Chapter 1
Harry potter wakes up to the banging of his cupboard door and the repetitive calls of aunt petunia, "UP! UP! UP!" she yelled, banging the door with every "UP!"
Dudley came running down the wooden stairs, as Harry was coming out of his cupboard, only to get shoved back in by Dudley Dursley. When Harry came into the Dursley's living room, aunt petunia hurried to Harry and said, "Cook these bacon! And don't you dare burn them!" she warned then she turned to her son and smiled at him in a sickening way, "I want everything perfect on Dudley's birthday." Harry obeyed as Dudley counted his presents. Suddenly,
His face fell. "Thirty six," he said, looking up at his mother and father, "that's 2 less than last year."
"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see it's under this big one from mummy and daddy"
"alright, thirty seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over. Aunt Petunia who obviously scented danger too said quickly, "and we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?" Dudley thought for a moment. Finally he said slowly, "so I'll have thirty... thirty..."
"Thirty nine sweetums," said aunt petunia. "Oh." Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. "All right then."
Uncle Vernon chuckled. "Little tyke wants his money worth, just like his father. Atta boy, Dudley!" He ruffled Dudley's hair. at that moment the telephone rang and aunt petunia went to answer it while Harry and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap his presents when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone, looking both angry and worried. "bad news, Vernon," she said, "Mrs. Figgs has to take her niece and her friends around. She can't take him."
She jerked her head in Harry's direction. Dudley's mouth fell open in horror but Harry's heart gave a leap. Every year on Dudley's birthday his parents took him out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger bars or the cinema. Every year, harry was left behind with Mrs Figgs, a mad old lady who lived 2 streets away. Harry hated it there. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs. Figgs made him look at photographs of all the cats she'd ever owned.
"Now what?" said aunt petunia, looking furiously at harry as though he had planned this. "We could phone Marge." Uncle Vernon suggested. "Don't be silly Vernon, she hates the boy." the Dursleys often spoke about him like this, Harry sighed and said, "you could just leave me here."
Aunt petunia looked as though as she swallowed a lemon. "And come back and find everything in ruins?" she snarled. Dudley began to cry loudly.
In fact, he wasn't really crying. It had been years since he actually cried. But he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted.
"I don't want.. Him... T-t-to come!" Dudley yelled between huge pretend sobs. "He always s-spoils everything!" he shot Harry a nasty grin through the gap in his mother's arms.
Just then the doorbell rang. "Oh good lord, they're here!" said aunt petunia frantically. Moments later, Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people's arms to their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.
Half an hour later, Harry, who couldn't believe his luck, was sitting in the back with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in his life. His aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with him, so they were forced out of their will to bring harry along. But before he was sitting in the brand new car, uncle Vernon had pulled him aside.
"I'm warning you," He had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Harry's, "I'm warning you now, boy. any funny business, anything at all, and you'll be in that cupboard until Christmas."
"I'm not going to do anything," said harry, from the bottom of his soul, "honestly."
But uncle Vernon didn't believe him. No one, not once, have someone ever did.
The problem was, strange things often happened around harry and it was just no good telling the Dursleys he didn't make them happen.
Once aunt petunia, tired of harry coming back from the barbers looking as though he hadn't been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald, except for his bangs which she left to "hide that horrible scar". Dudley had laughed himself silly at harry, who suffered sleepless nights dreading school the next day. He was already laughed at for his taped glasses and cheap clothes. However, the very next day, he found his hair exactly how it had been before aunt petunia sheared it off. He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried his very best, repeating again and again that he just couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.
Another time Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's, a brown sweater with orange puffballs. The harder she tried, the smaller it became, until it finally might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly not harry. Aunt petunia decided it was the dryer's fault, but harry was just glad he wasn't to be in the cupboard for this.
But today, everything will, and shall, be perfect. It was even worth being with Dudley and Piers to be spending the day somewhere that wasn't his school or his cupboard or Mrs. Figg's cabbage-smelling home.
while he drove, uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia about everything. People at work, Harry, court, harry, the bank, and harry were just few of his favorite complaints. This time, it was motorcycles.
"Roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said, as a motorcycle overtook them with over limit speed.
"I had a dream about a motor cycle," harry said, remembering suddenly about his peculiar dream, "it was flying."
Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a moustache. "MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY."
Dudley and Piers snickered.
