This is a bit of a long chapter, as is the next one, but I couldn't find where to divide either into two parts. Hope you enjoy!

The escape of the boa constrictor earned the twins their longest ever punishment. By the time they were allowed out of their room again, the summer holidays had started (thankfully), Dudley had already broke his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and first time on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.

Nicole was glad school was over, and she was over 100% sure that Harry felt the same. But there was no escaping Dudley's gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm & Gordon were all stupid idiots, and Dudley was the stupid of the lot, making him the leader. They were all happy to join in with Dudley's favourite sport: Twin Hunting. Which is a stupid name, but that is literally what he called it.

This is why the two spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays, where they could finally see a bit of hope. When September came, they were both going to secondary school, and for the first time in their lives, they wouldn't be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted into Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too. Harry & Nicole were both going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.

"They stuff people's heads down the toilet on their first day at Stonewall," Dudley said, even though he was so obviously lying. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"

"No, thanks," Harry said. "The toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it. It might be sick." Nicole laughed then, but then they both ran, once Dudley had realized what he said.

It took a while.

One day in July, Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving the twins at Mrs. Figg's. She wasn't as bad as usual, turns out she'd broken her leg by tripping over one of her cats, so she didn't seem quite as fond of them as before. She let the two watch television and gave them a bit of chocolate cake that tasted as though she's had it for about a century.

That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for his family in his new uniform. Smeltings' boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't lucky. This was supposed to be good training for life.

Nicole found the uniform reprehensible, Harry found it unappealing.

Vernon looked at him and said this was the proudest moment of his life, while Petunia burst into tears, because apparently he looked so handsome and all grown up. Nicole tried not to speak, but she couldn't stop herself, so she said "Seriously?" which she got told off for. Not punished, happily.

There was a horrible smell in the kitchen next morning when the twins went for breakfast. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray water.

"What's this?" Harry asked Petunia, as her lips tightened, because he dared to ask a question, even if it was only two words.

"Your new school uniforms," she said to both of them.

"Why are they so wet?" Nicole asked, as Aunt Petunia scowled again. She shouldn't have phrased that as a question.

"Don't be stupid," Petunia said. "And stop asking questions. I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old stuff grey for Harry, and a bunch of girl's clothes I found at the local clothes shop gray for Nicole. You'll both look just like everyone else's when I've finished."

Yeah, as if that's true, Nicole thought, but didn't say out loud incase she got told off. They sat down on the table, both thinking of how they were going to look on their first day of Stonewall High.

Probably like dirty dolphins or evil elephants.

Dudley & Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell of the twins' uniform. Uncle Vernon opened the newspaper as usual, and Dudley banged his smelting stick on the table. Nicole swore he brought that everywhere.

They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of the letters on the doormat.

"Get the mail, Dudley," said Vernon.

"Make one of the twins get it."

"Harry, get the mail."

"Make Dudley get it."

"Poke him with your smelting stick, Dudley."

"You guys are so nice," Nicole said, sarcastically, as she got looks from all three of them. Harry dodged the smelting stick and went to get the mail. Nicole stayed and ate her breakfast, and stopped Dudley when he tried to steal a bit of Harry's. Harry was taking a while, so it's only natural that Vernon got impatient.

"Hurry up boy!" he said. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke. Nicole did wonder why he was taking so long.

He came in, and gave Vernon what looked to be a bill and a postcard. He tapped Nicole on the shoulder, as she saw a letter.

A letter. For both of them.

"Are you sure this is real?" she whispered to him.

"I'm sure," Harry said, as Nicole started to analyze the envelope.

Mr. H & Ms. N. Potter
The dirty room upstairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey

She almost laughed at 'The dirty room upstairs', but tried to be quiet.

"Dad!" Dudley suddenly said. "The twins have got something!"

Harry was on the point of unfolding the letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment on the envelope. Vernon then snatched it out of his hand before either of them could get even close to reading it.

"That's ours!" Nicole shouted.

"Who'd be writing to you two?" Vernon sneered, shaking the letter and glancing at it. His face got so angry. Like it swallowed old porridge. And it changed into something weird.

Nicole wondered what the hell she was thinking. But she was more focused on where that letter came from.

"Petunia!" Vernon shouted.

Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Vernon held it high out of reach. Guess this was the only thing Dudley wanted that Nicole's aunt and uncle didn't give him. Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked like she might faint. Unfortunately, she didn't. Actually, scratch that. Vernon'll blame the twins and lock them in the room for 4 months for that.

"Vernon! Oh my goodness - Vernon!"

They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that Dudley and the twins were still in the room. Dudley, of course wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.

"I want to read that letter!" Dudley exclaimed.

"We want to read it!" Nicole insisted.

"It's our letter!" Harry shouted.

"Get out, all three of you!" Vernon said, unusually, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope.

The twins didn't move.

"WE WANT OUR LETTER!" they both said simultaneously.

"Let me see it!" Dudley demanded.

