The Vanishing Glass
Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their niece on the front step, but Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy front gardens and lit up the brass number four on the Dursleys' front door; it crept into their living room, which was almost exactly the same as it had been on the night when Mr. Dursley had seen that fateful news report about the owls. Only the photographs on the mantelpiece really showed how much time had passed.
Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of what looked like a large pink beach ball wearing different-colored bonnets -- but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a carousel at the fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother. The room held no sign at all that another child lived in the house, too.
Yet Rose Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long.
Her Aunt Petunia was awake, and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.
"Up! Get up! Now!"
Rose woke up with a start. Her aunt rapped on the door again.
"Up!" she screeched. Rose heard her walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. She rolled onto her back and tried to remember the dream she had been having. It had been a good one. There had been a flying motorcycle in it. He had a funny feeling he'd had the same dream before.
Her aunt was back outside the door.
"Are you up yet?" she demanded.
"Nearly," said Rose.
"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."
Rose groaned.
"What did you say?" his aunt snapped through the door.
"Nothing, nothing..."
Dudley's birthday - how could he have forgotten?
Rose got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. She found a pair under her bed 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 she slept.
When she was dressed, she went down the hall into the kitchen. The table was almost hidden beneath all Dudley's birthday presents. It looked as though Dudley had gotten 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 Rose, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise -- unless, of course, it involved punching somebody.
Dudley's favorite punching , was Rose, but he couldn't often catch her. Rose didn't look at it, but she was very fast. Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Rose had always been small and skinny for her age. She looked even smaller and skinnier than she really was because all he had to wear were old clothes of Dudley's, and Dudley was about four times bigger than she was. Rose had a thin face, knobbly knees, red hair, and emerald green eyes. She wore round glasses held together with a lot of Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched her on the nose.
The only thing Rose liked about her own appearance was a very thin scar on her forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning. She had it as long as she could remember, and the first question she could ever remember was asking her Aunt Petunia was how he had gotten 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.
Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Rose 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 Rose needed a haircut. Rose must have had more haircuts than the rest of the boys in his class put together, but it made no difference. Her hair simply grew that way - all over the place.
Rose 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, fat head.
Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel - Rose often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.
Rose 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 Mommy and Daddy."
"All right, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, going red in the face. Rose, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down her bacon as fast as possible in case Dudley turned the table over.
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."
Uncle Vernon chuckled. "Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. 'Atta boy, Dudley!" He ruffled Dudley's hair.
At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it while Rose and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap the racing bike, a video camera, a remote control airplane, sixteen new computer games, and a VCR. 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 Rose's direction.
Dudley's mouth fell open in horror, but Rose's heart gave a leap. Every year on Dudley's birthday, his parents took him and a friend out for the day to adventure parks, hamburger restaurants, or the movies. Every year, Rose was left behind with Mrs. Figg, a mad old lady who lived two streets away. Harry hated it there. The whole house smelled of cabbage and Mrs. Figg made him look at photographs of all the cats she'd ever owned.
"Now what?" said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Rose as though she'd planned this. Rose knew she ought to feel sorry that Mrs. Figg had broken her leg, but it wasn't easy when she reminded himself it would be a whole year before she had to look at Tibbles, Snowy, Mr. Paws, and Tufty again.
"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.
"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the girl."
The Dursleys often spoke about Rose like this, as though she wasn't there - or rather, as though she was something very nasty that couldn't understand them, like a slug.
"What about what's-her-name, your friend -- Yvonne?"
"On vacation in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.
"You could just leave me here," Harry put in hopefully (she'd be able to watch what he wanted on television for a change and maybe even have a go on Dudley's computer).
Aunt Petunia looked as though she'd just swallowed a lemon.
"And come back and find the house in ruins?" she snarled.
"I won't blow up the house," said Rose, but they weren't listening.
"I suppose we could take her to the zoo," said Aunt Petunia slowly, ". and leave her in the car...."
"That car's new. She's not sitting in it alone...."
Dudley began to cry loudly. In fact, he wasn't really crying -- it had been years since he'd really cried -- but he knew that if he screwed up his face and wailed, his mother would give him anything he wanted.
"Dinky Duddydums, don't cry, Mummy won't let her spoil your special day!" she cried, flinging her arms around him.
"I... don't... want... her... t-t-to come!" Dudley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. "She always sp- spoils everything!" He shot Rose a nasty grin through the gap in his mother's arms.
Just then, the doorbell rang -- "Oh, good Lord, they're here!" said Aunt Petunia frantically -- and a moment later, Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrawny boy with a face like a rat. He was usually the one who held people's arms behind their backs while Dudley hit them. Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.
