Harry Potter went to bed early on the evening of July 30th, too excited to notice the on the stairs. Tomorrow was his birthday, and he had a feeling there would be interesting things in store for him tonight after midnight.

Harry got into his pajamas and stared out his bedroom window. The moon was almost full, and the night brimmed with its light. He blinked. Had he just seen flying across it? Of course not--not here on Privet Drive. But then a flicker of movement in the garden below caught his attention. Oh my, and were scampering out of the hedge. He could hear the television downstairs, which meant the Dursleys were still awake. He hoped they wouldn't look out their window, especially when hopped onto the garden bench. A chewed on the flowers in Next Door's garden, and Harry laughed. Wouldn't Aunt Petunia love to see that!

Nothing else strange happened for a while, and Harry listened to the Dursleys go to bed. But then, certainly before they were asleep, Harry heard giggling. Oh no! A sat on his bed contentedly licking his pillow. A giggled at it from the night stand. "Hush!" he said, trying to shoo them out the window. They paid no attention to him, nor did the that crawled out from under the bed. Harry grabbed his pillow and took it with him to the window sill. While he sat there wondering how he could get rid of them without using magic, he heard scratching. A was climbing up the side of the house toward him. It, too, ignored him when he leaned out and waved his arms to shoo it away. Quietly, he closed the window.

"Not again," Harry moaned. He remembered when Dobby the House Elf had got him into such trouble. Surely an invasion of magical creatures and things would attract the Dursleys' attention. He became more desperate when scooted through the cat flap Uncle Vernon had installed in his room's door. "No! Go away!" he said. Then he had a horrible thought. If this had come into his room through the cat flap, there must be more things out there in the house. What if Aunt Petunia saw one? Her screams would wake everyone.

Harry eased his door open, and immediately and scampered into his room from the hall outside. Harry closed his eyes and shook his head. Where could they have come from? He closed his door behind him and tiptoed down the hall. Yes, there was by the bathroom door. He scooped it up, even though it squeaked in protest.

Harry got an idea. He took a pillow case from the linen closet and put the he found in the hall and the that slithered up the stairs in it. As he tiptoed through the dark house, he wished he could use his wand. Lumos would be very handy right now!

Soon Harry returned to his bedroom, the pillowcase squirming with the he'd found under the kitchen table, the that had come oozing out of the VCR, and the that had slipped through the mail slot. He'd stuck the mail slot closed with chewing gum, and hoped nothing else would get through it. By this time, he didn't care if the was fighting the , he just wanted to get them all out of the house. So he slid his window open and starting dumping everything outside. It was amazing how the fluttered off and the sailed through the air as if it were a kite.

Just after he dumped the last weird thing out the window and closed it, his watch started to beep. He'd set it for midnight. When all those things appeared, he'd forgotten all about his birthday.

Something else floated across the moon. Was it ? He blinked and looked again. No, it was his owl, Hedwig, carrying something in her talons. Harry opened the window again and let her in, pushing off the windowsill as she settled on his bed. When the window was safely closed, he looked at what she'd brought him. It was a package wrapped in paper that changed from flourescent pink to neon green as he watched. Who could have sent it? The paper was torn all along one side--maybe from Hedwig's talons.

Harry tore open the package and fell out, along with a note. "Happy Birthday, Harry! Watch the sky for more surprises." It wasn't signed, and the handwriting didn't look like Ron's, Hermione's, Sirius's, or Hagrid's. Could Draco Malfoy have sent all these things to annoy him?

"Who gave you the package, Hedwig?" he asked. But she just nibbled on his finger and went back to drinking out of her water dish. Then she hooted with surprise. A was swimming around in the water. "Not more things!" groaned Harry. He opened his dresser and found asleep on his sweaters and a nest of s snuggled in his socks.

Suddenly the bright moonlight coming in the window dimmed. Harry slammed the drawers closed and hurried over to see what it was this time. A hovered outside the window and he heard scuffling on the roof. He opened the window again and leaned out, pushing the hovering thing away. He couldn't see anything when he looked up. But he could hear better with the window open, and the noise on the roof sounded like footsteps.

"Hedwig," he whispered. She flew silently across the room and landed on his arm. "What's on the roof?"

Hedwig dropped into his hand, then soared outside as he dumped it out the window. Moments later, she returned. She nuzzled his cheek, then returned to her cage. "What was it?" he asked. She didn't seem concerned.

