Chapter Three
Letter from No One
The escape of the Brazilian boa constrictor earned Harry his longest-ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of his cupboard again, the summer holidays had started and Dudley had already broken his new video camera, crashed his remote control airplane, and, first time out on his racing bike, knocked down old Mrs. Figg as she crossed Privet Drive on her crutches. Helena raged against the Dursleys in a dozen small ways, burning every male she cooked, leaving the floor wet when she mopped it, and her favorite, using magic to kill all of the flowers in Aunt Petunia's garden.
She and Harry were once again signed up for the holiday program to get them out from under Aunt Petunia's feet, but when they were home there was no escaping Dudley's gang, who visited the house every single day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon were all big and stupid, but as Dudley was the biggest and stupidest of the lot, he was the leader. The rest of them were all quite happy to join in Dudley's favorite sport: Harry Hunting.
When Harry and Helena couldn't keep out of the house they would spend their time wondering around and thinking about the end of the holidays. When September came he would be going off to secondary school and, for the first time in his life, he wouldn't be with Dudley. Dudley had been accepted at Uncle Vernon's old private school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss was going there too.
Harry, on the other hand, believed that he would was going to Stonewall High, the local public school. Dudley thought this was very funny.
"They stuff people's heads down the toilet the first day at Stonewall," he told Harry. "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, before Dudley could work out what he'd said.
One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, it didn't really make a great deal of difference to Helena and Harry with the exception of the fact that, that evening, Dudley paraded around the living room for the family in his brand-new uniform.
Smeltings' boys wore maroon tailcoats, orange knickerbockers, and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life.
As he looked at Dudley in his new knickerbockers, Uncle Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up. Harry didn't trust himself to speak. He thought two of his ribs might already have cracked from trying not to laugh, and he didn't dare look at Helena knowing that she was having just as much trouble as he was.
There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Helena went down for breakfast, Harry following close behind her. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in grey water.
"What's this?" he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.
"Your new school uniform," she said.
Harry looked in the bowl again.
"Oh," he said, "I didn't realize it had to be so wet."
"Don't be stupid," snapped Aunt Petunia. "I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things grey for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished."
Harry seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue. He sat down at the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Stonewall High — like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin, probably. "What about Helena?"
"I'm dyeing some of the things I pick up at the church shop," Aunt Petunia answered, "They are good enough,"
Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry and Helena's new uniforms. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the table.
They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.
"Get the mail, Dudley," said Uncle Vernon from behind his paper.
"Make Harry get it." A predicable response
"Get the mail, Harry."
"Make Dudley get it."
"Poke him with your Smelting stick, Dudley." Helena looked at her brother and rolled her eye as if to so 'Did you really think that was going to work?'
Harry dodged the Smelting stick and before going to get the mail, Harry flashed back a smile back at Helena 'Worth a shot,' it said. Four things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon's sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill and— a letter each for Harry and Helena.
Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a giant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives —the library, which he and Helena had join with the holiday program had never had to as they were never late with books, so he'd never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there could be no mistake:
Mr. H. Potter
The Smallest Bedroom
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
The envelope was thick and heavy, made of yellowish parchment, and the address was written in emerald-green ink. There was no stamp.
Turning the envelope over, his hand trembling, Harry saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake surrounding a large letter H.
"Hurry up, boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. "What are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He chuckled at his own joke.
Harry went back to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed Uncle Vernon the bill and the postcard, sat down, and still holding Helena's he slowly began to open the yellow envelope, he was too caught up in his curiosity to think. If he was thinking he'd of tucked the letters inside his shirt then hurried his sister upstairs to read the letter in the safety of their room, but he wasn't thinking.
Uncle Vernon ripped open the bill, snorted in disgust, and flipped over the postcard.
"Marge's ill," he informed Aunt Petunia. "Ate a funny whelk.…"
"Dad!" said Dudley suddenly. "Dad, Harry's got something!"
Harry was on the point of unfolding his letter, which was written on the same heavy parchment as the envelope, when it and Helena letters were jerked sharply out of his hand by Uncle Vernon.
"That's mine!" said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
"Who'd be writing to you?" sneered Uncle Vernon, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face went from red to green faster than a set of traffic lights. And it didn't stop there. Within seconds it was the greyish white of old porridge. "P-P-Petunia!" he gasped.
Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line. For a moment it looked as though she might faint. She clutched her throat and made a choking noise.
"Vernon! Oh my goodness — Vernon!"
They stared at each other, seeming to have forgotten that all three children were still in the room. Dudley wasn't used to being ignored. He gave his father a sharp tap on the head with his Smelting stick.
"I want to read that letter," he said loudly.
"Iwant to read it," said Harry furiously, "as it's mine."
