The escape of the twisted boa constrictor resulted in Harry receiving the longest prison sentence. By the time he was allowed out of the cupboard again, the summer holidays had begun and Dudley’s new camera had broken, his toy airplane had hit something and crashed, and the first time he got on his racing bike, he knocked down Mrs Figg who was crossing Privet Drive with a cane. his armpit.
Harry was happy that school was out, but he couldn’t avoid Dudley’s gang who came every day. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm and Gordon are all big and stupid, but because Dudley is the biggest and stupidest, he becomes the leader of the gang. They all enjoyed taking part in the game that Dudley loved most: Harry-hunting.
This was why Harry spent as much time as possible outdoors, walking around and thinking about the end of the holidays, when he could see a small glimmer of hope. With September coming, he would be starting middle school, and for the first time in his life, he wouldn’t be going to school with Dudley. Dudley was going to Uncle Vernon’s old school, Smeltings. Piers Polkiss will be in there too. Harry, on the other hand, will attend Stonewall High, a local junior high school. Dudley thought this was very funny.
“The first day, they put the new kids’ heads down the toilet at Stonewall,” he told Harry. “Want to practice upstairs first?”
“No, thank you,” said Harry. “Poor toilet, I’ve never had anything more terrifying than your head in it—it’s possible that the toilet is now nauseous.” Then Harry ran off, before Dudley could process what he had just said.
One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform. Harry was left at Mrs Figg’s house. Mrs Figg wasn’t as severe as usual. It turns out he broke his leg because he tripped over one of his cats, so now he doesn’t like cats as much as before. He let Harry watch TV and gave Harry a piece of chocolate cake which tasted rancid.
That night Dudley paraded in his new uniform in the living room. Smeltings students wear dark red tailcoats, knee-length orange trousers, and flat straw hats. They also carried sticks, which they used to hit each other when their teachers weren’t looking. This is supposed to be good training for their future.
When he saw Dudley in his new uniform, Uncle Vernon said hoarsely that this was the proudest moment of his life. Aunt Petunia cried and said she couldn’t believe this dashing, handsome young man was the Ickle Dudleykins. Harry couldn’t talk. He thought maybe two of his ribs had cracked from holding in his laughter.
The kitchen stank when Harry came down the next morning for breakfast. The smell was coming from a large metal bucket in the kitchen sink. Harry looked at him. The bucket was full of dirty rags floating in the gray water.
“What’s this?” he asked Aunt Petunia. Aunt Petunia’s lips immediately pouted, as they always did when Harry dared ask a question.
“Your new school uniform,” he answered. Harry looked into the bucket again.
“Oh,” he commented. “I didn’t expect it to be so wet.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Aunt Petunia. “I’m dyeing Dudley’s old clothes in gray wether for you. When it’s finished, it will be the same as the others.”
Harry obviously doubted this, but he thought it best not to argue. He sat down at the dinner table and tried not to think about how he would look on his first day at Stonewall High—wearing pieces of old elephant skin, perhaps.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon appeared, both wrinkling their noses at the smell of Harry’s new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smeltings stick
—which he always took with him everywhere—on the table.
They heard the click of the mailbox and the drop of letters on the doormat.
“Take a letter, Dudley,” said Uncle Vernon from behind his newspaper. “Just tell Harry.”
“Take a letter, Harry.” “Just tell Dudley.”
“Poke him with your Smeltings stick, Dudley.”
Harry dodged a poke from Smeltings wand and went out to get the letter. There were three things lying on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon’s sister, Marge, who was on holiday on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like it contained a bill, and a letter to Harry .
Harry took it and stared at it, his heart clicking like a big piece of elastic being snapped. No one, in his entire life, had ever written to him. Who will write to him? He had no friends, no other family—he was also not a member of any library, so he had never even received a letter of harsh warning to immediately return the books he borrowed. But apparently, here is a letter clearly addressed to him:
Mr H. Potter
Cupboard Under Stairs Privet Drive no. 4
Little Whinging Surrey
The envelopes were thick and heavy, made of parchment—leather used instead of paper. The color is yellowish and the name and address are written in emerald green ink. There’s no stamp.
Turning the envelope over with trembling hands, Harry saw a purple seal bearing the symbol of a large “H” surrounded by lions, eagles, badgers and snakes.
“Hurry up, Harry!” shouted Uncle Vernon from the kitchen. “Why are you checking for mail bombs?” He laughed at his own joke.
Harry returned to the kitchen, still staring at his letter. He handed the bill and postcard to Uncle Vernon, then he sat down and slowly began to open the yellow envelope.
Uncle Vernon tore up the bill, snorted in disgust, and turned the postcard over.
“Marge is sick,” he told Aunt Petunia. ”Eating strange clams…” ”Dad!” Dudley suddenly said. “Dad, what did Harry get!”
