𝟎𝟎𝟏 | Dursley Issues
The Dursleys were possibly the worst type of people one could ever meet. Not only were they loud, noisy and obnoxious, but they were reactionary, prejudiced, ignorant and prudish.
Not to mention narrow-minded.
Narrow-minded in the sense that they were completely, irrevocably and utterly against any sort of change or innovation.
So, naturally, when they found Harry and Calysta Potter on the doorstep of Number Four Pivot Drive, they threw a big hissy fit. Unfortunately, they had no choice but the keep the twins.
Now, however, nearly ten years had passed since the death of James and Lily Potter, and the house was getting a little too small for the three Dursleys and the two Potter twins.
Harry Potter, was a skinny boy with knobbly knees, having a mass of messy black hair and his mothers shining emerald green eyes. He wore a pair of round glasses, and had a bizarre lightning shaped scar on his forehead.
His twin, Calysta Potter, was completely the opposite. She had a vivid shade of red hair, just like her mother's, and her father's brilliantly hazel eyes, with a hint of gold in them. She was very tiny, much too tiny for her age, but her mind made up for it.
Being brilliantly smart, she was also notoriously bold and very, very mischievous, most likely having earned that trait from her father. She too, had a scar on her forehead, the same lightning shaped, but hers was very light, only slightly visible against her skin.
It was slightly curious how both her and Harry had identical scars, but she couldn't dare ask any questions; for that was the first rule in the Dursley household.
The funny thing was that the Potter twins shared the cupboard under the stairs. In fact, most of the neighbors didn't even know about their existence in the neighborhood, and that is how the Dursleys wished to keep it.
Every day was the same thing. Over, and over again.
The Dursleys' life was undoubtedly the most boring life one could ever lead, and as far as Harry and Calysta Potter were concerned, nothing would ever change any time soon. Especially for them.
How very wrong they were...
It all started when Dudley was due to attend his new boarding school Smeltings, which Vernon Dursley had attended in his day, and according to him, there wasn't a finer school anywhere.
Harry was supposed to be sent off to Stonewall High, the public secondary school down the way, and as for Calysta, she'd be attending an all-girls' boarding school.
Neither of the Potters had ever been separated during childhood, and this was to be a huge change for them, for they wouldn't be seeing each other much any more.
Calysta doted on her brother, he was the one person in her life who made her feel home, and their separation would take a toll on her mental state.
One fine, Thursday morning, it was a perfectly normal day with the perfectly normal Dursley family. Harry was frying the bacon, Calysta was doing the dishes and Aunt Petunia was pouring the tea into the teapot.
Dudley was seated next to his father, a big beefy man with hardly any neck, eating his seventh serving of crumpets.
Until Mr. Dursley spoke, "Dudley, get the post."
The boy grunted in response. "Make Harry get it."
Vernon sipped the tea that was just freshly poured by Petunia. "Harry, get the post."
The skinny, black haired boy stole a glance backwards. "Make Dudley get it."
"Boy, get the post," Vernon barked, "Dudley hit him with your Smeltings stick."
Calysta turned around, just as Dudley got out the smooth stick, aiming for her twin. Luckily, Harry dodged out of the way, but ended up tripping over his long trousers, falling to the floor.
Uncle Vernon and Dudley looked at Calysta.
"Fine," she sighed begrudgingly. "I'll get the post."
Washing up her hands, she dried them, then headed to the letterbox.
There was a letter from Dudley's dreadful Aunt Marge, some sort of subscription and—
Her heart gave a funny jolt. There was a letter for her and one for Harry...
Handing the letters to Uncle Vernon, and one to Harry, she glanced at hers, marveling at the fact that for the first time in her entire life, someone had actually written to her.
In her whole life, she'd never gotten a single letter... She had no family save for Harry, but she knew it wasn't him who wrote it. Neither did she have any friends... Yet the letter seemed to be addressed directly to her, crystal clear, there was no mistaking it.
