The Letters From No One

The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry and Abi their longest-ever punishment. By the time they were allowed out of their cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new cine-camera, crashed his remote control aeroplane and, first time on his racing bike knocked down old Mrs Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.

Harry was glad school was over but there was no sign of escaping Dudley's gang, who visited the house every day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader. The rest of them were quite happy to join in his favourite game: Harry-hunting.

This was why Harry and Abi spent as much time out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where Harry could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came they would be going to secondary school and for the first time in his life he wouldn't be with Dudley.

Dudley had a place at their uncle's school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry and Abi on the other hand, were going to Stonewall High, the local comprehensive. Dudley thought this was very funny.

"They stuff peoples head the toilet first day at Stonewall" he told Abi, "want to come upstairs and practice?"

"No thanks," said Abi. "The poor toilets never had anything as horrible as your head down it – it might get sick!"

Then they ran, before Dudley could work out what she'd said.

One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Harry and Abi at Mrs Figg's. Mrs Figg wasn't as bad as usual. It turned out she'd broken her leg tripping over one of her cats and she didn't seem quite as fond of them as before.

She let them watch television and gave them a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she'd had it or several years.

That evening Dudley paraded around the living-room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carry knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other when the teacher isn't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.

As he looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her little ickle dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown up, Harry didn't trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs may have broken from trying so hard not to laugh.

There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry and Abi went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. Abi went to have a look, the tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in grey water.

"What's that?" she asked Aunt Petunia, who's lips tightened as they always did when the Potters spoke to her.

"Your new school uniform" she said.

Harry looked in the bowl, "oh I didn't realise it had to be so wet."

"Don't be stupid" snapped Aunt Petunia, "I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things and a skirt for her grey. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished."

They seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. They sat down at the table and tried not to think about how they would look on their first day at Stonewall high – like they were wearing bits of old elephant skin probably.

Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in with wrinkled noses because of the smell of the Potter's new uniform.

Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smeltings stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table, they heard the click of the letter-box and the flop of the letters on the mat.

"Get the post Dudley" said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.

"Make Harry get it."

"Get the post Harry."

"Make Dudley get it."

"ABIGAIL GET THE POST!"

"Yes Uncle Vernon" She squeaked.

"Now poke him with your Smeltings stick Dudley."

Harry dodged the stick and went to see what Abi had. There was a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, an envelope that looked like a bill and a letter for him – Harry.

Harry picked it up and stared at it, then at his sister, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one ever wrote to him – ever. Who would he had no friends, no other living relatives – he didn't belong to the library so he'd never ever got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter addressed to him, there was no mistake:

Mr Harry Potter

The Cupboard Under The Stairs

4 Privet Drive

Little Whinging

Surrey

The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment and the address was written in emerald – green ink. There was no stamp. Turning the envelope over in his hands, Harry saw a purple seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter 'H'.

"Hurry up girl!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.

They went back to the kitchen, Abi handed Uncle Vernon the bill and postcard, sat down and watched Harry slowly open the letter. Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust and flipped over the postcard.

"Marges ill" he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk….."

"Dad!" Dudley said suddenly, "Dad, Harry's got something!"

Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hands by Uncle Vernon.

"That's mine" said Harry trying to snatch it back.

"Who'd be writing to you" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it.

His face went from red to green faster then a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the greyish-white of old porridge.

"P-P-Petunia" he gasped.

Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it up high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked like she might faint. She clutched her throat and made choking noises.

"Vernon! Oh my goodness – Vernon!"

They stared at each other forgetting the three children in the room, Dudley wasn't used to being ignored he gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his stick.

"I want to read that letter" he said.

"I want to read it" said Harry loudly, "as it's mine."

"Get out both of you" croaked Uncle Vernon stuffing the letter back inside its envelope, Harry didn't move.

"I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted.

"Let me see it" demanded Dudley.

"OUT" roared Uncle Vernon and he took Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall. "Out girl" and Abi hurried out after them.

They had a silent fight over who would listen at the key-hole Dudley won, so Harry his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on the floor to listen at the crack between door and floor while Abi listened at the key-hole.

"Vernon" Aunt Petunia was saying, "look at the address – how could they know where he sleeps? You don't think there watching the house".

"Watching, spying might be following us" muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.

"But what should we do Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want"

Harry could see Uncle Vernon's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen. "No" he said finally, "No we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer….Yes that's best……We won't do anything…"

"But"-

"I'm not having one in the house Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took them in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?"

That evening when he got back from work Uncle Vernon did something he'd never done before, he visited the Potters in their cupboard.

"Where's my letter?" said Harry the moment his uncle squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to me?"

"No one it was addressed to you by mistake" said Uncle Vernon shortly, "I have burned it."

"It was not a mistake" said Abi angrily, "it had our cupboard on it!"

"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a deep breath and then forced his face into a smile which looked quite painful. "Er-yes Abigail, Harry – about this cupboard. You're Aunt and I have been thinking……Your really getting a bit big for it….We think you should move into Dudley's second bedroom."

"Why?" asked Harry.

"Don't ask questions!" snapped his Uncle. "Take this 'stuff' upstairs now"

The Dursleys house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors, one where Dudley slept and one where Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit in the first bedroom. It only took one trip for Harry and Abi to move everything they had upstairs. They sat down on their beds and looked around them nearly everything in here was broken. The month-old cine-camera was lying on top of a small, working tank Dudley had once driven over next doors dog; in the corner was Dudley's first-ever television set, which he had put his foot through when his favourite program had been cancelled; there was a large bird cage which had once held a parrot that Dudley had swapped at school for a real air rifle, which was up on a shelf with the end all bent up because Dudley had sat on it. Other shelves were filled with books; they were the only things in the room that looked as though they'd never been touched.

