Sorry for the long wait! I have been quite busy this week, thank you so much to those of you that are following this story! I hope you enjoy this chapter, please please review :)
The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor had led Hatty to question her life and look back at the unusual things that had happened to her in the past. She thought about the clothes Aunt Petunia had bought her that she didn't like and had miraculously shrunk the next day, the games console that she had broken when she got angry at losing which the next morning worked better than ever and strangest of them all once when she got her hair cut the hairdresser was distracted and cut one side three inches shorter than the other. It had to be cut much shorter than her liking but when Hatty woke up in the morning her hair was back to normal. Hatty did not tell her Aunt and Uncle about the first two incidents and managed to keep her hair hidden in a wooly hat for a month before her family noticed the growth and by then it was easy to pretend that it had just grown exceedingly quickly. But there was no way to get around this everyone saw the glass disappear and now everyone thought Hatty was a freak.
Aunt Petunia had done her best to avoid Hatty over the past few weeks, however this was hard to do with her incessant asking of questions. If it wasn't
"do you think I have super powers?" It was "was Doctor Doolittle real and could we be related?" Then one morning came the question Petunia had been dreading,
"Aunt Petunia?" Hatty said cautiously to her Aunt as she walked into the kitchen, "I know this is might be a hard question, but were my parents, you know, different?" Petunia froze at the mention of her sister, she did not often think of her sister and liked to pretend that Hatty was her daughter to stop thoughts of her sibling entering her mind. Of course it did not help that Hatty had her mothers eyes, sometimes looking at her step daughter brought memories she did not want to remember flooding back. She shook her head and blinked away the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes,
"I really dont know what you mean Hatty," Petunia snapped, "your mother was a pain, as any sister is and your father was a prankster but otherwise," she paused, considering the impact whatever she said next would have on the little girl, "otherwise, they were completely normal." Petunia could see the disappointment in Hattys eyes. "now go upstairs and try on your uniform, school is starting in a two months we need to be ready!"
Hatty slinked upstairs to her bedroom, she didn't know what answer she was hoping for but it definitely was not that her parents were completely normal. She wished she knew more about them but whenever Hatty mentioned her Mum and Dad Petunia seized up and Vernon just went purple, its not like she should complain. Hatty had a good life but sometimes she just wished that things were different and that she lived with her real parents.
The Next morning Hatty went downstairs just as the post came,
"I'll get it!" She shouted into the kitchen walking up to the pile of post. She looked through the letters as she walked into the kitchen. There was a postcard from Aunt Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and a letter for Hatty. She handed over the other two letters to Aunt Petunia and stared at the letter addressed to her. No one, ever, in her whole life, had written to her. She had friends at school but none that would send a letter and her family away from her Aunt, Uncle and Cousin did not particularly make her feel welcome. She didn't belong to the library, so she'd never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet
here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:
Miss. H. Potter
The Smallest Bedroom
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. Turning the envelope over, her hand trembling, Hatty saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H. As Hatty examined her letter 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. -."
"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Hatty's got something!"
"Oh yeah," Hatty said not taking her eyes off her letter, "its weird, i've never seen this symbol before," she handed it to Uncle Vernon, "do you recognise it?" Vernon took the letter and shook it 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. Dudley 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 Hatty and Dudley were still in the room.
"What is it?" Hatty said worriedly, "is it something serious?" When no one replied to her she tried to take it from Vernons grip. "Please let me see!"
"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope. Hatty looked at Aunt Petunia who slowly nodded at her, she sighed and left the room, it was not worth a fight, they would show her later.
When she left the room her and Dudley put their ears against the door to hear what they were saying,
"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, "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.
"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want -"
Hatty could see Uncle Vernon's shiny black shoes pacing up and down the
kitchen.
"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! Didn't we swear when we took her in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?"
Petunia looked at her husband, "that was before we knew her, I love her like she is our own. So what if she is different?"
"DIFFERENT!?" Vernon exploded, "there's being different and then there's being that, besides she's not even really ours."
Hatty pulled away from the door and ran upstairs, she knew Uncle Vernon had never fully accepted her but she thought deep down he felt different. Whatever was in this lesson had turned him against her and might be turning Aunt Petunia away as well. Whatever was in this letter she didn't want to know.
For the next week the house was bombarded with letters. Letters which the family simply ignored. Life went on as normal in the Dursley house hold, they carried out their day to day life . They avoided talking about the letters that flooded through the door, the fireplace, the windows. They even appeared in Hatty's room but she just took them downstairs and threw them away. The Dursleys were the only family she knew and she did not want anything, especially a stupid letter to destroy that.
The morning before Hatty's birthday was the worst for letters, at least 1000 came to the house every way possible. Hatty knew they could not avoid the situation much more but they still did not acknowledge the existence of the letters. That night a furious storm hovered above Privet Drive and it raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Hatty couldn't sleep. She lay in bed and watched her birthday tick nearer wondering not what her gifts would be this year but about what this letter would contain. She had one under her pillow which she was still refusing to open, but it was there. There to open when she finally built up the courage. Before she knew it there was only one minute to go until she would turn eleven then thirty seconds... twenty ... ten...nine - maybe she'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him - three... two... one...
BOOM.
The whole house shook and Hatty ran to the top of the stairs, staring down at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.
