Whelp, guys, here I am again. I proudly present you...CHAPTER THREE! :) I hope you guys enjoy! Please remember to read and review and follow for updates! 3

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It was nearly three weeks until I was let out of my closet again, the longest punishment I had ever received. By then, the summer holidays had started and the school year was over. Dudley had already broken his game player after accidentally sitting on it, and Mrs Figg had to scramble away on her crutches when he came zooming by on his new racing bike.

As for me, I was relieved that the summer break had begun. I wouldn't have to face Dudley and his gang at school anymore. However, I was annoyed at the fact that he had to invite them over nearly every day. But luckily, Harry and I could avoid them by going out of the house whenever they were over.

Dudley had been accepted into Smeltings Academy, the same school that Uncle Vernon attended his age. Piers had been accepted as well, which was odd as he practically had no signs of intelligence and received poor marks in school. In the fall, Harry and I would be shipped off to Stonewall High, the local secondary school. Dudley had had a great laugh about this and insisted that he'd practise flushing Harry's head down the toilet because he'd be greeted to this on the first day. Let's just say that we stayed further away from him since. However, I was holding onto the tiny fragment of hope that I could start fresh at my new school, as this would be the first time that we'd be going to a different school than Dudley.

A few days turned into weeks. Mrs Figg's leg had healed and Harry and I were dropped off at her place for an afternoon towards the end of July whilst Aunt Petunia took Dudley out shopping for his new school uniform.

It turned out that she had broken her leg after tripping over her cat, Tibbles. She didn't seem as fond of him as she used to when we stayed with her, so she didn't force us to go through the photo albums of her previous cats again. Harry and I were allowed to watch some television (a rarity for us) and Mrs. Figg fed us some chocolate cake that seemed like she had for a hundred years.

After we were picked up by Uncle Vernon and arrived home, I was greeted by Aunt Petunia gushing over Dudley in his new school uniform in front of the living room mantel.

He was dressed in a maroon tailcoat, orange knickerbockers, and complete with a straw boater rested over his blond hair and gnarled cane that the boys used to hit each other when the teachers weren't looking. I couldn't help but feel disgusted at his appearance.

"Oh, look at him, Vernon. He's all grown up! Our little Diddykins is a big boy," she said, all teary-eyed.

"He sure is now a man," Uncle Vernon beamed proudly.

I rolled my eyes and beckoned for Harry to follow me out into the hallway and into the kitchen to cook dinner.

"Will we have to wear that, too?" Harry asked sarcastically once we were in the kitchen.

"Thankfully, no. Let's just pray that they get us our proper uniforms," I sighed as I began to make the salad.

The following morning, I was awoken by the horrid smell of something musty being steamed throughout the house.

I dressed and exited into the kitchen. Harry was already awake and eating breakfast with Uncle Vernon and Dudley at the table. Aunt Petunia was standing at the stove, boiling what looked like elephant skin in the pot.

"What's that?" I asked her.

She pierced her lips as she did whenever I dared to ask a question.

"Your uniform. I'm dying one of Dudley's old ones. It'll be good as new on your first day at Stonewall," she replied sharply.

"Yes, ma'am," I replied, highly doubting that it would look anything like a uniform and trying to shake the horrid image of my first day at Stonewall wearing elephant's skin out of my head. I sat down at the table across from Dudley, who took up an entire side of the table due to his abnormal size.

I took a piece of toast and began to eat my breakfast when we heard the post arrive at the door.

"Get the mail, won't you Dud, please?" Uncle Vernon replied, not looking up from his Daily Mail.

"Make Harry get it."

"Get the post, boy," he ordered Harry.

"Make Dudley get it."

"Hit him with your Smeltings stick, Dudley," encouraged Aunt Petunia.

To avoid being smacked in the head, Harry jumped up and dived out of the kitchen before Dudley could swing. I kept my head down low.

"Hey, Hal. Come out here," Harry muttered outside the hall. My seat was the one closest to the hall, so only I could hear him.

After ensuring that Uncle Vernon was deep into his paper and that Aunt Petunia was busy fussing over and distracting Dudley with his fourth helping of bacon, I softly slipped out of my seat and crept out into the hall.

I tiptoed towards Harry, who was holding a few letters in his hands, looking dumbstruck at the one facing him.

"What is it?" I asked.

"We have letters…one addressed to me and the other to you," he whispered.

"What? We don't ever get mail. Are you sure?"

"Take a look for yourself." He handed me my letter.

