The Twin Unseen

Chapter One:

Nicki's POV

Every since I was young, I was invisible. I would stand at Harry's side and listen as the Dursley's yelled at him, completely ignoring my presence. I would sit at the dinner table, as any family member would, and would watch as the Dursley's forced Harry to make their breakfast and do their dishes and basically put him to work as a slave. There was nothing I could do to help him, absolutely nothing. Some people would say that it is easier this way. Lying aroung watching as Harry did all of the things I, as his twin sister, would normally help him with. But, nothing about our life was normal. For one, our parents had died when we were one in a car crash, and now we were living with our abusive aunt and uncle. Two, yeah they all hated Harry, but at least he got attention, they barely ever even looked at me. The difference being is it easier to be hated but acknowledged, or ignored and unseen? Well, I could tell you which was worse, and it was obviously not what happened to Harry. Unlike him though, I remembered our parents. I couldn't tell you why, but I did. I remembered them holding me, saying goodnight to me, wiping my tears when I got hurt. Of course, the memories only came in flashes, but that's more than I could say for Harry.

Our whole life changed the day of Dudley's 11th birthday. He woke me and Harry up from our slumber by jumping up and down on the stairs, making dust rain down upon Harry and I. Last night had been one of those nights where I just couldn't take it anymore, and had sobbed myself to sleep with Harry comforting me. We were close, really close. We had this connection to each other, though I couldn't describe it or explain it at all. We had woken up, and me being me, had sat up too fast and banged my head hard on one of the beams above us. I rubbed my forehead before sighing and getting up. I sat by Harry and watched as Dudley opened his stupid, worthless presents. Most kids here in my situation would write about how "oh so terrible" it was to not receive presents on their birthday, but let me tell you. I had never received one birthday gift, nor Christmas gift, in the entire time I had been living with the Dursley's. I'm not complaining though, I've seen what happens to those presents. Yeah, they're all cool when you get them. You play for a few weeks, acting like nothing else in the whole world mattered. Then, gradually, your play time would get less and less, and eventually you would forget about the thing, the worthless thing that you had gotten from that past holiday. Either it would wind up covered in dust, missing, or in the garbage can, so what was the point?

Anyways, we waited for Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon to load up the car so we could go to the zoo. I had never been to the zoo before, but I heard it was full of animals and, too be honest, I was terrified of animals. Even the smallest bug had me yelping and running away. I hated this fear though, so when Harry insisted I come, I couldn't find any reason to not agree.

As we walked into the zoo, i scooted closer to Harry, my fear showing as we got closer to thegiant cages fiulled with large animals. Harry grabbed my hand and massaged the back of it, making me feel slightly better. I smiled at him, and he moved my dark hair out of my face. He smiled back and me, and led me toward where my "family" had gone. Dudley had walked up to the snake tank, my least favorite animal of all. I buried my face in Harry's shoulder, and he put his arm around my shoulder and lightly squeezed it. Dudley was banging on the glass container which held the snake inside of it's container.

"WAKE UP!" Dudley yelled at the snake, banging even harder on the glass. He was so loud that even though I could not see it, I could hear exactly what was going on.

"Make it move!" Dudley said to Uncle Vernon.

"Move!" Vernon yelled, banging on the glass.

"MOVE!" Dudley yelled once more, then he gave up. "He's boring..." Dudley said as he walked away from the snake exhibit. Harry tensed as something happened which I couldn't see, so I slightly tilted my head on Harry's shoulder so I could see what was going on in the direction where he was looking. I saw the snake moving toward my brother in the glass. I gasped and turned my head back into Harry's shoulder.

"Sorry about him..." Harry said to the snake, "He doesn't understand what it's like, lying there day after day. Watching people press their ugly faces in on you." Harry slightly moved a bit before speaking again. "Can you hear me?"

"It's just- I've never talked to snake before..." I was starting to get curious, but I still didn't want to look at the snake, so she kept her head where it was. Harry looked down at me before speaking again. "Oh her? No, she doesn't like animals... she's afraid of them." He ruffled her hair, which made her let her guard down a little, but she still didn't lift her head.

"But- I mean- do you talk to people often?" Harry asked, still talking to the snake. He continued to go on asking the snake about where it came from, but I wasn't paying too much attention to the conversation. The snake had noticed me. That meant I wasn't invisible. It was nice to have something recognize my presence, even if it was just a snake.

Just then, Dudley ran back over to us, and pushed Harry, causing us both to fall to the ground, me more uncomfortably.

"Mum! Dad! You'll never believe what the snake is doing!" He pushed his face up to the glass, and I watched as the glass disappeared, causing Dudley to fall into it. The snake slithered out of the cage, causing me to freeze. As it slithered away, it's tail went over my foot, causing me to start gasping for air at the amount of fear I was feeling. I heard Harry say "Anytime." to the snake, but I was too terrified to notice anything else. Well, anything except the glass reappearing before Dudley, trapping him inside of the snake's cage. Harry helped me up as Uncle Vernon gave us an evil look and we got sent to our rooms the minute we first stepped inside of the Dursley's house.

From then on, the Dursley's acknowledged me, not nearly as much as they did Harry, but enough to let me know who had the authority. A few weeks after the snake incident, we got a little bit more mail then usual. Harry looked through it, curiously looking at two letters on the bottom. He handed one of them to me, and I looked at it, seeing that it was adressed to me. I knew better than to show that I had it, so I hid it in my shirt. Harry, obviously, was not as smart, and started opening the letter right in front of them. Vernon, Petunia, and Dudley looked at it after Dudley had taken it from Harry. Vernon had then burned the letter in the fire and that was that. I hid mine under my clothes, knowing that they would never search there for a letter that was adressed to me. I decided not to open my letter until Harry opened his, so we could discuss what was in it. Everytime the mail would come though, Vernon would take Harry's letters and destroy them, but more would continue coming.