Harry was about to unfold the letter, which was written on the same thick parchment paper as the envelope, when it was suddenly jerked from his hand by Uncle Vernon.
“That’s my letter !” said Harry, trying to snatch it back.
“Who wrote to you?” grinned Uncle Vernon, flicking the letter open with one hand. And glanced at the contents. His face changed color from red to green faster than a traffic light. And it doesn’t stop there. In just an instant, his face was white and gray like rotten porridge.
“PP-Petunia!” he said. gagapnya.
Dudley tried to grab the letter to read it, but Uncle Vernon held it up high out of his reach. Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first sentence. For a moment it looked like he was going to faint. He held his neck and made a strangled sound.
”Vernon! Oh, my… Vernon!”
They looked at each other, apparently forgetting that Harry and Dudley were still in the same room. Dudley was not used to being ignored. He tapped his father’s head hard with his Smeltings stick.
“I want to read the letter,” he shouted.
” I want to read it,” said Harry angrily, “because it’s my letter .”
“Get out, both of you,” said Uncle Vernon huskily, as he stuffed the letter back into its envelope.
Harry didn’t move.
“I WANT MY LETTER!” he shouted. “Here, let me see!” Dudley insisted.
“GO OUT!” growled Uncle Vernon. He grabbed Harry and Dudley by the collar and threw them into the hall, then slammed the kitchen door shut. Harry and Dudley immediately got into a heated, silent fight over who could listen through the keyhole. Dudley won, so Harry, his glasses hanging on one ear, lay on his stomach to listen through the gap between the door and the floor. “Vernon,” Aunt Petunia said in a shaky voice, “look at the address.
How could they possibly know where he slept? Do you think they are watching our house?”
“Watching—spying—maybe following us,” muttered Uncle Vernon worriedly.
“But what should we do, Vernon? Should we reply? We said that we don’t want…”
Harry could see Uncle Vernon’s shiny black shoes pacing around the kitchen.
“No,” he said finally. “No, we just ignore it. If they don’t get a reply… yes, that’s the best… we won’t do anything…”
“But…”
“I don’t want to hear it, Petunia! Didn’t we swear when we took it that we would eradicate that dangerous nonsense?”
That afternoon after work, Uncle Vernon did something he had never done before. He visited Harry in his cupboard.
“Where’s my letter?” Harry asked once Uncle Vernon had managed to squeeze himself through the door. “Who wrote to me?”
“There isn’t any. “The letter was mistakenly addressed to you,” said Uncle Vernon shortly. “I burned it.”
” Not wrong,” said Harry angrily. “The address says my cupboard.”
“SHUT UP!” roared Uncle Vernon and two spiders fell from the closet ceiling. He took a few deep breaths and then forced a smile on his face, seemingly regretting it.
“Er… yes, Harry… about this cupboard. Your aunt and I have been thinking about it… you’re actually getting too old to stay here… we think it would be better if you moved into Dudley’s other room.”
“Why?” Harry asked.
“Don’t ask questions!” said his uncle. “Take your things upstairs, now.”
The Dursleys’ house has four rooms: one for Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, one for guests (usually Uncle Vernon’s sister, Marge), one is Dudley’s bedroom, and the other is where Dudley keeps his toys and things that don’t fit in his room. his sleep. Harry only needed one haul to move his things from the cupboard to this room. He sat up in bed and looked around. Almost everything in this room was damaged. The camera, which was only a month old, was lying on top of a small tank which, when Dudley was driving, had run over the neighbor’s dog. In the corner was Dudley’s first television, which he kicked into a hole when his favorite show went off air. There was a large birdcage, formerly a parrot’s cage which Dudley later swapped at school for a real air rifle. The gun was now on the shelf, the barrel bent in Dudley’s position. The other shelves are full of books. It’s the only books that seem to have never been touched.
From downstairs you could hear Dudley shouting to his mother, “I don’t want him in there… I need that room… tell him to get out…”
Harry sighed and lay down on the bed. Yesterday he would have given anything to be in this room. Today he would rather be back in his cupboard with the letter than here without it.
The next morning at breakfast, everyone was a bit quiet. Dudley was grumpy. He had screamed, hit his father with his Smeltings stick, pretended to be sick, kicked his mother, and threw his turtle through the roof of the greenhouse until it had a hole in the roof, but still he didn’t get his room back. Harry reflected on this time yesterday and regretted deeply why he hadn’t opened his letter while he was still in the hallway. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia looked at each other with clouded faces.
When the postman arrived, Uncle Vernon, apparently trying to be nice to Harry, told Dudley to get the mail. They heard Dudley banging his Smeltings stick as he came down the hall. Then he shouted: “There’s another letter! Mr H. Potter, Smallest Room, number 4 Privet Drive …”
With a muffled scream Uncle Vernon jumped from his chair and ran downstairs. Harry behind him. Uncle Vernon had to pin Dudley to the floor to grab the letter, and that was made even more difficult because Harry had his arms around Uncle Vernon’s neck from behind. After a minute of frantic struggle, and all of them being hit by Smeltings’ wand, Uncle Vernon rose to his feet, panting, with Harry’s letter clutched tightly in his hand.
