Harry Potter 1 Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

HP 1 - Harry Potter and the
Sorcerer's Stone

---

CHAPTER TWO
THE VANISHING GLASS
N early 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 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.
           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
burning  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.

---