Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had awoken to find a pair of tiny babies on their front porch, and little had changed. As far as anyone was concerned, there was one boy living at number four, Privet Drive, and the other two were not spoken of or asked after.

Yet Amanda and Harry Potter were still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. Their Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.

"Up! Get up! Now!"

Amanda woke with a start. Her aunt rapped on the door again.

"Up!" Aunt Petunia screeched. Amanda heard her aunt making her way into the kitchen and putting the frying pan on the stove. The girl rolled over, right into her twin brother, Harry, who was groggily sitting up.

Their aunt was back outside the door.

"Are you up yet?" she demanded.

"Nearly," said Harry.

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

Harry groaned.

"What did you just say, boy?"

"Nothing, nothing…"

Dudley's birthday – how could Amanda have forgotten? She and Harry sat up a little, searching around for their things, she for a dressing gown, which was at the foot of the bed, and Harry for his socks. He fished a spider out of the left one. Amanda, unlike many girls her age, did not flinch at the sight of the spider. There were lots of them in the cupboard under the stairs, where they slept.

When they had both dressed sufficiently, they made their way to the kitchen, where the table was piled high with presents for Dudley. Amanda could see the obvious shapes of a computer, a television, and a racing bike. The very idea of Dudley on a racing bike was both comical and bewildering, as Dudley was incredibly large and really had no taste for exercise, unless it involved some sort of violent behavior. Of course, Harry was his absolute favorite outlet for violent behavior, but even Amanda had been swung at a few times.

It might have had something to do with living in the cupboard under the stairs, but the twins were very small for their age, and skinny and pale. They looked even smaller and skinnier than they actually were, on account of all of their clothes being old clothes of Dudley's, and Amanda in particular could have fit about four of herself into anything Dudley had once owned. Harry had round glasses held together by tape where Dudley had punched him repeatedly on the nose, and Amanda was actually rather jealous of his bright green eyes. She had flowing red hair, but her eyes were a dull hazel. For twins, she had thought time and time again, they actually looked nothing alike. Especially with the lightning-bolt scar Harry had on his forehead, which he was immensely proud of, and had had for as long as either of them could remember. He had even asked Aunt Petunia once how he'd gotten it.

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

Don't ask questions – that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.

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

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

About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Harry needed a haircut. Harry must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in their class put together, but it made no difference, his hair simply grew that way – all over the place.

Harry 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 blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel – Amanda often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.

Harry put the plates of egg 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, it's here, under this big one from Mommy and Daddy."

"All right, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. Amanda and Harry, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down bacon as fast as possible 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 hard work. 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 Amanda, Harry and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a video 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 them." She jerked her head in Amanda and Harry's direction.

Dudley looked horrified, but Amanda felt a surge of hope. Each year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend somewhere special, like water parks, hamburger restaurants, and the circus. Every year, on that very same day, Amanda and Harry had to stay with Mrs. Figg, an elderly lady who lived a street over and lived with her many cats in a house that reeked of cabbage. She made Harry and Amanda look at pictures of her cats and fed them her exceptionally awful cooking. It was, possibly, Amanda's least favorite day of the year.

"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Amanda and Harry as though they had planned this. Amanda knew she shouldn't feel such joy at the thought of Mrs. Figg breaking her leg, but the realization that it would be a whole year before she would have to look at pictures of Mr. Tibbles and the lot made her so pleased that she simply could help it.

"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.

"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates them."

The Dursleys often spoke in this way, as if Amanda and Harry weren't right there, or as if they were some sort of unpleasant thing that couldn't hear them talk about how disgusting it was.

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

"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.

"You could just leave us here," Harry put in hopefully.

Aunt Petunia looked as though she had just swallowed a lemon.

"And come back and find the house in ruins?" she snarled.

"I won't blow up the house," said Amanda, but they were not listening.

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

"That car's new; they're not sitting in it together unsupervised…."

Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact, he was not 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 him spoil your special day!" she cried, flinging her arms around him.

"I…don't…want…him…t-t-to come!" Dudley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. "He always sp-spoils everything!" He shot Amanda a nasty grin through the gap in his 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, Amanda, who could not believe their luck, and Harry were sitting in the back of the Dursleys' car with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in their lives. Their aunt and uncle had not been able to think of anything else to do with them, but before they had left, Uncle Vernon had taken the twins aside.

