The Vanishing Glass
“The Vanishing Glass,” Percy read.
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.
“Boring,” Ron yawned. Everybody else chuckled.
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 boy lived in the house, too.
Hermione and Ginny glared at the book as though it had offended them. Harry sighed, knowing what was coming. His home life had sucked.
Yet Harry Potter was still there, asleep at the moment, but not for long. His Aunt Petunia was awake and it was her shrill voice that made the first noise of the day.
“Up! Get up! Now!” Harry woke with a start. His aunt rapped on the door again.
“Up!” she screeched. Harry heard her walking toward the kitchen and then the sound of the frying pan being put on the stove. He rolled onto his back and tried to remember the dream he 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.
“Wasn’t a dream, Harry.” Ginny giggled. Harry grinned at his girlfriend.
“I know that now.”
His aunt was back outside the door.
“Are you up yet?” she demanded.
“Nearly,” said Harry.
Everybody laughed.
“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.”
“Duddy?” Jason asked, amused. Harry nodded, smirking.
“It gets better.”
Harry groaned.
“What did you say?” his aunt snapped through the door.
“Nothing, nothing…”
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 bed and, after pulling a spider off one of them, put them on.
Ron and Annabeth shivered at the mention of spiders.
“Why’d you have to mention the spiders, Harry!” Ron complained.
“Sorry.” Harry said, chuckling.
Harry was used to spiders, because the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where he slept.
In a split second, the room was in an uproar.
“They made you sleep in a cupboard!?”
“Harry, why didn’t you say anything?”
“If I ever meet those muggles —”
“Enough!” Harry called, silencing his friends and girlfriend instantly. He took a deep breath.
“Look, I get it, my home life sucked, but it's in the past. If you keep dwelling on it it’ll only slow us down, and I think we’d like to finish these books this century.” Reluctantly, his fellow witches and wizards settled down, still fuming. Percy’s friends were staring at Harry curiously, being strongly reminded of the son of Poseidon’s natural authority.
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 gotten the new computer he wanted, not to mention the second television and the racing bike.
“The what?” Neville asked, brow bunched in confusion.
“Muggle things,” Harry answered quickly.
Exactly why Dudley wanted a racing bike was a mystery to Harry, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise — unless of course it involved punching somebody.
“Something tells me that means you,” Hermione sighed dejectedly. Harry gave her a sheepish smile.
Dudley’s favorite punching bag was Harry, but he couldn’t often catch him. Harry didn’t look it, but he was very fast.
“Yeah, you are,” Ron agreed, thinking of the many times in their fifth year Harry had stormed off after an argument. It was very difficult to keep up with him, much less find him if he left the dormitory.
Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard, but Harry had always been small and skinny for his age.
“Well that wasn’t anything new,” Ron smirked. “Don’t think he grew ‘till fifth year.” Harry glared at him, and Annabeth giggled.
“Percy was the same way,” She said, grinning at the look on her boyfriend’s face (At least, Harry assumed they were dating — it sure seemed like it).
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 Scotch tape because of all the times Dudley had punched him on the nose. The only thing Harry liked about his own appearance was a very thin scar on his forehead that was shaped like a bolt of lightning.
“You liked your scar?” Hermione asked, surprised. Harry nodded.
“Yeah. I didn’t really understand it yet, though.”
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 gotten it.
“In the car crash when your parents died,” she had said. “And don’t ask questions.”
Percy paused for a second and gave Harry a half-sympathetic and half-peeved look.
Don’t ask questions — that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.
“But how were you supposed to learn?” Annabeth asked, bewildered.
“Dunno,” Harry replied.
Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen as Harry was turning over the bacon.
“Comb your hair!” he barked, by way of a morning greeting.
“Not going to work,” Harry sing-songed.
“Why?” Frank asked. Harry shrugged.
“Couldn’t tell you, it’s always been like that. My dad’s was the same way.”
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, fat head. Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel — Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig.
Everybody laughed out loud.
“I thought he was a whale,” A grinning Ron said. Harry shrugged.
“It depends on the day, really.” This earned him a few extra giggles and smirks.
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.”
“Spoiled brat,” Jason muttered. Everyone nodded in agreement.
“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, 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.
“Smart,” Ron said seriously.
“Must you always think with your stomach, Ron?” Ginny asked, exasperated. He rolled his eyes back at his sister.
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…”
“Is he serious right now?” Percy asked, cutting himself off.
“Unfortunately,” Harry responded, rolling his eyes.
“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.
“Is he seriously encouraging this?” Piper asked.
“You get used to it with them,” Harry said, shrugging.
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 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 Harry’s direction.
“They always talked about you like that?” Neville asked, concerned.
“It wasn’t that bad.” Harry answered quickly.
Dudley’s mouth fell open in horror, but Harry’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, Harry 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.
“Why cats though?” Hazel asked, cocking her head.
“Dunno.”
“Now what?” said Aunt Petunia, looking furiously at Harry as though he’d planned this. Harry 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. Paws, and Tufty again.
“We could phone Marge,” Uncle Vernon suggested.
“Was she the one that you —” Ron started to ask. Harry nodded, and the boys exchanged evil grins.
“Don’t be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy.”
“The feeling’s mutual,” Harry muttered.
The Dursleys often spoke about Harry 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 vacation in Majorca,” snapped Aunt Petunia.
“You could just leave me here,” Harry 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.
“So her normal expression, then?” Luna asked innocently, sending everyone into a laughing fit.
“And come back and find the house in ruins?” she snarled.
“I won’t blow up the house,” said Harry, but they weren’t listening.
“I dunno,” Ron said with a cheeky grin, “Wouldn’t put it past you, mate.”
Harry rolled his eyes, smiling all the same.
“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.
Everybody gave various noises of disbelief.
“This kid is beyond spoiled,” Percy muttered.
“Dinky Duddydums, don’t cry, Mummy won’t let him spoil your special day!” she cried, flinging her arms around him.
“Dinky Duddydums?” Everybody echoed, most barely concealing laughter. Ron, Neville, Percy, and Jason, however, didn’t bother and burst out laughing.
“I… don’t… want… him… t-t-to come!” Dudley yelled between huge, pretend sobs. “He always sp-spoils everything!” He shot Harry 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.
Percy and Piper scoffed, both of them having way too much experience with spoiled kids over the years through school.
“Of course, you can cry to mommy but not in front of your snobby friends,” Piper muttered.
Half an hour later, Harry, 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 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.”
“They better not have,” Hermione muttered, fingering the wand sticking out of her pocket. Harry and Ron eyed it nervously.
“I’m not going to do anything,” said Harry, “honestly…”
But Uncle Vernon didn’t believe him. No one ever did.
“Nope,” Percy agreed. Harry shot him a grin.
The problem was, strange things often happened around Harry and it was just no good telling the Dursleys he didn’t make them happen.
“That’s a demigod’s life in a nutshell,” Hazel said.
“It’s similar for muggle-borns,” Hermione said. The demigods nodded in understanding.
Once, Aunt Petunia, tired of Harry coming back from the barbers 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 bangs, 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 taped glasses. Next morning, however, he had gotten up to find his 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 that he couldn’t explain how it had grown back so quickly.
Another time, Aunt Petunia had been trying to force him into a revolting old sweater of Dudley’s (brown with orange puff balls).
“Ugh,” Piper said, revolted. Some of the other girls nodded their heads in agreement.
The harder she tried to pull it over his head, the smaller it seemed to become, until finally it might have fitted a hand puppet, but certainly wouldn’t fit Harry. Aunt Petunia had decided it must have shrunk in the wash and, to his great relief, Harry wasn’t punished.
“Not for that, at least,” Harry muttered. Ron shot him a concerned glance.