Half an hour later, Rose, who couldn't believe her luck, was sitting in the back of the Dursleys' car with Piers and Dudley, on the way to the zoo for the first time in her life. Her aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of anything else to do with her, but before they'd left, Uncle Vernon had taken Rose aside.
"I'm warning you," he had said, putting his large purple face right up close to Rose's, "I'm warning you now, girl - 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 Rose, "honestly..
But Uncle Vernon didn't believe her. No one ever did.
The problem was that strange things often happened around Rose, and it was just no good telling the Dursleys she didn't make them happen.
Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Rose coming back from the barbers looking as though she hadn't been at all, had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut her hair so short she was almost bald except for her bangs, which she left "to hide that horrible scar."
Dudley had laughed himself silly at Rose, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where she was already laughed at for her baggy clothes and taped glasses. Next morning, however, she had gotten up to find her hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off. She had been given a week in her cupboard for this, even though she had tried to explain that she couldn't explain how it had grown back so quickly.
Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force her into a revolting old sweater of Dudley's (brown with orange puff balls) -- The harder she tried to pull it over her head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn't fit Rose. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash, and, to his great relief, Rose wasn't punished.
On the other hand, he'd gotten into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. Dudley's gang had been chasing him as usual when, as much to Rose's surprise as anyone else's, there he was sitting on the chimney. The Dursleys had received a very angry letter from Rose's headmistress telling them Rose had been climbing school buildings. But all she'd tried to do (as he shouted at Uncle Vernon through the locked door of his cupboard) was jumping behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. Rose supposed that the wind must have caught him in mid- jump.
But today, nothing was going to go wrong. It was even worth being with Dudley and Piers to be spending the day somewhere that wasn't school, his cupboard, or Mrs. Figg's cabbage-smelling living room.
While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He liked to complain about things: people at work, Rose, the council, Rose, the bank, and Rose were just a few of his favorite subjects. This morning, it was motorcycles.
"... roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums," he said, as a motorcycle overtook them.
I had a dream about a motorcycle," said Rose, remembering suddenly. "It was flying."
Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Harry, his face like a gigantic beet with a mustache: "MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!"
Dudley and Piers sniggered.
I know they don't," said Rose. "It was only a dream."
But she wished she hadn't said anything. If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than her asking questions, it was her talking about anything acting in a way it shouldn't, no matter if it was in a dream or even a cartoon they seemed to think she might get dangerous ideas.
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 Rose what she wanted before they could hurry her away, they bought her a cheap lemon ice pop. It wasn't bad, either, Rose thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked remarkably like Dudley, except that it wasn't blond.
Rose had the best morning she'd had in a long time. She was careful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so that Dudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animals by lunchtime, wouldn't fall back on their favorite hobby of hitting her.
Everyone then glared at the two boys.
They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his knickerbocker glory didn't have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Rose was allowed to finish the first.
Harry felt, afterward, that he should have known it was all too good to last. After lunch, they went to the reptile house. It was cool and dark in there, 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 trash can, 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.
Rose moved in front of the tank and looked intently at the snake. She 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 she 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.
Rose stared. Then she looked quickly around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. She looked back at the snake and winked, too.
The snake jerked its head toward 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?" Rose asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Rose 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 Rose 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 toward them as fast as he could.
"Out of the way, you," he said, punching Rose in the ribs. Caught by surprise, Rose fell hard on the concrete floor. What came next happened so fast that no one saw how it happened one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass. The next, they had leaped back with howls of horror.
Rose 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.... Thanks, 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 apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as Rose 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, "Rose was talking to it, weren't you, Rose?"
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, "Go -- cupboard -- stay -- no meals,"
before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.
Rose lay in her dark cupboard much later, wishing she had a watch. She didn't know what time it was, and she couldn't be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, she couldn't risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food.
She'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as she could remember, ever since she'd been a baby and her parents had died in that car crash. She couldn't remember being in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when she strained her memory during long hours in her cupboard, she came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on her forehead.
This, she supposed, was the crash, though she couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. She couldn't remember her parents at all. Her aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course, she was forbidden to ask questions.
There were no photographs of them in the house. When she had been younger, Rose had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take her away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were her only family. Yet sometimes she thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know her. They were very strange strangers they were, too.
A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to her once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Rose furiously if she knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything.
A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at her once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken her hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second Rose tried to get a closer look.
At school, Rose had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Rose Potter in her baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang.