Harry Potter and the Mysterious Sibling
Chapter Two: The Letters
The two sat there in silence, trapped in their own thoughts and memories.
Melanie was trying to make sense of what happened. She was certain that, when she woke up this morning, she was not Melanie Lily Potter.
What happened could've been passed off as morning grogginess, if Harry hadn't gone through the exact same thing. Two times the witnesses of the strange, sudden memories. Something was wrong.
Harry felt overjoyed and guilty. Finally, there was somebody he could talk to without having to censor his thoughts and feelings.
Throughout his recently 'remembered' memories, there were plenty of times where the two siblings had defended each other at from… well, from people in general. It seemed that nobody else was brave enough to shield two kids from bullies although Melanie had done so countless times for others. It was understandable, but still frustrating.
His guilt came from the fact that he was happy that somebody else was condemned to living with the Dursleys. Harry had first-hand experience on how cruel they could be and yet he felt happy that somebody else was suffering with him.
Finally, Harry spoke. "Have you… remembered?"
Melanie nodded, adding, "It feels so real. But I can't be your sister; I barely know you!"
"Actually, we're technically twins 'cause we were born on the same day and all that."
"Fine. 'But I can't be your twin; I barely know you!'" Melanie fixed, rolling her eyes. "Happy?"
"I still kind of remember… before."
"What do you mean before?"
"Well… before today I supposed. When I was alone," Harry muttered. "That little cupboard under the stairs was my bedroom."
"They put you in that little cupboard when Duddy had a second bedroom!" Melanie looked murderous. Harry shivered, thankful that she was his sister and not his enemy. She breathed heavily, sounding rather like a wild animal that had been running for days.
Eventually, she calmed down and said, "We should just sleep. We'll have as long as it takes for Uncle Vernon to think something rational, which might take decades, if not centuries." With that, she crawled into bed and was asleep within a few minutes.
Harry felt reluctant to go to sleep. What if he woke up the next morning inside his cupboard? If everything was just a dream, he didn't think that he would be able to stand it.
I'll just stay awake and make sure that Mel doesn't disappear or something. Like the glass.He was, however, exhausted from the day's trekking about the zoo and ended up falling asleep almost as quickly as Melanie did.
~.~.~.~.~
Weeks passed (three to be exact) before their 'grounding' ended. During that time, they were only allowed out of their rooms for school, mealtimes, and bathroom breaks (of which they only had two each day).
The two siblings didn't mind that much for this meant that they had all the evenings on weekdays to discuss their current 'problem' without having to do chores. However, on the weekends, Melanie and Harry were put to work. They'd hoped that the grounding meant time to relax on the weekends, even if it was in their room, but Aunt Petunia seemed reluctant to lose two workers.
With all their discussions, they were able to confirm that: yes, their memories were the same and could be confirmed by Dudley in all the ones which he was present; yes, they were twins; yes, everybody they encountered knew who Melanie was, and not just Harry; and, last of all, yes, they both felt that something was wrong.
Quickly though, Harry shrugged off the feeling of something wrong and accepted it as something else weird that had happened to him in his ten, almost eleven, years.
Melanie was not so quick to dismiss it, as she could still feel the memories flitting around in her mind, trying to piece themselves together.
That wasn't normal.
The end of their grounding meant just one thing: more chores. As it was the summer break, they spent all day caring for the gardens at both the front and back of the house, cleaning every surface inside the house, and vacuuming every week.
"This is so dull," Melanie complained. The only response was Harry's 'get-used-to-it' look. In fact, Melanie had it slightly better. Although most of their chores were combined, there were some things that only Harry had to do.
While Melanie's list consisted of all their combined chores and cooking, Harry's included tidying up all the bedrooms, washing the dishes, sorting Uncle Vernon's papers and laundry. He had no idea why the Dursleys seemed to favour Melanie a little, but he never complained. After all, it was a considerably smaller list of chores compared to what he would've had to do alone.
Another benefit was that Melanie seemed to be able to intimidate Dudley. While Harry chose to ignore Dudley's taunting, she often couldn't stand it.