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 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 (as he shouted at Uncle Vernon through the locked door of his cupboard) was jump behind the big trash cans outside the kitchen doors. Harry supposed that the wind must have caught him in mid-jump.
Everyone looked at Harry incredulously.
“What?” He defended himself, “I was ten and had no idea magic existed!”
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, Harry, the council, Harry, the bank, and Harry were just a few of his favorite subjects.
Everyone giggled a little.
“He really likes talking about you,” Frank said, chuckling.
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 Harry, 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!”
Everyone laughed a little bit louder at Vernon’s reaction.
Dudley and Piers sniggered.
“I know they don’t,” said Harry. “It was only a dream.”
But he wished he hadn’t said anything. If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than his asking questions, it was his 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 he might get dangerous ideas.
“No, you do that on your own,” Hermione said, smiling slightly.
“My ideas aren’t dangerous!” Harry protested. Both Ron and Hermione gave him pointed looks — they obviously hadn’t forgotten about their dragon ride to escape Gringotts.
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 pop. It wasn’t bad, either, Harry thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla scratching its head who looked remarkably like Dudley, except that it wasn’t blond.
“Ten-year-old you was sassy, Harry,” Neville said, chuckling with everyone else. Harry gave him a sheepish grin.
Harry 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 favorite hobby of hitting him. They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his knickerbocker glory
“His what?” Echoed around the room.
“Ice cream,” Hermione explained.
didn’t have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Harry was allowed to finish the first.
“Wow, they’re actually being okay!” Frank said, surprised.
Harry felt, afterward, that he should have known it was all too good to last.
“Nevermind.”
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.
“That’s a shame,” Percy, Ron, and Jason muttered.
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.
“It winked?” Annabeth asked dubiously. “Snakes don’t even have eyelids!”
“Maybe if you let me read, we’ll find out,” Percy said, grinning. Annabeth rolled her eyes.
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 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.”
“You can talk to snakes?” Percy asked Harry, interrupting himself yet again. Harry nodded. Again, Harry had the distinct impression that Percy had just been reminded of something.
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?”
“Can most wizards talk to snakes?” Jason asked, bewildered. All of the wizards shook their heads.
“Wizards who can talk to snakes are called parsel-mouths, and they speak parsel-tongue, snake language.” Hermione explained. To Harry’s relief, she left out the fact that parsel-tongue was usually considered a dark art.
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 toward them as fast as he could.
“Out of the way, you,” he said, punching Harry in the ribs. 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.
“What?” Everyone exclaimed. Ron immediately started laughing.
“More accidental magic?” Hazel asked.
“Yeah.”
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.”
“You definitely heard it,” Neville said, nodding.
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 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.
Piper rolled her eyes. “Please, it wasn’t going anywhere near you,” she scoffed.
But worst of all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, “Harry was talking to it, weren’t you, Harry?”
“Uh oh.”
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,”
“No meals?” Hermione hissed dangerously. Ginny and Ron were glaring at the book.
before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.
Harry 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.
Everyone frowned.
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 forehead.
“That would be the scar, I guess,” Annabeth muttered. Neville was giving Harry a wide-eyed look at the mention of green light.
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.
“You didn’t know what they looked like?” Jason asked, slightly angry. Harry shook his head. His fellow witches and wizards were once again glaring at the book.
When he had been younger, Harry 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.
“Dedalus Diggle, I think,” said Harry, trying to remember the man’s face.
After asking Harry 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 second Harry tried to get a closer look.
“Are they trying to not get caught?” Hazel asked.
“The wizarding world has a statute of secrecy,” Hermione replied. “It was passed in 1689, and it forbids wizards from exposing our world to muggles.”
At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley’s gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley’s gang.
“I’d be happy to,” Percy said darkly as he set the book down. “Who wants to read next?”
“I’ll take it,” Frank said, and Percy passed him the book.