✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ⁺ ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ⁺ 　　✦ 

𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝟐: 𝐋𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐍𝐨 𝐎𝐧𝐞

The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches. I had already read five out of the ten books Dad gave me. 

There was no escaping Dudley's gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader. The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Dudley's favorite sport: Harry Hunting.

 "I told you no!" I shouted again as I hit Dudley smack on the head, "What is wrong with you? When someone says no, fat Dudley, they mean don't ever do it! And when Diane Amelia Dursley says it, you DO NOT do it ever again! Ghastly idiots!" 

This was why Harry spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn't be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Dad's old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. I was going to Ellison Academy. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.

 "They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"

 "No, thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it — it might be sick." Then he ran before Dudley could work out what he'd said.

 "Your boyfriend's horrible, I don't see why you like him," Dudley snapped at me. 

"Oh shut up, he's not my boyfriend!" I snapped back. 

"What do you see so much in him?" 

"I don't like him!" 

"Really?" 

"Shut up, Dudley, or should I tell Mum about what you did to Eleanor Fitzgerald the other day?" 

Dudley became quiet. 

One day in July, Mum took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Harry at Mrs. Figg's and leaving me at home alone, reading as usual. Just as Mum and Dudley left, I grabbed Harry's hand. 

"Please, Harry," I said as I saw Dudley and Mum go away in the car, "I want you to see this." 

Harry looked confused but followed me. 

"Where are we going, Ane?" He asked. He was the only one who called me Ane because of my name, Diane. 

"You'll see," I said as I opened the door of the cupboard. "Go in, Harry." 

We both shuffled inside. Harry stared curiously at me.  

"Harry are you alright?" I asked as I looked at him. 

"What d'you mean, Diane?" 

"I mean, Harry .  .  . you talked to the snake." 

"Talked to a snake? What the boa? You're kidding, Diane! It was talking." 

"No, Harry," I replied firmly. "You were talking to it." 

Harry looked at me. "Are you sure, Diane?" he asked skeptically. 

"Positive, Harry." 

Harry kept quiet. "Well, what else?" 

"Here, Harry," I said as I pointed up to the ceiling. "Press that if you ever need anything." 

✧✧✧✧

That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings' boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life. 

As we looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Dad said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Mum burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. He looked like a grown-up baboon. Seriously. 

"Nice," I said awkwardly. 

"Where are you going, Diane?" Dudley asked impatiently. 

"Ellison Academy, Dudley. Supposed to be good for astronomers." 

"Astronomers? What are-" 

"Astronomers are scientists who study the universe, its objects, and how it works. They aim to push the boundaries of human knowledge about how the universe works by observation and theoretical modeling." 

Mum rushed to hug me. "S-s-so i-intelligent, my ickle D-D-D-Diane," she sobbed. 

"Both of you! 'Atta boy, Dudley! 'Atta girl, Diane!" Dad said. 

✧✧✧✧

There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry came in for breakfast, followed by me. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. We went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray water. 

"What's this?" he asked Mum. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.

 "Your new school uniform," she said. 

Harry looked in the bowl again."Oh," he said, "I didn't realize it had to be so wet." 

"Don't be stupid," snapped Mum. "I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things gray for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished." 

Mum smiled as though nothing had happened and said, "Good morning, Diane." I smiled as I sat down. 

 Harry sat down at the table. Dudley and Dad came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry's new uniform. Dad opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table. We heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat. 

"Get the mail, Dudley," said Dad from behind his paper. 

"Make Harry get it." 

"Get the mail, Harry."

 "Make Dudley get it." 

"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley." 

Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. 

After hissing, "You are so idiotic," to Dudley, I followed. 

Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Dad's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and —a letter for Harry. Harry picked it up and stared at it. 

"Harry, watch out," I whispered, "you never get any letters! It could be dangerous!" I gripped his shirt. 

Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp. Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H. 

"What a seal," I said. 

"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Dad from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke. 

Harry and I went back to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Dad the bill and the postcard, sat down, and slowly began to open the yellow envelope. 

Dad ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard." Marge's ill," he informed Mum. "Ate a funny whelk...." 

"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!" 

Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Dad. 

"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back. 

"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Dan, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there.

 Within seconds it was the grayish white of old porridge." P-P-Petunia!" he gasped. 

Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Dad held it high out of his reach. 

Mum took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise. 

"Vernon! Oh my goodness — Vernon!" 

They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Harry, Dudley, and I were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave Dad a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.

"I want to read that letter," he said loudly. 

"I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it's mine." 

"Get out, all of you," croaked Dad, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope. 

Harry didn't move." I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted. 

"Let me see it!" demanded Dudley.

"IT'S HARRY'S LETTER!" I shouted. 

 "OUT!" roared Dad, and he took both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, grabbed my hand pushed me outside,  slamming the kitchen door behind them. Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between the door and floor and I heard from the door. 

