CHAPTER THE THIRD
Letters From No One In Particular
The Bengal Tiger Break-Out earned Harry his longest-ever castigation. By the time he was permitted out of his shed again, the summer holidays had begun and Bubba had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, during his first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg's gravestone as he tore through the local graveyard.
Harry dreaded the fact that school was over, since now there was no escaping Bubba's gang, who visited the house each and every day. Petes, Denny, Mally-Boy, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Bubba was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, and was the leader. The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Bubba's favorite hobby: Harry Hunting.
This was why Harry spent as much time as achievable out of the house, wandering around and dreaming about the end of the holidays, where he could see a tiny ray of hope. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his existence, he wouldn't be with Bubs. Bubba had been accepted at Uncle Vern's old private school, Smellington. Petes Polk was going there also. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Sir William G. Igot High School, the local public school. Bubba thought this was very funny.
"They cram people's heads down on toilets the first day at Igots," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"
"No, thanks," said Harry. "That poor toilet's already had enough with your big butt sitting on it every day." Then he ran before Bubba could work out what he'd said.
One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Bubba to London to procure his Smellington garb, leaving Harry at home with Uncle Vern. He wasn't as bad as usual. It turned out he'd broken his leg in yet another car accident a few weeks back, and now locked himself in his study with three bottles of brandy. So this gave Harry the opportunity to watch television and sneak a bit of chocolate cake.
After sundown, Bubba paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smellington boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, blue suspenders, and ragtime straw hats called boaters. They also carried meter 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 Bubba in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vern said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life, far better than his wedding day. Aunt Petunia ruptured into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Little Bubbakins, he looked so beautiful and grown-up. Harry didn't trust himself to speak. He was busy holding his ribs back from trying not to laugh.
There was an ungodly smell in the kitchen the subsequent morning when Harry went in for firstmeal. It seemed to be coming from a large rusty-metal tub in the sink. He went to have a gander. The tub was full of what looked like old dirty rags swimming in gray water.
"What's this?" he asked Aunt Petunia. Her right eye rose as if he dared to ask a question.
"Your fresh school uniform," she said.
Harry looked in the basin again.
"Oh," he said, "I didn't realize it had to be so… dreary."
"Don't be foolish," Aunt Petunia yelled as she backhanded Harry across the check. "I'm dying some of Bubba's old things gray for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've concluded."
Harry, rubbing his now reddening check, seriously doubted this but thought it best not to argue otherwise there would be more lashings in his future. He sat down at the table and tried to ponder on how he was going to look on his first day at Igot High — like he was wearing bits of old rhino skin, probably.
Bubba and Uncle Vern came in, both covering their noses because of the stench from Harry's new uniform. Uncle Vern opened his daily tabloid as usual and Bubba banged his meter 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, Bubba," said Uncle Vern preoccupied in a nasty story involving a CEO and the Royal Family.
"Make Harry fetch it, like the dog he is."
"Get the mail, Harry."
"No, make Bubba get it. He needs his daily bending over exercise."
"Whack him with your meter stick, Bubba."
Harry took a full blast right in the forehead and before Bubba could wind up again, he went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from a Nigerian prince who needs Uncle Vern's help, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and — a letter for Harry.
Harry picked it up and ogled it a bit, his heart now beating like big brass band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had ever written to him. Who would and why? He had no friends, no other relatives — he didn't belong to the library, so he'd never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:
To: His Excellency The Honorable Master Harry H. Potter, Heavy Weight Champion of the World
The Shed in the Backyard
408 Private Drive
Balls Cross
West Sussex
The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in shiny emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.
Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling violently, Harry saw a red wax seal bearing a coat of arms; an elephant, an eagle, a donkey, and a kitten surrounding a large letter H.
"Speed it up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vern from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for anthrax?" He chuckled at his own joke.
Harry went back to the kitchen, not taking his eyes off his letter. He tossed Uncle Vern the bill and the postcard, sat down, and little by little began to open the yellow envelope.
Uncle Vern ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and then turned to the postcard.
"Oh! Get this! The Prince of Nigeria needs our help," he informed Aunt Petunia. "He will reward us greatly if we just send him a small loan from our bank account to …"
"Dad!" said Bubba suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!"
Harry was at the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vern.
"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vern, shaking the letter open with one hand and plopping a rather large donut in his mouth with the other. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds he spit out the wad of donut and it sprayed all over the kitchen in every direction.
"Oh God! P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.
Bubba tried to seize the letter to read it, but Uncle Vern held it elevated out of his reach. Aunt Petunia curiously read the first line. She fainted to the floor, but woke up a moment later.
"Vern! Oh my goodness — Vern!"
