Chapter Two - The Vanishing Glass

A motorcycle with a giant astride it rose into the night sky, silhouetted in the moonlight—

"Up! Get up! Now!"

Violet Potter groaned as she rolled over and opened her green eyes. Her Aunt Petunia rapped on the door again. "Are you up yet?"

Violet sat up and blew her fringe out of her eyes. "Sort of…"

"Well, get a move on!" Aunt Petunia screeched. "You have to look after the bacon, and you had better not let it burn! I want everything to be perfect on Duddy's birthday."

Violet groaned.

"What did you say?" Aunt Petunia snapped through the door.

"Nothing, nothing..."

It was Dudley's birthday... Hm. How could she have forgotten? Oh, well. What can you do? Violet slid onto the floor and peered under her bed to locate a pair of socks. She sighed as she pulled a spider off one of them and then pulled them on. There were always spiders crawling around her cupboard under the stairs.

She pulled on a pair of old jeans and a jumper. Both articles of clothing were too large for her, and hung very loosely on her thin frame. She slinked into the kitchen and eyed the table, which was full of gifts for 'Duddy's' birthday. Violet sighed. It looked as though her cousin and gotten everything that he wanted, the stupid, spoilt pig.

Violet began turning over the bacon, a curtain of black hair obscuring her face. She grimaced as Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen and barked, "Can't you run a brush through that mess?"

Uncle Vernon hated Violet's hair; it was rather lank, no matter what she did to it. It seemed it just grew that way, but Violet didn't mind; she liked how her lank locks could hide her facial expressions, which allowed her to make faces at the Dursleys without their noticing.

Violet was frying eggs when Aunt Petunia returned to the kitchen with Dudley in tow. Thanks to her hair, Violet's smirk went unnoticed. She had always thought Dudley looked rather like a pig in a wig.

Violet began putting the eggs and bacon on plates while Dudley counted his presents. Violet counted the strips of bacon and made sure that she got more than the Dursleys. With a wicked grin that nobody noticed (Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia were too absorbed by their son; he had just realized he had gotten two less presents than he had last year, and was preparing to throw a fit), Violet placed the plates on the overloaded table and proceeded to scarf her meal down as fast as she possibly could (Dudley had been known to overturn furniture during his tantrums).

Just after Aunt Petunia assured her son that she and Uncle Vernon would buy him two more presents later in the day, the telephone rang. Petunia hurried out of the room to answer it.

Violet had just cleaned her plate. "May I have some more eggs?" she asked Uncle Vernon sweetly.

He glowered at her.

"Perhaps more bacon, then?" she tried again, appearing just as sweet and innocent.

"You're lucky we let you eat anything at all!" Uncle Vernon roared.

Violet shrugged. "All right, then."

Uncle Vernon and Violet sat and watched Dudley open some of his presents (a television, a VCR, a wristwatch, some video games, and a racing bike, although why fat, lazy Dudley would want a racing bike, Violet would never know). Aunt Petunia hurried back into the room, looking angry and worried.

"Mrs. Figg broke her leg. She can't take her." She was speaking of Violet, of course.

Violet was elated. For the first time, she wouldn't have to go stay at batty old Mrs. Figg's place for the day, which she had always had to do in the past on Dudley's birthday. Perhaps she would be allowed to stay home now, alone. She excitedly began mentally listing all of the things she wanted to do: watch whatever she wanted on television, mess around on Dudley's computer, play some video games….

The Dursleys tried futilely to come up with someone else who would want to take Violet for the day. Meanwhile, Dudley began to cry— or pretend to, anyway. Dudley hadn't actually cried for years, but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, he would get anything he desired.

"I could just stay here," Violet suggested hopefully.

"Absolutely not," Aunt Petunia snapped. "We don't know what sort of mischief you'd get into here by yourself, but you'd certainly find something!"

"Actually, as you apparently don't seem to realize, I'm not very mischievous…" Violet began coolly, but then she realized that the Dursleys weren't even listening to her.

"I suppose we could take her to the zoo... and leave her in the car..." Aunt Petunia suggested.

"That car's new. She's not sitting in it alone..." Uncle Vernon replied gruffly.

"I... don't... want... her... t-t-to come!" Dudley yelled, pretending to sob. "She always sp-spoils everything!"

"Dinky Duddydums, don't cry. Mummy won't let her spoil your special day!" Aunt Petunia cried, flinging her arms around her son.

Dudley shot Violet a dirty grin through the gap in his mother's arms.

Violet raised an eyebrow at Dudley slightly, and then gave him a small smile, which wiped the nasty grin off his piggy face. Then she glared at him haughtily and flicked her tongue out, her emerald eyes full of glee.

"Oh, good Lord, they're here!" Aunt Petunia said frantically. A moment later, Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Dudley ceased to pretend crying at once.

