"Wotcher, Piers, Gordon" Harry said. The next morning was bright and warm, and another glorious day of no school.
"Wotcher, mates." Piers Polkiss nodded to Harry and Dudley. Next to him, Gordon Charles just nodded at the two. The two boys were very different in appearance: Piers had short, dark, spiky hair and a thinner frame- though he was no slouch in the size department- while Gordon had blonde hair long enough that mums tended to mutter about how he needed a haircut, and was almost bigger than Dudley.
Of all the boys sometimes referred to as "Dudley's Gang" by the other kids in the area, Harry was by far the smallest, short and thin no matter how much he ate or how he worked out. Instead of bulging muscles, exercise just seemed to make him more wiry. Still, the other boys often bowed to him, figuratively speaking, because even they were quick to acknowledge he was the brightest of them, and that was a big plus when sport was their best subject.
"Where are Dennis and Malcolm at?" Dudley asked Piers, curious. Gordon, after all, rarely spoke.
Piers shrugged. "Fink Dennis is at his grandmum's. Malcolm got done up and is under house arrest for a week.
"What?" Harry asked, incredulous. Gordon pointed at the ground. "Oh," Harry said with a laugh, "grounded."
"What I said, innit?" Piers asked.
Dudley winced. "Please, Piers, stop trying to sound like an Eastie."
Harry gave Dudley a blank look. "Is that what it is?" He looked at Piers. "I thought he'd gotten dental work or something. Why are you trying to sound like you're from Essex?"
Gordon made a muscle by bending his arm up and nodded in Piers' direction. "He's trying to sound tough," Dudley translated. Harry snickered.
"Oy!" Piers said, an aggrieved look on his face.
"Seriously, mate, your older brother should've never shown you The Essex Boys," Dudley told him.
"Why do I hang out with you lot?" Piers asked, with a return to his normal dialect. He ran a hand through his spiky hair and utterly wrecked the look he was going for.
"'Cause we're the only game in town," Harry said with a shrug.
"Oh," Piers nodded, "that's right."
It wasn't strictly true; certainly, there were plenty of other kids around Little Whinging. But the group of them all went to the same school, and lived near each other, so they tended to spend a lot of their free time wandering about the little town together.
"So what are we going to do today?" Dudley asked.
"Same thing we do every day," Harry told him.
"Try to take over the world?" Piers suggested.
Harry nodded. "Exactly not that," he said.
"Oh," Dudley said, "hang out down at the playground until the streetlights come on and our mums yell at us to come in."
"Exactly that," Harry agreed.
They headed off to the playground as a group. Gordon sighed. "He's right," Piers said at the sigh, "we need to all get out of here."
"We're going to the park," Dudley pointed out.
"No," Piers corrected, "I mean, out of Little Whinging. This town couldn't be more boring if it tried."
"And go where?" Harry asked. "London?"
"Somewhere," Dudley said.
"Anywhere," Piers agreed.
"Given we're all 10," Harry said, "it's not too likely."
Gordon sighed his agreement.
"You'll be 11 soon, right?" Piers asked.
"Well, yeah," Harry said, "but that's still not old enough to sod off to London."
Gordon grunted.
"He's right," Dudley agreed, "we do need to do something fun for your birthday."
"We're having a family party on Friday," Harry pointed out. "Aunt Marge will come over. Mum and dad will probably let us go down the pizza place and play video games on my actual birthday, too."
Dudley grinned. "And Aunt Marge will bring an awful knit jumper and a box of cut-rate chocolates," he said.
"Always?" Piers asked, curious.
"Always," Harry agreed.
"I get the same," Dudley said. "Every. Year."
"I'm still convinced the chocolate isn't really chocolate," Harry said. "I think it's candles meant to look and smell like chocolate."
"And taste like chocolate?" Piers asked.
"No," Dudley told him, "they taste absolutely nothing like chocolate."
"More like the idea of chocolate," Harry said.
"Like if someone had a dream, once," Dudley continued, "and there was chocolate in the dream, and they were like, 'I bet that tastes like this.'" His face darkened. "But they were wrong, lads. They. Were. Wrong."
They arrived at the playground and found places on the swings. The lack of Dennis and Malcolm meant there were enough swings for the four of them to each take one. The boys were just old enough to be slightly self-conscious about actually playing on the playground, so they tended to adopt a "slouch around like you're bored and don't really want to be there" approach.
They didn't swing in the swings so much as let their body movements convert to slight motion of the equipment.
"Man…" Harry murmured after a few moments.
