Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or so many things would be different.

Chapter 2

'The Vanishing Glass'

Nearly ten years had passed since Katherine Potter arrived on the steps of number four and with her came Remus Lupin. Remus managed to explain everything to the Dursleys' and visited Katherine regularly.

The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into the living room, which hadn't really changed since that fateful night ten years ago. Only the photographs on the mantel really showed how much time had passed. The room held no sign at all that another child lived in the house, too.

Yet unfortunately Katherine Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but when do good things last. Her Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.

"Up! Get up Katherine! Now!"

Katherine woke with a start. Her Aunt Petunia rapped on the door again.

"Up!" she screeched. Katherine heard her walk toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. She rolled onto her back and remembered her dream. She knew it was actually a memory due to her Uncle Moony.

Uncle Moony. The one good thing about this hellhole. He saved her from having the cupboard beneath the stairs as a room and being abused by Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, he was an angel to her even with his furry little problem.

"Are you up yet?" Aunt Petunia demanded back outside her door.

"Nearly," said Katherine.

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

"Yes ma'am" Katherine replied. She knew better than to groan, because that would just make her aunt's attitude even worse.

Dudley's birthday – how could she have forgotten? Katherine got out of bed and started got dressed.

Once she was done getting dressed, she went down stairs and into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all of Dudley's presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten the computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Katherine, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise – unless of course it involved punching somebody. Dudley's favorite punching bag was Katherine, but he often could not catch her and he could not punch her without Moony knowing.

Katherine had always been small and skinny for her age, but at least she didn't look even smaller and skinnier than she really was in her clothes, because luckily all the clothes she had to wear were from Moony. Katherine had a thin face, knobby knees, messy black hair that had an undertone of red and bright green eyes. She wore round glasses and had a very thin scar on her forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. She had had it for as long she could remember, and the first question she could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how she had gotten it.

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

However, Moony thought she deserved to know and told that her parents died protecting her from Voldemort and that she survived the killing curse. She likes her scar; it reminds her that her parents loved her so much that they risked their lives for her.

Therefore, even though she cannot ask the Dursleys' questions, she knew that she could ask Moony and he would answer truthfully.

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

"Comb your hair!" he barked, by way of a morning greeting.

Katherine 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 blonde hair that lay smoothly on his head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel – Katherine often disagreed.

Katherine put the plates of eggs and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there was not 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 Mummy and Daddy."

"All right, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. Katherine, who could see a huge tantrum coming on, began eating faster, in case Dudley turned the table over.

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, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?"

Dudley thought for a moment. It looked like he was having a little bit of trouble. Finally he said slowly, "So I'll have thirty . . . thirty . . ."

"Thirty-nine, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia.

"Oh." Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. "All right then."

Uncle Vernon chuckled.

"Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. 'Atta boy, Dudley!" He ruffled Dudley's hair.

At that moment, the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Katherine and Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a cine-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 Katherine's direction.

Dudley's mouth fell open in horror, but Katherine's heart gave a leap. Moony's plan worked; well somewhat the actual plan was to have Mrs. Figg call and say that she was sick. However, she unfortunately tripped over one of her cats and broke her leg.

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, she was left with Mrs. Figg, an old lady who lived two streets away. Katherine liked it there. Sure, it smelled funny but that is expected due to the cats, but Mrs. Figg would let Moony come over when he could and Mrs. Figg baked some good brownies.

While Moony took her to lunch or the park on her birthday, they could not go to the zoo. The animals were intimidated by Moony's scent.

"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Katherine as though she had planned this, but Moony had planned this not her.

"We could phone Marge," Vernon suggested. But Marge hates me.

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

The Dursleys often about Katherine like this, as though she was not there – or rather, she was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug.

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

"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.

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

"The 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 had 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 pretend sobs. "She always s-spoils everything!" He shot Katherine a nasty grin through the gap of this mother's arms.

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, Katherine 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 had not been able to think of anything else to do with her, but before they had left, Uncle Vernon had taken Katherine aside.

"I'm warning you," he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Katherine's, "I'm warning you now, girl – any funny business, anything at all – and you'll be in the cupboard."

"Yes, sir." Said Katherine and thought 'as if you could get away with it.' Moony had warded the cupboard so that anytime Katherine was forced in there it would alert him.

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

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

Just to aggravate him, Katherine said, "I had a dream about a motorcycle. It was flying."

Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Katherine, his face purple like a giant beetroot with a mustache. "MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!"

Dudley and Piers sniggered. Katherine nearly did too.

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 of the smiling woman in the van had asked Katherine what she wanted before they could hurry her away, they bought her a cheap lemon ice pop. It was not bad, either, Katherine thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked remarkably like Dudley, except it was not blond.

Katherine had the best morning she had had since Yule. They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his knickboncker glory did not have enough ice cream on top, Vernon bought him another one and Katherine was allowed to have the first.

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 think, 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 trash bin – 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 did not budge. Katherine knew that Dudley was going to have Vernon do it again and he would do it in the same area. She concentrated her magic on the spot she wanted and imagined the glass shattering, as Moony taught her too, and the next time Vernon rapped on the glass it would shatter.

"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, and the glass shattered just as Katherine wanted it to. It woke the snake up and saw that the glass was not there. So it uncoiled itself slithered out of its tank and onto the floor. As it passed Katherine, she heard it say, "Brazil, here I come. . . . Thanksss, amiga."

The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.

The zoo director himself made Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized repeatedly, Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Katherine had seen, the snake had not done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Vernon's car, Dudley was telling how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it tried to squeeze him to death.

When they arrived at number four nobody even thought it was Katherine who made the glass shatter, not even Uncle Vernon.

As Katherine laid in her room that night she wondered what Moony would say when she told him about the snake. He would probably try to lecture her about how something could have gone wrong but would be too busy laughing at what Dudley and Piers said after the incident. As she was on the brink of sleep, she thought I can't wait till my birthday.