Disclaimer: Harry Potter, its characters, places and concepts belong to J.K. Rowling, not me. I only own Shirley and this story, which is done with the sole purpose of entertaining myself as well as its reader. No profit comes from publishing this.

Warnings: OC is, without a doubt, a spoiled brat and behaves as such.

Seriously, this is what, in my humble opinion, would be growing up with the Dursley's as your nuclear family. Also: the Dursley's are as shitty at parenting as they are portrayed in the source material, do not come here expecting the girl having a nice relationship with Harry and all that jazz, even if she might not see the real harm in her actions.

You've been warned. Have a nice day!

A TASTE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE

ii. OWLS ALWAYS HOOT TWICE

It all started with owls.

Thanks to her school lessons (the ones that weren't too boring at least), Shirley knew that owls were nocturnal animals, since they only moved at night and slept through day. Thus said, she couldn't understand not even one bit how an owl was standing over the mailbox the same day her mum was fixing her new uniform.

Though, to be honest, it wouldn't be the strangest thing to ever happen in the house. Nonetheless, it was the only unusual occurrence that wasn't Harry's fault or one she could blame on Harry, and perhaps it had been for such a reason she paid so much attention.

It had been a few days since the accident, one that made sure she would never forget her eleventh birthday, and that every time she remembered her face went red with pure anger. It would have been the best birthday ever, if not for the fact that Harry had to blew it all up! But Shirley noticed it was pretty weird that she was staying there, looking nowhere with her face red while trying to adjust the skirt.

"Mummy, are you sure this is the right size?" the clothes seemed her size once she pulled them out of the bag, but in that same moment they seemed to shrink down. Dear god, what if she had pulled on weight? "Mum, this is way too small!" and before she realized, the sleeve had been teared apart while trying to pass her arm.

Her mum looked ashamed, and quickly took it off to stuff it back into the bag.

"The seller told me it was your size, poppy, it even says it here," she pulled the tag where, effectively, was the size number Shirley was, "That wretched woman," her tone went from confusion to anger, not so different from her own daughter. It was such a cute outfit and it was all ruined! "She must've thought she could fool me and sell me this trash! Tomorrow morning I'll go and demand a refund!"

The little blonde girl nodded, at least comforted that her mum would put the seller into her place or, perhaps, because she blissfully ignored the fact that before remembering the Zoo Incident the uniform was perfectly fine. It didn't last long, thought, not when Dudley's uniform did fit him.

And as if destiny itself had been speaking, her cousin came in carrying the mail. Maybe in another occasion, Shirley would have tiredly told him to fix his hair had not been for two things: the growing, putrid odor that came from the kitchen (wouldn't be much easier to just buy another uniform for Harry? Though, after what happened, perhaps he did deserved it…) and the second one was Harry carrying a letter.

Perhaps it wouldn't have been such a weird thing if it wasn't because he kept staring at it like some dummy after letting the rest of the mail on the table. Had someone sent a letter to him? Impossible, her cousin had never been popular at school, as he had always been too much of a wallflower, and besides, her brother always had fun chasing him. It couldn't be an adult as well, that would've been both creepy and inappropriate on so many levels.

But Shirley was not the only one to notice, and before she could scream at Harry that she wanted to see it, Dudley had snatched the letter from his hands.

"Harry has a latter!" he screamed, waving it into the air as some sort of prize. Shirley ran into him, trying to see it.

"I wanna see it, I wanna see it!" she squealed in excitement, taking it from Dudley when he didn't notice, "Mister Harry Potter, uhh, is it perhaps a secret admirer?" she joked, but her cousin didn't seemed to took it all that well. She rolled her eyes before proceeding. "The cupboard…"

But it seemed that in that week Shirley's distractions were counted, because in that moment Dudley took it so he could take it to their parents. Harry could only protest, and after rolling her eyes, she ran to her parents to try and see it, sobbing when both she and Dudley weren't allowed to read it.

Shirley was too busy thinking on who could possibly send a letter to her cousin the weirdo. The possibility that it could be a secret admirer was quite big once she gave it a second thought, though later she would ask herself who could be as blind as to like somebody like Harry— short, wild hair, cate-like eyes and a big lightning-shaped scar on his forehead. 'Perhaps somebody like him, only without the glasses.' And she laughed with no care at the thought, ignoring all.