Miss. C. Potter
The Cupboard under the stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
The envelope felt thick and heavy between her fingers, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald green ink, in contrast to the parchment. There was also no stamp.
She turned the letter over, her eyes widening as she saw a purple wax seal with a coat of arms; a lion, a badger, an eagle and a snake, the letter 'H' emblazoned in the center.
She broke the seal, taking out the letter, which was made of the same heavy parchment as the envelope.
Her surroundings seemed to melt; all that mattered was the letter before her.
She could hear some sort of commotion in the kitchen, but her eyes flitted across the first sentence of the letter.
Dear Miss Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wiza—
When the letter was snatched out of her hand.
"Hey, that's mine!" she shouted, trying to make a reach for it, only for her cousin Dudley to wave it around, waddling into the kitchen.
"She's got one too," he cried.
Aunt Petunia's eyes widened, and she quickly threw the letter into the fireplace before anything else could be read off it.
Harry, on the other hand, seemed to be in some sort of physical battle with Uncle Vernon.
"I want my letter," he demanded, reaching for it.
"Get out," Vernon said gruffly. "Out."
"I want to see," whined Dudley.
"I WANT MY LETTER!" Harry yelled, causing Calysta to wince.
"OUT!" Uncle Vernon had yelled, holding Dudley and Harry by the scruff of their necks and throwing them out of the kitchen.
Calysta had been quiet throughout the argument, so neither her aunt nor uncle seemed to notice she was in the room. Ducking down under the table, she watched their horror-stricken faces read the contents of Harry's letter...
"Vernon," Aunt Petunia quivered. "You don't suppose they could be watching the house? Look at the address..."
"Watching, spying..." Uncle Vernon was muttering, pacing back and forth around the kitchen. "Might be following us."
"But what should we do?" Aunt Petunia interrupted. "Should we write back? Tell them we don't want-"
"No," Uncle Vernon said finally, after much thinking. In all her years, Calysta had never seen Uncle Vernon think this much. In fact, she wasn't even sure if he was capable of it. "We ignore it."
"But-"
"No, Petunia," he said firmly, his mind made up. "I'm not having one in the house, let alone two. We swore we'd stamp out this nonsense when we took them in, didn't we?"
Later that evening, Harry and Calysta were in their cupboard, sitting in miserable silence. Harry was lying down on the narrow bed, his twin picked out loose threads from her sleeve.
"I can't believe they'd do this," Harry muttered, breaking the silence.
"Me too," Calysta sighed, hugging her knees.
"Wait.." Harry perked up. "Didn't you get one too?"
"I did," she said, bending her head. "Aunt Petunia burned it."
"Oh," he said simply. "I mean, it had our cupboard on it. Do you think it could be a mistake?"
She shook her head. "Of course not. I mean, I got one too, right? They can't have gotten two mistakes."
"Right," Harry muttered dejectedly, his emerald green eyes cast downwards.
"At least we have each other," she pointed out. "We've got just one summer before we go to school..."
"Oh Cal," Harry mumbled, wrapping an arm around her shoulder. "School's not that bad, really..."
She shrugged, seemingly uncaring.
As a child, she'd been homeschooled by a private tutor, since Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn't want to send her off to school alone, for reasons unknown to her.
Her tutor taught her well, in fact, she was quite learned in a variety of languages, but at this point, the prospect of school seemed far fetched and much scarier to her than ever.
Before she could reply, the door swung open, revealing Uncle Vernon.
Cal folded her arms. "Where's Harry's letter?" she asked boldly.
"Who's writing to us?" Harry added.
"No one," Uncle Vernon interjected. "It was addressed to you by mistake."
Cal raised a brow. "You know you could try lying to us more convincingly," she huffed. "It had our cupboard on it."
"SILENCE!" Uncle Vernon bellowed, a couple of spiders falling down from the ceiling, one landing on Cal's shoulder, who yelped. Harry brushed it off as she made a face.
"Oh, it's just a spider," Uncle Vernon muttered.
The girl raised a brow. "Well then, you wouldn't mind if the spider was on you, would you?" she asked darkly, thoroughly sick of him.