"Vernon," Mum was saying in a quivering voice, "look at the address — how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don't think they're watching the house?" 

"Watching — spying — might be following us," muttered Dad wildly. 

Insane. Insane, spying? On the Dursleys and Harry? Why would anyone want that? I thought.

"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want —" 

I could see Dad's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen. 

"No," he said finally. "No, we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer...Yes, that's best...we won't do anything..."

 "But —" 

"I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took him in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?" 

That evening as I came back from the library, I heard people talking. I looked around as I put all my books on the table. There was more talking. I followed the noise to Harry's cupboard. 

"SILENCE!" yelled Dad, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful."Er — yes, Harry — about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking...you're really getting a bit big for it...we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom." 

"Why?" said Harry.

 "Don't ask questions!" snapped Dad. "Take this stuff upstairs, now." He looked up to see me. There was no smile.  "Help him," was all he said before running to do something else. 

I peaked in. "Harry," I said, "C'mon." 

It only took Harry one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room. He sat down on the bed and stared around him. 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 canceled; 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. 

From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at our mother, "I don't want him in there...I need that room...make him get out..."

Harry sighed and stretched on the bed. 

"See you, Harry," I whispered as I closed the door. 

The next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked our father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked our mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn't have his room back. Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he'd opened the letter in the hall. Dad and Mum kept looking at each other darkly. 

When the mail arrived, Dad, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry, made Dudley go and get it. 

They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one!'Mr. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive —'" 

With a strangled cry, Dad leaped from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind him, I following. Dad had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Dad around the neck from behind. 

After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick, Dad straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry's letter clutched in his hand. 

"Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom," he wheezed at Harry. "Dudley — go — just go." Dudley and Harry hurried out of the room. 

"DIANE! DO YOU NEED SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS? GO TO YOUR ROOM!" Dad hollered. Frightened, I hurried back to my room. 

I went to bed, thinking about the letters. They weren't coincidences. 

It seemed like only minutes later that someone shouted, "AAAAARRRGH!"

I rushed out of bed and hurried near the railings to see what was happening. Dad had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do. He shouted at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Harry shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Dad's lap. I could see three letters addressed in green ink.

"I want —" he began, but Dad was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes. Dad didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot. 

"See," he explained to Mum through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."

 "I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon." 

"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Dad, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Mum had just brought him. 

On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom. Dad stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" as he worked, and jumped at small noises. 

On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Mum through the living room window. While Dad made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Mum shredded the letters in her food processor. 

"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Harry in amazement.

"Someone who has some sense," I said angrily. 

✧✧✧✧

On Sunday morning, Dad sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.

 "No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today —" 

Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. The next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. Mum, Dad, and Dudley ducked, but Harry leaped into the air trying to catch one — 

"HARRY! HARRY, BE CAREFUL!" I said, staying at the spot and shielding my face from the letters. 

"Out! OUT!"Dad seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall. I quickly followed Harry. 

When Mum and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Dad slammed the door shut. We could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

 "That does it," said Dad, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!" He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. 

Ten minutes later we had wrenched our way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; Dad had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag. We drove. And we drove. Even Mum didn't dare ask where they were going. Now and then Dad would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while. 

"Shake 'em off...shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this. We didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall, Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

Dad 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 and I had a room the size of a closet. 

 We ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. We 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 a 'hundred of these at the front desk."She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:

Harry grabbed the letter but Dad knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.

 "I'll take them," said Dad, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.

"Oh, Harry!" I cried as Dudley and Mum went to get more cornflakes, "Oh Harry!" Tears splattered my face. 

"What happened now, Diane?" Harry asked as he looked at me. 

"What if - what if - we're being followed?" I sobbed. 

"Oh shut up, we aren't being followed. These are just some letters." 

But I knew Harry was kidding, just to make me feel better. 

✧✧✧✧

"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Mum suggested timidly, hours later, but Dad didn't seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage. 

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Mum dully late that afternoon. Dad had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared. It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled. 

"It's Monday," he told to Mum. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television." 

Monday - then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry's eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun — last year, the Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Dad's old socks. Still, you weren't eleven every day. 

"Happy early birthday," I whispered to Harry as I grabbed his hand. 

"Thank you." 

Dad was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Mum when she asked what he'd bought. 

"Found the perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!" 

It was very cold outside the car. Dad was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there. 

"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Dad gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!" 

A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them. 

"I've already got us some rations," said Dad, "so all aboard!"

 It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Dad, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house. The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms. Harry, Dudley, and I in one - Mum and Dad in another. Dad's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.

 "Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully. He was in a very good mood. Obviously, he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Harry privately agreed though the thought didn't cheer him up at all. 

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Mum found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Dad went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry was left to find the softest bit of floor he could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket. The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn't sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. I smiled before closing my eyes and sleeping. 

BOOM. 

The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door and I fell from my seat. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.

Word count: 3822