Chapter Text
It was safe to say that life at Number Four, Privet Drive, was utterly dull. There wasn’t much to do for a child like Clara. She had no toys, no swing in the garden, no pocket money to buy herself a book from the charity shops in the village, and most importantly, no friends. Fortunately, she rarely had enough free time for the boredom to get to her.
Living with her uncle and aunt, Mr and Mrs Dursley, meant being kept busy by loads and loads of chores. She did the laundry, washed the dishes, weeded the garden, painstakingly dusted all fifty-six picture frames of her pink-faced cousin Dudley lining the sitting room and hallway, cooked breakfast and often dinner too, and was regularly dispatched to fetch groceries from the corner shop a few blocks down.
A wealth of chores for a child. Clara often wondered if the Dursleys saddled her with all these chores purely to punish her for breathing their air, or simply because they were too bone-idle to do them themselves. Either way, Clara didn’t like them very much.
While Mr. Dursley, a very large man with a silly-looking moustache, worked as the director of a firm that made drills, Mrs. Dursley, a tall, bony woman with a perpetually pinched expression, spent her days listening to the neighbours' gossip or coddling their son. Dudley was, in all his enormous glory, the most spoiled child in Little Whinging, and possibly in all of England. The boy only had to snap his fingers and his parents dropped everything to tend to his very wish. Any gift, any toy, it didn’t matter.
Clara herself had never even seen a present with her name written on the name tag. And for all the toys Dudley owned and frequently discarded the moment he grew bored, she hadn't ever been allowed to so much as touch a single one of them.
There was an entire list of things the young girl wasn’t allowed to do. Like borrow books from the local library, or collect the exoskeletons of the bugs she found out in the garden. She wasn’t allowed to play with the neighbours' children, either. Not that they ever wanted to play with her anyway; they thought of her as too strange.
That seemed to be the case for most people in Little Whining. They took one look at Clara with her wide eyes and conspicuous hair, and suddenly found themselves instinctively pulling their own children out of her path. Clara had not yet figured out whether the problem lay with them or with her.
She was always on the outside looking in, never quite managing to fit in with the people around her. That was why, and Clara was sure of this, the Dursleys simply couldn’t stand her.
They had very strong opinions on people who weren’t like them. People who dreamed, people who wore strange clothing or had a funny way of saying things. Anything remotely unusual, they made a point to steer clear of.
So of course, the girl was a constant thorn in their eyes. And her life at Number Four, Privet Drive wasn’t just dull but also awfully lonely.
Almost ten years had passed since the Dursleys had opened their front door one morning to find their barely one-year-old niece abandoned on their doorstep. Yet, even after all this time, they still couldn't bring themselves to accept the girl as a true part of the family. Clara was never treated as a member of the household, but rather as an unfortunate burden thrust upon them. Which was exactly why she was never given a proper bedroom either, but just the cramped cupboard under the stairs.
And it was inside this very cupboard that she was currently fast asleep. She had stayed up well past her usual bedtime the previous night, painstakingly scrubbing away the sticky glue Dudley had smeared all over (thankfully) the outside of her schoolbooks. Had he glued the frayed pages together, she would have had no choice but to throw the books in the bin. They were just his battered hand-me-downs that she didn't even have to return once the summer ended, but Uncle Vernon would have had her head if he saw.
The quiet of the morning didn’t last much longer however, for her Aunt Petunia was awake, and it was her shrill voice that woke the young girl up with a start.
“Up! Get up already!”
Clara startled awake, whining into her lumpy pillow before blindly reaching for the chain connected to the flickering light bulb above her head. The sudden light made her wince and throw a hand across her eyes.
Another thump against the door. “Up!”
She listened to her aunt's footsteps as they retreated toward the kitchen. A moment later, the sound of the frying pan being put on the cooker drifted through the creaks of the wood. She closed her eyes for another few seconds, not yet willing to get up and start the day. She had had a funny dream last night, about a cat with long rabbit ears flying on a broomstick. She would have to draw it later, not wanting to forget.
Another sudden thump startled her for the second time.
“Don’t you laze around, girl. Are you up yet?” Aunt Petunia demanded.
Was her voice this shrill all the time or just in the morning? Clara opted for the first option, but who knew. She wasn’t a morning person, and using her brain this early in the day only made her head hurt.
“Nearly,” Clara yawned.
“Well, hurry up then! I want you to look after the bacon. And do not let it burn, I want everything perfect on my Duddy’s birthday.”
Clara furrowed her brow, followed by a heavy sigh.
“Pardon? What was that?”, Aunt Petunia snarled through the door.
“Nothing.”
