"My mother says I must not pass
Too near that glass;
She is afraid that I will see
A little witch that looks like me,
With a red, red mouth to whisper low
The very thing I should not know!"

"Alack for all your mother's care!
A bird of the air,
A wistful wind, or (I suppose
Sent by some hapless boy) a rose,
With breath too sweet, will whisper low
The very thing you should not know!"

—Sarah Morgan Bryan Piatt, The Witch in the Glass

Chapter Five

The years passed, as years always do, but Privet Drive and the houses on it remained much unaltered. New families moved in, and others departed, but this did little to change the overall feel of the town of Little Whinging. A place as supercilious as that one doesn't permit alteration if it can avoid it, so the only true thing to mark the passing time was the change of the people who lived within its borders. And this was especially true in the house of Number Four.

Ten years and almost two months had passed since Holly had come to live with the Dursleys, but not a lick of furniture had been altered within the house. The only nod to the passage of time was the photographs on the mantel piece. They originally had contained pictures of a fat baby wearing a bonnet, but now they showed that baby growing up into an even fatter boy, and joined by another blond boy half his age. The funny thing about those photos though, was sometimes they had a little girl in them as well. Most of the time, she was completely absent from the pictures, but whenever guests came over, out came the pictures of Holly as she grew older and prettier with time.

This was very much indicative of the Dursleys' attitude towards Holly in general. She was little more than a show piece to them, and worth nothing unless it brought prestige to the family. Her early experiences that first Christmas in Surrey reflected her later life. Because she was so charming and sweet, Petunia capitalized on this immediately. Local women, who had been standoffish before to Petunia due to her northern accent and uncontrollable child, ended up allowing the Dursley woman to join in exclusive groups and activities because of Holly. This was how Petunia joined the Little Whinging Ladies' Aid Society, and Surrey branch of Matrons for Better Living—which was just a fancy title for women who wrote nasty notes about the state of the roads and pavements in their town to the government.

As Holly's value in the Dursley household had much to do with how she was perceived by others, she had had one of the most stringent upbringings possible. Normal little girls were allowed to run and play and scream and yell, but not Holly Ivy Potter. She had very strict rules set down by her Aunt which governed all areas of her life.

Holly always had to wear dresses, never trousers. Her hair was rarely cut, so as a result it was down to her bottom, and always worn in braids or well-brushed. Shoes were patent leather, and worn with ankle socks in the summer and stockings in the winter. And woe betide her if she ever stained her clothing, even accidentally. Holly always received her clothes as Christmas and birthday presents, and their formal quality reflected the giver who had not lived in the Muggle world since she herself was a little girl during the Second World War. But, it turned out that a more formal mode of dress suited Aunt Petunia just fine and she was always gave a delicate sniff of approval when the clothes came.

But clothes were only the beginning. Holly was not allowed to play like other girls, except during Girl Guides and at the playground when everyone was watching. Even then, Holly had to act with decorum. This was a word she had learned when she was very young and dared to ride her bicycle in the park—a present one Christmas—and crashed it into a tree. The bike was fine, but Holly scraped her knee and had to listen to Aunt Petunia go on and on about decorum for weeks afterwards.

The rest of the time, Holly had to participate in the activities that her Aunt had carefully picked out. Girl Guides was fun, Holly didn't mind that so much, but she absolutely hated her ballet lessons. It wasn't that she was bad at it, but she loathed the girls in her class. Unlike with the Guides, the ballet lessons were made up of select children whose parents could pay, and as a result each of the girls was more wretched than the last. There was Veruca Lazenby, who was the most spoiled brat in the world; Margaret Asher, who had the grace of a hippo but was extraordinarily beautiful so she tried to boss everyone around; and there was Kate Witten, who was the daughter of a junior executive at Grunnings who worked with her Uncle Vernon and always trying to suck up to Holly.

Holly also had to take piano lessons, since Petunia was convinced that 'refined' girls did that. She didn't mind those lessons so much—because if there was one thing in the world she loved it was music—except for the fact that they were given by Mrs. Figg, who lived two streets away. Her house smelled like cabbage, and Mrs. Figg used her husband's death as an excuse to buy several cats. Normally, Holly wouldn't mind, as she liked cats and had one of her own—a black cat called Artemis—but Mrs. Figg took pictures of them and was constantly trying to get Holly to stay for tea after lessons and look at photos of her felines. And because her Aunt paid for the lessons, Holly had to practice on the Dursleys' upright piano for an hour each day. Sometimes when she did this, the little redheaded girl would allow her mind to drift and dream about a world in which her parents hadn't been killed by a terrorist.

That was why Holly lived with the Dursleys.

Her parents had died because of the Troubles, in a bombing in the West Country. Her mother Lily was Aunt Petunia's sister, and Holly looked extraordinarily like her. The little girl only had two photographs of her parents; one of their wedding, and another of when her mother was pregnant with her. Aunt Petunia didn't like to talk about them, and the only reason Holly knew their first names was because they were engraved on the picture frame of them standing in front of a motorbike.

