A/N: Every chapter, unless I say, will be in Harriet's point of view. I've made her personality a bit like mine. I've been told , jokingly, by my friends on several occasions that I'm very - er - "sassy" so Harriet may appear that way aswell. She's still nice and polite and all that, but she's a bit mouthy. That, combined with her running commentary throughout, should be quite entertaining. Especially in partnership with Ron.

"Up! Get up! Now!"

I woke with a start as Aunt Petunia rapped on the door.

"Up!" she screeched again, and then I heard footsteps leading away towards the kitchen and the clang of a frying pan being put on the hob. I groaned as I rolled over, put my glasses on and checked the time. 8:30. Dudley and Uncle Vernon should be down soon.

Dragging myself up so I was sitting, I rubbed my eyes and tried to remember the dream I'd had last night. It must have been good – there was a flying motorbike and a giant. I was pretty sure I'd had this dream before, though. It seemed too familiar… and too real; more like a memory than a dream.

Aunt was outside the door again.

"Are you up yet?" she demanded.

"Nearly," I yawned.

"Get a move on, then. You're looking after the bacon and eggs. And don't you dare let it burn. Everything needs to be perfect for your cousin's birthday."

I groaned. "As if I care," I muttered.

"What did you say?" she snapped.

Crap. She heard me. "Nothing… nothing…"

She must've walked away, because I heard footsteps leading back down to the kitchen, and they were too light-footed to have belonged to Uncle Vernon.

I flopped back onto my bed. Dudley's birthday – how on earth had I forgotten? He'd only been yapping about it for the last month or so.

I got out of bed and hunted for some socks. An alright-looking pair was rolled up under the bed. Plucking a spider off them, I popped it under an old shoe of mine and squished it. I inspected the underside of the shoe and found bug-juice. Ugh. I don't like spiders (A/N: I'm scared to death of spiders) – they give me the creeps – but I was used to them because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where I slept.

I was dressed in moments, and on entering the kitchen/living room I noticed the table was more-or-less hidden beneath the abundance of presents for my cousin, Dudley. I snorted. Typical.

Over by the fireplace I saw the racing bike Dudley had been after for ages. Now, why, Dudley wanted a racing bike in the first place was a mystery to me; he wasn't the slimmest person around… no; scratch that. He was the fattest person our age and hated exercise. Unless, of course, it involved punching someone. And I was his favourite punch-bag, though he rarely caught me. I didn't look it, but I was pretty fast for my age.

Maybe it had something to do with the fact I'd grown up sleeping in a dark cupboard, but I had always been small and skinny for my age. I often looked smaller than I was, because the only proper clothes I had to wear were Dudley's old ones, and he was four times bigger than me.

I had a thin face, knobbly knees (I looked awful in the shorts I had to wear in PE), black, messy hair that grew all over the place and green eyes. The round glasses I wore were held together with a load of tape from the many times Dudley had punched me in the nose. Chivalry in the line of Dursley had evidently died a long time ago.

I liked my eyes, and my hair, but my absolute favourite thing about the way I looked was a thin scar on my forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. I'd had it as long as I could remember, and when I was younger I'd spend ages coming up with crazy stories as to how I'd got it. The one time I'd asked Aunt, when I was very young – I can't have been more than three – she'd told me I'd gotten it in the car crash the night my parents had died. She'd also asked me not to ask questions.

Don't ask questions... that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys. Obviously I'd learnt that the hard way.

Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen and barked, "Comb you hair!" by way of a morning greeting.

See, about every three months, Aunt Petunia would decide I needed a haircut, and out would come her scissors. Ironically, I quite liked the haircuts she would give me. They were never neat, but I liked the way it looked afterwards; all choppy and messy. She was always fairly nice to me whilst doing it, and would always ask me, "Is this all right?" at the end, before reverting back to her regular, snappy self in a second. I think she knew I liked the way she cut my hair. Uncle Vernon never liked my haircuts, though. He would claim they were ridiculous, but Aunt would always argue that it was easier (and cheaper) than taking me to a proper hairdressers, and that she wasn't trained, anyway.

I was on to frying the eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen. He was the spitting image of Uncle Vernon; he had a large pink face, not much neck, small watery blue eyes and blonde hair that sat on his thick, fat head (that in my mind, strongly resembled a beach ball).

Aunt often remarked that he looked like a baby angel. I often thought he looked like a pig in a wig.

I put the plated of egg and bacon on the side bar as Dudley began counting his presents. After a few moments of muttering to himself, he stopped. His face fell.

"Thirty-six," he said, evidently in disbelief, "that's two less than last year."

Spoiled brat.

"Darling," Aunt replied, sickly-sweet, "you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present. See, it's here, under this big one from Mummy and Daddy."

Mummy and Daddy? What was he, three? I loved the way Aunt cut my hair, but the rest of the time she was just pathetic and ridiculous. I hated her less than I did Dudley and Uncle Vernon, though.

"Alright, thirty-seven then," he said, going red in the face.

Sensing a tantrum, I wolfed down the rest of my food and plopped it in the sink. The last thing I needed was for Dudley to go on a plate-breaking spree, meaning I'd have to clear it up.

Aunt obviously smelled danger too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you another two presents while we're out today? How's that, popkin? Two more presents. Is that all right?"

