudley was looking at him, and kicking at him, and blaming him for this absurd trip, and Harry said “all you probably had to do was let me read one of those letters,” and Petunia turned around and practically screamed, “You’re not getting one!”
Luckily Dudley had flinched at her tone, and she was in front of him on the same side so even twisted around, she couldn’t see how Harry had cracked the door open as she yelled.
His heart pounding, Harry looked around. Was he really going to do this? Yes, yes he was. The car was pointing towards the sea, with the town behind them, so full of narrow streets and overgrown yards that all he had to do was get out of sight and he’d have lost them.
Granted, he didn’t know how he’d get something to eat tonight, or anytime thereafter, but he wasn’t that sure of getting anything from the Dursleys either, for that matter. Maybe the letter would direct him to someone who’d feed him?
Dudley settled into a sulk, staring out his own window. Petunia leaned back against the headrest and pinched her nose, giving the air of having had a headache.
Harry looked around again. Vernon was nowhere in sight.
Three—two—one.
Harry bolted, out the door and sprinting for the nearest buildings before Dudley’s yell and Petunia’s shriek met his ears. He didn’t look back, not wanting to see how close they were; he came to the buildings and darted between them, out of sight, weaving through them at angles, terrified, but elated.
Was this freedom?
Some couple minutes later, as the place seemed to get dingier and more neglected, he wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake. His pulse was rushing in his ears, his breath on fire in his throat, a stitch in his side as painful as any kick from Dudley or Piers, his legs wobbly and weak. But he thought about what would happen if he was caught, and he thought about how a letter might come to him if he could find someplace safe to hide, and he kept going.
There was a bridge ahead of him, and a line of trees beside it. Risking a look back, seeing no one, he darted to one side of it, tearing through overgrown weeds and stumbling down into a creekbed. He scooped up a double handful of water and put it over his head, which felt wonderful, but he didn’t know if it was safe to drink, and he supposed if Aunt Petunia found the bridge she might guess where he’d gone.
He ran through the dried mud and stumbled over round rocks that slid and gave way under him, and splashed through the shallow water when this seemed the quietest or quickest option. Once he fell, scraping hands and shin and knees on the rocks, and he was up again like a shot, stepping in deeper water that soaked his battered trainers and lapped soothingly at his shins, breathing like a steam engine, and running on.
He hadn’t gone too much further before he realized he was in trouble. The banks of the creek weren’t as high here, and the trees were sparser and shorter; if he stayed going this way he’d be visible.
He climbed the bank, looked around for Petunia, Vernon, or anybody else for that matter, saw nothing, and darted along an alley and into a row of backyards. Hopped a fence. Clambered over another. Tried to leap a third, turned it into an awkward climb, and the rotted wood gave way under him with an accusing screech, and he hit the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of him.
He tried to get up, and couldn’t. He could only lie there, sucking in great lungfuls of air and letting them out again, feeling like he would never get enough oxygen, and then he froze as he heard a door bang open.
He looked, but there was, thankfully, some sort of bush in the way blocking him from sight. The door didn’t bang closed again, and there were soft footsteps as if of someone coming down the stairs.
Decide it’s nothing decide it’s nothing decide it’s nothing! he mentally pleaded. But there was a moment of silence, and then a man appeared around the side of the shrubs: a thin man, tall and lanky and wearing black flowing clothes that made him look sort of like a vicar Harry had seen on TV once. His hair was long enough the Dursleys would have disapproved, and his nose was hooked in his sallow face, and his eyes were black and more piercing than any furious stare of Aunt Petunias.
The man looked Harry over from his legs—Harry looked down and saw the blood and gasped as the pain washed over him—to his face, and for a moment he looked utterly shocked. Then it was gone, and, acting as though terrified breathless children collapsed his fence and landed in his backyard all the time, he spoke.
But what he said was, “Potter.”