“That’s what I thought.” Once more, her steps retreated.
Brilliant. Dudley’s birthday. The one day of the year when the beefy boy—hard as it was to believe—somehow managed to feel even more self-important than he did on the other 364 days.
Clara slowly sat up, the scratchy blanket bunching around her skinny legs as she rummaged through the cardboard box at the foot of her mattress where she kept all her clothes.
She didn’t own anything particularly nice; her wardrobe consisted almost entirely of cheap charity shop finds and Dudley’s old hand-me-downs. In fact, Aunt Petunia had only bothered to buy her a few items actually meant for girls after one of the neighbours had made a comment about the inappropriateness of a young girl walking around in boys' clothes. Even then, they still didn’t fit her right; all at least two sizes too large.
It was alright though. At least nobody picked on her for looking like a scrawny twig like the kids in gym class always did.
Once she was dressed in a pair of Dudley’s old trousers with an old-fashioned, lacy dress over them, she padded down the hall into the kitchen.
She wasn’t at all surprised to find that the table was practically collapsing beneath a mountain of wrapped presents. The wrapping paper was an ugly mustard yellow with bright green ribbon tied neatly around each package.
Looking at the pile of presents while flipping over the bacon, she secretly hoped that one of them contained a punching bag, so Dudley would stop using her as one. He loved racing after her with his mean friends, only to push her over or throw things at her. One time he gave her a really bad bruise on her cheek. After the school had called her uncle to report the incident, she had gotten punished by her uncle for accusing his precious Duddy of doing anything wrong. She hadn’t accused him of anything, the bruise had simply been dark enough not to notice.
Uncle Vernon entered the kitchen and sat down on one of the kitchen chairs with a low grunt. He only glanced at her and then turned his attention to his newspaper.
Aunt Petunia marched past to inspect the sizzling bacon, pausing only to shoot Clara a piercing glare. “Comb your hair, girl!”
Without waiting for a response, she spun around and went right back to adjusting Dudley’s mountain of presents for what must have been the thousandth time. Clara simply stared after her from under her lashes, deliberately ignoring the stray curl hanging in her line of sight.
Despite what Aunt Petunia always said, she thought her hair to be the prettiest thing about herself. It was very curly and bouncy and she had never seen another person with the same dark red colour. It was everything her aunt hated. One time Petunia had grabbed the kitchen scissors and savagely hacked away at the strands, leaving Clara staring down at the floor in tearful misery—only for her hair to grow back twice as curly overnight.
Clara had finished both the bacon and the fried eggs by the time Dudley came barging into the kitchen. He looked so much like his father with his big, pink face, small blue eyes, and wispy blond hair.
“Good morning, Dudley. Happy Birthday,” she offered politely while plating his breakfast. He ignored her and started counting his presents.
After a couple of seconds, his face morphed into one of great betrayal. “That’s only thirty-six. Last year I got thirty-eight! That’s not fair!” His voice rose into a loud, grating whine, not at all fitting for a boy of his size or age.
Clara didn’t care for the following conversation, ignoring her uncle's piercing glare when she plated herself half a strip of bacon and the last scraps of eggs that stuck to the sides of the pan.
She had a long, dreadful day ahead of her, like she did every year on Dudley’s birthday, and she thought she deserved at least a little bit of fuel for it. Her aunt and uncle always took Dudley and his friends out for the day, to adventure parks, laser tag, or the cinema, and every year Clara was left behind. She had to spend the day with Mrs. Figg, the spooky old lady who lived two streets over. She didn’t like it there.
And as if she had jinxed it, the telephone rang just as Dudley ripped the paper off a brand-new video recorder, and Aunt Petunia went to answer it. She was gone for barely a minute before returning to the kitchen, wearing an expression even sourer than usual.
“Vernon, I have bad news,” she said. “Mrs Figg’s broken her leg. She can’t take the girl today.”
His face morphed into one of great distaste and Dudley’s mouth opened in sheer horror, face turning tomato red.
“What do we do now, Vernon?” Aunt Petunia shot her a furious look, which Clara only returned with wide, blinking eyes. It wasn’t like she had personally gone over and snapped Mrs. Figg’s leg in half. "We can't leave her here alone, she’ll burn the house to the ground."
She perked up at that. Perhaps they’d have to take her with them to whatever they were doing today. She bet it would be something fun, and she had never been anywhere fun before.
“We could phone Marge,” Uncle Vernon suggested thoughtfully.
“Oh, don’t be silly, Vernon. She hates the girl.”
