I honestly didn't know how the hell I managed to hide the fact that I turn into a sixty foot snake at sunset from my relatives for over a month even with them mostly ignoring me except for handing me chore lists and Dudley picking on me while I was doing said chores, but I did. Every night, I had expected Uncle Vernon to come barreling into my room yelling at me to be quiet every time I whacked my head on the ceiling considering how loudly I swore, but he always failed to do so. Every morning, I half feared that Aunt Petunia would open the door just a little too early, but she never did. And so, despite my constant fears of discovery, my secret remained just that. At least until Aunt Marge arrived.
How it didn't turn into a complete disaster worse than the Dobby fiasco I'll never know.
Aunt Marge was the least favorite of my relatives, as each one of the few visits she made when she could spare the time from breeding her godawful dogs and writing trashy romance novels that were constantly being rejected by every publisher in existence stood out in my memory as being the absolute worst times in my life. The dog biscuits for Christmas were par for the course, but being whacked so hard with a stick that my knee was nearly broken because she didn't want me to beat Dudley at musical statues was above and beyond, as well as leaving me in a tree until well after midnight because Dudley had tripped me and I landed on her dog Ripper who retaliated by chasing me up said tree. Not even Uncle Vernon would go as far as she did when making comments about me or my parents. Learning that she was going to stop by for a week had been absolutely the worst birthday present my Aunt and Uncle could have given me. That was probably why that fatass Vernon was smiling when he informed me that he was going to pick up his sister from the train station.
I had to race to finish the dinner dishes by sunset on the first night of Marge's visit, as Marge tended to enjoy a rather leisurely meal, during which she ate enough food to stuff a small elephant. As I cleaned the dishes, Marge raided the fridge and made disparaging remarks about my current appearance, my ancestry and my likely criminal history. I managed to tune her out by focusing on the task at hand. I raced to my room the instant the last dish was dry. Marge followed, apparently not finished with insulting me and my ancestors.
Despite the fact that sunset was nearly nine o'clock at night, I barely made it back to my room in time. One interesting fact about my bedroom is that despite the fact that there are several locks on the door, I cannot lock it from the inside. It is this lack of privacy that had caused my secret to be revealed to the rest of the family. Fortunately for my continued existence and the continued existence of my relatives, I somehow managed to keep my eyes shut that evening.
I had just removed my sunglasses - which had received many negative comments from my relatives - and taken a seat on the floor in preparation for the burning when Marge slammed my bedroom door open to continue her harangue. Fortunately for Marge's continued survival, I had become so accustomed to loud banging noises over the years that I didn't even flinch, much less instinctively turn to see what the source of the noise was like many of my classmates are wont to do, and continued looking out the window instead, searching for something to focus on so I could tune the old bitch out. I chose a tree, seeing as plants oddly failed to die when I looked at them, and I didn't want to risk petrifying one of the neighbors. Asking Marge to leave would be pointless, as that would only serve to egg her on. Instead I silently prayed that she would shut up and go away before the itching in my feet turned to flames.
No such luck. The woman watched the entire burning. First she started yelling at me for setting myself on fire - attracting the attention of the rest of my relatives - then, upon seeing me turn into a giant snake she became oddly silent. Once the process was finished, she turned to Aunt Petunia and asked what planet my father was from. When Aunt Petunia replied that she didn't know, Marge walked over to the guest room and shut the door.
About five minutes into the long silence that followed Marge's departure, I heard the clicking of typewriter keys punctuated by the ding that indicated that the end of a line been reached.
After I was starting to think that I might have somehow petrified my relatives despite having shut my eyes shortly after the start of the burning, Aunt Petunia sighed and shut the door, apparently having had her fill of staring at me.
"You see Vernon," Aunt Petunia said once the door was securely locked. "This is why I didn't want him going to that school."
And with that, the people I most expected to freak out spectacularly failed to do so.
Apparently Aunt Petunia had been half expecting that something like this would happen to me since - as I learned the next morning during the discussion about how I became an enormous snake - my mother had spent half of the summer after her third year in St. Mungo's recovering from a potions mishap that made Hermione's polyjuice accident look positively cute, and one of my mother's best friends had spent the first couple weeks of the summer after their fourth year as some sort of giant gerbil thing. She had been waiting for the letter informing her that I'd been involved in some sort of magical disaster for the last two years.
Marge, who was apparently somewhat insane and a Sci-Fi fanatic - everything from Star Trek to Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles and absolutely devoted to Dr. Who [having once committed the cardinal sin of actually changing the channel while Dudley was watching t.v. to catch an episode] - had immediately decided that I was some sort of half-alien weresnake, and that my transformations had something to do with puberty. The fact that she had once attempted to do a background check on my father to get better material for her rants and came up with nothing became proof of this in her mind. She spent the rest of the week either typing away - having been inspired by the sight of me rather than completely freaked out like a "normal' person would be - or asking me questions I didn't know the answers to. I eventually started making stuff up so she would leave me alone, seeing as I knew nearly zilch about my biology, anatomy, and family history.
Uncle Vernon had decided that discretion was the better part of valour, and rather than yell at me about my "freakishness" had gone back to completely ignoring me. Once the week was over and Marge left carrying her bag and a surprisingly well behaved - more like constantly cowering in a corner whining - Ripper's leash in one hand and a sheaf of typewritten papers in the other, he surprisingly honored our bargain and signed the Hogsmeade permission form. The fact that I could turn into a bloody huge snake and eat him while he slept probably had something to do with it.
Dudley all but vanished, staying away from the house all day, eating very little at mealtimes and avoiding snacks altogether for some strange reason. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I accidentally referred to him as a fat-filled snack when he decided to block my sunlight while I was doing yardwork one afternoon...