The Vanishing Glass
Nearly ten years had passed since the Dursleys had woken up to find their nephew 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 a plus-sized little child wearing diffrent-coloured bobble hats - but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby, and now the photographs showed a large blond boy riding his first bicycle, on a roundabout at a fair, playing a computer game with his father, being hugged and kissed by his mother.
The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.
Yet Corey Evans Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. His Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice which made the first noise of the day.
‘Up! Get up! Now!’
Corey woke with a start. His aunt banged on the door again. ‘Up!’ she screeched.
Corey heard her walking towards the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the cooker. He rolled on to his back and tried to remember the dream he had been having.
It had been a good dream. There had been a flying motorbike in it. He had a funny feeling he’d had the same dream before.
His aunt was back outside the door. ‘Are you up yet?’ she demanded. ‘Nearly,’ said Corey. ‘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.’ Corey groaned. ‘What did you say?’ his aunt snapped through the door. ‘Nothing, nothing…’
Dudley’s birtday - how could he have forgotten? Corey got slowly out of bed and started looking for socks. He found a pair under his bed and, after pulling a spider off on of them, put them on. Corey 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 televisionand the racing bike.
Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Corey, as Dudley hated to do exercise - unless of course it involved punching somebody. Dudley’s favourite punching-bag was Corey, but he couldn’t often catch him.
Corey didn’t look it, but he was very fast. Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Corey 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 a lot bigger than Corey was.
Corey had a thin face, knobbly knees, black hair and bright green eyes. He wore round glasses held together with a lot of Sellotape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Corey liked about his own apperance was a scar on his forhead that went through his eye that split his pupil in two which looked like a bolt of lightning.
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.’ His Aunt had then hit him with a frying-pan just to get the point across.
Don’t ask questions - that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys. Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Corey 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 Corey needed a haircut.
Corey 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.
Corey 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, pinkish face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes and thick, blond hair that lay smoothly on his head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel - Corey often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.
Corey 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. Corey, who could see a huge Dudley tantrum coming on, began wolfing down his 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. 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 Corey and Uncle Vernon watched Dudley unwrap his 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 Corey’s direction.
Dudley’s mouth fell open in horror but Corey’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 bars or the cinema.
Every year, Corey was left behind with Mrs Figg, a mad old lady who lived two streets away. Corey 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 Corey as though he’d planned this. Corey knew he ought to feel sorry that Mrs Figg had broken her leg, but it wasn’t easy when he reminded himself it would be a whole year before he had to look at Tibbles, Snowy, Mr Paw and Tufty again.
‘We could phone Marge,’ Uncle Vernon suggested.
‘Don’t be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy.’ The Dursleys often spoke about Corey like this, as though he wasn’t there - or rather, as though he was something very nasty that couldn’t understand them, like a slug.
‘What about what’s-her-name, your friend - Yvonne?’
‘On holiday in Majorca,’ snapped Aunt Petunia.
‘You could just leave me here,’ Corey put in hopefully (he’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 Corey, but they weren’t listening.
‘I suppose we could take him to the zoo,’ said Aunt Petunia slowly, ‘… and leave him in the car…’
‘That car’s new, he’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 him spoil your special day!’ she cried, flinging her arms around him.
‘I… don’t… want… him… t-t-to come!’ Dudley yelled between huge pretend sobs. ‘He always sp-spoils everything!’ He shot Corey 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 bestfriend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother. Piers was a scrwny boy with a face that Corey thought looked 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, Corey, who couldn’t believe his 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 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 Corey aside.
‘I’m warning you,’ he had said, putting his purple like face right up close to Corey’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 Corey, ‘honestly…’ But Uncle Vernon didn’t believe him. No one ever did. The problem was, strange things often happened around Corey and it was just no good telling the Dursleys he didn’t make them happen.
Once Aunt Petunia, who was tired of Corey coming back from the barber’s looking as though he hadn’t been at all (because he hadn’t, he pocketed the money), had taken a pair of kitchen scissors and cut his hair so short he almost bald exept for his fringe, which she left ‘to hide that horrible scar’.