"OUT!" roared Vernon, at the top of his voice, and he took Harry & Dudley by the scruffs of their necks, and threw them in the hall, and then did the same to Nicole, slamming the kitchen door behind them. The three had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole. Dudley won, so the twins lay flat on their stomachs to listen at the crack between door and floor.

"Vernon," Petunia was saying, nervously. "Look at the address - how could they possibly know where they sleep? You don't think they've been watching the house?"

"Watching - spying - might be following us!" said Vernon wildly.

"What should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want-?"

The twins could see Vernon's shoes pacing up and down the kitchen like a madman.

"No," he decided. "We 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 them in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?"

As the argument ended, the three left, as the twins went back to their room, after having a really bad start to the day.

"What the hell was that?" Nicole asked.

"I don't know," Harry said.

"Is this a dream?" Nicole said, trying to explain all of it to herself. "That we're somehow both having?"

"It's something," said Harry. "Maybe we're worth more than we think."

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That evening, when Vernon got home from work, as the twins continued to talk about what just happened, Vernon did something he had never done before. Visit Harry & Nicole in their room.

"Where's our letter?" Nicole immediately said.

"Who was writing to us?" Harry demanded to know.

"No one, it was addressed to you by mistake," Vernon lied. "I have burned it."

"Seriously?" Nicole said. "You're going to play that card? It had our room on it!"

"SILENCE!" yelled Vernon, and a couple of spiders fell from the ceiling. He took a few deep breaths, and forced his face into a smile. "Er, yes - guys, about this room. Your aunt and I have been thinking, maybe for the sake of your health, you should clean it."

Clean their room? Did this guy suddenly grow a conscience?

"Why?" They both asked.

"Don't ask questions!" argued Vernon. "Now get scrubbing. I've got everything you need downstairs. Come and get it once you've done going on about yourselves."

"This must've made them really angry," Harry said when Vernon left.

"I know, right?" Nicole said. "Well, let's get to it. I don't want to waste any more time."

The twins went downstairs to get their equipment, as they continued to talk.

"What if the letter wasn't good news?" Nicole asked. "What if it was the spirits saying we are going to Hell right now?"

"It would be better than being here," Harry responded.

"Good point."

Next morning at breakfast, the two had slept in a clean room for the first time in well, probably since before their parents died. Nicole thought it was a good night. Best she's had in a while. When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, seemingly being nice to the twins, made Dudley get it. They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick down the hall. Then he shouted "There's another one! 'Mr. H & Ms. N Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive'".

Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall. The twins followed closely after. Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made hard by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon's neck from behind (Nicole had just tagged along waiting). After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got a hit a lot by the Smelting stick (Dudley should definitely put that away once in a while). Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with the twins' letter clutched into his hand.

"Go to your bedroom, NOW!" he said to the twins, as they both ran up.

"They knew," Harry said.

"They'll try again," Nicole said. "I know they will."

"I've got a plan," said Harry. "It's not that risky."

"I've got one too," Nicole said. "But it's VERY risky. Let's go with yours for once."

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The repaired alarm rang at six o'clock the next morning. Harry turned it off quickly, as Nicole looked away, and then stayed in her pajamas for her stupid job of keeping watch.

"Why do I get to keep watch?" she angrily whispered.

"We need to make sure The Dursleys stay asleep," whispered Harry back. "Now go on. We need to do this."

"Fine," Nicole answered, as Harry headed down the stairs without turning on any lights. He was going to wait for the postman at the end of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. Nicole had to keep watch to make sure none of the Dursleys wake up. Way better than her plan, which featured climbing out a window and looking in the post themselves. As Harry headed down the stairs, Nicole heard a sound.

"AAAAARRRRGH!"

Petunia & Dudley got out from their bedrooms, as Nicole was in the hall, still in her pajamas, went into her room to get dressed. When she got out, it turned out that Vernon had been lying at the front of the front door in a sleeping bag, so somehow he knew about the plan. Was her plan better after all? Never mind. Vernon then shouted at Harry for half an hour, and then Nicole ran down, as he asked Harry to make a cup of tea, as he shouted at Nicole for the same amount of time, or at least he would've if the mail hadn't have came just after Harry got the tea. It flew right into Vernon's lap. The twins saw three letters addressed in green ink.

"We want-" The twins began, but Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes. Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot, unfortunately.

"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia. "If they can't deliver them, they'll just give up."

"I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon."

"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," Vernon said, trying to knock a nail in with a piece of fruitcake.

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On Friday, no less than twelve letters came for the twins. As they couldn't go through the mail slot, they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom. Yet not Harry nor Nicole managed to pick one up. The Dursleys were being way too harsh, and the twins were really wondering what was going on.

Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors, so no one could get out. Which Dudley did get really angry about.

On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Twenty-four letters to the twins found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia to through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon calls the post office and the dairy, Nicole wasn't sure if he blamed them or not, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor.