"Yeah," Dudley agreed, after a pause.
"Yeah," Piers agreed, after another pause.
A few more moments passed before Gordon gave a grunt of agreement.
"You're not wrong," Harry said, after another few moments of silence, "about needing to leave this town behind." He looked around their tiny fiefdom. "I mean, Little Whinging is nice, and all, I'd certainly come back for a visit on occasion if I left, but…"
"It's Little Whinging," Dudley finished.
"Yeah," Piers agreed.
Gordon sighed.
"We could find a snake," Piers said after a few more minutes of silence. "Harry could do his trick."
"Aw, mate, no," Harry groaned, "I hate doing the trick! My head always feels done-in, after."
"You can talk to snakes," Dudley said, "that's pretty cool. You could be a, what-do-you-call-it, a snake whisperer, some day."
"Yes, because talking to snakes is exactly what I want to do with my life," Harry said with a snort. "That brings in all the birds and all the pounds. I'll have a Maybach by the time I'm 20."
"OK, so maybe it wouldn't be big money," Dudley said, "but it's cool. Hey! You could become a magician or something. They always have fit birds as their assistants. And some of them go to Las Vegas and do make big money, right?"
They all considered the prospect of Las Vegas, fit birds, and big money for a minute or two. Then Piers said, suddenly, "Snake hissperer."
Harry winced and Dudley groaned. Gordon pointedly got out of his swing, walked a couple steps away, and leaned against one of the swingset supports, arms crossed and back to them.
"Oh, come on!" Piers griped, "That was dead funny!"
"We can check 'stand up comedian' off Piers' list of potential careers," Harry told Dudley. The two of them and Gordon all snickered.
"Hate the lot of you," Piers griped. He hopped out of the swing. "I'm going to go find a grass snake."
Harry groaned.
When Piers returned a while later though, a grass snake in his hands, Harry sat up on the swing. "Why don't you be a 'snake hissperer,'" Harry suggested, "I don't know how you just pick them up and carry them about."
"Fast hands," Piers said. Gordon wandered over from his self-imposed exile by the swingset support to watch with interest.
"Go on, then," Dudley urged Harry.
Harry sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, then focused and re-opened them. He hissed at the snake. "Hello, mate, name's Harry. What's your name?"
"I'm a snake," the grass snake replied, "We don't do names."
Harry translated for the other three boys. "Ask him what he does for fun around here," Dudley suggested. "Maybe he's got some good ideas.
After a round of more hissing back and forth, Harry said, "He says he's a snake, all he does is try to survive." He hissed back at the snake, then told them, "Sorry, she."
"I got a girl snake?" Piers asked.
"Yup," Harry agreed. "A young one, too, which is why she's not, oh, over a meter long." He hissed back at the grass snake and snorted. "I'm not going to translate that," he told them, "but she had some very unflattering things to say about how you came along and dragged her out of her favorite hedge, Piers. Also your parentage."
"Oy!" Piers said to the snake he still held. "That's not very nice!"
The snake hissed some more and Harry snickered. "She also says you should wash your hands more. And that if you don't put her down, right now, she's going to pee on you."
Piers dropped the snake like it was hot and jumped away from the snake. The snake hissed at Harry one more time and slithered off in the direction from which Piers carried it. "What was that last bit?" he asked Harry.
"She said if she sees you again, she's going to bite you." He rubbed the scar on his forehead and winced at the ache there.
"Bloody cheeky snake," Piers sniffed.
At Gordon's grunt, Harry said, "Exactly," to Piers, "how would you like it if some great lout with dirty hands picked you out from under your hedge and carried you about?" He continued to rub at the lightning bolt-shaped scar he kept hidden under his longish bangs.
"Anyone tries to pull me out of my hedge," Piers exclaimed, "they'll get a kicking." He plopped back down in his swing and Gordon sat in the other free seat.
"We really should do something special for your birthday," Dudley told Harry. "I mean, it's your eleventh."
"Yeah," Harry said, "my eleventh birthday, big deal; in three more years, I'll be able to go into a pub without mum and dad. As long as I order food."
"But it's your eleventh birthday," Dudley stressed. "Doesn't that mean… you know…"
The other three stared at him. It seemed to occur to Gordon first, who made a small noise of understanding.
"What?" Harry asked Dudley. "What?" He looked to Gordon and Piers.
Gordon made a gesture as if he wielded a magician's wand.
"You're a wizard, Harry," Dudley told him.
"Oh, bugger," Harry swore.