From downstairs came the sound of Dudley bawling at his mother: "I don't want them in there….I need that room……Make them get out…"

They sighed and stretched out on their beds, yesterday Harry would have given anything to be up here. Today he'd rather be in his cupboard with that letter than up here without it, Abi must have been thinking along the same lines, "wonder what that letter said" she mumbled.

Next morning at breakfast everyone was rather quite, Dudley was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with the Smeltings stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother and thrown his tortoise through the green house roof and he still didn't have his room back. Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he'd have opened that letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept throwing each other dark looks.

When the post arrived, Uncle Vernon who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry and Abi, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smeltings stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one! Mr Harry Potter, the smallest bedroom, 4 Privet Drive"-

With a strangled cry Uncle Vernon lept from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had Uncle Vernon by the back of the neck. After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got his a lot by the Smeltings stick Uncle Vernon straightened up gasping for breath, with Harry's letter in his hand, "Get the girl and go to your cupboard – I mean bedroom" he wheezed at Harry. "Dudley go!"

Harry walked round and round his new room, while Abi slumped on her bed. Some one knew he had moved out of his cupboard and they seemed to know he hadn't received his first letter. Surely that meant they'd try again? And this time he'd make sure they didn't fail. He had a plan.

The repaired alarm clock rang at six 'o' clock in the morning. Harry turned it off quickly and dressed silently. He mustn't wake the Dursleys. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.

He was going to wait for the post-man on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall, towards the dark door-"AAAAARRRGH!"

Harry lept in the air, he'd trodden on something big and squishy, on the doormat - something alive! Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Harry realised that the big squishy thing had been his Uncle's face. Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do. He shouted at Harry for nearly half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea, and by the time he got back the post had just arrived, right into Uncle Vernon's lap. "I want"- he began but Uncle Vernon was tearing them into pieces right before his eyes.

Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day, he stayed home and nailed the-letter box. "See" he explained to Aunt Petunia through a through a mouthful of nails, "If they can't deliver them they'll just give up."

"I'm not sure that'll work Vernon."

"Oh these peoples minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me." Said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruit cake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.

*

On Friday, no fewer than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn't go through the letter-box they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides and Abi even found a few forced through the small window in the downstairs toilet.

Uncle Vernon stayed home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed 'Tiptoe through the Tulips' as he worked, and jumped at small noises.

*

On Saturday this began to get out of hand. Twenty four letters to Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Abi through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food mixer. "Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Harry in amazement.

*

On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy. "No post on Sundays" he reminded them happily as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "No damn letters today—"

Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry and Abi leapt in the air trying to catch one—

"Out! OUT!"

Uncle Vernon seized Abi and Harry around the waist and threw them into the hall. When Aunt Petunia and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

"That does it" said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly. "I want you all back here in five minutes, ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"

They drove and drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turning and drive in the opposite direction for a while.

"Shake them off…shake them off," he would mutter whenever he did this.

They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he wanted to see and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley, Harry and Abi shared a room with three twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Dudley snored but Abi stayed awake, sitting on the window-sill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering…

They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.

"Excuse me, but is one of you Mr H. Potter? Only I got about a hundred of these at the front desk."

She held up the letter so they could read the green ink address:

Mr H. Potter

Room 17

Railveiw Hotel

Cokeworth

Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared. "I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room. Abi considered following them but decided against it.

* * *

"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn't seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove into the middle of the forest, got out looked around, shook his head, got back in the car and they were off again. The same thing happened in the middle of a ploughed field, half way across a suspension bridge and at the top of a multi story car park.

"Daddy's gone mad hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast locked them all inside and disappeared.

It started to rain large drops on the car roof, Dudley snivelled. "It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television.

Monday. This reminded Harry of something. If it was Monday—and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days of the week, because of television—then tomorrow, Tuesday was Harry's eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun-- till Abi gave him her present—last year the Dursleys had given him a coat-hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks. Still, you weren't eleven every day.

Uncle Vernon was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd brought. "Perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"

It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out to sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was for certain, there was no television there.

"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!" A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a grey wicked grin, at an old rowing boat bobbing in the iron grey water below them. "I've already got us some rations," said Uncle Vernon, "So all aboard!"

It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like ages they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.

The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls and the fire place was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.

Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a packet of crisp each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty crisp packets just smoked and shrivelled up.

"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully. He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver the post. Harry and Abi privately agreed, though the thought didn't cheer them up at all.

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the windows. Aunt Petunia found a few blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door and Harry and Abi were left to find the softest bit of floor they could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Harry couldn't sleep. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, on his other side Abi was snoring delicately, his stomach rumbled. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.

Five minutes to go. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although he might be warmer if he did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters that he might be able to steal one somehow.

Three minutes to go. Was that the sea slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?

One minute to go and he'd be eleven. Thirty seconds…twenty…ten—nine—maybe he'd wake Dudley up just to annoy him—three—two—one

BOOM.

The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, knocking into Abi as he did so, that she sat up too, they stared at the door. Someone was outside knocking to come in.

A/N:

Hey ok some things you might like to know:

Abi is a year younger then Harry, she has red hair like Lily's and the same emerald green eyes as Harry.

She has no scar like Harry because she was only like two months old when Voldemort attacked Harry and killed their parents.

The only people who knew about her before she went to the Dursleys were, McGonagall, Dumbledore, Sirius and old Bathilda, and some random order members.

Hope you enjoy will update soon!

Please review.