They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Harry and Bubba were still in the room. Bubba wasn't used to going unnoticed. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his meter stick.
"I demand you let me read that letter," he said stridently.
"I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it is addressed to me."
"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vern, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.
Harry didn't move.
"I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted.
"Let me see it!" commanded Bubba.
"OUT!" roared Uncle Vern, and he subsequently took both Harry and Bubba by the shirt and pants and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Harry and Bubba promptly had a furious slapping fight over who would listen through the keyhole; Bubba prevailed, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor.
"Know what this means, Vern?" Aunt Petunia was saying in a trembling voice. "Look at the address — how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You think they're watching the house?"
"Watching — spying — probably following our every move," muttered Uncle Vern wildly.
"But what are we supposed to we do, Vern? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want —"
Harry could see Uncle Vern's tiny black shoes pacing up and down the kitchen.
"No," he said finally. "No, we'll pay no attention to 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 vow when we took him in we'd stamp out that treacherous nonsense?"
That evening when he got back from work, Uncle Vern did something he'd by no means ever done before; he visited Harry in his shed.
"Where's my letter?" said Harry, the instant Uncle Vern had squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to me?"
"No one. It was addressed to you by mistake," said Uncle Vern shortly. "I have destroyed it."
"It was not a mistake," said Harry angrily, "It had my shed on it."
"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vern has he backhanded Harry across the mouth. He took a few profound breaths and then forced his face into a smile, which looked quite painful.
"It was meant for the boy who lives in the shed a few houses over. And er — yes, Harry — about this shed. 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 the basement next to the water heater.
"Why?" said Harry.
"Don't ask questions!" His uncle slapped Harry across the face again. "Take this stuff down there now."
The Drubblesnorts' house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vern and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors (usually Uncle Vern's sister, Marge), one where Bubba slept, and one where Bubba kept all the toys and things that wouldn't fit into his first bedroom. Being that there was no place for Harry to go, moving into the unfinished basement seemed the only logical place for him. It only took Harry one trip downstairs to move everything he owned from the shed to this new abode. He sat down on the hay he brought in for a bed and looked around him. Nearly everything down here was broken. The month-old video camera was lying on top of the Ferrari go kart Bubba had driven over the next door neighbor's dog with and killed it; in the corner was Bubba's first-ever television set, which he'd put his foot through when he lost at one of his video games; there was a large dogcage which had once held a bulldog that Bubba had swapped at school for a real air rifle. All over the floor, too, where piles of dirty laundry that Harry would have to wash the next day.
Harry stretched out on his hay bed and exhaled noisily. Yesterday he'd have given anything to have a room inside. But today, he'd rather be back in his leaky shed with that letter than down here without it, even with it was pouring rain outside currently.
Next sunrise at breakfast, everyone was rather silent. Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and in deep regret he hadn't opened the letter in the hall or shove it down his pants for later reading. Uncle Vern and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.
When the mail arrived, Uncle Vern made Bubba go and get it. They heard him banging things with his meter stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one! 'His Excellency The Honorable Master Harry H. Potter, Heavy Weight Champion of the World, The Basement, 408 Private Drive —'"
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vern leapt from his seat and barreled down the hall, Harry right at is rear. Uncle Vern tackled Bubba to the ground and grabbed the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vern around the neck from behind. After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the meter stick, Uncle Vern straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry's letter clutched in his hand.
"Go to your shed — I mean, the basement," he wheezed at Harry. "Bubba — go and get daddy's shotgun."
Harry walked round and round in the basement. Someone knew he had moved out of the shed and they seemed to be aware he hadn't received his first letter. That meant he was clearly being spied on. Certainly that meant they'd try again? And this time he'd make sure they didn't fail. He had a plan.
The repaired alarm clock rang at six o'clock the next morning. Harry smacked it off quickly and dressed noiselessly. He mustn't wake the Drubblesnorts. He tiptoed upstairs without turning on any of the lights.
He was going to wait it out for the postman on the corner of the Private Drive and get the letters for number four hundred and eight first. His heart pounded as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door —
"AHAAAA!"
Harry leapt into the air; a shotgun pointed straight as his face!
Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Harry realized that Uncle Vern had been sitting to the side of the front door which what looked like had been all night, making sure Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do. He shouted at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and bring back a bottle of brandy. Harry shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vern's guarded territory. Harry could see three letters addressed in green ink.
"Give me —" he began, but Uncle Vern threw the letters to the floor and shot them three times with his shotgun, obliterating all traces of them.
Uncle Vern didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home to nail up the mail slot.
"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."
"I'm not sure that'll work, know what I mean Vern?"
"Oh, these people's minds work in mysterious ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vern, trying to knock in a nail with the butt of his shotgun.
