Chapter Text
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.
Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large moustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours. The Dursleys had a small son called Dudley, and in their opinion, there was no finer boy anywhere.
The Dursleys had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about Harry’s freakishness.
Harry was the nephew of Mrs. Dursley. He was dropped off at the Dursleys' front door – number four, Privet Drive – on a chilly Halloween night for them to look after. Mr. and Mrs. Dursley's problems began with that. After all, the boy shares his parents' freakishness, which doesn’t fit the Dursleys' otherwise normal appearance.
—
‘Up! Get up! Now!’
Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again. Harry has been living with the Dursleys for almost 10 years. Well, it's more like surviving.
‘Up!’ she screeched.
Harry heard her walking towards the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the cooker. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having. It had been a good one. He was in a cosy living room with a handful of people. Most were his age, some older, some younger, but all very kind to him. Harry wonders if that is what family is supposed to feel like. The Dursleys never accepted him into their family. He was more like their house slave.
His aunt was back outside the door. ‘Are you up yet?’ she demanded.
‘Nearly,’ said Harry.
‘Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon. And don’t you dare let it burn, I want everything perfect on Duddy’s birthday.’
Dudley’s birthday – how could he have forgotten? Harry got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his matras and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on. Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.
When he was dressed, he went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley’s birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had got the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as Dudley was very big and hated exercise – unless it involved punching somebody. Dudley's favourite punch-bag was Harry, but he couldn't often catch him. Harry didn't look it, but he was very fast.
Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age. He looked even smaller and skinnier than he really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's and Dudley was about four times bigger than he was. Harry had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Sellotape and prayers. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was the scar like a bolt of lightning on his forehead which blended into his eye. He had had it as long as he could remember and the first question he could ever remember asking his Aunt Petunia was how he had got it.
‘In the car crash when your parents died,' she had said. ‘And don't ask questions.’
Don't ask questions – that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys. If he did, Harry would wake up with bruises and maybe even a blue eye.
Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Harry was turning over the bacon.
‘Comb your hair!’ he barked, by way of a morning greeting.
About once a week, Uncle Vernon looked over the top of his newspaper and shouted that Harry needed a haircut. Harry must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in his class put together, but it made no difference, his hair simply grew that way – all over the place.
Harry was frying eggs by the time Dudley arrived in the kitchen with his mother. Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large, pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes and thick, blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel.
Harry put the plates of egg and bacon on the table, which was difficult as there wasn't much room. Dudley, meanwhile, was counting his presents. His face fell.
"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his mother and father. 'That's two less than last year.’
‘Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge’s present, see, it’s here under this big one from Mummy and Daddy.’
‘All right, thirty-seven then,’ said Dudley, going red in the face. Harry could see a Dudly tantrum coming and tried to put some distance between them.
Aunt Petunia obviously scented 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. It looked like hard work. Finally he said slowly, ‘So I'll have thirty ... thirty ...’
‘Thirty-nine, sweetums,' said Aunt Petunia.
‘Oh.’ Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. ‘All right then.’
At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Harry and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a cine-camera, a remote-control aeroplane, sixteen new computer games and a video recorder. He was ripping the paper off a gold wristwatch when Aunt Petunia came back from the telephone, looking both angry and worried.
‘Bad news, Vernon,' she said. ‘Mrs Figg's broken her leg. She can't take him.' She jerked her head in Harry's direction.
And that's how Harry ended up going on Dudley's birthday trip.
—
Harry, who couldn't believe his luck, was sitting in the back of the Dursleys’ car with Dudley and his friend Piers on the way to the zoo for the first time in his life. His aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with him, but before they'd left, Uncle Vernon had taken Harry aside.
'I'm warning you,' he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Harry's. ‘I’m warning you now, boy – any funny business, anything at all – and you'll be in that cupboard from now until Christmas.’
'I'm not going to do anything,’ said Harry, ‘honestly ...’
But Uncle Vernon didn’t believe him. No one ever did. The problem was, strange things often happened around Harry and it was just no good telling the Dursleys he didn’t make them happen.
Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry coming back from the barber’s looking as though he hadn't been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he was almost bald except for his fringe, which she left ‘to hide that horrible scar’. Dudley had laughed himself silly at Harry, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes and sellotaped glasses. The next morning, however, he had got up to find his hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. He had been given a week – what oddly felt closer to minutes – in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain that he couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.
He'd also got into trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Dudley's gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Harry's surprise as anyone else's, there he was sitting on the chimney. The Dursleys had received a very angry letter from Harry's headmistress telling them Harry had been climbing school buildings. But all he'd tried to do was jump behind the big bins outside the kitchen doors.
He woke up with terrible bruises and a broken arm the morning after.
—
It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady in the van had asked Harry what he wanted before they could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon ice lolly. Harry felt like a child for the first time in years as he was licking the cold treat on their way to the reptile house.
It was cool and dark in here, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twice around Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a dustbin – but at the moment, it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staring at the glistening brown coils. ‘Make it move,’ he whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn’t budge. ‘Do it again,' Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glass smartly with his knuckles, but the snake just snoozed on. ‘This is boring,’ Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.
Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself – no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass, trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you up – at least he got to visit the rest of the house.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry’s. It winked. Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. He looked back at the snake and winked, too.
The snake jerked its head towards Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that said quite plainly: ‘I get that all the time.’
‘I know,' Harry murmured through the glass, though he wasn't sure the snake could hear him. ‘It must be really annoying.’ The snake nodded vigorously. ‘Where do you come from, anyway?’ Harry asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry peered at it.
Boa Constrictor, Brazil.
‘Was it nice there?’
The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again and Harry read on:
This specimen was bred in the zoo.
‘Oh, I see – so you've never been to Brazil?’ As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Harry made both of them jump.
‘DUDLEY! MR DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!’
Dudley came waddling towards them as fast as he could. ‘Out of the way, you,' he said, pushing Harry to the side. Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast no one saw how it happened – one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next, they had leapt back with howls of horror.
Harry sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor – people throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits. As the snake slid swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low, hissing voice said, ‘Brazil, here I come... Thanksss, amigo.’
The keeper of the reptile house was in shock. ‘But the glass,’ he kept saying, ‘where did the glass go?’
The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong sweet tea while he apologised over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Harry had seen, the snake hadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, ‘Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?'
Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, ‘Putunia, Dear, why don’t you and Dudders go out to get a dessert for after supper?’
Harry had never seen the man so furious. He knew he was going to die in agony, but he blacked out before anything could happen.