“Go back to your cupboard—I mean, your room,” he hissed at Harry. ”Dudley… gone… gone.”
Harry walked back and forth around his new room. Some knew he had moved out of his closet and they apparently knew he hadn’t received his first letter. Obviously that means they will try again. And this time he would make sure they wouldn’t fail. He has a plan.
The fixed alarm clock rang at six o’clock the next morning. Harry quickly turned it off and changed clothes without making a sound. Don’t let the Dursleys wake up. He went downstairs quietly without turning on a single light.
He would wait for the postman at the corner of Privet Drive and pick up the letters for house number four first. His heart was pounding as he crept down the dark hallway towards the front door…
”AAAAARRRGH!”
Harry was shocked and jumped – he stepped on something big and soft on the doormat – something alive !
The light came on in the attic and to Harry’s surprise, the soft object he had stepped on was actually his uncle’s face. Uncle Vernon had deliberately slept in front of the door in a sleeping bag. It was clear he intended to prevent Harry from doing what he was about to do. For about half an hour he scolded Harry, then told him to make a cup of tea. Harry stumbled sadly into the kitchen, and by the time he returned, the letter had arrived, falling right into Uncle Vernon’s lap. Harry could see three letters with addresses written in green ink.
“Give me…” he was about to speak when Uncle Vernon tore the letters apart before his eyes.
Uncle Vernon didn’t come to the office that day. He stayed home and nailed his mailbox.
“If they can’t send a letter, they’ll give up,” he explained to Aunt Petunia through a mouth full of nails.
“I’m not sure, Vernon.”
“Oh, these people think strangely, Petunia, not like us,” said Uncle Vernon, hitting the nail on the head with a piece of fruit cake that Aunt Petunia had just brought.
On Friday, no less than twelve letters to Harry arrived. Because they couldn’t be put in the letter box, the letters were shoved under doors, stuffed into door gaps, and some of them were even stuffed through the small window of the downstairs toilet.
Uncle Vernon lives at home again. After burning all the letters, he took out a hammer and nails and covered all the gaps in the front and back doors with boards, so that no one could get out. He hummed Tiptoe Among the Tulips as he worked, and jumped at the slightest sound.
On Saturday, what happened was out of control. Twenty-four letters to Harry had been smuggled into the house, rolled up and hidden in two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had stuck out to Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon angrily called the post office and the dairy looking for someone to blame, Aunt Petunia crushed the letters in her food mixer .
“Who wants to talk to you so badly ?” Dudley asked Harry in surprise.
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon sat at the table for breakfast, looking tired but happy.
“The postman doesn’t come on Sundays,” he reminded them cheerfully as he smeared jam on his newspaper, “so no damn mail today…”
Something hissed down the chimney as Uncle Vernon spoke, and hit the back of his head. The next moment thirty or forty letters rolled out of the fireplace like
bullet. The Dursleys ducked out of the way, but Harry jumped to try to catch one of them….
“Get out! GET OUT!”
Uncle Vernon caught Harry around the waist and threw him into the hallway outside. After Aunt Petunia and Dudley came out with their arms covering their faces, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. They could hear the letters still flowing into the room, bouncing against the walls and floor.
“It’s too late,” said Uncle Vernon, trying to speak calmly, but at the same time pulling at his mustache frantically. “I want you all back here in five minutes, ready to go. We will go. Just bring enough clothes. Don’t argue!”
Uncle Vernon looked so dangerous with half his mustache gone that no one dared argue. Ten minutes later they managed to get out of the door that had been nailed shut and were in the car, which was speeding towards the toll road. Dudley was sobbing in the backseat. His father had hit him on the head because they had to wait for him to try to stuff his television, videos, and computer into his gym bag.
The car continued to roll. Keep sliding. Not even Aunt Petunia dared ask where they were going. Every now and then Uncle Vernon suddenly made a sharp turn and launched his car in the opposite direction.
“Leave them… lead them astray,” muttered Uncle Vernon every time he did this.
They don’t even stop to eat all day long. When night fell, Dudley was crying loudly. Never before had he had such a bad day. He was hungry, he couldn’t watch the five television shows he wanted to watch, and he had never gone so long without exploding aliens on his computer screen.
Uncle Vernon finally stopped in front of a gloomy hotel outside a large city. Dudley and Harry shared a room with two beds and damp sheets that smelled of mildew. Dudley was snoring, but Harry couldn’t sleep. He sat on the windowsill, looking at the headlights of passing cars and wondering to himself….
