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J. K. Rowling «Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone» / Chapter II. The Vanishing Glass
J. K. Rowling «Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone»
Chapter II. 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 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.
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.
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."
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.
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 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 Harry, as Dudley was very fat and hated exercise -- unless
of course it involved punching somebody. Dudley's favorite punching 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 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. 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."
Don't ask
questions -- that was the first rule for a quiet life with the Dursleys.
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, 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.
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 Mommy 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.
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 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.
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.
"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.
"Don't be silly, Vernon, she hates the boy."
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.
"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 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 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.
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."
"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 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) -- 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.
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.
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. 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!"
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.
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.
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 didn't have enough
ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Harry 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.
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 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?"
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 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. 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 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. 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, "Go -- cupboard
-- stay -- no meals," 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.
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 burn- ing pain on his forehead. 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, 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.
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.
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.
Contents:
Chapter I. The Boy Who Lived
Chapter II. The Vanishing Glass
Chapter III. The Letters From No One
Chapter IV. The Keeper Of The Keys
Chapter V. Diagon Alley
Chapter VI. The Journey From Platform Nine And Three-Quarters
Chapter VII. The Sorting Hat
Chapter VIII. The Potions Master
Chapter IX. The Midnight Duel
Chapter X. Halloween
Chapter XI. Quidditch
Chapter XII. The Mirror Of Erised
Chapter XIII. Nicolas Flamel
Chapter XIV. Norbert The Norwegian Ridgeback
Chapter XV. The Forbidden Forest
Chapter XVI. Through The Trapdoor
Chapter XVII. The Man With Two Faces
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