Her temper was even worse than his but she was just as scary when angered. Her hazel eyes narrowed sternly, hands crossed in front of her chest or on her hips. Within a few impatient taps of her foot, the spoiled boy would either apologize or retreat.
A clear example of this favouring was that while Harry's clothes were mainly hand-me-downs from Dudley, Melanie got bought clothes that she chose instead of having to take Aunt Petunia's and get them cut to fit her. Of course, there was no tolerance of clothes that exceeded their agreed, cheap, limit, but it was a step up from Harry's situation (though they had worked out how to fix his clothes' proportional size to his body by 'borrowing' some thread and a needle occasionally).
A few days before the two sibling's birthday, mail came. They heard the mail slot open and the small thump as the letters landed on the floor just in front of the door.
"Get the mail, Dudley," Uncle Vernon ordered.
"Make Harry get it."
"Get the mail, Harry."
"Make Dudley get it."
"I'll get it," Melanie snapped, if only to end the bickering that would obviously result in Harry having to go get the mail. She knocked Dudley's Smeltings stick back at him, shooting him a glare for trying to hit her.
Four things lay on the floor: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge, who was on vacation, a brown envelope which appeared to be a bill, and two near identical letters, one for Harry and the other for Melanie. She took the small stack of letters and put the two for them at the bottom. They'd never gotten mail before, but this was obviously addressed to them.
Mr. H. Potter
The Smallest Bedroom
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
The other was the same except that it was addressed to 'Ms. M. Potter'.The envelope was thick and heavy, made of something that looked like parchment, and the address was written in green ink.
No stamp, Melanie noted as she ran her thumb over the purple wax seal with a coat of arms.
"Hurry up, girl!" Uncle Vernon's voice stopped her from opening the letter. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?"
"How witty. Maybe you should become a comedian," Melanie scoffed quietly.
She hurried into the kitchen and handed Uncle Vernon the two normal letters. Under the table, she handed Harry his envelope. They both slowly pried up the wax seal. So entranced by their letters, neither Potter noticed Dudley get out of his chair and stand behind them.
"Dad! Dad, they've got something!"
Quickly, Harry tried to unfold his letter but it was jerked out of his hands by Uncle Vernon. He tried to peer at Melanie's letter but it was taken a moment later by Aunt Petunia.
"That's mine!" Harry said, reaching to take it back. Melanie was running around Aunt Petunia, who was turning in circles and holding the letter up above her head.
"Who'd be writing to you?" Uncle Vernon's face suddenly seemed to change colours. Red with anger, green with nausea and finally a pale gray.
"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped out. Aunt Petunia read the letter she was holding (Melanie's letter! Harry thought) and she screeched.
"Vernon! Oh my goodness!" Suddenly, she thrust the letter as far as she could, as if afraid that it would bite her or something (he hoped it would).
Melanie stood still, her confusion replacing her anger, watching as Dudley and Harry both yelled at Uncle Vernon to let them read the letter. This ended up with a lot of yelling and the two boys being thrown out into the hall.
"I'll, um, just go." She didn't want to test Uncle Vernon more than necessary.
In the hall, she saw that the two boys were fighting over who would listen at the keyhole. As Harry pressed himself to the ground, Melanie contemplated when she saw.
A wax seal; who still did that? Coupled along with the odd 'paper' that had been used, it seemed as though somebody extremely old had sent them the letter. The wax seal, what was on it? It was divided into four parts… Yes, there were animals, around a letter. H was it?
Despite all her best memory recalling techniques (a.k.a. closing her eyes and telling both boys to be quiet so she could think), she couldn't remember what the four animals were.
That evening, after Uncle Vernon had come and insisted that the letter was addressed to them by mistake ("No, it wasn't, it had my name on it!" Harry insisted), Melanie told Harry what she remembered.
"Wax seal, parchment, and H on the seal. What does that mean?"
"How am I supposed to know?" Harry was fuming that he didn't get his letter.
"I did see one thing from the letter. It was only the beginning of the word, though: Hog."
He stared at her in disbelief. "Did we get a letter from a butcher or something?"
