Chapter Text
Emmalina's POV
An argument had erupted over the breakfast table, not for the first time at Privet Drive. Uncle Vernon's slumber had been disturbed by Hedwig and Athena, Harry and my owls, hooting early in the morning.
"Third time this week!" He yells to Harry and me across the table. "If you can't control those bloody owls, they will have to go!"
Harry and I once again began to explain.
"They're bored," I argue. "They're used to flying whenever they please. If we could only let them out at dark -"
"Do I like stupid?" Uncle Vernon sneers, a piece of a fried egg was hanging from his mustache. "I know exactly what'll happen if those owls get let out."
He exchanged mysterious looks with Aunt Petunia.
Harry tried to respond but his sentence was mellowed by a long and noisy belch from Dudley.
"I want more bacon."
"There's more in the frying open, sweetums," Aunt Petunia tells him, her misted eyes turning to her son. "We have to build you up while you're still here. ... I don't like the way that school food sounds. ..."
"Nonsense, Petunia, I never got hungry when I went to Smeltings," Uncle Vernon protests. "Dudley gets plenty to eat, don't you?"
Dudley was so big that his behind fell over both sides of the chair and he turned to face Harry.
"Pass the frying pan."
I knew Harry was so distracted that he didn't realize what he was saying.
"You forgot the magic word," Harry snaps.
The aftermath of this small sentence on the Dursleys was outstanding: Dudley gave a large gasp and tumbled from his chair that shook the entire kitchen. Aunt Petunia gave a scream and clasped her hands to her mouth, Uncle Vernon sprang to his feet, his veins popping out of his temple.
"I mean 'please'!" Harry corrects quickly. "I didn't mean -"
"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT," Uncle Vernon shouts, showering the table with spit, " SAYING THE 'M' WORD IN THIS HOUSE?"
"But he -" I try to argue.
"I WARNED YOU! I WARNED BOTH OF YOU! I WILL NOT DEAL WITH THE THOUGHT OF YOUR WEIRDNESS IN THIS HOUSEHOLD!"
I looked from our purple-faced uncle to our pale-faced aunt, who was trying to help Dudley to his feet.
"All right," Harry and I say, "all right ..."
Uncle Vernon takes his seat once more, breathing very deeply and watching Harry and me from the corners of his eyes.
Ever since Harry and I had come back from the summer holidays, Uncle Vernon was acting like we were a bomb that could explode at any second because Harry and I weren't normal people. Actually, we were as abnormal as possible.
Harry and I were a wizard and a witch straight from our first year of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. And if the Dursleys were displeased with this, it didn't hold a penny to what Harry and I were feeling.
We missed Hogwarts so bad that it was like being homesick. I missed the castle, the secret passageways, the ghosts, the class (perhaps not Snape's class, Potions), the mail by owls, eating feasts in the Great Hall, sleeping in my four-poster bed in the tower dormitory, visiting Hagrid the gamekeeper that lived in a cabin by the Forbidden Forest, and Quidditch, the most famous sport in the wizarding world with six tall goal posts, four (well, five now that I've joined) flying balls and fourteen (Now sixteen) players on broomsticks. And most of all, I miss Fred … George. Yeah, Fred and George.
All of Harry and my spellbooks, both our wands, robes, both cauldrons, and each of our top-of-the-line Nimbus Two Thousand broomsticks were locked in the cupboard under the stairs as soon as Harry and I had arrived here. Why would the Dursleys care if Harry and I were kicked off the Quidditch team because we hadn't practiced a single time all summer? Or that we went back to school without doing any of our homework? The Dursleys were called Muggles in the Wizarding world (there wasn't even an ounce of magic running through their veins) and as they were concerned, having people with magical powers in their family was absolutely shameful. Uncle Vernon had even put a padlock on Harry and my owls, Hedwig and Athena, cages to stop them from delivering letters to our wizarding friends.
Harry and I looked nothing like the Dursleys; Uncle Vernon was big and had no neck and a very large mustache, Aunt Petunia had a horse-face and was very bony, Dudley was blond, pink, and porky. Harry, though, was small and skinny, sported dazzling green eyes and untidy jet-black hair. He had round glasses and on his forehead was a thin, lightning bolt scar. I, almost completely opposite of Harry, had light brown hair and sparkling blue eyes that Fred usually compared to diamonds. I had a nice developing body and stood at an even five foot four. I had an identical lightning bolt scar but mine was on the left side of my forehead.
It was these scars that made Harry and me so different, even for a wizard and witch. These scars were the only detail of Harry and my peculiar past, the reason that Harry and I had been left on the Dursleys doorsteps eleven years ago.
At one year old, Harry and I had somehow survived a curse from the greatest Dark sorcerer ever, Lord Voldemort, whose name most magical people never said. Harry and my parents were killed at Voldemort's attack but Harry and I escaped and the lightning bolt scars were how we proved it. Voldemort's powers had been terminated when he failed to kill Harry and me.
So Harry and I were raised by our dead mother's sister and her husband. We'd spent the last ten years of our lives with the Dursleys, never getting why we could make weird things without trying or meaning. We believed that our parents had died in a car crash and gotten our scars from it, the story that the Dursleys had told us.
And exactly one year ago, Hogwarts had sent Harry and me letters, and the truth came out. Harry and I took our places at the wizarding school, where we and our scars were famous ... but now, our first year was over and we were back to stay with the Dursleys over the summer, back to being treated like vermin.
The Dursleys didn't even remember the fact that today was Harry and my twelfth birthday. Naturally, we didn't have much enthusiasm; we'd never gotten an actual present or even a cake - but to actually plainly ignore it.