Author's Note: My apologies, but for this chapter and the next, it was hard to credibly establish really clear differences between girls or from canon. I tried to make differences where I felt I rationally could. The first part of the chapter is more obviously different than the second part. Otherwise, for now just enjoy, and if it's any consolation once we hit the Diagon Alley chapter, differences start to get much bigger. By the time you hit the Hogwarts Express you will almost be reading four totally separate stories. They will never truly become the same again afterward.

For now, just enjoy the story and the subtle differences. That's what these first three chapters are all about.

Darcey Two

School ended and the summer holidays began. Darcey spent as much of her time as possible outside the house with friends. Meanwhile, Dudley celebrated the beginning of summer in his own way. By the end of the second week, he had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote controlled aeroplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.

Dudley's gang took over the Dursley house, visiting it every single day, so she saw them a lot. They were all friendly to her, as Dudley's sister, but like Dudley most were rather big, dull fighters - Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon.

When September came, Darcey would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in her life, she wouldn't be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Darcey, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, the local public school.

"I'm worried about you. I won't be there and it's supposed to be a pretty rough place," said Dudley, his eyes narrowed, sizing her up as if seeing if she could handle her new school as they stood on the staircase talking one afternoon.

Darcey smiled in exasperated amusement. "Don't worry, Dudley, I'll be fine," she said warmly, half laughing, but Dudley didn't look convinced.

Darcey was, after all, just a little girl.

One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy school uniforms, leaving Darcey 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 countless cats, and she didn't seem quite as fond of them as before. She let Darcey watch television and gave her a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she'd had it for several years.

That evening, Aunt Petunia handed Darcey some plain grey skirt and jacket uniforms. "Your new school uniforms," she said brusquely, placing the neatly folded pile in Darcey's arms in the front hall near the cupboard. "Put them away and come out to the living room."

Dudley was assigned to parade 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 carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren'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 ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. Darcey didn't trust herself to speak. She was having enough trouble suppressing horrified, pitying giggles as it was.

The next morning, everyone sat down to breakfast. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.

They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

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

"Make Darcey get it."

"Get the mail, Darcey."

"Make Dudley get it."

"Poke her with your Smelting stick, Dudley."

Darcey dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail, storming in a somewhat bad-tempered, scowling way to the door. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and a letter for Darcey.

Darcey picked it up and looked it over curiously, her annoyance evaporated. She had gotten letters and postcards before, from school friends. But this letter seemed odd. First there was the address:

Miss D. 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 and no return address.

Turning the envelope over, Darcey saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H. Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus, said tiny Latin letters in a ribbon around the animals.

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

Darcey went back into the kitchen and handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard. "I got a letter," she said curiously, "but it's a little funny."

"Let's see it," said Uncle Vernon, grabbing the letter from her hands and sounding bored. This was expected. Uncle Vernon always read Darcey's mail before she did.

Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard. "Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk. Well, all right, girl, let's see your letter."

Uncle Vernon ripped open the letter, took out some heavy parchment paper, shook that paper open with one hand and glanced at it. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the grayish white of old porridge.

"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.

"What is it? What's going on?" said Dudley eagerly. He tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.

"Vernon! Oh my goodness - Vernon!"

They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Darcey and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.

"I want to read that letter," he said loudly.

"Not before I do!" said Darcey furiously. She'd been fuming for whole minutes and at last she openly lost her temper. "It's my bloody letter!" she said. "If anyone gets to see it first, it should be me!"

"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.

Darcey didn't move. "No," she said in a hard, defiant voice, her eyes flashing.

"Let me see the letter!" demanded Dudley.

"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Darcey and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the carpeted hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Dudley and Darcey looked at each other - and Dudley motioned Darcey to look in the kitchen door keyhole, closer to the staircase, perhaps feeling she deserved it more. Then he lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.

"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, her back to Darcey in a kitchen table chair, "look at the address - how could they possibly know where she sleeps? You don't think they're watching the house?"

"Watching - spying - might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly. He was pacing up and down the kitchen, his face an even deeper shade of purple than usual, his temple working and his tiny dark eyes roving around madly as he thought hard.

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

Uncle Vernon paced silently.

"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! Especially not one of those nasty women! Didn't we swear when we took her 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 Darcey in her cupboard.

"Where's my letter?" said Darcey, the moment Uncle Vernon had 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."

"A mistake!" said Darcey, outraged. Her eyes narrowed furiously. "You burned a letter that had my cupboard on it," she growled out through gritted teeth.