The next morning, everybody was unusually quiet. Dudley was in shock; he'd screamed, punched, kicked and broken some more of his toys, but he still wasn't allowed to read the letter. Uncle Vernon was rather jumpy that day, practically falling out of his chair every time he heard something. Aunt Petunia's beady eyes were darting around the room as if she was looking for a way to escape.
When the mail arrived, Dudley was told to go get it. They heard his stomping gradually get quieter as he got further down the hall. There was a brief pause, then a shout. "There's two more! 'Mr. H. Potter, the Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive–'"
With a cry, Uncle Vernon ran down the hallway and seized the mail. Despite Harry's best efforts, he was unable to take the mail from Dudley or, afterwards, Uncle Vernon.
"Upstairs!" Uncle Vernon roared at Dudley, Harry, and Melanie, who was still in the kitchen, astonished to see how quickly things got chaotic.
The repaired alarm clock rang at six the next morning. Harry turned it off quickly and got dressed as quietly as possible. His plan was to sit in front of the door and wait for the post. This way, he'd be the first to get the letters and would be up in his bedroom before anybody knew anything about his plan.
Unfortunately, things didn't go his way. It seemed that they never did.
When approaching the door, Harry was preoccupied with watching the stairs behind him to make sure that nobody had heard him. He yelled with fright as he stepped on something big and squashy in front of him. A quick dash to the lights revealed that he'd stepped on his uncle's face.
He stayed here all night? What could possibly be in the letter that would make Uncle Vernon sleep in front of a door?
The mail arrived, landing right on Uncle Vernon's stomach. All that there was today was a large pile of a dozen or so letters addressed in green ink.
"Give-" His demand was cut off by Uncle Vernon tearing the letters.
Melanie chose to come down the stairs at that moment, having been woken up first by the alarm clock, which she ignored to the best of her abilities, and then Harry's shouting. The situation would've been funny to anybody else. Now, it was a declaration of war over the letters.
"Just leave it. Obviously, whoever it is that keeps sending these letters is getting more desperate for us to get them," Melanie said to Harry, who just nodded absentmindedly with no intentions of doing that.
The situation was getting worse and worse. That day, Uncle Vernon had boarded up the mail slot, but the letters were pushed under the door the next. There were no less than twenty letters that time.
Uncle Vernon stayed home again. After shredding, soaking and then burning the letters, he ran around the house boarding up all the cracks. However, the next day, twenty-four letters, twelve for Harry and twelve for Melanie, were hidden inside two dozen eggs that the milkman handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window which had temporarily been un-boarded for the milkman.
"Lunatics, all of 'em," Vernon declared with a slightly frantic look on his face.
On Sunday morning, which was the next day, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table. He was worn out from his efforts to stop the letters but was rather happy that day.
"No post on Sundays." His statement was proven false as letters began spewing out of the kitchen chimney. Harry leapt into the air, trying to catch a letter while Melanie held her arms in front of her face, not wanting to get paper cuts on her face or, even worse, her eyes.
"Out! OUT!"
Melanie and Harry were kicked out of the kitchen. Not a minute later, the other three inhabitants of the house ran out of the room.
"That does it. I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!" Uncle Vernon's voice was stressed.
They drove. Nobody asked where. Every once in a while, Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn to 'shake 'em off,' as he put it. Harry and Melanie exchanged a raised eyebrow whenever he said that, getting more and more worried about his mental state.
They didn't stop all day and this continued for the next four days. Each morning, they would have to leave a hotel when they were asked about a hundred or so letters addressed to the two Potters.
Finally, Uncle Vernon had had enough. He came back with a long, thin package and declared that he'd found the perfect place for them. Perched on top of a large rock way out at sea was a little shack. It was absolutely freezing there, but Melanie managed to, miraculously, start a small fire.
Overall, this was the worst birthday that Harry and Melanie could ever imagine, and they'd have some pretty bad birthdays.
They talked late into the night, trying to figure out more about the letters when the entire hut shook.
Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling. Just so you know.
Forgive me if some of these chapters are covering what we already know. I need to get through the first year following what's been written, so I'll start branching out more in the later books (probably third year?).
Hope this chapter wasn't too boring for you! The next one will be able them getting picked up and brought to Diagon Alley.
Please read and review!
~ScaleneGalleons~