He spluttered, and she took that moment to pick up the spider and flick it onto his nose.
"ARRGHHH!"
He slapped himself on the face, trying to wave it off. "GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"
Aunt Petunia chose then to arrive, and she splashed his face with water, washing the spider off.
Uncle Vernon forced himself into a painful smile. "Er- your Aunt and I were thinking.. You two are really getting big for this cupboard... We think it best of you move into Dudley's second bedroom."
Aunt Petunia nodded furiously.
"Why?" asked the two in sync.
"Don't ask questions," said Uncle Vernon. "Just take this stuff upstairs."
Calysta gathered up her briefcase, which was lodged into the corner, following Harry, until Uncle Vernon pulled her aside. "Not you."
She froze, waiting for him to continue.
"You're moving into the attic."
The Dursleys' house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge), one where Dudley slept, and one where Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom. Then there was the attic, which just had all the old furniture of the house, and loads of books that none of the Dursleys ever read.
It only took one trip upstairs to move everything they owned from the cupboard to their new living areas.
After Calysta was done, she went down to Harry's room, sitting beside him on the bed. Nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old video camera was lying on top of a small, working tank Dudley had once driven over the next door neighbor's dog; in the corner was Dudley's first-ever television set, which he'd put his foot through when his favorite program had been cancelled; there was a large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Dudley had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all bent because Dudley had sat on it.
Other shelves were full of books. They were the only things in the room that looked as though they'd never been touched.
"You okay?" she asked, touching his shoulder.
"Mmm."
"Can I keep those?" Calysta asked, pointing to the books. Harry nodded, and Calysta wasted no time in picking them off the shelf and carrying the huge pile upstairs to the attic.
From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother, "I don't want him in there... I need that room... make him get out..."
Calysta let her thoughts run through her head. Yesterday, she'd have given anything to be up here. Today she'd rather be back in the cupboard with that letter than up here without it.
She was in no mood to arrange stuff around her room, there was no bed. She just flopped on the mattress that had been put on the floor and fell asleep.
The week that followed was rather eventful.
After Harry had tried to get the mail very early in the morning, having trodden on Uncle Vernon's face, who'd been camping to make sure neither of the twins would do exactly that, he nailed up the letterbox.
Only for the letters to multiply, and squashed through all the cracks into the house. Uncle Vernon skipped work, nailing up all the cracks and boarding up all the windows so no more letters would reach them.
On Saturday, a rather queer surprise greeted Aunt Petunia. In the morning, the milkman handed her two dozens of eggs through the window, and a letter was rolled up inside each and every one of them.
Dudley had found this rather amusing, "Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?"
"I wish I knew," Calysta shook her head bitterly.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon was seated at the breakfast table, looking very tired, but incredibly smug. "No post on Sundays," he reminded them. "No damn letters today—"
At that very moment, something came whizzing in from the chimney, hitting Uncle Vernon smack dab at the back of his head.
A second later, the fireplace was vomiting letters into the living room, Harry and Calysta trying to catch one, only for Uncle Vernon to yell and grab them both in his hands, throwing them into the hallway.
"That does it. We're going away. Far, far away," he growled, half his mustache nicked off by one of the falling letters.
Nobody dared to argue. Five minutes later, they were in the car, driving off to goodness knows where.
Calysta looked out of the window, watching the sky suddenly darken with clouds above.
The next thing she knew was that it was raining.
As she looked up at the sky, she pondered over the events of the past week. That's when it hit her.
She had read a bit of the letter...
"Dear Miss Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted into Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wiza— "
Hogwarts School... She'd never heard of it. Wait a second...
Witchcraft?
This was just another dumb, sick joke.
Witchcraft doesn't exist, she told her mind firmly.
That was what the Dursleys had told her.
There is no such thing as magic.
{ hey guys ,, here's the first chapter ,, i've tried to make it a bit humorous ,, so please do comment on what you think. all graphics made by me. i will try to update regularly. }
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