They ate mushy, rancid cornflakes and canned tomatoes on toast for breakfast the next day. Just as they finished, the hotel owner came to their table.
“Excuse me, but is one of you Mr H. Potter? There are about a hundred letters like this on the reception desk.”
The woman held up the letter so they could read the address written in green ink:
Mr H. Potter Kamar 17
Hotel Railview Cokeworth
Harry went to reach for the letter, but Uncle Vernon slapped his hand away.
The woman stared.
“I’ll get it,” said Uncle Vernon, rising quickly and following him out of the dining room.
“Shouldn’t we just go home, darling?” Aunt Petunia suggested timidly a few hours later, but Uncle Vernon didn’t seem to hear. Who knows what he was looking for, no one knows. He took them to the middle of the woods, got out of the car, looked around, shook his head, got back into the car, and the car sped off again. The same thing happened in the middle of a rice field being plowed, in the middle of a suspension bridge, and on top of a multi-storey car park.
“Daddy’s crazy, huh?” Dudley asked Aunt Petunia that afternoon. Uncle Vernon had parked his car on the beach, locked the three of them inside, and disappeared.
It started raining. The big drops tapped on the roof of the car. Dudley sobbed.
“It’s Monday,” he said to his mother. “There’s the Great Humberto program on television tonight. I want to watch.”
Monday. Harry remembered something. Today is Monday, and Dudley can be relied on in this matter, regarding his hobby of watching television
—then tomorrow, Tuesday, would be Harry’s eleventh birthday. Of course
It’s just that the past birthdays weren’t happy days. Last year, for example, the Dursleys had presented him with a coat hanger and a pair of Uncle Vernon’s old socks. But, we don’t turn eleven every day.
Uncle Vernon returned with a smile. He also carried a small, long package and did not answer when asked by Aunt Petunia what he was carrying.
“I’ve found the perfect place!” he said. “Come on, everyone get out!”
It was very cold outside the car. Uncle Vernon pointed at what looked like a large rock jutting out into the sea. Perched on the rock was a small hut that was very shabby and dilapidated. It looks so sad. One thing was clear, there was no television in the hut.
“There’s a storm forecast tonight!” said Uncle Vernon happily, clapping his hands. “And this gentleman was kind enough to lend me his boat!”
A toothless old man walked casually towards them. Grinning rather evilly, he pointed at the old rowboat bobbing in the dark gray water below them.
“I’ve bought provisions for us,” said Uncle Vernon, “so everyone’s on board!”
It was so cold on the boat, it felt like they were freezing. Splashes of sea water and icy raindrops crept down the nape of their necks and the cold wind hit their faces. After what felt like hours later, they arrived at the rock. Uncle Vernon, stumbling, led the way to the rickety hut.
The inside of the hut was truly disgusting. The smell of sea gangs was strong, the wind whistled through the cracks in the plank walls. The fireplace was damp and empty. There is only one room.
Uncle Vernon’s provisions turned out to be a packet of chips and four bananas for each person. He tried to light a fire, but the four now empty packets of chips just shriveled and smoked.
“The letters can be used now, eh?” he said cheerfully.
Uncle Vernon was very happy. Obviously he thought no one would be able to catch them in the storm to deliver the mail. Harry mentally admitted, and this made him sad.
As night fell, the promised storm crashed around them. Splashes from the high waves splashed against the walls of the hut and strong winds rattled the dirty windows. Aunt Petunia found some musty fleece blankets from the room and made a bed for Dudley on a sofa that had moth-eaten holes in it. He and Uncle Vernon slept on the rickety bed in the room and Harry was left to find the softest spot on the floor and curl up under the thinnest, most tattered blanket.
As the night went on the storm became more intense. Harry couldn’t sleep. He shivered from the cold and turned over, trying to find a more comfortable position. His hungry stomach growled. Dudley’s snoring was muffled by the rumble of thunder that started booming near midnight. The glowing hand of Dudley’s watch—his fat watch-wearing hand dangled under the sofa—indicated that Harry would be eleven in ten minutes. He lay there watching as his birthday ticked closer, wondering if the Dursleys would remember about his birthday, wondering where the hell the person who wrote to him was now.
Five more minutes. Harry heard something creak outside. He hoped the roof of the hut wouldn’t collapse, although if it did, he might be warmer. Four more minutes. Maybe the house on Privet Drive would be full of letters when they came home, so he could steal one.
Three more minutes. Is that wave hitting the rocks so hard? And (two minutes later) what is that strange rattling sound? Did the coral crumble and fall into the sea?
In a minute he will be eleven years old. Thirty seconds… twenty… ten… nine, maybe he’ll wake Dudley up, just to make Dudley angry… three… two… one…
BOOM!
The whole hut shook and Harry sat up straight, looking at the door. There were people outside the door, banging to get in.