Half an hour later, the Dursleys having been unable to think of anything better to do with her, Violet was on her way to the zoo for the first time in her life. Before they'd left, however, Uncle Vernon had taken Violet aside and warned her not to do any 'funny business'. Now they were on a rather boring car ride spent with Uncle Vernon complaining about motorcycles.

At the entrance to the zoo, the Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers some ice cream cones. They began to hurry Violet away, but the smiling woman in the van asked her what she wanted before they could go more than a few steps. The Dursleys always cared about what people thought of them, of course, so they bought Violet a lemon ice pop so as not to make it obvious that Violet wasn't treated like an equal in their family.

Violet had the best morning she'd had in a long time. The animals were interesting, although Dudley and Piers were bored with them by lunchtime.

At lunch they ate in the zoo restaurant. Dudley ordered a knickerbocker glory.

"It doesn't have enough ice cream on top!" he whined.

"I'll buy you another one, son," Uncle Vernon told him gruffly. Satisfied, Dudley pushed the first one aside.

"That's a lot of ice cream to go to waste…" Aunt Petunia said. The Dursleys offered it to Piers to finish, but he didn't want it.

"I'd eat it," Violet said wistfully.

"Nonsense," Vernon said, "we'll just throw it in the trash."

"Well, alright," Violet said with a shrug. "But that's quite a waste of five pounds…."

Uncle Vernon glared at her, but he was cheap enough to agree.

"Fine, eat it, girl," he snarled, and shoved the dish of ice cream at her. Violet ate it quite happily, thinking this day was just getting better and better.

After lunch they went to the reptile house. There were lizards crawling all around behind the glass, and Violet thought it was very cool. She especially found the snakes attractive. However, she thought it odd that whenever she walked by a snake, it would lift its head and stare at her.

Dudley and Piers wanted to see poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can, but right now it was fast asleep.

Dudley waited for the serpent to move, but when it wouldn't, he got incredibly whiney.

"Make it move," he wined to Uncle Vernon. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the serpent wouldn't budge.

"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass with his knuckles, but the snake still refused to awaken.

"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.

Violet, who was also interested in seeing the enormous serpent, moved in front of the glass. She looked intently at the snake, and felt rather surprised for a moment when the snake suddenly moved. It had been so immobile for Uncle Vernon and Dudley that Violet had almost questioned if it was even alive. Slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Violet's, and it winked.

Violet stared. She couldn't believe it; she had always thought that snakes didn't have eyelids, so the fact that it even could wink at her was quite astonishing.

She looked around to see if anyone was watching. When she was sure that nobody was, she returned her gaze to the snake and winked back at it.

The snake jerked its head toward Dudley and Uncle Vernon, and then raised its eyes to the ceiling.

"I know," Violet murmured. "It must be really annoying. You probably get that all the time."

The snake nodded.

"Where are you from, anyway?" Violet asked.

The snake jabbed its tail at a sign next to the glass.

Boa Constrictor, Brazil.

"Was it nice there?"

The snake jabbed at the sign again, and this time Violet read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo. "Oh, I see. You've never been to Brazil."

The snake shook its head just as Piers screamed, "DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"

Dudley hurried over, saying, "Out of the way, you," to Violet as he pushed her out of the way. She fell hard to the floor, having been taken by surprise. She lay there as Dudley and Piers leaned excitedly against the glass. She stared at their eager backs for a second, and then narrowed her eyes. She wanted something to happen to them, she wanted them to pay for being so mean to her all the time….

Suddenly the glass on the front of the boa constrictor's tank vanished. The snake uncoiled itself and began slithering out onto the floor. People began screaming and running away.

As the snake slid past her, Violet heard a hissing voice say, "Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amiga."

The keeper of the reptile house was in shock, along with everyone else. The zoo director actually even made Aunt Petunia a cup of tea while he apologized over and over. And as for Piers and Dudley, well... as far as Violet had seen, all the boa constrictor had done was snap playfully at their heels, but by the time they were all back in the car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But the worst thing of all happened when Piers finally calmed down and said, "Violet was talking to it, weren't you, Violet?"

Uncle Vernon was too angry to speak. After Piers was safely out of the house he started on Violet and barely managed to tell her, "Go-- cupboard-- stay-- no meals," before he collapsed into a chair.

Violet lay in her cupboard later, wishing she had a watch or something so that she could know what time it was. She couldn't sneak into the kitchen for food until she was sure the Dursleys were asleep now. She waited and listened and finally heard footsteps clomping upstairs but not coming back down. Violet wasn't sure how much longer she waited, but finally she snuck out of her cupboard and tiptoed into the kitchen where she found some left over birthday cake and some old fruit. It wasn't much of a meal, but it would satisfy her hunger.

A/N: Sorry I haven't updated this story in a while. As you can tell from my profile, I'm an avid video game player. I was busy playing video games and watching Anime, and that's why I haven't updated. Good news, though: I beat Kingdom Hearts the day before this chapter was posted, on August 03, 2006. Also, thank you to those people that put this story under their favourites and on their alerts. And reviews would be very much appreciated!