"Get out, both of you," croaked Uncle Vernon, stuffing the letter back inside its envelope. Harry didn't move. It seemed that since she hadn't said a word, Uncle Vernon had forgotten about Helena and she was happy to keep it that way.
"I WANT MY LETTER!" he shouted.
"Let me see it!" demanded Dudley.
OUT!" roared Uncle Vernon, and he took both Harry and Dudley by the scruffs of their necks and threw them into the hall, slamming the kitchen door behind them. Harry and Dudley promptly had a furious but silent fight over who would listen at the keyhole; Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses dangling from one ear, lay flat on his stomach to listen at the crack between door and floor. Throughout all this Helena remains still and silent trying her best to fade into the background, the more that she hears of this conversation the better
"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a quivering voice, "look at the address — how could they possibly know where he sleeps? You don't think they're watching the house?"
"Watching — spying — might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon wildly. Helena slapped her hand over her mouth fighting not to laugh at that. Clearly the Wizarding world had nothing better to do then watch the Dursley family. She had the ridicules image of hundreds of robed figures following Uncle Vernon about as he went about his workday. And hiding up the neighbours tree to watch Aunt Petunia as she herself spied on those around her and gossiped in turn.
"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want —"
Uncle Vernon paced up and down the kitchen.
"No," he said finally. "No, we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer…Yes, that's best…, we won't do anything…"
"But —"
"I'm not having one in the house, Petunia! Didn't we swear when we took them in we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense?" It was at this point that Helena was spotted and was taken by the ear and dragged out of the kitchen by her ear, which she would later sneak into the kitchen to ice for as it would swell up and throb and keep her a wake.
Next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He'd screamed, whacked his father with his Smelting stick, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and thrown his tortoise through the greenhouse roof, and he still didn't get to read the letters. Harry was thinking about this time yesterday and bitterly wishing he'd opened the letter in the hall or hidden it and taken it up stairs. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept looking at each other darkly.
When the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon, who seemed to be trying to be nice to Harry, made Dudley go and get it. They heard him banging things with his Smelting stick all the way down the hall. Then he shouted, "There's another one! 'Miss. H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive —'"
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall, Harry 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. This movement reminded Helena of how her former self the girl child named Hermione was befriended by two boys. After a minute of confused fighting, in which everyone got hit a lot by the Smelting stick, Uncle Vernon straightened up, gasping for breath, with Harry's letter clutched in his hand.
"Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom," he wheezed at Harry. "Dudley — go — just go." Harry walked round and round his room. Someone seemed to know he hadn't received his first letter. Surely that meant they'd try again? And this time he'd make sure they didn't fail. He had a plan. He couldn't understand how Helena was so relaxed about the matter of the letters, why she never pushed to know the truth of the heavy envelops addressed in green ink.
The repaired alarm clock rang at six o'clock the next morning. Harry turned it off quickly and dressed silently. He mustn't wake the Dursleys; Helena sat up in her bed and watched as her brother walk out of the door. He stole downstairs without turning on any of the lights.
He was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the letters for number four first. His heart hammered as he crept across the dark hall toward the front door —
"AAAAARRRGH!"
Harry leapt into the air; he'd trodden on something big and squashy on the doormat — something alive!
Lights clicked on upstairs and to his horror Harry realized that the big, squashy something had been his uncle's face. Uncle Vernon had been lying at the foot of the front door in a sleeping bag, clearly making sure that Harry didn't do exactly what he'd been trying to do. He shouted at Harry for about half an hour and then told him to go and make a cup of tea. Harry shuffled miserably off into the kitchen and by the time he got back, the mail had arrived, right into Uncle Vernon's lap. Harry could see six letters addressed in green ink.
"I want —" he began, but Uncle Vernon was tearing the letters into pieces before his eyes. Uncle Vernon didn't go to work that day. He stayed at home and nailed up the mail slot.
"See," he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouthful of nails, "if they can't deliver them they'll just give up."
"I'm not sure that'll work, Vernon."
"Oh, these people's minds work in strange ways, Petunia, they're not like you and me," said Uncle Vernon, trying to knock in a nail with the piece of fruitcake Aunt Petunia had just brought him.
On Friday, no less than twenty four letters arrived for Harry and Helena twelve for each of them. As they couldn't go through the mail slot they had been pushed under the door, slotted through the sides, and a few even forced through the small window in the downstairs bathroom.
Uncle Vernon stayed at home again. After burning all the letters, he got out a hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around the front and back doors so no one could go out. He hummed "Tiptoe Through the Tulips" as he worked, and jumped at small noises. Helena and Harry stuck close together as much as they could; their Uncle's behaviour was upsetting Helena so her brother stayed as close as he could to his little sister.
