A/N: Well, because of all the recent fav's that have been made, i have gained some motivation and am currently updating this story to take out as much of the book parts as possible. If anyone wants to be my Beta, please PM me.
Roselyn Potter was NOT having a good summer. Sure, it had started out great because her older brother Harry had been back from his first year at Hogwarts and she got to hear all about his adventures with his friends and all about the classes he took, but there were far more downsides to the summer. First of all, her cousin Dudley was also back from his first year at Smeltings, and while he was treating she and her brother like the plague, he still had no qualms with getting them in trouble with his parents. Second of all, she couldn't actually look through all of her brothers books again to prepare for the upcoming school year since she would also be attending, not to mention she really wanted a good look at his broom and the photo album he had of their parents, but their Uncle Vernon had locked everything her brother had up in the cupboard under the stairs. Finally, Harry's pet owl Hedwig, who had also been padlocked in her cage, would not stop screeching at all hours of the day. While Rose felt badly for the poor owl, she also disliked the amount of tension and yelling it created in the house.
Every morning, at varying times, Hedwig would start screeching her head off while beating her wings furiously against the cage which promptly caused Uncle Vernon to wake up and start screaming at Harry, who would try (and most times fail) to yell back for the next 2 hours or so. Then she and her brother would have to tread carefully around their Aunt and Uncle until they calmed down a bit unless they wanted to be given an ungodly amount of chores to do for the rest of the day.
Unfortunately, she just knew the summer was about to get worse, it usually did around Harry's birthday and today was Harry's 12th birthday. She was currently in the kitchen with Harry, frantically trying to pull together a breakfast that was acceptable to their Aunt Petunia, but that would also please their Uncle since Hedwig had once again started screeching early that morning, waking everyone up a good two and a half hours earlier than anyone, even the Potter siblings, wanted to be.
Just as Harry was done with the eggs and bacon and Rose was finishing up setting the table, their Uncle came storming in, his face was slowly becoming redder as he huffed and puffed, clearly trying to calm down. Their Aunt and Cousin came in shortly after, Dudley taking his own seat while their Aunt Petunia hovered over them to inspect the food, making sure they hadn't burnt, spilt, broken, or otherwise harmed the food, her kitchen, or the cooking utensils.
Rose made sure to fetch her Uncle his coffee before helping Harry to serve everyone. Rose made sure to keep her head down so she didn't have to watch her Uncle and Cousin eat since it really was disgusting and while her Uncle had far more table manners than Dudley did, when he was furious as he was currently, only 3/4ths of his food made it into his mouth, the other bit of his hanging off his beard.
To Rose's surprise, it took a few moments before her Uncle finally slammed his fist on the table, startling her and her Aunt. Dudley proceeded to ignore them as he worked at putting as much food in his mouth as he could and Harry just sighed in resignation.
"Enough is enough! If that bird of yours continues to make such a racket at all hours of the day, it'll have to go!" he yelled, pointing at the ceiling as though to prove a point.
"She's only bored! If you'd just let me-" Harry started, but was cut off by their Uncle slamming his hand on the table again.
"No! I won't have it!" He snarled.
"She's used to flying outside though! If I could just let her out at night she'd stop." Harry tried once again to explain, Rose just sighed and finished her own breakfast, swiftly stuffing some toast in her pocket to give to Hedwig while everyone was distracted.
"May I be dismissed?" She asked, trying to stop the topic from escalating or to keep from having to hear any more of the argument, unfortunately it didn't have the desired effect and her Uncle turned to her, face still red,
"Absolutely not!" He snapped before turning back to Harry. "I know exactly what'll happen if that owl is let out, you'll decide to write your freaky little friends and I'm not having it!"
Just then, Dudley belched loudly, grabbing everyone's attention.
"I want more bacon!" He half whined, half demanded.
"There's more in the frying pan sweetums." Aunt Petunia said, her hands fluttering about as they soothed her son's hair back some before starting to put more eggs and toast also on his plate. "We must feed you up before you go back to school, I don't trust their food."
Rose shook her head in disbelief, she never would have thought that someone could gain so much weight just off of school food, but Dudley had severely surprised her. He had always been a big kid, always on the obese side, but he had enough exercise trying to catch her brother and beat him up or anyone else that disagreed with him or his friends that he was still able to move without looking like he was going to kill over with every step but when they had picked him up from smeltings school, Rose had been appalled to see that he had put on so much weight that his bottom drooped over either side of the dining room chair. Clearly, the school had wonderful food or very fatty food, Dudley loved it either way apparently.
She came out of her thoughts when she caught Harry responding to Dudleys demand for the frying pan with a "Say the magic word," and about dropped her head to the table, cringing. Sure enough, Dudley squeaked in fright and fell sideways off his chair, shaking the whole kitchen, Aunt Petunia gasped and went pale, looking as though she was going to faint, and Uncle Vernon, who had started to regain his natural coloring when past his usual angry red face and right into furious purple.
"I just meant please!" Harry quickly tried to correct himself, but the damage had been done.
"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT USING THAT WORD IN THIS HOUSE!" their Uncle thundered, causing Rose to whimper and slide down in her chair, she really hated when her Uncle got this mad, it usually meant bad things for the Potter siblings. "HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!" roared Uncle Vernon, pounding the table with his fist.
"I just -"
"I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!"
Harry stared from his purple-faced uncle to his pale aunt, who was trying to heave Dudley to his feet, then finally to his sister who was looking down at her plate and shaking her head slightly.
