Rohini was glad school was finally over. She was tired of counting how many watermelons Mister Smith was left with if you took off ten percent of his storage or having to write a poem about a pet she never had. Still, summer vacation wasn't her favourite period of the year; it was too hot to be outside but there was no escaping Dudley's gang -who visited the house every single day- if they stayed inside.
This was why Harry and she spent as much time as possible out of the house, wandering around and thinking about the end of the holidays. One day they were sitting under a large tree, talking about how nice it was going to feel to be separated from Dudley; their cousin had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school but the twins on the other hand were going to the local public school.
"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," Dudley had told Harry while Rohini was washing the dirty dishes. "Want to come upstairs and practice?"
"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 out of the house before Dudley could work out what he'd said while Rohini laughed so hard she got stomach cramps. Harry might be a quiet boy, he was still quite witty and Rohini loved that about her brother.
Xxx
"I'm so tired of this place." Rohini suddenly said, playing with a pebble before throwing it as far as she could. They were hiding in the shadow of a tree. "Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon and 'Ickle Dudleykins'. They are the worst family someone could have." She said before her attention was caught by two owls standing on the park's fence.
"Look!" She told Harry, pointing at the birds. "I didn't know owls could be seen during the day."
"They are beautiful." Harry smiled. He was right; one of the birds was an immaculate white and the other was a combination of grey and brown. The twins chuckled as the birds hooted and were disappointed when they flew away too soon. "We should get back home."
"Home isn't Private Drive, Harry." Rohini said, staring into her brother's green eyes. "Not for us."
Harry knew it all too well but said nothing. Rohini helped him on his feet and they walked back home where Dudley was playing with the Smelting stick that was part of his uniform. He tried to hit Harry with it but a single glance at Rohini was enough to calm him down.
"Clean up the dishes." Aunt Petunia ordered at her niece who rolled her eyes before doing as she was told when the mail slot clicked and letters fell from it at their doorstep.
"Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper but Dudley hit him with his stick.
"Make Harry get it."
"Get the mail, Harry." Uncle Vernon ordered.
"Make Dudley get it." Harry said, deadpan and Rohini bite her lips to stop a giggle.
"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley." Uncle Vernon asked his son but Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Meanwhile, Rohini was fighting a stain on Aunt Petunia's favourite plate.
"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke and Rohini resisted the urge to throw the damn plate to his froggy face.
Harry went back to the kitchen and handed Uncle Vernon his mails but kept two envelops. He handed one to Rohini who was quite surprised for they never get any letter. However, she was hands deep into the water and shook her head.
"I will have a look later." She said and Harry began to open his own envelope.
"Marge's ill," Uncle Vernon informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk…" Marge was his sister, and just as awful and ugly as him. Rohini hated her with a furious passion and couldn't help but feel happy at the news.
"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, the freaks got something!"
Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it was jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon as well as Rohini's letter.
"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking Harry's letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from red to white as a bed sheet in a blink, his eyes wide opened in shock.
"P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.
Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. Exchanging a confused look with her brother, Rohini whipped her hands on her brown skirt before joining him.
"Vernon! Oh my goodness—Vernon!" Aunt Petunia said, covering her mouth with a trembling hand.
"Give it back!" Harry shouted, furious.
"I want to read it!" Dudley ordered, waving his stick.
"Those are ours!" Rohini pointed out, trying to grab the letters only to be pushed away by her Uncle.
"Get out, all of you!," croaked Uncle Vernon as Petunia grabbed the two Potters by the ear and forced them to leave the kitchen before she closed the door on them. Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor. Rohini had hearing troubles after an accident at the local swimming pool and so she just waited behind the two boys, arms crossed and lips pinched.
"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, "look at the address—how could they possibly know? You don't think they're watching the house?"
"Watching—spying—might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly.
"But what should we do, Vernon?"
"We'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer-..."
They must have moved to the extremity of the kitchen for the rest of their discussion was inaudible. Dudley pouted and hit Harry with his stick before going upstairs, saying everything was "boring". As for Rohini, she sat in the corridor next to Harry, speculating about what it could have possibly been about.
"Where's my letter?" said Harry, the moment Uncle Vernon had squeezed through the door. "Who's writing to us?"
"No one. It was addressed to you by mistake," said Uncle Vernon shortly. "I have burned it."
"You have what?!" Rohini screamed, jumping on her feet with a furious expression on her face.
"It was not a mistake," said Harry angrily, "it had my cupboard on it."
"SILENCE!" yelled Uncle Vernon and the twins grimaced; they hated when their Uncle was shouting. He took a few deep breaths and then forced his face into a horrible smile.
"Er—yes, Harry—about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking… we think it might be nice if you moved into your sister's bedroom. You're too big for this nasty little cupboard."
"Why?" said Harry with a frown. "It didn't seem to bother you until now."
"Don't ask questions!" snapped his uncle. "Take this stuff upstairs, now."
The Dursleys' house had four bedrooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for visitors, one where Dudley slept, and Rohini's room. It only took Harry one trip upstairs to move everything he owned from the cupboard to this room, though a second trip was necessary to move the mattress upstairs. When they finally sat down on it, the twins were red and exhausted. Rohini's bedroom was tidier than what one could have expected from her.
There was her bed that used to belong to Dudley on the left side of her window with a kitten calendar above it (It was Aunt Petunia who had chosen it back in January). An old closet was in a corner of the room, filled with Aunt Petunia's old clothes. The desk was obviously second hand too, with a chair that was on the verge of collapsing. Broken toys that used to belong to Dudley were piled next to the door, with books that their cousin had probably never read. The walls were more personal though, for Rohini had covered them with drawings she had done over the years. Harry's favourite was the one representing them together chasing Dudley with a tree stick.