Clara pulled a face. Aunt Marge wasn’t exactly at the top of the list of people she liked, either. Truthfully, she didn’t really have a list like that, because she hadn’t met very many nice people in her life yet. She often wondered if all the nice people were hiding somewhere. Perhaps they were just scared of people like Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, which was exactly why they always managed to steer clear of her too.
“I suppose…maybe, we could take her to the zoo with us,” muttered Aunt Petunia slowly, reluctantly.
Dudley made a whiny sound of protest. “But..but we’ll leave her in the car right? She won’t have to come in with us!”
“I wish she could, but that’s a new car. She can’t sit in it alone…”
Dudley began to wail loudly. Like a big baby, Clara thought while still standing behind the counter. She didn’t want to make any sudden moves, lest she attract even more attention to herself and get yelled at.
“Oh, my Duddyboy, don’t cry! Mummy won’t let her spoil your special day!” Aunt Petunia cried, flinging her arms around him like a pair of bony, clinging vines.
There wasn’t much else she could do however, and so it was decided. The girl would have to come along.
An hour later, Clara could hardly believe it; she stood right before the large entrance gates of the zoo. Next to her stood Dudley and his friend Piers Polkiss, who had complained the entire drive about having to share the back seat with Clara. Not that she had much space between the two boys. They had practically squished her together like Marge did with Dudley’s cheeks whenever she came round for a visit. But she had simply ignored that. She had also tuned out Uncle Vernon's hissing lecture regarding the rules, along with his promise that if she instigated any "funny business," she would be locked in her cupboard until Christmas.
By “funny business”, he meant the strange things that sometimes happened around Clara ever since she was a little girl. Things like her hair growing back overnight, or the colour of her backpack changing from an ugly, muddy brown to a nice-looking blue. There was one incident where she had somehow ended up on the other side of the playground just as Dudley and his gang were chasing her down to throw rocks at the back of her head. It had happened in the blink of an eye, and she had gotten a full week locked in her cupboard without any proper meals for it.
She really didn’t do these things on purpose. They just happened. If anything, they made her life on Privet Drive that much harder.
Today, though, nothing could dim her good mood. She was going to the zoo and she was going to enjoy herself!
Although she wasn’t allowed to get a chocolate milkshake like Dudley and Piers did, she did get a small lemony lollipop for free from the nice lady in the van. And as long as she stayed out of their way, she wasn’t bothered by the Dursleys much while looking at all the animals. She liked the giraffes and the lions very much, but she was especially excited about going into the reptile house.
They had a multitude of different reptile species behind lit-up glass windows, a bunch of colorful insects to look at too, and there were plants everywhere. It smelled very earthy. One particular beetle caught the light, its shell shimmering like oil on water and was as large as her entire palm!
She wandered around for a bit, eventually stopping at one of the enclosures near the very back. Behind the thick glass, a massive snake looked like it was taking a nap. It had beautifully shiny scales and had coiled itself up into one great, heavy pile. For a good while, she watched it sleep.
She bet it felt lonely in there, being locked away behind a glass window all day. That’s how she felt being locked away in her cupboard, at least.
Her gaze drifted over to the small plaque mounted next to the glass. It read: Boa Constrictor, Brazil. This specimen was raised in captivity.
“You must be very lonely in there,” she said.
The snake opened its beady eyes. Slowly, it raised its head until it was on a level with hers. She tilted her head to the side, only for the snake to copy her. Clara blinked.
“Can you … hear me?” she wondered aloud.
The snake nodded its head.
“Is this the first time someone is talking to you?”
Another nod, more firmly this time.
That sounded far worse than spending a week locked away in the cupboard.
She smiled, and although she knew logically that snakes couldn’t smile, it very nearly looked like this one did.
The moment was abruptly interrupted by her cousin, who loudly announced his arrival by shoving Clara away from the glass to press his own pudgy face against it.
“Wow, look at this one!”
“I bet it’s extremely venomous! Could easily kill ya',” Piers said.
Clara furrowed her brows. “It’s a boa constrictor. They aren’t venomous.”
“Shut up!” barked Dudley. “You don’t know anything! I bet it would kill you with one bite, you stupid cow!”
She let out a frustrated huff, knowing perfectly well what she was talking about. she had stumbled across a whole book about reptiles in the school library. It had been so fascinating that she had spent the entire recess curled up in one of the library's uncomfortable chairs.
Before she could say any of that, she got pushed again by Dudley, now losing her footing and falling flat on her bottom. Clara scowled up at him, her eyes burning and her fingertips tingling in that strange way they sometimes did. The next thing she knew, and she really didn’t know how, the glass in front of the boa constrictor's enclosure vanished into thin air and the two boys leaped back with terrified shrieks.
