A/N - First story so please be nice. Less than three.
DISCLAIMER: Look at the web address. Says FANFICTION doesn't it? Good, that means I don't own Harry Potter. JK ROWLING does. Not me. If it had of been me, well let's just say I would have let Voldie win, among other things.
Chapter 1 – The Vanishing Glass
Rosalie Potter sat up sharply at the sound of her aunt's shrill voice at the door. She would have gotten used to it by now but still Aunt Petunia shrieks grated on her eardrums like every morning.
"Up! Get up!"
"We're getting up!" Rosalie shot back. The ten year old sighed and glanced over at her twin.
Like Rose, Harri was small and skinny, with messy black hair and both had vibrant, green eyes. In fact the twins were identical in almost every way, right down to the lightning bolt shaped scars on their foreheads.
One of the first things the twins ever asked was how they got those scars.
"In the car crash your parents died in. And don't ask questions!" Aunt Petunia had replied.
Don't ask questions. Rule number one in Surviving the Dursleys 101.
Harriet yawned and sat up too, rubbing the back of her head. She'd been dreaming about flying motorcycles again.
"Are you up yet?" their aunt was back at the door.
"Nearly" Harri answered tiredly.
"Well hurry up then, I want every to be perfect for Dudley's special day"
The twins groaned in unison. Dudley's birthday. How could they have forgotten?
"What was that?" Aunt Petunia asked sharply.
"Nothing, nothing" said Rose.
"Get up then and don't let the bacon burn!'
They heard Aunt Petunia make a huffing noise and footsteps fading away. Rose quickly searched around their shared mattress for clothes to wear while Harriet hunted for socks. Locating a pair, Harri brushed a spider off them and continued looking for a second pair. The twins were used to spiders as the cupboard under the stairs was full of them and that was where they slept.
Pulling on the most decent clothes they had, Rose and Harri made their way to the kitchen reluctantly. On the way they ignored the many photos of what Aunt Petunia called a baby angel and what Harri frequently referred to as a pig in a wig, in other words, their cousin Dudley.
Entering the kitchen, the walrus- er, Uncle Vernon barked, "Comb your hair!" over his newspaper by way of greeting. This was a normal occurrence as ever morning he would shout that the twins needed haircuts even though they had had more haircuts than their entire class put together.
~Won't do anything~ Harri thought sing song.
~Cause nothing can tame our beautiful hair~ Rose finished.
Something else that Harriet and Rosalie shared was a mental link. They figured it was one of the cool things that twins could do. While good at times, it meant there were no secrets between each other. This only made them even closer.
Harri and Rose noticed the huge pile of parcels wrapped in brightly coloured paper on and around the table that Dudley was already tearing into. They wondered briefly how many presents their cousin had managed to haul in this year. Not that it really mattered to them, the twins never got presents anyway.
Harri glumly took up the duty of stirring the bacon, her good mood vanishing as quickly as it came. Rose grabbed plates from the drawers and poured the juice.
Just as the girls sat down, Dudley, who had been counting his many gifts, said "There's only thirty six. That's two less than last year."
~I'm surprised he can count that high~ Rose nearly snorted at her sister's comment.
"But you missed that one from your Aunt Marge, Diddykins." Aunt Petunia quickly said trying to placate her son.
"Alright, thirty seven then" Dudley was starting to go red.
Rose and Harri immediately began scoffing their breakfast as fast as they could sense one of Dudley's famous tantrums coming on, as he would likely turn the table over.
"Well, we'll buy you two more presents today, how's that popkin?"
"So I'll have thirty- thirty"
"Thirty nine, sweetums"
"Oh" Dudley seemed to relax and went back to eating. Uncle Vernon just chuckled.
"Little tyke wants his money's worth" he said, "Atta boy Dudley!"
Dudley just burped loudly and said "I want more bacon"
~Disgusting~ Harri wrinkled her nose in agreement.
At that moment the phone rang with its familiar, annoying tune. Aunt Petunia went to pick it up.
The twins sat in silence while Uncle Vernon and Dudley continued eating like they hadn't even noticed the phone ringing.
When Aunt Petunia returned she seemed furious.
"That was Mrs. Figg, she said she'd broken her leg, so she can't take them." She snapped jerking her thumb at the girls.
~I know we should feel bad about Mrs. Figg, but YES!~ Harri said excitedly.
