DISCLAIMER: I OWN NOTHING EXCEPT FOR CHLOE AND MARY ANNE GREEVLEY!

THE VANISHING GLASS

Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their niece on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed. Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that a girl lived in the house, too. Well, she lived near the house anyway.

Yet Chloe Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. Her Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.

"Up! Get up! Now!"

Chloe woke with a start. Her aunt rapped on the door to the shed again.

"Up!" she screeched. Chloe heard her walking toward the house and then the sound of the door being slammed shut. She rolled onto her back and tried to remember the dream she had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying broom and she was riding the broom around a cozy house. She had a funny feeling she'd had the same dream before.

Her aunt was back outside of the house.

"Are you up yet?" she demanded.

"Nearly," said Chloe.

"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don't you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy's birthday."

Chloe groaned.

"What did you say?" her aunt snapped through the door.

"Nothing, nothing..."

Dudley's birthday - how could she have forgotten? Chloe got slowly off of the straw that she called a bed and started looking for her uniform. Her uncle forced her to wear a maid's uniform. She didn't mind so much, because they always washed it in case someone came over. When there were people over, she was to be the hired help.

When she was dressed she walked through the back yard and into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley's birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Chloe, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise - unless of course it involved punching somebody. Dudley's favorite punching bag was Chloe, but he couldn't catch her. Even when Dudley did catch her he wouldn't hit her hard. He didn't want to leave bruises since her uniform didn't cover her whole body.

Perhaps it had something to do with living in a small, dark shed, but Chloe had always been small and skinny for her age. She looked even smaller and skinnier than she really was because all she had to wear were the maid's dresses and they were so puffy it looked like she was drowning in the thing. Chloe had a thin face, knobbly knees, red hair, and pale blue eyes. (A/N she has blue eyes for later on in the series when Snape kills Dumbledore. I want Snape to not only see James Potter when he looks into Chloe's eyes, but Dumbledore as well so he will have a guilty conscience!) The only thing Chloe liked about her own appearance was a very thin scar on her forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. She had had it as long as she could remember, and the first question she could ever remember asking her Aunt Petunia was how she had gotten it.

"In the car crash when your parents died," she had said. "And don't ask questions."

Don't ask questions - that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys. Chloe had learned that fast. Now she only spoke when spoken too. Everyone thought she was a mute, but that wasn't the case.

Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Chloe was turning over the bacon.

"Wash your face!" he barked, by way of a morning greeting.

About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Chloe needed a bath. Chloe was used to only having one bath a week. Her hair had also gotten used to it, it seemed. Her hair was no longer greasy and gross to feel and touch.

Chloe was frying eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes, and thick blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel - Chloe often said that Dudley looked like a fat lump of lard.

Chloe put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there wasn't much room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell.

"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. "That's two less than last year."

"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see, its here under this big one from Mommy and Daddy."

"All right, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. Chloe, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, quickly moved her plate of food into the kitchen and began eating quietly.

Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger, too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today. How's that, pumpkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?''

Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like hard work. Finally he said slowly, "So I'll have thirty ... thirty..."

"Thirty-nine," Chloe said quietly, but not quiet enough.

"Oh." Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. "All right then. I feel so stupid," Dudley pouted. He knew that if he said this, Chloe would get into trouble and that was his favorite thing to see.

Uncle Vernon turned a nasty shade of purple and stood up, "Stop making him feel bad about himself you waste of space! He is ten times smarter than you will ever hope to be!"

"Yes, sir," Chloe said quietly while hanging her head. She may have looked shameful on the outside, but on the inside she was anything but.

At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Chloe and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR. He was ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone looking both angry and worried.

"Bad news, Vernon," she said. "Mrs. Figg's broken her leg. She can't take her." She jerked her head in Chloe's direction.

Dudley's mouth fell open in horror, but Chloe's heart gave a leap. Every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Every year, Chloe was left behind with Mrs. Figg, a mad old lady who lived two streets away. Chloe hated it there. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs. Figg made her look at photographs of all the cats she'd ever owned. She also told all these stories about a school for gifted children and how bloody brilliant it was.

"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Chloe as though she'd planned this. Chloe knew she ought to feel sorry that Mrs. Figg had broken her leg, but it wasn't easy when she reminded herself it would be a whole year before he had to look at Tibbles, Snowy, Mr. Paws, and Tufty again, or listen to the most outrageous stories imaginable.

"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.

"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the girl."

The Dursleys often spoke about Chloe like this, as though she wasn't there - or rather, as though she was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug. She didn't mind, it meant that the attention wasn't on her.

"What about what's-her-name, your friend - Yvonne?"

"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.

"You could just leave her here," Dudley put in hopefully (he didn't want the girl to ruin his birthday after all).

Aunt Petunia looked as though she'd just swallowed a lemon.

"Sorry pumpkin, but she might ruin the house?" she said sweetly while glaring at Chloe.

"She won't blow up the house, will you?" said Dudley, he was getting frantic now.

"No, sir" Chloe replied still staring at the floor, but it was no use; they were already on to a different way.

"I suppose we could take her to the zoo," said Aunt Petunia slowly, "... and leave her in the car..."

"That car's new; she's not sitting in it alone..."

Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact, he wasn't really crying - it had been years since he'd really cried - but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted.

"Dinky Duddydums, don't cry, Mummy won't let her spoil your special day!" she cried, flinging her arms around him.

"I... don't... want... her... t-t-to come!" Dudley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. "She always sp- spoils everything!" He shot Chloe a nasty grin through the gap in his mother's arms. Chloe knew right then that it was no use. They would find some way to keep her home, or away from Dudley.

Just then, the doorbell rang - "Oh, good Lord, they're here!" said Aunt Petunia frantically - and a moment later, Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people's arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.

Half an hour later, Chloe, who couldn't believe her luck, was sitting in the back of the Dursleys' car with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in her life. Her aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with her, but before they'd left, Uncle Vernon had taken Chloe aside.

"I'm warning you," he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Chloe's, "I'm warning you now, girl - any funny business, anything at all - and you'll be in that shed from now until Christmas."

"I'm not going to do anything, sir," said Chloe, "honestly."

But Uncle Vernon didn't believe her. No one ever did.

The problem was, strange things often happened around Chloe and it was just no good telling the Dursleys she didn't make them happen.

Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Chloe coming back from the barbers looking as though she hadn't been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut her hair so short she looked like a pixie. It looked horrible and Dudley had laughed himself silly at Chloe, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where she was already laughed at for her maid clothes and scar. Next morning, however, she had gotten up to find her hair exactly as it had been before, straight down to her lower back, Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. She had been given a week in her shed for this, even though she had tried to explain that she couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.

Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force her into a revolting old dress of hers (brown with pink flowers) - The harder she tried to pull it over her head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn't fit Chloe. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to her great relief, Chloe wasn't punished.

On the other hand, she'd gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Dudley's gang had been chasing her as usual when, as much to Chloe's surprise as anyone else's, there she was sitting on the chimney. The Dursleys had received a very angry letter from Chloe's headmistress telling them Chloe had been climbing school buildings. But all she'd tried to do (as she quietly explained to Uncle Vernon through the locked door of her shed) was jump behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. Chloe supposed that the wind must have caught her in mid- jump, she was rather skinny.

But today, nothing was going to go wrong. It was even worth being with Dudley and Piers to be spending the day somewhere that wasn't school, her shed, or Mrs. Figg's cabbage-smelling living room.

While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Chloe, the council, Chloe, the bank, and Chloe were just a few of his favorite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.

"... Roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.

It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady in the van had asked Chloe what she wanted before they could hurry her away, they bought her a cheap lemon ice pop. It was horrible, the Dursley's always forgot she hated lemon. Chloe watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked remarkably like Dudley, except that it wasn't blond.

Chloe had the best morning she'd had in a long time. She was careful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn't fall back on their favorite hobby of hitting her. They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his knickerbocker glory didn't have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Chloe was allowed to finish the first.

Chloe felt, afterward, that she should have known it was all too good to last.

After lunch they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can - but at the moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.

Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils.

"Make it move," he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.

"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.

"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.

Chloe moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. She absolutely loved snakes, though she didn't know why. This was the first time she had seen a real snake. She wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself - no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a shed as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least she got to go outside the shed every once in a while.

The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Chloe's.

It winked.

Chloe stared. Then she looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. She looked back at the snake and winked, too.

The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Chloe a look that said quite plainly:

"I get that all the time."

"I know," Chloe murmured through the glass, though she wasn't sure the snake could hear her. "It must be really annoying."

The snake nodded vigorously.

Chloe read the plaque next to the glass:

Boa Constrictor, Brazil.

This specimen was bred in the zoo.

"Oh, so you've never been to Brazil?"

As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Chloe made both of them jump.

"DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"

Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.

"Out of the way, you," he said, pushing Chloe in the stomach. Caught by surprise, Chloe fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened - one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.

Chloe sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.

As the snake slid swiftly past her, Chloe could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amiga."

The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.

"But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"

The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Chloe had seen, the snake hadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Chloe at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "Chloe was talking to it, weren't you, Chloe?"

Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Chloe. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go - shed - stay - no meals," before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.

Chloe lay in her dark, and small shed much later, wishing she had a watch. She didn't know what time it was and she couldn't be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, she couldn't risk sneaking in to the house for some food.

She'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as she could remember, ever since she'd been a baby and her parents had died in that car crash. She couldn't remember being in the car when her parents had died. Sometimes, when she strained her memory during long hours in her shed, she came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on her forehead. This, she supposed, was the crash, though she couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. She couldn't remember her parents at all. Her aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course she was forbidden to ask questions, not that she would anyway. There were no photographs of them in the house.

When she had been younger, Chloe had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take her away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were her only family. Yet sometimes she thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know her. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to her once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Chloe furiously if she knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at her once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken her hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Chloe tried to get a closer look.

At school, Chloe had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Chloe Potter in her baggy maid's clothes and weird scar, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang. Once she did have a friend, Mary Anne Greevley. Mary had moved to the school in the middle of the year and asked Chloe for help around the school. When Chloe asked her why Mary chose her instead of someone else, Mary said that she was once the school weirdo and didn't want Chloe to end up the same way. The day after that Mary ignored her. Chloe found out later that Dudley's gang had gotten to her.

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