Shirley, like her mum, had developed abilities to be aware of what was going on everybody else's life, too bored now with exaggerated TV-shows. She knew the life of her school mates down to the 'T', and if some of them liked her cousin Shirley would've known.

So, if it wasn't an admirer as weird as he was, who could possibly be?

And because of those same abilities to be informed (like a good hearing, for example), she managed to hear and see that scene by herself.

"Oh goodness, Vernon!" it seemed like her mum had seen a ghost, and initially she thought that, perhaps, they would drop another estranged and weird cousin like Harry with them (it made more sense than a secret admirer). But then her mum's eyes went from the letter to her, looking at Shirley as if she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer or some incurable disease.

It was in that very moment that all curiosity went out from her body and was replaced with a sense of dread, like she had eaten something in a bad state and was about to puke at any time. It wasn't a nice sensation at all, and in a long time since the crystal ballerina dance on her dresser, Shirley felt cornered.

She didn't even had time to realize her parents went to another room, but when she blinked and noticed she was still in the dining room alongside Dudley and a very angry Harry, she made her choice.

Not spending too much time to think it through, she took her cousin's hand and spun him around so they could face each other, as well as ignoring the grunt he let out.

"What was in that letter? What did it say?" she asked, but Harry didn't seem all that willing to answer.

"I only kept mine and put yours in the table," he explained, trying to get loose of her grip. Nonetheless, Shirley took Harry with both arms since she wouldn't let him go off that easily. "Let go of me!"

Even if Harry wasn't as strong as Dudley, he certainly was far more strong that Shirley, too busy in preparing for some children's beauty pageant than in being stronger than her cousin. The latter, just before Dudley could ask him himself what could be on the letter, went running out of the room and into his uncle asking for the letter.

She sighed in anger before fixing her skirt. That little…

"They sent you one as well, why I didn't got one?" he sounded as angry as her, and it was that after a Boa Constrictor fell a top of him and Piers Polkiss in the Zoo because of Harry (something that would have never happened if he just stayed at home in the first place), Dudley wasn't exactly Harry's number one fan those days.

Shirley wouldn't stop looking at the trail Harry disappeared into, now having crossing her arms and wishing that this time something exploded. However, nothing happened, and she put a hand on his brother's soft arm.

"Don't worry, Duds, I bet the other was for you but they made a mistake and put it on his name. That must be." She explained with the same confidence as if it was one of the pageant's questions.

"But it said the cupboard…"

"It-was-a-mistake." She almost barked, and just behind her, the lid of the stove was thrown into the roof, scaring them both.

She was sure that a letter to Harry was a mistake… but, if she had received the same letter as well, why would their parents act like it was something bad?

"It's not fair, it's not fair, IT'S NOT FAIR!" she cried her heart out, feeling her lungs burning and that she must look like a witch of how horrible she must've be with a tear-stained face. "WHY SHOULD I GO WITH HIM?!"

It was almost like their parents were under a spell, that something awfully bad must've happened because that day not only they told her she would have share a room again, but that she would share a room with Harry of all people. And it wasn't like they would send them to a bigger room, they would share the trashcan where Dudley sent all his broken toys!

"Mum, MUM!" and she wasn't the only one finding a fallacy in that order as well, Dudley was in front of their mum, kicking and stomping into the ground with a face as red as Shirley's. "It's not fair, Harry was fine sleeping in the cupboard! That is MY ROOM!"

But it was like their mum wouldn't hear them, as if none of them where there. Their father, who seemed the most affected, only mumbled:

"Just… just take your things…" everybody heard the clock striking six, and before they could keep weeping, their father went running downstairs.

The next thing they heard were the sounds of fighting, struggle, and snooping through the stairs they could see what happened: Harry trying to take the letter from their father without any success whatsoever.

"They're mine, those are my letters!" was his shouting as he flexed a skinny arm to take one of them. It was as if he was fighting a bigger version of Dudley.

At the end, her father won and Dudley tried again to make him come to his senses, leaving Harry alone at the entrance, all nice and perfect to get the answers.

She intercepted him right before he could go upstairs, resting an arm on the wall so she could block the path.

"It is weird, don't ya think, cousin?" she feigned that her nails were more interesting, like the high school girls that searched for the nerds and their school work. "They send you and me a letter, and the very next day my parents pair us together. And just then, I see more letters being send to you… I'm seeing a patron in here, don't you think?"