I took it and flipped it over to the addressee side.

Addressed in sharp, green ink read:

Miss H. Potter

The Closet Near the Stairs

4. Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey

On the side, there was no stamp with no return address. I flipped over the envelope, now facing the side to open the envelope. A waxed emblemed crest of a lion, snake, badger, and eagle faced my wide-eyed expression.

"Lemme see yours," I asked Harry.

Harry's was addressed to him the same way it had been addressed to me, with the only exception of it being addressed to "The Cupboard Under the Stairs." No return address, no stamp, and that same mysterious crest on the back.

"Who could've sent these, Haley?" Harry asked.

"I have no idea. It must be a mistake."

"No, surely, it can't. It has our closet and cupboard addressed on them. They wouldn't have put that on there if it had been a mistake."

"Or perhaps it was a coincidence or a prank. Perhaps Dudley is pulling some cruel joke or something," I said, trying to rationalise this situation.

"I don't Dudley even knows how to read…"

"What's taking you so long, boy? Are you checking the letters for dung bombs or something? What are you two doing?" Uncle Vernon barked from the table.

"Let's open them."

We began to peel the crest off the sealed envelope until Dudley came bursting into the room from the kitchen.

"What'd you get there, cousins?" he demanded, snatching the letters out of our hands and running back into the kitchen.

"Give that back, they're ours!" I shouted as Harry and I chased after him.

"Mum! Dad! Harry and Haley have letters to them! Where's mine?!" Dudley cried as he skidded into the kitchen.

"They're not yours, those are ours, give them back!" Harry shouted, charging forward at our massive cousin and tackling him to the ground.

Aunt Petunia screamed. I jumped on top of them, grabbing the mangled letters out of Dudley's thick fingers as he swung his Smelting stick madly.

"STOP IT!" Uncle Vernon boomed, as he joined the mess.

It was a moment of very confused and disoriented fighting. Dudley had managed to free himself of Harry's pinning, causing me and Harry to be squashed on top of each other by Uncle Vernon whilst he grabbed my hand. He had begun smacking us in the heads with his Smelting Stick, attempting to target Harry and I. Aunt Petunia cowered in a corner, whimpering and crying.

"GIVE ME THOSE LETTERS!" Uncle Vernon yelled, taking hold of my wrist as he wrestled Harry off of me. "OW! DUDLEY DURSLEY, PUT THAT DARN STICK DOWN, NOW!"

"NO!" I shouted, scrambling to my feet and mingling out of his grasp.

I made a run for the door into the hall, but as I broke into a sprint, Dudley ran and blew a full-on punch to my face.

I fell backwards, screaming in pain from the blow. My glasses had snapped in half and had fallen into two pieces next to me. I accidentally lost hold of the letters, which flew out of my hands and landed on the floor next to me. Uncle Vernon stomped over to them and snatched them away.

"That's. Enough. You. Filthy. Bastards," he gasped. "All of you, out. NOW!"

He took hold of Harry, Dudley, and me, and threw us out into the hallway. He slammed and locked the door behind us.

"Thanks a lot, freaks!" Dudley shouted.

"You're going to pay for this!" Harry replied, holding a fist to Dudley's face. "This is for what you did to Haley, and for stealing our letters."

"Both of you, shut up!" I hissed, attempting to hold my glasses together underneath my throbbing eye. "They're talking, I want to hear."

After fighting over who'd listen through the keyhole, with Dudley winning, Harry peaked under the door crack to listen in on our aunt and uncle, while I listened through the door frame, trying to hold my broken glasses together.

"Vernon, does this mean what I think it means?" my aunt whispered, sounding horrified.

"Yes, it does. The letter said –"

"I know what the letter says, Vernon!" she cried in a hushed, quivering tone. "But we can't let them, it's unnatural. How could they possibly know where they sleep?"

"We're being watched, Petunia. You saw what the letters addressed them to. Their cupboard and closet."

"But we'll write back, tell them to leave us alone, and then they'll be gone."

I heard Uncle Vernon pacing around for a few moments before speaking.

"I don't think that will work. We'll have to move them upstairs if we're being watched."

"But what about the letters? They'll keep coming!"

"We'll seal off the post, and that'll be the end of this nonsense."

Uncle Vernon did an extraordinary thing that day. For the first time in ten years, he visited me and Harry in our closet and cupboard.

"Potter! Open this door this instant," he shouted outside my closet.

I gloomily stood up again from my mattress and let him in.

Uncle Vernon managed to squeeze himself into the tight space.