Clara blinked in surprise, the tingling now spreading up through her entire upper body.
The snake uncoiled itself rapidly, wasting no time as it slithered out onto the floor right in front of her feet. People all around her started screaming and sprinting for the exit, but Clara didn’t move an inch. Just like before, the snake held her gaze. She could hear Aunt Petunia's hysterical cry echoing in the background, but she cared very little about that.
“Thankssss, little girl,” the snake hissed lowly.
Clara could barely breath out a stunned “You're welcome,” before it quickly slithered past her and toward the exit. The visitors started screaming and scrambling away, their shoes pounding heavily against the floor, which didn’t seem to bother the snake at all. She watched after it curiously, still sitting on the floor when she caught the eyes of Uncle Vernon. He was staring down at her with unbridled fury. Bollocks.
The drive home was unnervingly quiet. The entire way back, Clara kept her fingers tightly crossed, desperately hoping that Uncle Vernon hadn't actually witnessed the disaster in the reptile house with his own two eyes. He could hardly blame her for something that, from an outside perspective, couldn’t possibly be her fault. Oh, who was she kidding? Being blamed for the impossible was practically the story of her life. Even so, she kept her fingers crossed until they began to ache.
There wasn’t actually any yelling or blaming until Piers was safely out of the house and Dudley, who was apparently so shaken up that he couldn’t form a coherent sentence anymore, was sitting in front of the telly, wrapped up in a quilt like a giant pig in a blanket.
But then there was yelling. A whole lot of it. Uncle Vernon was so angry that Clara feared the vein on his forehead might pop. He could hardly speak, shoving her roughly into her cupboard, slamming the door, and clicking all three locks shut. Clara’s shoulders sank in the sudden darkness, and she let out a deflated sigh. So much for having a nice day.
It was dark and a bit damp inside the cupboard, but she couldn't even muster the motivation to reach up and flick on the bare light bulb. So, she just lay there and stared at the ceiling. Her stomach started grumbling after a while and she found herself genuinely missing the tart taste of the small lemon lollipop from the zoo. What a shame she hadn't thought to save it for later.
She often went hungry, shut away in the cupboard for days at a stretch with permission to use the bathroom only twice—once in the morning and once before bed. Having lived with the Dursleys for nearly her entire life, she was used to it by now. That didn’t mean she didn’t dream of a different life every night when she fell asleep. A life where her parents were alive and well, and the three of them lived in a proper home somewhere far, far away from Little Whining.
But her parents were dead, having been killed in a car crash that left little Clara behind, with nothing but a strange-looking scar on the side of her face to remember. The other children at school often teased her about it, for it did look quite unusual; like lightning had struck her right on the brow.
She had tried asking Aunt Petunia about it once, but her aunt had simply glared at her in fury, snapping that she had no intention of entertaining any of Clara’s childish fantasies.
She hadn’t asked again.
Instead, she spent her nights dreaming of a family she had never met, barging right through the front door and whisking her away from this dreadful place. Nobody ever came, of course, but that never stopped her from dreaming.
· · · ·
By the time the summer holidays had started, she had gone back to spending as much time as possible in the Dursleys’ garden; tending to the rosebushes and pulling up every last weed from the little stone path that led down to the tool shed. Secretly, it was her absolute favourite chore to do, but she would never dare tell them that. They would surely find a way to use it against her. So, whenever Aunt Petunia held out the key to the shed, Clara put on her most believable frown and trotted out through the door in the sunroom.
It was a bright, sunny day, and even though Clara much preferred the chill of the colder months, she made the most of it by spending as much time as possible outside. She was crouched down at the moment, helping a small caterpillar cross the path to reach one of the bushes. She tried talking to it, like she had with the snake, but the little bug didn’t answer. It was green and yellow and Clara was certain it would make a beautiful butterfly one day.
Another hour passed until Uncle Vernon bellowed for her to get the post. He and Dudley were sitting in front of the telly, watching a match of cricket. As Clara stepped inside and walked past the living room, she spotted Aunt Petunia standing over the kitchen sink, vigorously rinsing a pile of ugly, lumpy grey clothes. It was supposed to be Clara’s new uniform for her upcoming year at secondary school. There was no way anyone was going to take her seriously in those! She'll look like a bloody trash bag.
There was a pile of letters lying on the doormat. She reached down to gather them up, leafing through a few drab envelopes that could only be some sort of bills. Nothing of interest caught her eye until she reached the very last envelope at the bottom of the stack. It was noticeably heavier than the rest, crafted from thick, stiff parchment rather than ordinary paper.