Mrs. Figg was their neighbour who had far too many cats and a house that smelt like cabbages.
~Yeah, I wouldn't be able to bear seeing all those photos of Snowy, Tibbles, Mr. Paws and Tufty again.~ Rose agreed.
"What about Marge?" Uncle Vernon asked.
"Don't be ridiculous, Vernon, she hates the girls."
"Well, what about you friend, what's her name, Yvonne?"
"Vacationing in Majorca."
"You could leave us here" Harriet piped up.
~We might be able to do whatever we want for a change~ Rose added mentally.
"And come home to find the house in ruins?" Aunt Petunia hissed at them.
"We won't blow the house up." Rose insisted. But the Dursleys weren't listening.
"We could leave them in the car..." Aunt Petunia suggested.
"The car's new; I'm not leaving them in it."
The Dursleys spoke of the twins like this often, as though they were something particularly nasty like a slug.
"I suppose we could bring them to the zoo with us..."
Dudley suddenly began giving huge, fake sobs and saying between gasps, "I d-don't want them too c-come – they always s-spoil everything!"
"Oh Diddykins, don't cry! Mummy won't let them ruin your special day!" Aunt Petunia cried flinging her arms around her son.
Dudley shot a nasty grin between his mother's bony arms at the twins. Rose and Harri just glared. Of course Dudley had stopped properly crying years ago but he had worked out that if he scrunched up his eyes and wailed loudly his parents would give him whatever he wanted.
Just then the doorbell rang.
"Oh, good lord, they're here!" Aunt Petunia said frantically and ran to get the door.
Dudley quickly stopped crying.
~Of course, can't look like a baby in front of your friend, can you?~ Rose growled.
Dudley's friend, Piers Polkiss, was a skinny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held the person's hands behind their back while Dudley hit them.
Half an hour later, the twin's couldn't believe their luck. The two of them were squeezed in next to Dudley and Piers in the back seat of the car on their way to the zoo.
Before they had left, Uncle Vernon had pulled the twins aside.
"Listen here girls, any funny business, anything at all, and you'll be locked in that cupboard from now until Christmas!" he hissed.
"We won't do anything." Rose insisted. But Uncle Vernon wasn't listening. No one ever listened to the twins.
As much as the twins tried to deny it, strange things did happen around them. Like when Rose and Harri had been running from Dudley's gang and had somehow found themselves on top of the cafeteria's chimney. They had to bring home a letter from the headmistress about how they had been climbing school buildings. Rosalie tried to explain that they had just gone to jump behind a bin and they were just there. Harriet figured that the wind had caught them mid jump. They had gotten a week in their cupboard for that. Another time Aunt Petunia had been trying to force an old sweater of Dudley's onto Rose, a really horrible one; orange with puff balls. The more Aunt Petunia pushed, the smaller the sweater became until it was small enough to fit a puppet but certainly not Rose. Luckily, Aunt Petunia just assumed that it had shrunk in the wash and Rose wasn't punished.
Once, Aunt Petunia had been so fed up with the twins coming back from the hair dresser's looking like they hadn't been at all, she had taken a pair of kitchen shears and roughly cut almost all of the twins' hair off, except for their bangs, to "hide those nasty scars". Dudley had collapsed in laughter at the pair's horrid haircuts. The two of them spent all night in their cupboard panicking about the next day in school where the two girls were already laughed at for their baggy clothes which were actually hand me downs from Dudley. When Rose and Harri had woken up in the morning they had found that all of their hair had grown back exactly the way it was before. Aunt Petunia nearly had a fit over it.
But today everything was going to be perfect. Nothing was going to go wrong.
In the car Uncle Vernon liked to complain about things that included but were not limited to: Harriet, people at work, Rosalie, the neighbours, Harriet, people at the shops, Rosalie, and the twins. Today's subject was motorcycles.
"...tearing along like maniacs, the hoodlums." He said as one overtook them.
"I had a dream about a motorcycle," Harriet said suddenly, "it was flying."
Uncle Vernon slammed on the brakes and nearly crashed into the car in front.
~...Oops~
"MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!" He roared.
"I know they don't," Harri said meekly as Dudley and Piers snickered. "It was just a dream"
~Well done~
~Shut up Rose~
This was the usual reaction to the twins mentioning anything "abnormal". The Dursleys seemed to think that Harri and Rose would get dangerous ideas.