Dudley had laughed harder than Corey had ever seen him laugh at Corey ever, who spent a sleepless night imagining school the next day, where he was already laughed at for his baggy clothes and Sellotaped glasses. Next morning, however, he had got up to findhis hair exactly as it had been before Aunt Petunia had sheared it off.
He had been given a week in his cupboard for this, even though he had tried to explain he couldn’t explain how it had grown back quickly.
Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old jumper of Dudley’s (brown with orange bobbles that Corey found ugly). The harder she tried yo pull it over his head, the smaller it became, until finally it might have fit a glove puppet, but certainly wouldn’t fit Corey.
Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to his great relief, Corey wasn’t punished.
On the other hand, he’d got 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 Corey’s surprise as anyone else’s, there he was sitting on the chimney. The Dursleys had recieved a very angry letter from Corey’s headmistress telling them Corey had been climbing school buildings.
But all he’d tried to do (as he shouted at Uncle Vernon through the locked door of his cupboard) was jump behind the big bins outside the kitchen doors. Corey, after thinking about all these things, thought maybe he had superpowers that maybe he could control if he tried hard enough.
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 his Aunt Petunia.
He liked to complain about things: people at work, Corey, the council, Corey, the bank and Corey were just a few of his favourite subjects. This morning, it was motorbikes.
‘… roaring along like manaics, young hoodlums,’ he said, as motorbike overtook them.
‘I had a dream about a motorbike,’ said Corey, remembering suddenly and, dispite himself, added. ‘It was flying.’
Uncle Vernon nearly crashed into the car in front. He turned right around in his seat and yelled at Corey, his face turning a mix of purple and red, ‘MOTORBIKES DON’T FLY!’ Dudley and Piers sniggered.
‘I know they don’t,’ said Corey. ‘It was only a dream.’ Corey repremanded himself in his head that he should have just stayed quite. If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than him asking questions, it was talking about anything in a way it shouldn’t no matter if it was in a dream or even a cartoon - they seemed to think he 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 Corey what he wanted before they could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon ice lolly.
It wasn’t bad either, Corey thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head and looking, Corey thought, remarkably like Dudley, except that it wasn’t blond.
Corey had the best morning he’d had in a long time. He 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 favourite hobby of hitting him.
They ate in the zoo restaurant and when Dudley had a tantrum because his knickerbocker glory wasn’t big enough, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Corey was allowed to finish the first. Corey felt, afterwards, 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 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 complained. He shuffled away.
Corey 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 Corey’s. It winked. Corey stared. Then he looked around quickly 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 Corey a look that said quite plainly: ‘I get that all the time.’
‘I know,’ Corey 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?’ Corey asked. The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Corey peered. Boa Constrictor Brazil. 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 Corey made both of them jump.
‘DUDLEY! MR DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT’S DOING!’ Dudley came running towards them as fast as he could.
‘Out of the way, you,’ he said, punching Corey in the ribs. Caught by surprise, Corey 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.
Corey sat up and gasped, the glass front of the boa constrictor’s tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out on to the floor - people throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits. As the snake slid swiftly past him, Corey could have sworn a low, hissing voice said,
‘Brazil, here I come… Thanksss, vinur.’ 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 Corey 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 Corey at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, ‘Corey was talking to it, weren’t you, Corey?’
Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on Corey. He was so angry he could hardly speak.
He managed to smack Corey in the face and then said, ‘Go - cupboard - stay - no meals,’ before he collapsed into a chair and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.
Corey lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had a watch. He didn’t know what time it was and he couldn’t be sure the Dursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn’t risk sneaking to the kitchen for some food.
He’d lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as he could remember, ever since he’d been a baby and his parents had died in that car crash. He couldn’t remember being in the car when his parents had died.
Sometimes, when he strained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burning pain on his forhead.
This, he supposed, was the crash, though he couldn’t imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn’t remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions.
There were no photographs of them in the house. When he had been younger, Corey had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened, the Dursleys were his only family.
Yet sometimes he thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strange strangers they were, too.
A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Corey furiously if he 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 him once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his 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 secon Corey tried to get closer look. At school, Corey had no one. Everbody knew that Dudley’s gang hated that odd Corey Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and novody liked to disagree with Dudley’s gang.