Lily Potter looked nothing like her sister, while James Potter looked nothing like Holly. From what Holly could tell, the only thing she had inherited from her father was his eyes. Still, that didn't stop her from sometimes sitting for hours in her room, with Artemis on her lap, hugging their photo close and wishing with a fervent hope that they weren't dead.

They looked so kind, so happy. Holly was convinced that if she lived with her parents, they wouldn't care if she didn't get perfect marks in school. (Holly had gotten less than an A only once, and never again. The disgust on her Aunt Petunia's face had been too awful to dare repeating.) They wouldn't care if she got mud on her dresses, and maybe she would even be allowed to wear trousers! They wouldn't care that she hated Brussels sprouts, and they certainly wouldn't force her to eat them. And, most importantly of all, they wouldn't care that Holly could make Odd Things happen.

This was perhaps the one thing about her that had angered her Aunt and Uncle beyond reason. Most of the time, they had been willing to be civil, if not loving, to their niece, except when she made Odd Things happen. There was simply no forgiving it to the Dursleys. As Holly had been taught from an early age that she had to be perfect, she did want to please the Dursleys, but this was one tiny inch of her life for which she refused to bend.

It was her great secret, you see. To the Dursleys' minds, Odd Things had stopped happening when Holly was about six. This, of course, drastically improved the attitude and atmosphere at Privet Drive, but in this her guardians were mistaken. Odd Things hadn't stopped happening, Holly had simply learned how to control them.

She had known she was different from the time she was a little girl. Though she couldn't remember her parents well, she did have occasional flashes of them. Her mother had smelled of gardenias and lemons, and her father had always snapped his fingers when he was talking. These were small things, things Holly treasured, but there were other, bigger things she remembered too. She remembered a laughing man who could turn into a dog, though she couldn't tell you what the dog looked like other than it was black. And she remembered a flying broomstick in the back yard, and her mother doing Odd Things in the kitchen to make breakfast.

Something about her parents had been different, strange, and Holly knew the Dursleys knew about it too. All her life, since she came to Privet Drive, they got very nervous at the mention of anything out of the ordinary. They became positively moody on Halloween, and refused to attend any parties whatsoever. When the Girl Guides had once been putting on a play about King Arthur and wanted Holly to play Morgana, Petunia had told them that Holly was sick and kept her home for two weeks from school and everything just so Holly couldn't participate.

And, of course, there was the very memorable time that Holly had been watching Snow White on the telly because Dudley couldn't find anything better, and Uncle Vernon had walked in on the part with the witch making the poisoned apple in her cauldron. He had shouted so loudly, and Holly had only been five and scared—and then the window shattered. After that, her uncle had spoken in whispers around Holly for a month.

Holly wasn't stupid. She was a very smart little girl, and she realized that the Odd Things that happened around her were her doing. She had made the window shatter. Just like she had made herself float when she fell off the swings at the age of four. And there was the time she had forgotten her homework at home, and she had been so worried that she would get a bad grade, and suddenly it was there, right in her hand. Once she had been able to put all the pieces together, it had been like a fever in her mind. Holly hadn't been able to rest until she could control it. She would go to her room when Dudley was off with Piers and Malcolm, and her Aunt was downstairs cleaning or playing with her cousin Bobby, and she would practice Moving things.

At first, all she had accomplished was stopping Odd Things from happening around the Dursleys. But soon it had progressed to the point that she could make her dolls dance and call her books to her from across the room. She never did these things in front of the Dursleys, but Holly could do them all the same. The little girl often wondered what it meant. At first she had just though it was something like telekinesis—she had looked that word up at the library—but then that really didn't fit in with the way her Aunt and Uncle were so against anything fanciful.

It hadn't taken her long to realize that Odd Things really meant witchcraft.

She had worried for two weeks after that, thinking that the IRA killed her parents because they wanted to burn them at the stake, but blew them up instead. Eventually though, once she was able to calm down, she realized that they couldn't have known her parents, or maybe just her mother, was magical. If they had known, they would have killed Holly too.

Holly knew she was there that night because sometimes she had nightmares about green light that must have been the flash from the explosion, and laughing. And she had a scar on her chest from where a piece of the house had fallen on her. It was shaped like a lightning bolt, and Holly hated it because she knew it she had gotten it the night her parents died. Aunt Petunia called it "her deformity."

Still, there were inconsistencies with the whole story. For one thing, someone had gotten her out of the house and knew to bring her to her Aunt's. It hadn't been the government who had done that. And Holly had things from the house which hadn't been blown up, like photos or her music box or the two trunks which sat in her closet and refused to open no matter what Holly did. And there were the presents that Holly got sent on her birthday and Christmas every year which never had a card.

It was all very confusing, but her Aunt and Uncle refused to talk about it, so Holly supposed there were some things she would never know. Like how she was a witch when such things were supposed to be make believe, and why her parents had died. Even so, it didn't keep her from wondering and longing for the two people who had left such a great hole in her life.

Holly finally got the answers to her questions on her eleventh birthday.

