Harry Potter doesn't belong to me, it belongs to J. K. Rowling.
Some of the text is taken directly from the books. That text is in bold.
This chapter takes place in the book "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone".
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Summer holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and the first time out on his racing bike knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches.
Both Harry and Iris preferred to spend their time away from Dursleys, who would yell at them and give additional chores, and Dudley, who had a gang that liked to join in Dudley's favourite sport: Harry Hunting. Iris felt thankful that there was no Iris Hunting, mainly, because she had the protection of teachers and was a girl. Due to Iris being a girl, Dudley hadn't gone after her much, mainly focusing on Harry.
After the summer holidays the twins and Dudley would be heading off to different secondary schools. While the twins were to go to Stonewall High, Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old school, Smeltings. Dudley thought this was very funny.
"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Harry. "Want to come upstairs and practise?"
"No thanks," said Harry. "The poor toilet's never had anything as horrible as your head down it - it might be sick." Then he ran, before Dudley could work out what he'd said.
With the twins going to attend a different school from their cousin, Iris planned to corner Harry into putting more effort into learning than before, with Dudley no longer there to report to their Aunt and Uncle about Harry and Iris getting good marks.
One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Harry and Iris at Mrs. Figg's. Mrs. Figg wasn't as bad as usual. It turned out she'd broken her leg tripping over one of her cats, and she didn't seem quite as fond of them as before.
She let Harry and her watch television and gave them a bit of old chocolate cake that Iris refused on account of not liking cakes.
That evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings' boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly 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 Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. Iris could see Harry trying hard not to laugh. She herself almost snorted, Dudley handsome?
There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning that seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink when Iris went to cook breakfast but she refrained from asking not wanting to be snapped at. When Harry came in for breakfast, he too saw the tub that was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in grey water.
"What's this?" he unwisely asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if one of them dared to ask a question.
"Your new school uniform," she said.
Harry looked in the bowl again.
"Oh," he said. "I didn't realize it had to be so wet."
"Don't be stupid," snapped aunt Petunia. "I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things gray for you. It'll look like everyone else's when I've finished."
Both Iris and Harry secretly doubted this, but thought it best not to argue, knowing that there would be no winning that argument.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry and Iris' new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smeltings 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, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.
"Make Harry get it."
"Get the mail, Harry."
"Make Dudley get it."
"Poke him with your Smeltings stick, Dudley."
Harry dodged the Smeltings stick and went to get mail. For whatever reason, he took more than two minutes, far more time than was usually needed to get mail from the doormat, in coming back to the kitchen.
"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon. "What are you doing, checking for letter-bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.
Harry came back to the kitchen looking preoccupied. He handed Uncle Vernon the majority of the post. One of the two remaining yellow envelopes he gave Iris while beginning to open the last one himself.
Iris took the heavy yellowish letter and turned it around. On one side in emerald ink was written:
Ms. I. Potter
The Smallest Bedroom
4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging
Surrey
On the other, was a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter 'H'. While Iris and Harry were busy with their own envelopes, Uncle Vernon had been reading his mail.
"Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk..."
"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Harry and Iris's got something!"
With a sharp movement, Uncle Vernon confiscated the twins' letters before either managed to open them.
"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back. Iris didn't bother as she knew she wouldn't succeed.
"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking Harry's partly opened letter open with one hand and glancing 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 the twins and Dudley were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smeltings stick.
"I want to read that letter," he said loudly.
"I want to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it's mine."
"Get out all of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the opened letter back inside its envelope.
Harry didn't move. Having expected that, Iris silently moved towards the stairs knowing that not moving herself meant being thrown out by Uncle Vernon.
"I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted.
"Let me see it!" demanded Dudley.
"OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. As Harry and Dudley promptly had a brief fight over who would listen at the keyhole, Iris returned to her and Harry's room. She was curious but knew that later, she could ask Harry what he overheard.
Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Harry quite obviously was regretting not opening his letter in the hall. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.
When the post arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to her brother, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smeltings stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another two! Mr. and Ms. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive -"
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry right behind him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letters from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind. After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smeltings stick, Uncle Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with the twins' letters clutched in his hand.
"Go to your room," he wheezed at Harry. "Dudley - go - just go."
Next day, the post had arrived straight into Uncle Vernon's lap. Everyone could see six letters addressed in green ink.
"I want -" Harry began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before their eyes. Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the letter-box.
"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver, 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," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with a piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.
On Friday, no fewer than twenty-four letters arrived for Harry and Iris. As they couldn't go through the letter-box, they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.
Uncle Vernon 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 'Tiptoe through the Tulips' as he worked, and jumped at small noises.
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Forty-eight letters to Iris and Harry found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs and bottles of milk that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor.
"Who on earth wants to talk to you two this badly?" Dudley asked the twins in amazement.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.
"No post on Sundays," he reminded them happily as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today -"
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. Next moment, sixty or eighty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one. Iris pretended to stumble as if startled before quickly grabbing one letter from the ground and hiding it inside her shirt.
"Out! OUT!" Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall while Iris voluntarily vacated the kitchen having got her letter.
When Aunt Petunia and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the kitchen door shut. They could 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 pulling great tufts out of his moustache at the same time. "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 his half moustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later, they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding towards the motorway. Dudley was sniffling in the backseat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, video 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 Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.
"Shake 'em off … shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.
They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. Dudley, Harry and Iris shared a room with three twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Despite having cunningly succeeded in getting her letter, the whole day Iris didn't have an opportunity to read it. And even now, in this hotel room, there was a risk that Dudley would wake up and tell his parents.
They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
"'Scuse me, but is one of you Mr. H. Potter or Ms. I. Potter? Only I got an 'undred of these each at the front desk." She held up two letters so they could read the green ink address:
Mr. H. Potter/Ms. I. Potter
Room 17 Railview Hotel
Cokeworth
Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.
"I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon quickly, standing up and following her from the dining room.
"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn't seem to hear 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 and off they went again.
The same happened in the middle of a ploughed field, halfway across a suspension bridge and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.
"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dullu late that afternoon.
Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car and disappeared. It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled.
"It's Monday," he told his mother.
"The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."
Dudley's whinging had reminded Iris that her and Harry's birthday was tomorrow. Their eleventh to be exact. Not having friends and with their aunt and uncle greatly disliking them, the only people who would give them nice gifts were each other, and not only for birthdays but for Christmas, too.
Uncle Vernon was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd bought.
"Found the perfect 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 to sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.
"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together.
"And this gentleman has 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 rowing boat bobbing in the iron-grey water below them.
"I've already got us some rations," said Uncle Vernon, "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, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken down house.
The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.
Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a packet of crisps each and five bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty crisp packets just smoked and shriveled up.
"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully.
He was in a very good mood. Obviously, he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver post. Secretly, Iris didn't mind that as she already had hers, what she minded was that she still didn't get a chance to read it.
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. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door and Harry and Iris were left to find the softest bit of the floor they could find and huddle up together under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.
The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Neither Iris, nor Harry managed to fall asleep. They were hungry, uncomfortable and cold. Iris could only imagine how much worse it would be without her twin to help her remain warm by sharing body heat.
As Iris had snuggled up very closely to Harry, she could see him watching something towards the sofa. After blinking a few times, she finally noticed what he was watching - Dudley's hand dangled over the edge of the sofa on which a watch glinted. It showed that in a few minutes they would be eleven.
They heard something creak outside. Iris hoped that the roof wasn't going to fall in, although it might be warmer if it did. Four minutes to go.
Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?
One minute to go and they'd be eleven. Thirty seconds… twenty seconds… ten - nine…
...three...two...one…
BOOM.
The whole shack shivered and brother and sister bolted upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside knocking to come in.