Dudley thought for a moment (yes, the impossible actually did occur)and then said slowly, "So I'll have thirty… thirty…"

Evidently he was three.

"Thirty-nine, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia.

"Oh. All right then," he said.

Uncle Vernon chuckled. "Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father." He ruffled his son's hair, who had just begun the lengthy task of unwrapping his presents.

The phone rang and Aunt Petunia went off to get it. After a couple of minutes, she came back, her face sour.

"Bad news, Vernon," she said. I looked up. "Mrs Figg's broken her leg, tripping over one of those bloody cats. She can't take her." She jerked her head and glared at me, but I didn't care.

Mrs Figg was this elderly woman who lived two streets away from us, and was basically my 'babysitter'. Every year on Dudley's birthday, I'd have to go over to her place for the day, while Dudley and a friend went out. I mean, she was nice and all, and she sometimes gave me chocolate cake (though it was always stale), but I hated having to her house. It smelled of old people, cabbage and cats (I thoroughly disliked cats, apart from this one which I seemed to see everywhere during summer) and the décor was awful. Not that it mattered, necessarily, but it gave me another reason not to like going to her place. She always made do chores (though they were never very hard) and look at pictures of all the cats she'd ever owned and she fed me her 'own recipe' of cabbage soup. It was nasty.

Now she couldn't take me, it would be months before her leg healed and I would have to spend the day cooing over Tibbles or Mr Paws.

"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia.

"We could phone Marge," suggested Uncle Vernon.

NO!

"Don't be ridiculous, Vernon, she hates the girl."

Phew.

"You know… you could just leave me here," I put in. I'd have the TV to myself and I could have a go on Dudley's computer.

"And come back to find the house in ruins?" Uncle Vernon snapped.

It was worth a shot.

"I suppose we could take her to the zoo… and leave her in the car…" she said slowly.

"That car's new! She's not sitting in it alone," cried Uncle Vernon.

Dudley burst into fake tears (albeit quite convincingly).

"I d-don't want h-h-her to c-come. She a-always r-r-ruins ev-ev-everything."

No I don't, you bloody twat.

Flinging her arms around him, Aunt Petunia cried, "Dinky Duddydums! Don't cry! Mummy won't let her ruin you special day!" she shot me a pointed glare: You'd better not mess this up. Dudley grinned at me maliciously from between his mother's arms.

Just then the doorbell rang.

"Oh good God, they're here!" Aunt Petunia said frantically, releasing her son and patting him on the head. She straightened her clothes and hair, and scuttled towards the door. I ran around, picking up the wrapping paper and stuffing it in the bin as Dudley gave a final sniff for effect, but it soon morphed into a cough as Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, came striding into the room followed by his mother and Aunt.

Piers was a skinny boy with a face like a rat. He wasn't tall, but tall enough, as he was the one who normally held people's arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them.

"Alright, Harriet," he said, winking at me. I rolled my eyes and went to sit in my cupboard, listening to the adults make small talk, and Piers and Dudley chattered about the kid they'd beat up a couple of days before.

Half an hour later, I still couldn't believe my luck when I found myself sitting in the back of the car with Dudley and Piers on the way to the zoo for the first time. My aunt and uncle hadn't been able to come up with a solution, and, after Aunt dressing me in "clothes fit for a girl of your age" (which were actually rather nice), we were getting into the car when Uncle Vernon had pulled me aside.

"I'm warning you," he had said, "I'm warning you now, girl. Any funny business and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas."

"I'm not going to do anything. Honestly," I had protested, but Uncle Vernon didn't believe me. No one ever did.

See, strange things happened around me, and as hard as I tried, the Dursleys (namely uncle Vernon) never understood that it wasn't me making them happen.

For example, one time, after lots of arguing, Aunt Petunia had resorted to forcing me into one of Dudley's revolting old jumpers. The harder she had tried to push it over my head, the smaller it became, until it was so small it could have fitted a three year old easily, but certainly not me. Deciding it had shrunk in the wash, she gave it away to charity, and thankfully I wasn't punished.

Another time, though, Dudley and his gang had been chasing me when, much to my surprise and shock (as anyone else's), there I was, sitting on the roof above the school canteen. The Dursley's had received a very long and angry letter from the Headteacher about me 'climbing school property', but all I'd been trying to do (I yelled at Uncle Vernon through the locked door of my cupboard) was escape Dudley's gang. I'd been trying to jump behind the bins and the wind must have picked me up mid-jump and deposited me atop the canteen.

But today nothing was to go wrong. I was even okay with sitting squashed up against Piers in the back seat, happy to be somewhere that wasn't school, my cupboard or Mrs Figg's cabbage-smelling house.

While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt. He liked to complain about things: people at work, me, the council, me, taxes, me, the bank and me were some of his favourite topics. Today, though, it was motorbikes.

"… roaring along like maniacs," he said as a motorbike overtook them.

"I had a dream about a motorbike," I said, "A giant was flying it."

Uncle Vernon almost crashed the car as he spun around to face me. His moustache wobbled on his now beetroot-coloured face. "GIANTS DON'T EXIST AND MOTORBIKES DON'T FLY!" he yelled.

Piers and Dudley sniggered.

"I know they don't. It was only a dream."

So what do you think of Harriet? Is she okay? The story picks up here so stuff actually happens. The attack of the boa constrictor will be updated next week :) Please review if you can xxx