"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.

"Er - yes, Darcey - about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking… you're really getting a bit big for it… we think it might be nice if you moved into Dudley's second bedroom."

"Why?" said Darcey, puzzled.

"Don't ask questions!" snapped her uncle. "Take this stuff upstairs, now."

The Dursleys' house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge), one where Dudley slept, and one where Dudley kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom. Darcey moved everything she owned from the cupboard to this room. As she moved upstairs, Dudley was nice enough to move some of his things downstairs; he was clearing his old toys away for her and putting them in the basement, puffing with effort as he shoved them down the staircase.

Nearly everything Darcey passed on her way up was broken. There was the month-old video camera. There was the small, working tank that Dudley had once driven over the next door neighbor's dog. There was Dudley's first-ever television set, which he'd put his foot through when his favorite program had been canceled. There was the large birdcage, which had once held a parrot that Dudley had swapped at school for an air rifle, which also came from the second bedroom with its end all bent because Dudley had sat on it. Many, many books also came down the staircase and were consigned to the basement. They were the only things that looked as though they'd never been touched.

Meanwhile, everything Darcey owned was still in near perfect working order, and the books she owned were much more well worn. She thought it was because she had none of her own money and she wasn't allowed much - so she'd learned to be careful, and to treasure what she had. Her rock band posters went on the walls, her rock music went into the room, as did her comics and the few personal video games and single video game player she owned, as did the few tabletop games she owned. Her Funko Pop character figurines, tiny and quirky, went on surrounding shelves. Her jar of sand and series of beautiful pebbles, full of rare happy childhood memories, were spread across one particular shelf. She put her clothes and things in the wardrobe with its inside door mirror, her flannels and fading colorful big letter T shirts, her scrunchies and jean shorts, cat socks and sandals, sunglasses and curling iron. There was also a large bed, a bedside table with a repaired alarm clock and a lamp for her glasses and her watch, and a desk beside the curtained upstairs window.

Darcey sighed and stretched out on the bed. Yesterday she'd have given anything to be up here. Today she'd rather be back in her cupboard with that letter than up here without it.

Next morning at breakfast, everything was rather quiet. Dudley seemed unusually hesitant around the dark moods of the rest of his family. Darcey was thinking bitterly about this time yesterday. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.

When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Darcey, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one! 'Miss D. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive -'"

With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall. Darcey stayed in her seat primly. She was curious to see the letter, not full of testosterone and stupid. She and Aunt Petunia sat there, exasperated and deadpan, as they heard Uncle Vernon and Dudley fighting and wrestling each other for the letter in the hall, accompanied by the frequent bangs of the Smelting stick.

At last, Uncle Vernon seemed to have won, because they heard his heaving gasps for breath, the fighting ceased, and then they heard him wheeze, "Dudley - go - just go."

Darcey sat there in her seat, the cogs in her head turning behind her sharp eyes. Someone knew she had moved out of her cupboard and they seemed to know she hadn't received her first letter. Surely that meant they'd try again? And this time she'd make sure they didn't fail. She had a plan.

That evening, Darcey asked to be excused from dinner early. "I'm not feeling well," she said cautiously. "I think I'll go to bed."

Everyone ignored her, the kitchen still full of dark silence.

She crept from the table, out of the kitchen, across the hall - then she sprinted for the front door. She'd made sure before coming down to dinner that her bedroom light was off, the door closed, and a lump formed by a pillow underneath her pulled-up covers. She opened the front door as silently as she could, closed it quietly behind her, ducked underneath view of the living room windows, and crept off the Dursley property.

She straightened in the cool night air, taking deep, nervous breaths, as she moved quickly down the street. She walked down Privet Drive, made it to the corner by the largest lamp-post - she sat in the large pool of light it provided against the pavement, at the edge of the sidewalk, and she waited.

She waited all night, forcing herself to be as patient as she could. This was important. This strange letter was the first one the Dursleys actively hadn't wanted her to read, which ironically meant it was probably the one most important to read.

This wasn't just curiosity. Darcey wanted to know what qualified her as a so-called nasty woman - what the Dursleys didn't want her to know.

Finally, as grey pearly light hit the horizon, the mailman drove up to the corner of Privet Drive - and stopped curiously, seeing her. He hung out the window. "You lost?" he called.

"I need the letters for number four, please," she said, standing.