She slowly set down the rest of the stack on the staircase to her right, not taking her eyes off the letter. It looked strange, with thick yellowing parchment paper, and written on it in swooping letters in what looked like real ink was her name.
She could hardly believe it! No one had ever written to her. Most people she knew didn’t even know her name. And yet, here it was.
Ms C. Evans
The Cupboard under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey
How strange. Whoever sent it knew about the cupboard. Perhaps, if they knew, they might actually come here and do something about it. Maybe that’s what was written in the letter.
With trembling hands, she turned the envelope over. There was a purple wax seal bearing the small outlines of a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake, all surrounding a large letter ‘H’. It looked very old-timey and not at all like something she’d ever be on the receiving end of.
She went to crack seal, but before she had the chance to, Uncle Vernon shouted for her.
“Hurry up, girl!”
Clara frowned, knowing there was zero chance they would let her open it, even with her name written right on the front. So, quickly gathering the rest of the pile, she went and tucked her envelope through the narrow gap beneath her cupboard door before slipping into the living room.
“Anything interesting?” Uncle Vernon asked gruffly, snatching the pile out of her grip. Clara only shook her head and made her way back out to the garden.
There, she found with delight that the little caterpillar had made it safely across the rest of the stone path and was now slowly munching on one of Aunt Petunia’s roses.
“Good job!” She smiled at it and crouched down again to observe it for the rest of the afternoon.
By the time the late afternoon sun began to dip low and paint the sky in deep shades of red, Clara had showered and cooked dinner for the Dursleys. She herself sat at the counter nibbling on a buttered slice of bread, before washing the dishes in record time and retreating to her cupboard.
That’s where she was sitting now, holding the envelope between her fingers. She could hear the muffled sounds of the telly running from the living room, but she wasn’t too worried about her uncle coming in here to check up on her. He never did once his shows were on.
She thought she’d be safe to open it here, but of course nothing was ever that easy. Just as she was about to break the lovely wax seal in two, her cupboard door flew open, slamming hard against the wall to her right with a sharp rattle. Clara jumped so badly that the letter slipped right out of her hands.
“Mummy said you are sup—” Dudley didn’t finish his sentence, his eyes traveling straight to the envelope now laying on her mattress. They widened almost comically, and before Clara could do anything about it, he had snatched it up and was running toward the living room.
“Hey! Give it back, that isn’t yours!”
By the time Clara scrambled out of the cupboard and made it into the living room, Dudley was already standing in front of the sofa, waving her letter in front of his parents' faces.
“Dad! Dad, look! Clara’s got a letter! She hid it in her cupboard!”
Clara froze, eyes unblinking as she watched her uncle take the letter from his son's grabby fingers. His face had turned bright pink and he shot her a dangerous glower. Clara took a step back, but Uncle Vernon grabbed her by the seam of her shirt.
“Now why would you be hiding some—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. What had looked like a thunderstorm of fury building up in his face had quickly turned into unsettling silence. Uncle Vernon stared down at the parchment while the colour of his face changed from red to an ashen grey. Next to him, Aunt Petunia looked at him with furrowed brows.
“What is it, Vernon, darling?”
“This can’t be. P-P-Petunia!” he wheezed.
Clara watched as he held out her letter to his wife with visibly trembling hands. The moment her aunt caught sight of it, her face took on a shade even more concerning than her uncle's. She looked like she was about to faint.
They wouldn't be reacting like this if they didn't know who had sent it, would they? So they had to know. That bothered Clara immensely.
“Oh my goodness, Vernon! It cannot be!”
Dudley tried to grab for a look, but Uncle Vernon merely swatted his pudgy hands away and pointed sharply toward the armchair in front of the telly. But Dudley, who was entirely unused to being told off, simply crossed his arms and stomped his foot. Clara shot him a side-glance.
“No! Get out, both of you! Out!" Uncle Vernon bellowed before pushing Clara toward the door with one hand and Dudley with the other.
Clara, despite everything in her screaming to turn around and snatch back her letter, knew better than to argue. She couldn’t afford to spend another week stuck in the cupboard, assuming her fate hadn’t already been sealed by this new development.
Dudley, however, was not as observant and started whining and complaining even more, to the point where his father simply grabbed him by the scruff of his fat neck and threw him out, shutting the door in his face.
Clara ignored Dudley’s pathetic attempt to listen in on his parents' conversation through the keyhole. Instead, she threw her cousin one last venomous glare—since turn of events was his fault—before quietly climbing back into the dark of her cupboard. Her eyes stung with disappointed tears, but she ignored them, lying down on her mattress and pressing her face into the pillow.
This had not gone the way she had hoped. Not at all.