She was born in December, right next to Christmas, which would have been awful for most children because it meant that all their presents got crammed together, but for Holly who generally received clothes and one toy for both occasions—it didn't really matter to her. There was nothing she loved more than winter. It often snowed in the week leading up to her birthday, and that meant that Holly was excused from ballet. For the last several years, Surrey had been getting Sea-effect snow, and Holly had loved every minute of it.

Maybe it was because she had been born right by Christmas on the second day of winter, or maybe it was because of her name, whatever the reason, Holly had always loved Christmas and everything to do with the winter season. In fact, her favorite book was called The Story of Holly & Ivy, which was about an orphan named Ivy who was adopted by a loving family at Christmastime and had a doll named Holly. After she had received that book one Christmas, Holly had named her favorite porcelain doll (who until that point had been called Dolly) Ivy. And her music box, which was from before, played "The Holly and the Ivy" when it was wound, which had always been her favorite Christmas carol.

For all her love of the season though, Holly hadn't expected anything exciting to happen on her birthday. And when she was walking down the stairs that morning, it hadn't been with any real eagerness. She knew she wouldn't receive her presents until after supper, and though there was a cake because Dudley demanded one, there were never any candles. All she had to look forward to that day were piano lessons in the afternoon as long as the snow stopped in time.

"I know what today is."

Holly stepped off the bottom step and looked at her oldest cousin with confusion. "Yes, and so do I. We learned the days of the week together, remember?"

"It's your birthday," Dudley smirked. "Betcha won't get anything but clothes."

She rolled her eyes. "No deal, too easy."

"Are you gonna get pwesents, Holly?" Bobby, her younger cousin asked, following Dudley out of the sitting room.

Bobby wasn't much like the rest of the Dursleys. He was only four, and already had a much sweeter nature than his brother. He looked nothing like Dudley either, save for the blond hair on his head. Aunt Petunia said this was because he took after the Evans side, and Holly had seen enough pictures of her maternal grandparents to know that this was true. Dudley was wholly uninterested in his brother, and called him a whiny baby. Holly was certain this was just because Bobby was six years younger than Dudley and could already count better than his older brother.

"We'll see," Holly told him, smiling. "A new doll would be nice, but I would appreciate anything."

"I drew you a picture," Bobby confided, "but you have to act surprised when you open it."

Holly chuckled and promised she would. Then, with Bobby and Dudley at her heels, she then turned and walked into the kitchen. They all sat down at the table, her cousins on either side of her Uncle, and her Aunt immediately gave Holly a sensible portion of porridge and piled Dudley's plate high with a full English breakfast. Bobby received a quarter of what Dudley did, though they all knew he would barely eat half of it. He was a very picky eater.

She had always thought it was disgusting the way her Aunt and Uncle treated Dudley. He was the perfect prince to their minds who could do no wrong, and they spoiled him ridiculously. He ate whatever he wanted when he wanted, and he absolutely ran mad, unlike Holly with her regimented life. He tended towards being a bully, but mostly he left Holly alone as he was slightly afraid of her, much like his father. Dudley either still remembered that day with the window or it was a subconscious reaction, because he always took the attitude of caution around her. That didn't stop his mouth from running when he saw her, but the rest of the time they mostly ignored each other.

As for Bobby, well, it seemed to Holly that he was very much the second child in his parent's eyes. Holly knew that when her Uncle and Aunt had decided to have a baby when Holly was six and a half that they had intended to have a girl. Petunia had been convinced that any daughter of hers would be even more spectacular than Holly, and she had quite resented Bobby when he arrived without the prerequisite gender. Oh they loved him, which was certainly more than Holly could say they felt for her, but Dudley was the heir, Bobby the spare.

"Now, my Duddydums, what are you going to do on your first day of your holidays?" Aunt Petunia asked once she had sat down as well.

This passed for scintillating conversation in the Dursley household.

Dudley regaled his parents with his plans to meet up with Gordon and Malcolm at the park, which afforded Petunia a chance to worry about Dudley catching cold, and Bobby munched on a piece of bacon, then Uncle Vernon interjected about Dudley enjoying himself and passed him a five pound note, and all the while Holly stared down at her bowl in thoughtful silence. She didn't resent the way his parents treated Dudley, not really, but sometimes when they were acting so much like a family, it made Holly's chest ache a little when she thought about all that she was missing.

Holly wasn't able to dwell on such thoughts because there was a sharp rap on the door.

"Get the door, Holly," her Uncle demanded, hiding himself behind his morning paper once more.

Holly rose with alacrity, and walked out into the hall, and opened the front door. There, standing on the stoop, was a stern-looking bespectacled woman with her black hair in a tidy bun, dressed in woolen frock and coat. Something about the woman teased at the back of Holly's mind, like some long forgotten memory. She knew her, though she was certain she hadn't met her before. Yet, something about this woman made Holly automatically think of her mother.

"Hello?" Holly said, watching the woman with wide eyes. "May I help you?"

"I believe so, Miss Potter," the woman said, making Holly gasp. "For you are the very person I have come to see."