"All right," said Harry, "all right. . . "
Uncle Vernon sat back down, huffing and puffing and for all the world looking like he would charge if either of them made the slightest wrong movement. If he had been bad last summer after they had found out about being a Witch and Wizard, it was nothing to this summer. Now that Harry actually had a year of Magical schooling under his belt, their family had been treating them as though they would spontaneously combust, or somehow infect them with their freakishness.
Rose knew that Harry missed Hogwarts and couldn't wait to be back by the way he would constantly talk about it. She simply couldn't wait to go and experience it all for herself. She had been devastated when Harry got to go, but she had to wait with the Dursleys for the whole school year, the only highlights of being left with her Aunt and Uncle by herself was that her cousin (who was her biggest tormentor) was also gone away, her teacher Mr. Lupin had also been a wonderful person she had met, and of course her Penpal Ginny Weasley who's older brother was Harry's best friend Ron. The two girls had both been happy to get to know each other and commiserate on how excited they were to be going to Hogwarts the next year together.
Unfortunately, while she had been treated much better than usual while the two older boys had been away at school, Harry and Rose were back to being treated worse than dirt.
Rose realized she must have zoned out for a moment only to tune back in when her Uncle cleared his throat pointedly, drawing everyone's attention back to him.
"Now, as we all know, today is a very important day."
Rose just sighed, 'talking again about that blasted business dinner.' She thought irritably. He'd been talking of nothing else for two weeks. Some rich builder and his wife were coming to dinner and Uncle Vernon was hoping to get a huge order from him. She glanced over at Harry and wince when she saw him look up in disbelief. 'Oh Harry, you forgot about the dinner didn't you.' She thought sadly, he was about to get his hopes crushed. And sure enough, her Uncle continued.
"This could well be the day I make the biggest deal of my career, " she winced when she saw Harry's face fall dejectedly as he pushed his plate away half-heartedly
"I think we should run through the schedule one more time," said Uncle Vernon, ignoring the muted groans that Rose, Harry, and Dudley all had. Even Dudley was tired of going through the routine to the point that he was starting to voice it.
"We should all be in position at eight o'clock. Petunia, you will be -."
"In the lounge," said Aunt Petunia promptly, "waiting to welcome them graciously to our home."
"Good, good. And Dudley."
"I'll be waiting to open the door." Dudley put on a foul, simpering smile. "May I take your coats, Mr. and Mrs. Mason."
"Excellent, Dudley," praised Uncle Vernon as Aunt Petunia started cooing over her son.
The siblings gave each other similar exasperated and disgusted looks, straightening up and faces going blank when they were rounded on by their Uncle, demanding what their answer was.
"We'll be in our bedroom, making no noise and pretending we're not there," said Harry and Rose together, tonelessly.
This continued for several minutes, their Uncle going through every little bit of information that could possible (and probably wouldn't) be relevant for the dinner, forcing the two siblings to continue repeating the same answer over and over. When all was said and done, he stood up and announced, "Right - I'm off into town to pick up the dinner jackets for Dudley and me. And you two," he snarled at Rose and Harry. "You stay out of your aunt's way while she's cleaning."
Harry quickly left through the back door, Rose hot on his tail. It was a brilliant, sunny day and would have been perfect to celebrate Harry's birthday if their Uncle hadn't ruined it with his dumb dinner party. When they two took a seat on the garden bench, Rose pulled out a birthday card that she had hand drawn for him with a picture of him blowing out candles on a cake and handed it to him. While he looked the card over, she quietly sang him happy birthday.
Harry looked over to his sister and gave her a small smile.
"Happy Birthday Harry," She said sadly.
"Thanks Rosie," He said equally sad. Rose frowned somewhat angrily down at her hands, wondering why none of their friends had written to them yet. She knew that Ron had promised to ask if the two could come and stay with his family during the summer, but had never even written. Ginny had also seemed to stop writing once the summer had started, which had seemed really odd because she had been so enthusiastic about writing to her during the school year.
The two sat in silence for a few moments before Harry jerked upright suddenly, his eyes narrowing onto the bush in front of them causing Rose to look strangely at him.
"What is it?" She asked, looking between Harry and the bush.
"Didn't you see that?" He whispered, leaning closer. Rose looked hard at the bush, but she couldn't see anything, so she shook her head.
Rose looked around and saw Dudley waddling over to them. She groaned, murmured to Harry that she was going to go grab her art things, and quickly left the backyard, skirting around Dudley who ignored her as he seemed to have his beady eyes set on Harry. She quickly made her way up to her and Harry's bedroom and started to look for her art things. Once she had them all and was getting ready to start drawing, she heard Dudley squeal for Aunt Petunia, and groaned.
'Why today?' she wondered as she put her things back away. She came downstairs to see that Aunt Petunia was lecturing Harry about his abnormality and that he was going to regret doing whatever it was he did before giving him a humongous list of chores to do. Unfortunately, she didn't duck away fast enough and Aunt Petunia caught sight of her as well.
"And don't think you're not going to do anything today either!" She snapped and rattled off a slightly smaller list of things to do, such as clean the bathrooms, vacuum the rooms, dust the hallway pictures, clean the kitchen and help cook dinner.
Rose grumbled furiously under her breath at the unfairness, after all she had no part in whatever Harry had said or done to Dudley. She knew that her brother was upset that his friends hadn't written to him, that he wasn't having a semi-good birthday, but he should have known not to get them in trouble today of all days.
Thirty minutes until the Masons were to arrive, Aunt Petunia called them both into the kitchen to eat a small meal of bread and cheese before shooing them upstairs. After a quick threat from their uncle, they quietly slipped into their room, closed the door, and went to collapse on their bunk bed, only to find that someone was already sitting on it.