"I'm warning you," he said, putting his large purple face right up close to Amanda's, "I'm warning you now, the both of you – any funny business, anything at all – and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas."

"We're not going to do anything," said Amanda, "honestly…"

But Uncle Vernon did not believe her. No one ever did.

The problem was, strange things were a staple around Amanda and Harry, and try as they might, they just could not convince the Dursleys that they weren't responsible for them.

Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry coming back from the barbers looking as though he had not been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald except for his bangs, which she left "to hide that horrible scar." Dudley had laughed himself silly at Harry, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes and taped glasses. Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain that he could not explain how it had grown back so quickly.

Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force Amanda into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's (brown with orange puff balls). The harder she tried to pull it over her niece's head, the smaller it seemed to become, until it finally might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly would not fit Amanda. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to her great relief, Amanda was not punished.

On the other hand, they had gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. The pair had been running, per usual, from the gang that Dudley surrounded himself with and had gone to jump behind some rubbish bins, only to find themselves shocked as anyone when they landed, not on the solid ground behind the bins, but actually on the roof. Despite their protests that the wind must have caught them mid-jump (for how else could such a strange thing occur?), the twins had been locked up in the cupboard for quite some time after that incident.

But today, nothing was going to go wrong. It was even worth being with Dudley and Piers to be spending the day somewhere that was not school, their cupboard, or Mrs. Figg's cabbage-smelling living room.

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

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

"I had a dream about a motorcycle," said Harry. "It was flying."

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

Dudley and Piers sniggered.

"I know they don't," said Harry. "It was only a dream."

But Amanda wished Harry hadn't said anything, as lovely as the dream sounded. The Dursleys took great exception to anything behaving other than it ought to, even in television programs and comic books. They seemed to find imagination to be a very dangerous sort of thing.

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 the smiling lady in the van had asked Amanda and Harry what they wanted before the Dursleys could hurry them away, they bought them each a cheap lemon ice pop. It was not bad, either, Amanda thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head that looked remarkably like Dudley, except that it was not blond.

Amanda and Harry had the best afternoon either could remember having for quite a long time. They walked a bit apart from the others, which meant that it would have taken effort for the now-bored Dudley and Piers to resort to hitting Harry or Amanda. They had had lunch at the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley complained that his knickerbocker glory was insufficient, Uncle Vernon ordered him another and allowed Amanda and Harry to split the rest of the first.

Amanda felt, afterward, that she should have known it was all too good to last.

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 massive, poisonous, man-crushing snakes and vicious creatures. It didn't take Dudley long to find the largest snake, which could have wrapped around Uncle Vernon's car several times, crunched it up and tossed it in the bin. Unfortunately for Dudley, the snake was fast asleep and didn't appear to be close to waking.

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.

"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on.

"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.

Amanda and Harry moved in front of the snake, sympathizing with it very much. Amanda knew what it was like, to be locked up in a small, confined space, someone wrapping on her door when she was trying to sleep, being utterly obnoxious and inconsiderate. It must be a rather dull, frustrating sort of life, watching the sad zoo-goers, thinking themselves so important, so significant, while the snake simply wanted to be left along to its own life, without idiots tapping on the glass all day.

The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's.

It winked.

Amanda stared. Then she looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They were not. She looked back in time to see Harry wink back at the creature.

The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said quite plainly:

"I get that all the time."

Amanda found herself shocked when Harry leaned forward and hissed lightly at the glass. She had no idea what was going on, but it gave her skin chills.

The snake nodded vigorously.

Harry hissed again, and Amanda jumped slightly. Was he talking to the thing?

The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Amanda peered at it.

Boa Constrictor, Brazil.

Harry hissed again.

The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Amanda read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo. There was more hissing from Harry and Amanda was starting to get very crept out.

As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Amanda made the three of them jump. "DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"

Dudley came waddling toward them as fast as he could.

"Out of the way, you," he said, punching Harry in the ribs. Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened – one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.

Harry sat up and gasped; the glass in front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.

The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.

"But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"

The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Amanda 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 Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Amanda and Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?"

Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on the twins, because one of them doing something nearly always meant both of them were to be punished. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go – cupboard – stay – no meals," before he collapsed into a chair and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.