"You don't even know what that means." Shirley was tempted to throw him downstairs when she caught him rolling his eyes at her, but instead she tightened her smile before going back to block his path.

"What was in that letter?" she asked, more serious, hoping to stop playing such games.

"I don't know." But instead, Harry's angry tone only made her even madder.

"Then who send it?"

"I've told you I don't know."

She pressed her lips, breathing heavily before taking him by the arm and corner him into the wall. What was wrong with him? Didn't he realize it was his fault they were stuck into this?

"Listen to me: I will not share a room, AND EVEN LESS I'LL SHARE IT WITH YOU—"

"Don't worry, it's not like I want it either." And as fast as he said it, Harry took one of her arms off of him with a slap from his hand before he went downstairs.

She scoffed, succeeding in making a blonde strand of hair jump from the middle of her face, not without keeping her stare on her cousin. Nonetheless, nothing happened this time— how awfully convenient, if you asked her.

It was pretty clear that the whole ordeal had something to do with those wretched letters, the ones her cousin was bent on getting his hands on, but what kind of thing related to Harry could be so important as to make her parents act so strange?

She heard a noise and then a grunt of pain from her cousin, just before she could watch as Dudley went to look for their father. At the very least she could count on Dudley to punish Harry.

Shirley looked curiously at the owls standing outside their window, even going as far as to count them all. What was going up? And why would they all come in there?

She was way too busy checking if their eyes kept staring at her as to hear how her father blocked any entrance, as well as to hear her mum weeping in frustration since there were only letters inside the eggs.

When Sunday came in, she was pretty sure that any freakiness she blamed upon Harry (or the ones that he had actually caused) wouldn't beat what ended up happening.

"Mum, mommy, it's not fair!" she wept when she caught her mum barely letting one (one!) of her bags into the car. "We're not guilty for this! Have you even considered on just filing up a lawsuit?!"

But when they weren't busy scolding both her and Dudley to keep quiet (scolding! THEM! Had they lost their minds?!), both their parents ignored her, and when she realized they were already inside the car, with her father driving to god-knows-where and mumbling something along the lines of 'they won't find us there, no sir!' as he turned the steering wheel to turn around.

That week her father did anything in his hands to try and block the house's entrances, intercepting the mail— doing all he could so those damned letters wouldn't come, or at least, keeping both the twins and Harry from reading them. Dudley's own curiosity for the letters had died down as he was busier feeling insulted, since his room went to both his sister and cousin. Meanwhile, Shirley just couldn't get over the fact that she had to put all of her stuff piled together so that it would fit, how aesthetically unpleasant!

Thus, Sunday seemed like a blessing, since mail wouldn't be delivered. For a moment (aside from the fact that her father seemed like he was out of a mental institution), everything seemed alright… and out of the blue, and quite ironically in the same moment Vernon Dursley gloated on the fact that they wouldn't see 'not even a bloody letter', thousands of said letters came from the chimney and into the living room, filling it to the top like it was a flood. Letters for both her and Harry, and taking advantage that everybody else was busier watching Father go insane, she managed to grab on of her own, hiding it between her stockings and her underwear due to the rush.

Just when she was calming down (or at least when she stopped crying), she thought that perhaps she should've kept one for Harry, thinking that if he finally had the bloody letter all of that circus would be put to an end. But it was too late, and it would be really weird to pull out a letter from her stockings to hand it over to her cousin. No, thank you.

Finally, the managed to check into a hotel where the three of them would share the room. She was going to the bathroom, thinking that perhaps she could see what was inside those letters when the service lady came in… with 200 of them.

It was pretty clear that they wouldn't go back to their home, and had it not been for the fatigue, she was pretty sure she would be crying out of sadness or punching Harry harder than Dudley ever did.

"Could you tell me who is so bent on sending you those letters?!" she managed to ask him in the middle of the freeway, just when she saw her hair was starting to get ruined because of all the humidity. "Now my hair's a mess because of you, idiot! And it didn't even brought anything to fix it!"

And even if Shirley was indeed too tired to cry, just when she saw the place her father had brought them was like a repetition of the day she was sent to share a room with Harry. Effectively, nobody would even dream of seeing them in that old shack, and quite honestly, she doubted anybody was brave enough to ride the mess of a boat they rented…

There was no TV, there weren't even rooms— just as sofa that thank-god was big enough to fit both her and Dudley, and upstairs (well, it seemed like it was large enough for another floor) just a bed for their parents. Shirley was way too tired and angry to even care if Harry slept outside in the boat and drowned.