On Friday, no less than twelve letters arrived for Harry. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been shoved under the door and slotted through the sides.
Uncle Vern stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "If I Only Had A Brain" as he worked, and jumped at small noises.
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to Harry found their way into each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vern made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in the garbage disposal.
"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Bubba asked Harry in bewilderment.
"Who says they're from Earth?" Harry responded.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vern sat down at the breakfast table looking exhausted and rather sick, but happy nonetheless.
"No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers.
Just then something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Drubblesnorts ducked, but Harry leapt into the air attempting to catch one. As Harry was never any good at sports, always being the one picked last, it was no surpise to him when he failed to reach out and grab one —
"Out! OUT!"
Uncle Vern drop-kicked Harry into the hall. Then Aunt Petunia and Bubba ran out with their arms over their faces. Uncle Vern slammed the door shut behind them. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.
"That's it!" said Uncle Vern, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts of hair from his head at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to depart. We're going away! Just pack clothes – a week's worth. No! More! And No squabbling!"
He looked so dangerous now with budging death eyes that no one dared argue. Twenty minutes later they had axed their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Bubba was sniffling in the back seat; his father had wacked him round the head for holding them up when he tried to pack his television, DVD player, and computer in his sports bag.
They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vern would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.
"Shake 'em off… gotta, gotta shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.
They didn't stop to eat or drink or go to the bathroom all day. By nightfall Bubba was crying. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he wanted to see, he peed in a bottle Uncle Vern had tossed back to him, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.
Uncle Vern stopped at last outside a sketchy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Bubba and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Bubba soon snored causing Harry to stay alert, so he sat on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing automobiles and wondered…
They ate stale cornflakes and burnt toast for breakfast the next day, and had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
"'Scuse me, but is one of you considerd to be the Heavy Weight Champion of the World? I got about a 'undred of these at the front desk."
He held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:
To: His Excellency The Honorable Master Harry H. Potter, Heavy Weight Champion of the World
Room 16
Bates Motel
Cokeworth
Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vern knocked his hand out of the way. The man stared.
"I'll take the lot," said Uncle Vern, igniting his lighter and following the man from the dining room with a smirk.
"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested hours later, but Uncle Vern refused to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a swamp, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, but the rest of the family had to get out and push since they were now stuck in the mud. The same sort of thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.
"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Bubba asked Aunt Petunia late that afternoon. "Yes sweetums," she replied. Uncle Vern had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.
It started to hail. Great big chunks of ice beat on the roof of the car and began to put tiny dents in the hood.
"It's Monday," he told his mother. "Montel's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."
Monday. This reminded Harry of something. If it was Monday — and you could usually count on Bubba to know the days the week because of television — then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry's eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly pleasurable — last year, the Drubblesnorts had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vern's old socks. Still, you don't get those every day.
Uncle Vern was back and he was grinning hysterically.
"Found the most wonderful place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"
It was very cold outside the car, but the hail had just begun to let up. Uncle Vern was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine, well second most miserable after the shed Harry was used to staying in. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.
"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vern gleefully, rubbing his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his yacht!"
A toothless old man came limping up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.
"I've already got us some rations," said Uncle Vern, "So all aboard!"
It was beyond freezing in the boat. Icy sea splashes and pouring rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what had to have been many hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Vern, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down dwelling.
The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of dead whale, the wind whistled through great gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.
"Whoa!" Harry said stepping inside. "This place is a palace compared to what I'm used to."
Uncle Vern's "rations" turned out to be a bag of banana chips and four prunes. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.
"Now, where are those letters when you need them, eh?" he said hysterically.
He was in a very fine mood. Noticeably he assumed that nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Harry faced facts and agreed, though the thought didn't cheer him up at all.
As nighttime fell, the storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves pounded the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the mucky windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Bubba on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vern went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry was left to his own to find the best bit of floor he could curl up on and was given the thinnest, most ragged sheet.
The storm raged more and more violently as the night went on. Harry couldn't take it. He shivered and turned over, trying to get comfortable, his belly rumbling with starvation. Bubba's snores were drowned by the loud crack of thunder. The glow-in-the-dark hand of Bubba's Rolex, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Drubblesnorts would remember at all, wondering where the letter writer was now.
Five minutes to go. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although it might be warmer if it did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house on the Private Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he'd be able to steal one somehow.
Three minutes to go. Was that the ocean, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that curious crunching clatter outside? Was the foundation crumbling into the sea?
One minute to go and he'd be eleven. Thirty seconds… twenty… ten… nine — maybe he'd wake Bubba up just to annoy him — three… two… one…
BANG.
The whole shack shivered and Harry scampered across the room then stared at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in.