"I don't understand why Uncle Vernon suddenly let you in." Rohini said, staring at a family of spiders hanging from her ceiling. "I mean, they usually refuse to let you and I stay more than two seconds together in fear we'll blew up the house."
"It's because of the letter. The one that was addressed to me, it said 'Mr. H. Potter, The Cupboard under the Stairs'."
"Woah, really? But how could they know that?" Rohini asked and Harry shrugged. "I wish we could have read them before he burn them…"
"I'd normally have given anything to be up here, but now I'd rather be back in my cupboard with that letter than up here without it." Harry said and Rohini gently pet his back.
"Well, I hope you don't snore too loudly." She said with a wink, bringing a weak smile to Harry's face. "Now, let's see if we can find something to play at." She added before standing up and going through Dudley's old toys. They ended up finding an intact Monopoly. It wasn't the most thrilling game ever, but it was good enough to make them forget about the letters for the rest of the day.
Dinner was once again extremely quiet; even more surprising, none of the Dursleys had complained when Rohini had toasted the bread for too long. Harry tried to bring up the letters subject again, but was silenced by Uncle Vernon who threatened to hit him with Dudley's stick.
Back to their room, Rohini suggested they'd play another game of Monopoly, but soon they grew bored and the game was pulled back into the pile. Instead, Harry picked up a book about a little boy that travelled to the moon, and the twins took turn to read it aloud. They barely had the time to finish the story that Aunt Petunia knocked at their door and barked at them to go to sleep.
"I wonder what the letters were saying…" Rohini said, her back turned to her brother. "It must have been serious if even Dudley wasn't allowed to read it."
Harry sighed and it's quite morose that the Potters fell asleep, Rohini snoring loudly but not loudly enough to cover Uncle Vernon's snores.
Xxx
When the mail arrived the next morning, Uncle Vernon ordered at Rohini to stay in the kitchen and made Dudley go and get it instead. They heard him shouting "There's another one! 'Mrs. R. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive—'"
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, the twins right behind him. Uncle Vernon had to wrestle Dudley to the ground to get the letter from him, which was made difficult by the fact that Harry had grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind and Rohini was biting his arm. After a minute of confused fighting and the help of Aunt Petunia, Uncle Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath and teared the letters in so many pieces that it would be obviously impossible to know what those said.
Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot. He gave them an evil smile when he realised the twins were standing behind him. But the letters didn't stop; since they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door and slipped through the sides.
The house was turning crazy now, the Potters and Dudley fighting to catch at least one letter before Uncle Vernon who was now guarding the door day and night. He made sure to burn the letters in the chimney right in front of his niece and nephew, saying "you will never read this." after each letter he threw away.
"Who could want to talk to us so much?" Rohini asked Harry in amazement, the flames reflecting on their glasses. Harry only shrugged and so they just stared in silence. The mystery was getting thicker.
XXX
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking surprisingly gleeful after the terrible week that had just passed.
"Fine day Sunday. In my opinion, best day of the week. Why is that, Dudley?" He asked and Dudley shrugged. It was Harry who answered, handing his Uncle a plate of cookies.
"Because there's no post on Sunday?"
"Ah, right you are, Harry. No post on Sunday. Hah! No blasted letters today. No, sir." He seemed so content about that fact that he didn't see the millions of owls perched outside. Eyes wide opened, Rohini elbowed her brother to show him the strange spectacle. "No sir, not one blasted, miserable-"
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. There was a menacing rumbling inside the chimney and suddenly a thousand letters came shooting out of the fireplace. Everybody began to scream, protecting their face from the projectiles. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Harry leapt into the air trying to catch one.
"Out! OUT!"
Uncle Vernon seized Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall. Rohini tried to do the same, but it was Petunia who pushed her into the hall before Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.
"That's it! We're going away! Far away! Where they can't find us!" Vernon screamed, his face turning purple from anger. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"
"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked his mother who was hugging him against her.
Ten minutes later they were in the car, speeding toward the highway with a grim expression on their faces.
They drove. And they drove. Uncle Vernon seemed so furious that even Dudley didn't complain about how hungry he was. As night fell upon them, Uncle Vernon finally stopped outside a gloomy-looking hotel in the middle of nowhere. Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets while Rohini was lucky enough to get her own bedroom where she stared for two hours at a suspicious dark stain on the wall.
They were back on the road at dawn and Uncle Vernon had been driving for three hours when it started to rain, making it hard to see anything past 10 feet forward. Rohini rested her forehead against the window, drawing patters on the glass. Next to Harry, Dudley snivelled.
"It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."
Monday! The twins exchanged a glance: If it was Monday then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Harry and Rohini's eleventh birthday. If their birthday was never fun, this time promised to be worse if they spend it stuck in a car with the Dursleys.
As they discover where Uncle Vernon had taken them however, the twins wondered if it wouldn't have been better to stay on the road: They had stopped in front of the sea, terrible and impressive as a storm was rising. An old crooked man was waiting for them and Rohini took Harry's hand with a loud gulp.
"This gentleman will lead us to our new home!" Vernon said excitingly, pointing at a dark spot at the horizon and Aunt Petunia seemed ready to faint at the idea of sleeping in a house lost on a rock, in the middle of an enraged sea.
"Now, no letters will be able to find you!" Uncle Vernon said cheerfully, his piggy eyes glittering as he clasped his hands together. Rohini glanced at Harry and saw the same worry in his eyes; their Uncle had simply gone mad, there was no explanation.
As they navigated towards the rock island, Dudley looking ill the closer they get, Rohini realised it as the first time Harry and her were taking a boat. Uncle Vernon was right; no letters will be able to reach them now.
There will be no miracle, this time.