"I know they don't," Harry said quickly, "it was only a dream."
But he wished he hadn't said anything. If there's one thing the Dursleys hated even more than his questions, it was his talking about anything in a way above normal, may it be cartoons or his dreams. They don't want him getting dangerous ideas.
It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because of the smiling lady in the van had asked what harry wanted before they could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon ice pop. it wasn't bad, harry thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching itself who looked remarkably like Dudley, except it was brown.
Harry had the best morning he'd had in a long time. He was careful to walk a little way apart form Dudley and piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunch, taking care so the two won't fall back to their favorite hobby of bullying him.
As he was staying away from the group, somebody bumped into his back, making him choke on his ice pop. "S-sorry!" the twins hurriedly said simultaneously and began to blame each other as they walk away. Harry stared at them pointing to each other. They stopped as if noticed Harry was staring, smiled and waved to him. Harry supposed he should wave back, but the Dursleys have called him back with a slight scorn on their tone.
"He looks like..." Alice whispered, looking at harry go. Ellease agreed, deep in thought, "too alike..."
"Could he be-" they started at the same time, turning to each other. They nodded as if reading each other's thoughts. "wanna go see the snake?" Alice grinned.
Meanwhile, Harry realized that this peaceful morning was all too good to last.
After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the thick glass, snakes and lizards of all kinds were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley's and Piers' were at huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car, and crushed it into a useless pile of junk, but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. It was in fact fast asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils. He seemed irritated to not see any action from his idolized snake. He didn't even realize that the twins Harry bumped into earlier were standing next to him.
"Make it move," he whined. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge. Not an inch.
"Do it again," Dudley ordered, getting impatient. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles. Nothing.
"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away and marvel at other reptiles.
Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself: No company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to get it to move all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as your only place to stay in, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up. He heard a rustle and saw the twins edging away from the glass to look at the other snakes.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's.
It winked.
Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching, or they'll be thinking harry was crazy. No one. He returned the snake's wink.
The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, and then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said quite plainly:
"I get that all the time."
"I know," Harry murmured through the glass, though it's doubtful whether the snake could hear the low murmur through the glass."It must be really annoying."
The snake nodded vigorously. Yes! Yes! It is!
"Where do you come from, anyway?" Harry asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry peered at it.
Boa Constrictor, Brazil.
"Was it nice there?"
The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Harry read on:
This specimen was bred in the zoo.
"Ah... so that's how i is... so you've never been to Brazil?"
Far behind him, witnessing this conversation, were the twins from before, enjoying their own cup of cola and nibbling on their ice. Alice arched her eyebrow in interest while Ellease nodded from time to time, sighing at the same time with Alice, "Ahhh... I see..."
As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Harry made both of them jump. "DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"
Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.
"Out of the way, you," he said, punching Harry in the ribs and find his way to the boa. Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one knew exactly how it happened, but one second before Piers and Dudley was leaning right up close to the glass, gasping at the snake, and the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.
Harry sat up and gasped too; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor, terrorizing people without him wanting, People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.
As the snake slid past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo..." harry was then pulled up by 2 pairs of hands and saw the twins helping him stand, "Careful, and see you later…" One of them said.
The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.
"But the glass," he kept saying, feeling weird how the snake could have escaped, "where did the glass go?"
The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of sweet tea to calm her nerves while apologizing over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber in their fright. As far as Harry had seen, the snake hadn't done anything harmful, except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?"
Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say in his boiling anger his beloved son's party was ruined by a certain brat, "Go - cupboard - stay - no meals," before he collapsed into a chair wiping his sweat, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy before he does anything unsightly.
Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, not exactly sad, wishing he had a watch. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't be sure if the Dursleys were asleep yet. He knew it was hours after the zoo incident though. But until the dursleys were snoring, he couldn't risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food.
He'd lived with the Dursleys for roughly ten years, all ten miserable and at times tiring, for as long as his memories could trace, ever since he'd been a baby and his parents had died in that car crash.
He couldn't remember being in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn't remember his parents at all, not their faces, not their names. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions, not about his parents of anything. he is to stay silent and only speak when spoken to. There were no photographs of them in the house.
When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed almost every night of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were his only remaining family. Yet sometimes he thought strangers in the street know him. Very strange strangers ones, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After interrogating Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.
At school, Harry had no one to talk to, literally saying no friends. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang.