Harry Potter and the Boa Constrictor
Harry Potter was a highly unusual child. All his teachers agreed on that. The loner boy would make his way to a corner of the playground, sit with his back to the fence, and make up stories. They asked him about the stories later. They sometimes involved a flying motorbike ridden by a giant, sometimes spiders who whisked him off to a forest. Sometimes they involved talking snakes. The teachers weren’t worried by the stories, although they were surprised that such a no-nonsense household as Mr. and Mrs. Dursleys’ could produce such an imaginative child. Then the trouble started.
Harry’s school attendance became patchy as his behaviour grew inexplicably worse. With the downturn in attendance came a downturn in marks. He no longer spent time in unobtrusive corners at breaks, but often ran from Dudley and his friends. The teachers watched for signs of bullying but, though there was clearly no love between the cousins, there was never anything punishable in Dudley’s behaviour. Dudley’s marks were never high, despite his unblemished attendance record, and the teachers put the animosity between the cousins down to jealousy.
Then the cousins left primary school and the teachers moved on to other pupils. The Headmistress and her secretary noticed that only Dudley was put down for the traditionalist Smelting’s, ‘probably a good fit for him, a fine sports programme, give him an outlet for his energy’, while Harry, ‘poor lamb, such a clever boy, a shame he’s so troublesome’, was heading straight to Stonewall High. And that was the end of Greater Whinging primary school’s interest in Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley.
***
Harry Potter was still an unusual child. Both his guardians agreed on that. They preferred to keep him out of sight. Unlike Dudley, who screamed when sent to his room, Harry never complained about being locked in his cupboard, although they did sometimes hear him talking to the spiders. Vernon Dursley objected to this behaviour, and it stopped. Dudley cried when told to tidy his bedroom. Harry never cried, and never objected to tidying the rest of the house. Sometimes Petunia had to admit Harry was the easier child. But she was always watchful for signs of trouble.
Dudley’s birthdays occurred at the beginning of the summer holidays. Last year Vernon and Petunia had taken Dudley and his friends to Alton Towers, explaining that this was a special treat for hitting double figures. This year they were planning to take the boys to the zoo. Harry had been left last year with Mrs Figg, a neighbour who lived with a varying number of cats and who had inexplicably taken a liking to Harry when he was young. He enjoyed the time with Mrs. Figg. She spoke of her cats a lot and made tea with too much sugar, but she gave him cake and let him watch telly and didn’t make him do chores.
On the day of Dudley’s 11th birthday Harry was carefully squeezing eggs and bacon onto the table between Dudley’s presents when an ambulance sounded outside. Aunt Petunia whisked to the sitting room window to see who it had come for. She was always nosey, Harry considered, but she was also first with the gossip every book-club evening. Dudley threw a tantrum about his presents and upset the plate of toast Harry had balanced on one corner of the table. Harry quietly and competently got on with making fresh toast as Uncle Vernon explained boisterously that there would be more presents when they got back from the zoo.
Dudley settled down to ripping wrapping paper and Aunt Petunia came back into the kitchen looking worried. “That ambulance looked like it was stopping at Mrs. Figg’s, Vernon,” she reported waspishly, “she might not be able to take the boy.” The adults settled down to discussing where Harry was to spend the day as Harry considered Aunt Petunia’s news.
Ambulances only came when people were really ill, didn’t they? Mrs. Figg was quite old. Maybe she was dying. What would happen to her cats if she died? Maybe her daughter would come back from Canada to live in her house and take care of them. Or would they go to someone else? Were there cat-orphanages? Uncle Vernon and Aunt Marge said that Harry should have gone to an orphanage. It sounded like a terrible place. He hoped the cats didn’t have to go somewhere like that. But the ambulance would take Mrs. Figg to hospital and they would probably make her better, so that would be alright. Maybe her daughter would come back anyway to take care of her. Harry knew Mrs. Figg missed her daughter, ‘cause she had told him so. When Aunt Petunia had gone to hospital that time when she fell down the stairs Aunt Marge had come to help, saying it was criminal that Harry’s mother had got herself killed and couldn’t be more useful. Everyone had brought flowers. Maybe Harry would find some flowers to take to Mrs. Figg when she got back. That would be a nice thing to do.
The doorbell rang, interrupting Harry’s thoughts, and Dudley’s friend Piers entered, carrying a large present wrapped in green paper with footballs on it. Piers liked football. Dudley didn’t. But Dudley didn’t seem to mind the wrapping paper as he tore into it, revealing a pair of walkie-talkies. The two boys abandoned the kitchen to try them out in the living room. Harry cleared away the wrapping paper, allowing Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon to finish their breakfast. He made two sandwiches out of the spilled toast, filling one with Dudley’s favourite chocolate spread while Aunt Petunia wasn’t looking and the other with jam, which he ate for his own breakfast. He put the chocolate one in his cupboard for later.
When breakfast was cleared away Dudley and Piers were impatient to be off, and Harry, feeling both lucky and apprehensive, was shepherded into the car to go with them all to the zoo. Harry had a wonderful day. He understood why Dudley had been so excited about going. A lot of caged up animals hadn’t sounded exciting to Harry, but there were shows where the animals did tricks, and Harry had a chance to read all about the animals he saw, so that Dudley and Piers could get right in front of the cages. Harry thought they looked like the big apes and amused himself imagining the zookeepers coming up with big nets to capture the two boys, insisting that they had been stolen 11 years ago and were supposed to be locked up too.
After lunch, in the reptile house, Dudley and Piers were quickly bored with the snakes and lizards, but Harry was entranced. He stared at the patterns on the snakes’ scales, and the way they blended in with their tanks. Then the impossible happened: a boa constrictor winked at him. Harry stared at the snake and winked back.