"Who on earth wants to talk to you two this badly?!" exclaimed Dudley to the twins.

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"Who is writing to us?" Nicole asked to Harry Saturday night, they've been talking a lot about this, speculating, with no conclusion to be found.

"We don't know," Harry said. "But if The Dursleys don't like it, it must be good news."

"Well, what do you think, Harry?" Nicole said. "It could be a letter from our long-lost relatives, wanting to take us back, and these 'strange ways' comments are them shaming them for not hating us."

Of course, Nicole never believed this, but she was just trying to make sense out of all of it.

"I would prefer if it was just a really long dream," Harry said. "That's most likely."

Harry was right.

"Correct, but we want this to be good news. We've got to get at least one letter," Nicole responded.

"Well, we're going to have to wait until Monday," Harry said.

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"No post on Sundays," Vernon reminded the twins the next day, as they sighed.

"We know that," Nicole pointed out.

"Yup, no damn letters today," Vernon said.

Something came down the kitchen chimney as he spoke, and caught him sharply at the back of the head. Next moment, thirty or forty or maybe even fifty letters came down like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but the twins both leapt into the air trying to catch one -

"Out! OUT!" Vernon stopped before either of them got one. Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall. Nicole quickly ran with Petunia & Dudley, so he didn't do the same to her. They could all hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.

"That does it!" said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly, but failing. "I want you all back here in five minutes, ready to leave! We're going away! Just pack some clothes! No arguments!"

He looked so dangerous with half his moustache missing, that no one bothered to argue. Harry and Nicole quickly got into their room, looked in their wardrobes, packing the clothes.

"This is really getting him in a twist," Nicole said.

"What if they contact us from wherever we're going," Harry said.

"Possible," Nicole said, "They do seem like they were tracking us."

They spoke to each other quickly so they aren't late, and to their luck they weren't, and Dudley was later because he had packed so much. For punishment, Vernon hit him round the head for holding them up. They wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in car, speeding towards the highway.

They drove, and they drove, and they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for once. Nicole was just thinking. If this was a dream, would it be a good one or a bad one? Right now, it's a REALLY bad one.

They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nighttime, Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd mist about twenty television programs he wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast. The twins both hated it. They had just finished it when the hotel owner came over to their table.

"Excuse me, but are two of you Mr. H & Ms. N Potter? I've got about a hundred of these on the front desk," she said. She held up the letter so they can read the address:

Mr. H & Ms. N Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth

The twins tried to make a grab for one, as usual, but Vernon knocked their hands out of the way. The woman stared.

"I'll take them," Vernon said.

Whatever was in that letter, Uncle Vernon certainly didn't like it.

"Wouldn't it be better to just go home, dear?" Petunia suggested, but Vernon might not have even heard her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car. The same thing happened again with a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked dully when Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and then disappeared.

Well, duh, Nicole thought.

It started to rain. Dudley sniveled as great drops beat on the roof of the car.

"It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."

Nicole and Harry smiled at each other. It was Monday, which meant tomorrow was the twins' eleventh birthday. Of course, his birthdays were never exactly fun - last year, The Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and a pair of old socks. But sometimes they got each other something. But they couldn't buy that much, since The Dursleys only gave them $£5 a year as pocket money. They always managed to make cards for each other out of old paper at least.

Uncle Vernon was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Petunia when she asked him what he'd bought.

"Found the place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"

It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was for certain, there was no television there.

"Storm forecast for the night," Vernon continued gleefully, clapping his hands together. And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!"

A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.

"I've already bought us some rations!" he exclaimed. "So all aboard!"

It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, and Vernon led the way to a broken-down house.

The inside was horrible. It smelt strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There was only two rooms. Vernon's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire, but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up.

"Could do with some of those letters now, eh," Uncle Vernon said cheerfully to the twins.

He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Nicole agreed, but hated it. She wanted a letter like this.

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Petunia had a few moldy blankets in the second room and made a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry & Nicole were left the softest bit of floor they could to curl up under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. They both couldn't sleep. Nicole kept turning over, even though her and Harry were using the same blanket, they were both doing it. They both tried to get comfortable, as Dudley's snores of thunder started near midnight. The light dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the sofa on the fat wrist, told the twins they'd be eleven years old in ten minutes time. This would be the first birthday in which they can't even write cards to each other, but still. They lay and watch their birthday tick nearer, as they smiled at each other, wondering if The Dursleys were going to remember at all, and where the letter writer is now.

Five minutes to go. Nicole heard something creak outside.

"Did you hear that?" she whispered to Harry, as quiet as she can. Harry nodded. She hoped the roof wouldn't fall in, but she knew they'd both be warmer if it did. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that one of them would be able to steal one somehow.

Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? What was that weird crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea? One minute to go and they'd both be eleven.

"Maybe we can wake Dudley up just to annoy him," Nicole whispered to Harry, as they both laughed.

Three, two, one.

BOOM!

The whole shack shivered, as the twins sat upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, trying to come in.