It was then when she undressed in the bathroom (at least the shack managed to have one), as pulled down her stockings that she saw it right there, meddled in the fabric was the letter, almost as if it could look and mock Shirley. It was absurd, sure, but after all of that mess it wouldn't seem so far-fetched.

She wanted to rip it into pieces, throw it into the sea and let a fish choke on it, since it was the least it deserved in Shirley's eyes. It was because of those letters she was there in the first place… but soon she realized two important things: one was that she talked about the letter like it was the villain from some spy flick, and the other was that a part of her must knew what the hell was so important that they needed thousands of those bloody papers.

"This is crazy…" she whispered as she ripped the envelope.

And she almost wanted to laugh (perhaps to do something different from crying) when she finally read what it said. In all of her life Shirley read things as absurd as what it said: one was a love letter a dork from her class send her, another that the minimum weight to enter Little Miss Surrey went up, and that there could be alternative universes (whatever that might be) — all of them seemed crazy and yet, mashed together wouldn't be half as ridiculous as what that letter suggested.

Her. Accepted in a school for witches.

She, a witch. And that had been the reason her father drove them to the other side of the country, instead of just filing a lawsuit?!

Shirley had never spent the night awake, but even when she closed her eyes, the letter's words would come to her mind and bang up the walls inside. A school for witchcraft, for heaven's sake— it sounded like it came from a cheap fairytale!

It couldn't be, it made no sense. For starters, she was already enrolled into a just-girls school, a normal one and thus, she had no use for another scholarship; in second place, what could she possibly learn there? How to make pointy hats? How to ride a broom? What use had any of them to study acting?! And at last (but not less important) it was impossible she had been accepted because, for what sense was in assisting a school for witches if she was not one?

She stored the letter in one of her shoes, folded and hidden underneath the socks so that nobody could see it and then she went to sleep, or at least she tried.

Shirley pressed her lips together when her brother flexed, pushing her into the edge of the sofa. She tried to move him against the back of the sofa, but if Harry could handle her already, there was no chance she could move her twin.

'Unless you do some magic… What the hell?!'

She couldn't help but weep.

"Are you still awake?" she didn't bother to answer, as she was still mad at him. It was all his fault, had not been for that stupid school sending the letter to them—!

Oh.

Oh.

Shirley turned, almost falling out of the sofa before she tugged on Harry's shirt, wanting him to see her through the dark. She felt him tense up, perhaps because they could wake up their family, all until the clock on Dudley's wrist struck twelve.

Shirley could never ask Harry about Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, after all, she had no reason to.

Taking into account the great explanation they gave her (one so messed up like that book they appointed them for their Foreign Literature class, One thousand years of something), she almost wished that once the giant kicked down the door it had been to take them.

Because no, at the end of the day not only she was really a witch. No, her cousin (Harry, the one everybody avoided at school; Harry, the one her brother always chased; Harry, the one that to be honest was too weird for his own good) was a wizard as well, perhaps more.

Her cousin, the one that after years she blamed for her own messes, was perhaps the most famous of them all. Nonetheless, any explanation was thrown out of the window when that giant (Hagrid, the most wizardly name she ever heard) gave Dudley a pig tale.

Had it been the fatigue, the sheer surprise or whatever might have been, Shirley did what any conscious girl in her situation would: passing out.

a/n: so, yeah, here it is guys!

First of all, I want to say THANK YOU to all of you which have either given favorite, follow or even reviewed! thank you so much for your support! Most people who left reviews said that this either had potential or that they wanted a second chapter just to see if they would like it, so, here it is and I hope you've all liked it!

A thing that I want to state is that, while this will cover all of the books/movies of the main series I WON'T REWRITE ALL OF IT, mostly for two reasons: two, it's pretty cheap from a writing point of view and two— it's really, really exhausting for me. There might be instances such as these where it will have to be that way, but those I can avoid let it be known that I will do so.

and yes, this story is called 'a taste of their own medicine' so most of you might ask "WHERE'S THE FUCKING KARMA?" don't worry, this will mark the start of such karma :9

again: thank you very much guys!