The Dursleys Departing
"Lies!" The shout from the upstairs bedroom next door came just seconds after the lawn mower had sputtered to a stop. Abner Leonard, half way to keeling down next to the decrepit mower stopped and held still, one knee hovering inches above the ground, wondering just what in the world was going on at the Dursleys this time.
He'd seen Vernon Dursley out front just ten minutes ago, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk, walking the length of his car, muttering to himself. As Abner watched, Vernon, had twice charged toward the house, his moustache bristling, striding determinately past the agapanthus, only to reach the doorstep, seem to change his mind and head back down the path toward the car and resume his pacing.
Abner diagnosed a slipped belt on the broken lawn mower, fixed it and pushed it round to the front of the house. Just as he was about to pull the cord, his wife Gladys strode through the front door, carrying a glass of water. "Packed again, are they?" she handed him the glass. Abner made a noise of agreement as he drank down the water in one. Gladys waved at Vernon as he glanced over to them during one more trip up the walkway toward the front door; he turned and walked back to the car, his face purpling. "Suppose they're really going to go this time?" Over the past month, the Leonards had watched Vernon and his son Dudley pack and unpack the car several times, even waking up to it packed one morning, just to see it unpacked as Abner was off to work an hour later.
"Don't know," Abner handed her back the empty glass, "maybe." He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped his brow.
"I suppose they'll just fly off in the car one evening," Gladys uttered in the exasperated teasingly way that only a wife of thirty years can.
Abner threw the handkerchief down on the ground, and shook his finger at her. "I tell you, I saw a flying Ford Anglia!"
"Yes, yes," his wife muttered soothingly, "and a flying motorbike as well."
Abner pointed excitedly, "Yes! The flying motorbike, I'd almost forgotten about that!" Abner had spent the last seven years trying to convince his wife of the strange goings on of their neighbors at number 4. She protested -never having seen one thing out of the ordinary- that Abner was frequently drunk.
The two of them watched Vernon charge once again toward the house, but this time, he did not turn back, he strode through his front door like a man who had made a decision.
"Oi! You!" Vernons voice carried to them even through the closed door.
"I hope he's not speaking to his wife like that," Gladys muttered, affronted.
"No," Abner kneeled down next to the lawn mower again. "The smaller boy, the one who wears glasses."
"Not the boy with the tail then?" Abner grunted at his wife's attempt at a joke and jerked the cord of the mower several times before it roared to life. Gladys picked up the tossed handkerchief and moved to the pavement, out of Abners way, but she did not trot off inside. Gladys Leonard watched her husband for a few moments as he pushed the mower up and down the front lawn. She could hear raised voices coming from inside the Dursley's house, but no specific words. And she wanted very badly to hear the specific words.
Giving up, Gladys made her way inside. Abner contented himself on mowing for a few more minutes before the broken down mower sputtered out again. Cursing, Abner decided to give up for the evening, the sun was almost set, and darkness would fall soon enough. He steered the mower toward the back lawn again, stowed it inside the shed, and walked back around front. A woman with dark hair and a small man wearing a mauve top hat were striding up the Dursley's front walk and ringing the bell.
"Gladys!" Abner hollered toward his house. A moment later, his wife stuck her head out through the door, just in time to not see the man in the purple top hat closing the front door of number 4 behind him.
"What?" Gladys said, and Abner turned to her, frustrated.
"Never mind," he said sheepishly and walked inside the house.
Half an hour later the Leonards were rowing. "I tell you, she was as large as a hot air balloon and she floated away toward London!"
"You mean she didn't fly off on a broom?" Gladys countered.
Abner waggled a finger at her, "There were about ten of them, I tell you, must have landed in the back yard, all riding brooms. One of them had violet hair!"
"What, no flying carpets?" Gladys shook her head despairingly, "Abner. Abner, please you can get help!" She was quite convinced her husband kept a stash of spirits in his shed along side the lawn mower.
Abner shook his head and pounded his fist on the table. "I do not drink! I tell you, it was the same night Dursley drove off bragging about the All-England Best-Kept Lawn competition!" He paused, as if the remembering of this one fact could prove to his wife of the broom rider's existence. "You remember that don't you? The whole family was getting into the car-"
"Did the boy still have his pigs tail?"
"No, it was gone by then," Abner answered matter of factly. She shook her head. "There were about ten of them," he repeated desperately, "all riding brooms-"
"Was the man with the long white beard wearing a dress among them?" She asked tiredly, her mother had warned her not to marry Abner.
"The streetlights went out," Abner snapped his fingers to demonstrate the blinking out of all the lights on Privet Drive. "And a man in a long black dress with a long white beard walked down the center of the-"
"How do you know what color his beard was if the lights were out?"
"It shone in the moonlight," Abner answered simply.
"Abner. Abner, please," she begged again. "Flying cars, flying motorbikes, flying women, flying brooms! Enough! There are programs that can help people like you!" She took his hands in hers, in what she hoped was a sign of solidarity.
Abner pulled his hands away from his wife's grip and stood up from the table. He pointed at her. "I do not drink. I have seen, with my own eyes, a flying motorbike, a flying car. I saw a woman the size of a hot air balloon, rising from the Dursley's back yard and flying toward London. I have seen men and women riding booms landing in that same back yard!"
As he pointed toward the offending back yard, the roar of an engine sounded from the other side of their fence. Abner and Gladys both walked through their back door just in time to hear someone holler, "Good luck everyone," the voice was drowned by another roar of the engine, then the voice yelled even louder "One…two…THREE." The engine roared like a dragon and suddenly, a flying motorbike, two large black flying horses and four flying brooms each carrying the Dursley's nephew, all rose into the air and flew off.
As the noise of the motorbike faded into nothing, Abner looked to his wife. Her mouth hung open, her eyes wide as she stared into the now empty sky. "So," he said with the calmness of a vindicated man, "shall we have a drink then?"