"Where is my letter?" I demanded.

"I burned both of them. Those…were not yours. They were addressed to you and your brother by mistake."

"They had my closet addressed to them!" I shouted angrily. "And Harry's cupboard!"

"SILENCE!" he bellowed, his shout booming off the walls in the small closet. A few spiders fell from the ceiling. He forced a painful smile.

"Say, Haley…your aunt and I have been thinking…you and your brother have grown out of your rooms and that it is time that you both move into Dudley's spare bedroom," he stated, taking a disgusted look at the filthy closet.

"If you consider this closet to be a 'room'…" I muttered, rolling my eyes behind my now-taped glasses.

"ENOUGH TALK! Move your things up there, NOW. You both will be sleeping there from now on," he stated, tossing me a worn cardboard box. He then squeezed himself out and left, slamming the door behind him.

With a huff of resentment, I began to furiously throw ten years' worth of worn clothes, beaten books, and torn blankets into my single box. Every item I touched grew that fiery ball of rage boiling inside of me. If only I had read and hidden that darn letter in the hall, I wouldn't be in this mess. Dudley would've never been able to viciously snatch it away, and Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia never would've discovered the letter's contents. I would've known who was writing to me and why. If only I hadn't let my guard down for a bloody minute.

In the middle of my rage, Harry appeared at the door.

"Well, looks like we finally got a long overdue upgrade," he sighed as he stood in the doorframe, holding an identical box of his belongings.

"Tell that to the Dursleys," I muttered. We began to make our way upstairs.

There were four bedrooms at the Dursleys. The largest one belonged to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia. The second largest one belonged to Dudley, where he usually slept and shoved all of his toys in. The third largest one was the spare bedroom, which is where Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge, typically stayed when she came to visit. And the smallest one was Dudley's second one, which was rarely ever used, and where he crowded all of his broken or unused toys that didn't fit into his first room. This was the room that now belonged to Harry and me.

"Home, sweet home," I remarked when we first opened the door to our new bedroom, holding a half-filled box of clothes, books, and knickknacks.

Our room was rather small but much bigger compared to both our cupboard and closet combined. The room was littered with Dudley's old and broken toys. His first-ever television was there, he had broken it by kicking it after his favourite programme had been cancelled. Scattered across the floor were broken pieces of toys. There was a wardrobe, dresser, desk with a chair, a nightstand, and a wooden bunk bed; spare furniture from Uncle Vernon's drill company. The only thing that did not look like it had been touched in this room was the dusty shelf of unread books in the corner.

We dumped the boxes empty of our belongings onto the bottom bunk and spent the afternoon cleaning and organising the bedroom. It took us only one trip to move everything up there.

Less than an hour had passed and our meagre number of things were organised and the toys were boxed away into the wardrobe. We sat quietly on the lower bunk for a few moments, trying to let the atmosphere of the new bedroom sink in.

"I wish we were in our old rooms," Harry sighed. "We could've read those letters in there, alone. Now we're up here and the Dursleys can spy on us all they want to."

"I should've kept my letter hidden in my closet. At least there it would've been safe."

"We both should've. Now we'll never know where those letters were from or what they were writing us for."

"I do wonder if–"

"I NEED THAT ROOM, IT'S MINE!" I heard Dudley suddenly bawl to Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia downstairs, making Harry and I jump. "MAKE THEM SLEEP IN THEIR OLD ROOMS!"

"Diddykins, please don't be upset–"

"NO! I WILL MAKE THEM PAY FOR THIS! MAKE THEM GET OUT, THAT ROOM IS MINE AND I WANT IT BACK!" he continued to wail. The horrible sound of him thrashing around his Smelting cane on the kitchen walls shook our bedroom floor. I looked back up at Harry, who was shaking his head in disgust.

"Looks like Ickle Diddykins didn't get his wishes granted today," he remarked while he stretched out on the bed.

I stood up and grinned at him, he hadn't realised his defeat. "I call top bunk, Harry."

"What? No fair! I should get it," Harry said, sitting up quickly and jumping off the bed.

"Oh, really? Who said so?" I replied, wheeling around and beginning to climb the ladder to the top bunk.

"I'm older," Harry stated, smiling pridefully.

"By seven minutes, big deal!" I sneered, reaching down from the top and flicking him on the forehead. "You already claimed the bottom. It might suit you well, too. I'm the smallest one here," I stated, lying down on the mattress.

"I'll give you a pound to trade."

"And I'll give you a pound to shut up."

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