Sister Diana Chapter 1
"If you were to compare the Potter twins to their cousin Dudley, you would be pleasantly surprised. Diana was a genius, redheaded, pretty, nice and quiet. Harry was average, black-haired, green-eyed and nice. He also wore round glasses and had a scar like a bolt of lightning. They were both friendless, except from one another. Dudley was constantly spoilt by his parents Petunia and Vernon Dursley. He was porky, mean, not very attractive, stupid and a completely spoilt brat. He had many friends, or should I say victims and he spent much of his life making people think that it was cool to be horrible to Diana and Harry so they were "allowed" to be his friends.
Diana and Harry lived in a cupboard underneath the stairs. They had an old blanket between them and half a pillow each. They were forced to do chores by their Aunt and Uncle while their cousin lazed around, blasting aliens and getting fat. As a young girl, Diana had been told that she could go far. Not by her Aunt and Uncle obviously, but by her teachers. When she started school at the age of four, she could already read and write, knew all of her times tables up to 50, fully understood quantum physics and knew words to explain things that not many adults knew. Her primary one teacher had noticed her potential and had mentioned her in passing to the head teacher of the school. Mrs Collins, the head teacher of the school at that time had not believed Miss Morris, Diana's class teacher and had set her a book to read and write a report on and a very complicated advanced maths test. Obviously Diana had struggled with some of the maths but she had muddled through it, scoring 75%.
In the next two years, Diana had fast-tracked the entire primary school syllabus and some of the secondary school syllabus. She had then moved up to secondary school five years early and the year after that she became one of the youngest people in Britain to score 100% in her Advanced Highers. By the time she was nine, Diana had taken 13 Highers and 8 Advanced Highers, the most in Surrey, if not England. She had signed up for Oxford University but they had said that she was too young to go to university and not emotionally ready so the council payed for a teacher of obscure subjects to come into the school three times a week to teach Diana Latin, Environmental Science and, insanely Romanian.
This story begins in the June of 1991. The morning began just like any other morning. Aunt Petunia banging on the door screaming at 7 am on a Saturday, Diana and Harry having to cook breakfast for the three Dursleys and the general absence of love. However, this day, In Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's minds, was one of the most important days of the year. It was their darling Dudley's 11th birthday. In Diana's opinion, Dudley's birthday was the worst day of the entire year. She usually forgot about it until the day before as she was trying to restrain the terrible memories of Dudley's too many presents, her having to make a cake for "Diddydinkydums" and the constant taunting from Dudley about how on 'their "birthday 'they" didn't get cake or presents. Well, they got presents, bet they were normally something fowl like a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks. Yuck, cheesy.
That day was destined to be bad. First of all, Dudley had a tantrum because he "didn't have enough presents." The pig had been told by his mother that they would buy more presents when they were out at the zoo. And then disaster struck. Mrs Figg, the batty old cat lady who looked Harry and Diana when the Dursleys were out, had broken her leg tripping over one of her cats. 'Bet she isn't quite so fond of them anymore", thought Diana. Who would after tripping over one of them? After some careful considering, their Aunt and Uncle decided that they were going to have to take Harry and Diana with them to the zoo and arrange for Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkess, to be taken to the zoo by his mother due to the fact that the Dursley's car only had five seats.
Diana and Harry were each brought a cheap lemon lolly at the front gate because the lady asked them what they wanted and they had answered before Uncle Vernon had been able to stop them. Diana enjoyed the zoo. She had never been to the zoo, neither had Harry.
"Look, that orang-utan looks very like Dudley!" Diana whispered to Harry while nobody was listening. It wasn't that she didn't want to offend Dudley, she would do that at any possible time, but she didn't want to be yelled at by Uncle Vernon or elbowed by Aunt Petunia.
"LOOK THERE'S A SNAKE!" Yelled Dudley not so quietly. Diana wouldn't have really been surprised if the snake had been pretending to be asleep to annoy Dudley.
Uncle Vernon, on the request of Dudley, knocked on the glass of the enclosure in an attempt to make it move. This didn't work and Dudley soon lost interest and moved away. Diana felt sorry for this snake, she really did.
"It must be boring, having to be in a cage all day, people pressing their ugly faces against the glass," Diana remarked to Harry.
"Well not all of them ugly, probably more just Dudley and Uncle Vernon,
added Harry. Then, to the great surprise of both of them, the snake winked at them.
"Do you understand us?" Harry asked the snake,
"Yeessss," The snake replied.
"Where are you from?" Asked Diana. She was genuinely interested, not trying to be rude.
The snake gestured towards the plaque on the wall with information on the animal being displayed. It said that it had been bred in captivity and that it was Brazilian. Harry continued to talk to the snake for a little while longer while Diana pondered. This snake had been annoyed by people for its whole life. It had no choice of where to live. It was worse off than her and Harry and then she felt very angry. How dare they keep that poor snake imprisoned behind glass. It had never been to its place of origin. Suddenly the glass wasn't there.
The next few minutes were chaos. Piers tried to get Diana and Harry into trouble but they were already in trouble so it only added to Uncle Vernon's anger. Diana and Harry "earned" their longest ever punishment and were only let out of the cupboard for school . Diana and Harry weren't surprised. Their "family" used any chance to punish them and even punished them for breathing too loudly. They spent all day rereading their old worn paperbacks and tried to sleep at night. They had lived in that same cupboard ever since their parents had died in a car crash. They had been little more than a year old then, now the cupboard was too small. The hot water system had long been updated so the pipe no longer gave them any heat at winter. The pipe was still there to annoy them. It was the rusty type and it made the already cold cupboard feel colder. And smaller.