Moments later, a foot came into view outside the window. Then Ron Weasley appeared, laughing at the astonished look on Harry's face. "Happy Birthday!" he said, quietly so he wouldn't wake the Dursleys. Then he looked puzzled, and dropped onto the floor. "Is this yours?" he asked.

"No!" said Harry. "Strange things have been appearing all evening. I thought somebody was trying to curse me. Did you send this?" He pointed at the package on the bed.

"Not me. I just wanted to come by and surprise you. Borrowed an invisibility cloak from dad, and--" he stopped suddenly and pulled from his bright red hair.

Harry tossed it out the window, and caught that was trying to climb over the sill and threw it along. "The note says 'watch the sky for more surprises.' And here you are, as well as all these odd things."

Ron laughed quietly. "The only thing I brought you. . ." he pulled something out of his pants pocket, ". . .was this!" He handed a small wrapped package to Harry.

"Wow, thanks!" Harry was about to open it when dropped from the ceiling right in front of them both. They leaped backward and fell onto the bed. Then they heard Harry's Uncle Vernon's snores falter and sat quietly, hoping the snoring would start up again. It did.

Hedwig hooted loudly at that sat innocently on the dresser near her cage. Harry groaned when he realized he'd left the window open. "Shhh," he told the owl, grabbing the thing and dumping it out the window.

"Look!" said Ron in an awed voice. Something huge approached through the air.

Keeping an eye on it while catching the that scampered across the floor, Harry closed the window one more time. "Do you think it's Voldemort?" he asked Ron.

"Don't say the name!" whispered Ron. "No, why would he send things to annoy you? He wants you dead, not just bothered."

"What if all this is to drive me away from the Dursleys? Voldemort said I was protected while with my family." Harry found and still hiding in corners of his room and stuffed them into the pillowcase. He didn't want to open the window.

The flying thing got closer and closer. First it looked like , then like . Its outlines wavered and changed, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. Harry started to get a scared prickling feeling down the back of his neck and in the pit of his stomach.

Ron stared out the window. "It's . No, now it looks like ." He didn't seem as uneasy as Harry was feeling. But then, he hadn't received a package that said 'watch the sky for more surprises.'

When Harry was sure that it was , the flying thing suddenly lost its wavery outlines, and he could see that it was . . . Rubeus Hagrid, flying on the oddest creature Harry had seen since Buckbeak the hippogriff. It had the head of , the body of , the feet of and the wings of . With a relieved grin, Harry flung the window open. "Hagrid!" he called, not even caring if he woke the Dursleys. They were scared senseless by Hagrid.

"Harry!" cried Hagrid. "Happy Birthday to ye!" As he and the odd beast flew in through the window, and scuttled out of the way. Harry didn't even care anymore. Let the Dursleys see them. He almost hoped they would.

"What is that thing?" he asked Hagrid as the huge man sat on his bed, making it creak ominously.

"It's a kameleon--a magical sort o' chameleon. Hides its shape by magic to confuse ye. If Muggles see it, they just think it's an airplane or ."

Harry grinned, thinking about all the stories of UFOs.

"So, did ye get yer present?" Hagrid looked around the room, noticing and curled up next to the wall.

"Um, what did you send?" asked Harry. He was staring at a particularly ugly lazing on a bookshelf. "I asked an old friend in Diagon Alley to send ye a box o' magic bonbons. Ye didn't get it?" Hagrid looked downcast.

"The only thing I got--" Harry pointed at the color-changing wrapping paper and its strange note. A was nibbling on the paper.

Hagrid looked at it. "Yes, that should be it. They're a bit like the crackers we 'ave at Christmas. All kinds o' interestin' things come out. Thought you'd enjoy it, stuck 'ere with the Muggles."

"Interesting things like that?" asked Harry, pointing to perched on the top of Hedwig's cage. Hedwig glared at it, clicking her beak.

"Hmmm. Could be. Didn't ask which box he sent, just ordered the biggest one."

Ron grinned as he scooped up that was trying to crawl up his leg. "Would make a nice pet," he said.

"So what happened to your present?" Hagrid asked Harry. He reached out to stroke with one huge finger.

"I think the box came open, and dumped most of the bonbons outside the house," said Harry. "I've been finding weird things all over the place tonight."

"And we dumped most of them right back out the window," chortled Ron, tickling . "Just imagine what the Dursleys will think in the morning."

As Ron, Hagrid and Harry laughed, Harry thought that this was certainly the strangest birthday he had ever had.