On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Forty Eight letters to the Potter twins found their way into the house, rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made furious telephone calls to the post office and the dairy trying to find someone to complain to, Aunt Petunia shredded the letters in her food processor.
"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Harry in amazement.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat down at the breakfast table looking tired and rather ill, but happy.
"No post on Sundays," he reminded them cheerfully as he spread marmalade on his newspapers, "no damn letters today —"
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as he spoke and caught him sharply on the back of the head. 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. When Aunt Petunia and Dudley had run out with their arms over their faces and Helens walked out calmly, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still streaming into the room, bouncing off the walls and floor.
"That does it," said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly but pulling great tufts out of his moustache at the same time. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"
He looked so dangerous with half his moustache missing that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the back seat; his father had hit him round the head for holding them up while he tried to pack his television, VCR, and computer in his sports bag.
They drove. And they drove. Even Aunt Petunia didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.
"Shake 'em off…shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.
Sometimes Helena would whimper, and hide her head in Harry's shoulder, Harry hated his Uncle just a little bit more with each frighten sound that his precious sister made, nothing should frighten his sister in such a way.
They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By nightfall Dudley was howling. He'd never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.
Uncle Vernon stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. All three children shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets Harry and Helena top to tail in one and Dudley in the other. Dudley snored, and Helena slept peacefully, but Harry stayed awake, sitting on the windowsill, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering.…
They ate stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. They had just finished when the owner of the hotel came over to their table.
"'Scuse me, any of you Mr. and Miss. H. Potter? Only I got about an 'undred of these at the front desk."
She held up a letter so they could read the green ink address:
Mr. H. Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth
Harry made a grab for the letter but Uncle Vernon knocked his hand out of the way. The woman stared.
"I'll take them," said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.
"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" Aunt Petunia suggested timidly, hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn't seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a ploughed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.
"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley asked Aunt Petunia dully late that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.
It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley snivelled.
"Don't like this Harry," Helena told him that same fear that had made her whimper with each made turn their Uncle had taken.
"I'll take care of you Rosie, always." Harry promised
"I've have doubted that big brother," Helena said leaning in to his shoulder.
"It's Monday," he told his mother. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."
Monday. This reminded Harry of something. If it was Monday — and you could usually count on Dudley to know the days the week, because of television — then tomorrow, Tuesday, was Helena Harry's eleventh birthday. Of course, their birthdays were never exactly fun — last year, the Dursleys had given him a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks Helena had been given a small a thin ribbon that had come off Aunt Petunia's dresses. Still, you weren't eleven every day.
Uncle Vernon was back and he was smiling. He was also carrying a long, thin package and didn't answer Aunt Petunia when she asked what he'd bought.
"Found the perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"
It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine. One thing was certain, there was no television in there.
"Storm forecast for tonight!" said Uncle Vernon gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!"
A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-grey water below them.
"I've already got us some rations," said Uncle Vernon, "so all aboard!"
It was freezing in the boat. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where Uncle Vernon, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.
The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.
Uncle Vernon's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shrivelled up.
"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" he said cheerfully.
He was in a very good mood. Obviously he thought nobody stood a chance of reaching them here in a storm to deliver mail. Harry privately agreed, though the thought didn't cheer him up at all.
As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed next door, Helena and Harry were left with two blankets to find the softest bit of floor they could and to curl up atop one and under the other, Harry's back to Helena's the two of them trying to share the warmth between them.
The storm raged more and more ferociously as the night went on. Nether of the twins could sleep. Harry shivered and turned over cuddling around his sister, trying to get comfortable, his stomach rumbling with hunger, Dudley had of course stolen his pack of chips. Dudley's snores were drowned by the low rolls of thunder that started near midnight. The lighted dial of Dudley's watch, which was dangling over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist, told Harry he'd be eleven in ten minutes' time. He lay and watched his birthday tick nearer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember at all; promising his sister silently that he would find a way to make a birthday for her, wondering where the letter writer was now
Five minutes to go. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof wasn't going to fall in, although he might be warmer if it did and he didn't for a second consider that Helena could be hurt because he would never let that happen. Four minutes to go. Maybe the house in Privet Drive would be so full of letters when they got back that he'd be able to steal one somehow.
Three minutes to go. Was that the sea, slapping hard on the rock like that? And (two minutes to go) what was that funny crunching noise? Was the rock crumbling into the sea?
One minute to go and he'd be eleven and he could turn to his sister and wish her a happy birthday. Thirty seconds...twenty…ten…nine — maybe he'd wake Dudley up, just to annoy him — three…two…one…
BOOM.
The whole shack shivered and Harry sat bolt upright, staring at the door. Someone was outside, knocking to come in, instinctively he moved himself between the door and his sister. No one was going to hurt her much less on her birthday.