Note: I want to explain something else! Whenever Harry says his family eats meals together, it actually means Harry makes the meal and then sits in the kitchen, doing the dishes and eating his own meal while the Dursleys eat at the table. He doesn't know that family means everyone, even the nephew who lives with them, it's just all he knows so he thinks family means everyone, except the nephew who lives with them. (He's too trusting and naive for his own good! /cries)
I own nothing!
There were lots of rules in Harry's family's home. Rules like, don't put your elbows on the table and no wearing a hat inside, but lots of families had those kinds of rules. Then there were Dursley Rules. Those, Aunt Petunia said, were the most important.
Not only were they special rules, but they were Harry's rules.
Do your chores promptly and efficiently. Harry didn't know what efficiently meant when Aunt Petunia first told him so instead she told him promptly and correctly.
Don't make noise. Harry wasn't supposed to be noisy when he did his chores. Uncle Vernon could be doing work for the company he worked at or Aunt Petunia could be trying to take a nap or Dudley could be playing his videogames. And bothering people was rude.
The third rule, Harry liked to call the 'No money, no ticket' rule. He'd heard Dudley watching a Christmas movie once and he'd heard that and it made sense. If you didn't have something to trade, you couldn't get something in return. The third rule was, if Harry didn't get his chores done on time, he didn't get dinner. And that was fair. He'd gone to bed without dinner lots of times, and Harry always tried to do his chores better next time, so he could be an even better con-e-sewer of everything.
The fourth rule was pretty important, because Uncle Vernon had come up with it. And anything Uncle Vernon said was law, that's what Aunt Petunia said.
The fourth rule was Harry could never ever say the word, 'magic'. Harry didn't know why. It's not like magic was something Harry even liked. Frankly, it was rather boring. Even though Harry was stupid at school, he wasn't stupid enough to not know that the magician had stuff up his sleeve. Dudley sometimes hid stuff in his sleeves when he didn't want his Mum or Dad to know what he was trying to sneak into his room upstairs.
But for whatever reason, Harry wasn't allowed to even mention vaguely the word 'magic'. And it wasn't just Harry; Dudley, Aunt Petunia, and even Uncle Vernon weren't allowed to say the word 'magic'. If they did, Uncle Vernon would get real angry; his mustache would twitch like an angry caterpillar, his face would turn an odd pansy purple, and he would yell for Harry to go to his cupboard and for Aunt Petunia and Dudley to go upstairs! Then, while in his cupboard, Harry could hear Uncle Vernon pace around the living room and mutter to himself about 'those people'; freaks.