~This isn't half bad actually~ Harri thought as she and Rose shared a cheap lemon ice lolly and watched a gorilla, who looked remarkably like Dudley except it wasn't blonde, scratch its head. The only reason they had it was because the lady at the ice cream stand had asked if the twins wanted anything before the Dursleys could steer them away.
Lunch was alright too. Rose and Harri got to finish of Dudley's Knickerbocker Glory because he was complaining that there wasn't enough ice cream on the top so he was bought another one.
Later Harri and Rose realised they should have known it was all too good to last.
They reached the reptile house and Piers and Dudley wasted no time in trying to find huge man crushing pythons and deadly cobras.
The twins stayed good distance away from Dudley and Piers, just in case they got bored of the animals and fell back on their old habit of hitting Rose and Harri.
The girls caught to the Dudley and Piers to find the ogling at a huge boa constrictor in its tank. The animal was long enough to wrap itself around Uncle Vernon's car twice and strong enough to crush a garbage bin. Though it didn't seem to be doing much of that at the moment. In fact, it was sleeping.
"Make it move" Dudley ordered his father.
Uncle Vernon rapped on the glass smartly. The snake did not stir.
"Move!" Dudley yelled whacking his hand against the glass.
"He's asleep!" Harri snapped.
"He's boring." Dudley said and waddled away, Piers close behind him.
"Sorry about that." Rose told the snake needlessly. But Harri and Rose could sympathise with the snake. At least they were allowed to move around their house whereas the snake could not.
Suddenly the snake did something unexpected. It winked.
The twins quickly looked around to see if anyone was watching before Harri said in amazement "Can you hear us?"
The snake nodded and gave them a look that said I get that all the time.
"I know," Rose murmured, "It must be awful."
The snake nodded vigorously.
"Where are you from, anyway?" Harri asked.
The snake jerked its head towards a metal sign that read:
Boa Constrictor
Brazil
"Was it nice there?" Rose asked then Harri added "Do you miss your family?"
It jerked its head at the sign again. The twins read further down.
This specimen was bred in captivity
"Oh, that's us too. We never knew our parents either." Harri said.
"DUDLEY! MR DURSLEY!" Piers yelled suddenly. "You won't believe what this snake is doing!"
"Out of the way you" Dudley growled as he waddled towards them. It might have been comical if it weren't for the fact that Dudley had punched Harri in the ribs causing her to collide with her sister making them both tumble to the hard concrete.
Suddenly Dudley and Piers leapt back from the tank with howls of horror. Rose and Harri sat up and gasped. The glass to the front of the tank had vanished and the great serpent was uncoiling itself to slide out of its enclosure.
It paused momentarily at the shell-shocked twins and they swore they heard a hissing voice say "Thanksss amigosss. Brazil, here I come!"
All the dumbfounded keeper could say was "But, the glass! Where did the glass go?" The zoo manager had fixed Aunt Petunia a cup of strong tea in his office.
By the time they all made it back to the car Dudley was saying how the snake almost bit his leg off and how it nearly crushed Piers. All the twins had seen was the snake snap playfully at people's heels though. Harri and Rose were about to relax that they hadn't been punished.
Then Piers had said, "Harriet and Rosalie were talking to the snake, weren't you guys?"
Harri and Rose gulped.
When they finally made it back to Number Four, all Uncle Vernon could say was "Cupboard, no meals" before he collapsed in his chair and Aunt Petunia ran to get him a large brandy.
Later in the darkness of their cupboard, the twins sat, not daring to go out to steal food from the kitchen. They did not know how late it was and wished they had a clock so they would know if the Dursleys had gone to bed yet.
This was the way their lives had been for nearly ten years. Harri and Rose used to hope that they had some other relative who would come and take them away from the Dursleys. The only reminder of there was their scars. Sometimes if they strained their memories they could see a green flash of light and feel a lot of pain on their foreheads. This, the twins supposed, was the car crash.
Harri and Rose eventually fell asleep, into dreams of flying motorbikes and green flashes.
A/N So yeah, this is my first fic, so please, please be nice. And I KNOW that the "Harry has a twin sister" thing is used alot, BUT, this is different I promise! I took the idea of Harry being a girl as well and decided to mash them together. The storyline will stick as close as I can manage to canon, but it won't be word for word, promise.
Oh and I hope you got the joke. If you didn't, go watch AVPM and AVPS. Then you will understand.
Review please. Constructive criticism welcome. 3