"All right." He seemed nonplussed, but willing enough, rifling through his bag. "Here you are." He handed her the mail and drove on. She took the mail excitedly - and then sagged, disappointed.

There was no strange letter in this pile of mail.

She walked slowly back to the house at number four, hoping she could just sneak in unnoticed -

But she opened the front door and Uncle Vernon was lying there, at the foot of the door in a sleeping bag. He had clearly been trying to prevent Darcey from doing exactly what she did. And in his lap were three letters addressed in emerald green ink.

How were those letters getting here… if they didn't come by post?

Uncle Vernon's face purpled as he saw her. "Thought you'd outsmarted me, had you?" he said furiously. He ripped the letters into pieces before her eyes, shouted at her for about half an hour once he'd shut the door, grabbed the mail from her hands, and then told her to go and make him a cup of tea.

Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.

"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver then they'll just give up."

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

"Oh, these people's 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 fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.

On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Darcey. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in one of the bathrooms.

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

On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Darcey found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia 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 processor.

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 cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today -"

Something came whizzing down the red brick kitchen chimney near the table as he spoke and caught him sharply in the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Darcey leapt into the air trying to catch one -

"Out! OUT!"

Uncle Vernon seized Darcey around the waist and threw her 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 but pulling great tufts out of his mustache at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"

He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, movie player, and computer into his sports bag.

Darcey reached out and gave Dudley's hand a gentle squeeze, still staring straight ahead. He looked over at her and his sniffles quieted a little.

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

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

They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling, and try as she might, not even Darcey could comfort him. Dudley had never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on one of his video games.

Darcey was used to all three of those things, most particularly having suffered cupboard punishments but in general never being treated as well, so she wasn't sure what to say.

Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. The city seemed at least at nighttime to be a dark, crummy place full of crowded corner streets and tiny boarded-up buildings. The hotel was a tall, forbidding tower with an eerie neon sign above its bottom floor that had one of the letters out. Dudley and Darcey shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets, a small, square sort of place with plain bedcovers that barely qualified as clean. Dudley snored, exhausted after his trying day, but Darcey stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the red lights of passing cars turning at the corner intersection far below, wondering about the letters and whoever was sending them…

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

"Excuse me, but it was one of you Miss D. Potter? Only I got about a hundred of these at the front desk."

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

Miss D. Potter

Room 17

Railview Hotel

Cokeworth

Darcey made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked her hand out of the way. The woman stared.

"I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the carpeted dining room full of little tables with white tablecloths, low chatter and clinking silverware.

"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 them into the middle of a forest full of thick, dark green trees. He got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed golden field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the flat, paved open top of a multi-level parking garage.

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, along a flat stretch of wet stone and gravel right near a cliff leading down to the sea, had locked them all inside the car, and had disappeared into the soft curtain of grey rain moving toward them.

The rain reached them. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled.

"It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."

Monday. This reminded Darcey 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, July 31st, would be Darcey's eleventh birthday. Of course, she was with the Dursleys, who never usually celebrated her birthdays - that was more of her friends' thing - last year on her birthday, the Dursleys had given her a coat hanger and an ugly old blouse of Aunt Petunia's that she'd been about to give away to charity. Still, you weren't eleven every day.

Uncle Vernon was back, dripping wet, and he was smiling eerily. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd bought.

"Found the perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"

It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon was pointing over the cliff, across the iron-grey, foaming white, choppy waves, toward what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was a tiny, sagging shack. One thing was certain, there was no television in 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 rather wicked grin, down some steps leading down the side of the cliff to an old rowboat bobbing in the 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 hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.

The inside was horrible; the floor was made of dirt, the whole place smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, there was only a single sofa, and the fireplace it was in front of was damp and dark and empty. There were only two rooms, the other being a small bedroom with one bed.

Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a bag of crisps each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty crisp bags just smoked and shriveled 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 mail. Darcey privately agreed, though the thought didn't cheer her 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 tiny, thick, filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the ugly, moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Darcey was left to find the softest bit of floor she could and to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Darcey couldn't sleep. She shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, her stomach rumbling with hunger. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which dangled over the edge of the sofa on his thick wrist, told Darcey she'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. She lay and watched her birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all, wondering where the letter-writer was now.

Four minutes to go. Darcey heard something creak outside. She hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although she might be warmer if it did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house on Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that she'd 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 she'd be eleven. Thirty seconds… twenty… ten… nine - maybe she'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him - three… two… one…

BOOM.

The whole shack shivered and Darcey sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.