“What’s it like out there?” a voice asked, and Harry could have sworn it came from the snake. He pretended it had.
“Noisy,” he replied, “and hot.” It was hot, especially outside in the open concrete of the zoo. “What’s it like in there?”
“Boring,” the snake replied, “humans are always noisy.”
“Shall I go away?”
“No.”
Harry cast around for another topic to talk about with the snake, and his eye fell on the little information card by the tank. Boa constrictor, Brazil.
“What was it like in Brazil?”
“Never been. Never left here. Will you let me out? Then I could go.”
“I don’t think I can do that.” Harry was sad for the snake. Never leaving the reptile house would be terrible.
Another voice, one he knew well, said loudly by his ear, “Oy Potty, get a move on!” and a fist knocked the air out of him. Dudley looked smug as Harry fell to the floor in surprise, and then a lot of things happened all at once. The boa constrictor uncoiled itself at head height, coming right out of its tank. Dudley screamed, tried to run, and tripped over Harry, who was still prone. The snake lowered its head to the floor, seeming to follow Dudley down, still uncoiling itself from the tank. Harry heard it, as it slithered past, whispering, “Brazil, here I come. My thanks, Wizard.”
Uncle Vernon was furious, Aunt Petunia had hysterics, Dudley was pale and shaking and, for once, utterly silent. The zoo director and the keeper of the reptile house were shocked. “The glass,” was all they could say, “it didn’t break. It just vanished! 24 square feet of glass 3 inches thick can’t vanish. Not like that! But where is it then? It didn’t break. It just vanished!” Only Piers was unaffected. Harry was thinking hard.
Snakes couldn’t talk. Oh, he’d always imagined they could, but he knew that they couldn’t. And this one had. He’d heard it. It had spoken to him on its way past. It had called him a wizard. It had known he could get it out of the tank. Had Harry been the one to vanish the glass? Was it something inside him that caused all the trouble he kept getting into? The snake had called him a Wizard. How had it known? Maybe there were magic snakes? But the snake had been a boa constrictor, not a magic snake. But if Harry was a wizard, and his parents weren’t (how could they have been, to die in a car crash? Wizards would at least have died in a broomstick crash) maybe the snake was a kind of snake-wizard (snizard?) born in the zoo to non-magical parents.
It was all so complicated, and far too much to think about. But he kept the thought in his mind as the summer continued. Aunt Petunia was more watchful of him this summer. Normally when he had finished his chores he was allowed out, and often told not to return until it was time to make supper. He had been looking forward to reading about magical snakes in the library. He’d never heard of them before. But this summer he was confined to the house and garden. Until the day the letter arrived.
***
Aunt Petunia had taken Dudley up to town the day before to get his Smelting’s uniform, and he had spent the evening ‘getting used’ to his Smelting’s stick, hitting Harry when Uncle Vernon wasn’t looking. Harry was feeling unusually sore, therefore, when told to fetch the post. He dawdled in the hallway, reading the outsides of the envelopes, and looking at the picture on the postcard Aunt Marge had sent from Majorca. And he saw the heavy envelope addressed to himself. He stopped halfway back to the kitchen. No one wrote to him. Especially not on fancy paper in green ink. He put the letter into his pocket to read later. If it was a joke, he didn’t want Dudley laughing at him.
Dudley and Piers, who was also going to Smelting’s, spent their day annoying the neighbours with their new sticks and then, when Mrs Figg had shouted at them for hitting Tubsy, returned to number 4 to annoy Harry instead. They broke a vase Aunt Petunia was very attached to, and she put Harry in his cupboard to keep them separated. By the light of a torch, he read his letter.
Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore
Dear Mr. Potter,
We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment. We await your owl no later than the 31st of July. Term begins on September 1st.
Yours sincerely,
Prof. M. McGonagall
Deputy Headmistress
Harry read the letter heading again. Witchcraft and Wizardry. There were witches and wizards. And he was one of them. The boa constrictor had been right! He was a wizard! His heart felt like it would burst out of his chest as he read the letter again. And then it dropped. All necessary books and equipment. He had a little money, change from Uncle Vernon’s pockets dropped into the sofa, mostly, although some he had found on the street. Once he found a whole £20 behind a car tyre. But £28.38 wasn’t going to buy him all necessary books and equipment. He pulled out the list. Books, clothes, a magic wand, a cauldron. Unless he could magic up some more money, he wasn’t going to be able to go. He put the letter under his pillow and tried to forget about it. It would make a nice dream, even if it would never come true.
***
Even though Harry had sworn not to look at the letter again he found himself taking it out as the 31st of July came closer. He wondered what we await your owl meant. A real owl? And what did they want it for? He found himself imagining dark rites where owls were sacrificed on granite slabs under the night sky and shivered. Owls didn’t deserve that. A falconer had come to school once and let him pet the birds. The owl had looked with eyes that seemed to see right through Harry. She had let him pet her and hadn’t liked Dudley at all. Harry thought that owls must be very clever.
On Harry’s birthday Aunt Petunia seemed to relax. She let him eat with them at the breakfast table, and even excused him chores, letting him go to the park for the first time this holiday. He took off gladly, happy to be free from the peach walls that had hemmed him in for far too long. He swung idly for a while, until he heard the roar of a motorbike. Motorbikes were a rarity in Little Whinging. He jumped excitedly from the swing and ran off in search of the noise.
When he reached the end of Magnolia Walk where it joined Privet Drive, he stopped. The bike was parked outside number 4 and an enormous man had dismounted. Neighbours were openly gawking as they walked dogs or mowed the lawns. Harry was openly gawking too. He hurried back to the house, keen to find out about the huge man and his bike.