Star-Crossed | Draco Malfoy

.04

Natalie

Natalie was beyond frustrated when Vernon burned those letters. Those odd little bits of parchment that bore both her's and Harry's names.

They never got letters.

It was possibly the most obscure thing that had ever happened to them. Maybe even trumping the unexplainable happenings they sometimes caused.

The Potter twins had gotten letters.

And as soon as their uncle had gotten hold of them. What had he done? He burned them. Burned them both into nothing more than little piles of ash.

The next few days following that particularly strange event, passed in an even stranger series of events.

More letters arrived at the house, bearing both twins' names. Not only through the post, but also in the most bizarre places.

Vernon began to take extreme measures to make explicitly sure neither Harry nor Natalie would get their hands on any single one of the arriving letters.

Though, Natalie tried her best to scheme ways along with her brother to beat their uncle to the post almost every morning, until they both woke to the sound of a whirring drill.

They cracked the door of the cupboard open to find their uncle screwing a piece of wood in front of the letterbox. A pile of letters were stacked behind them.

But before Natalie could even think of leaping from the doorway to snag two, one for her and one for Harry, they watched Vernon begin to tear them apart, piece by piece, smiling sinisterly in their direction.

Throughout the week, it almost seemed to get worse. They watched with their cousin and aunt in stunned silence as Vernon flitted about the house, attempting to make sure no letters could arrive from anywhere, almost seeming to descend into a state of madness.

Every morning when Petunia would walk her husband out the door, Harry and Natalie would see if somehow they'd be able to sneak through the door and race to the mailbox and steal a letter.

But one morning, when they were peeking from the front door, they were completely and utterly shocked to find nearly the entire neighbourhood covered top to bottom in owls. Flocks of them.

They covered the chimneys, the roofs, the cars, everything.

It obviously unnerved their aunt and uncle, who were in the carpark, waving frantically at the flock that had settled on their uncle's car, attempting to shoo them away, to no avail.

Petunia came racing inside, causing Harry and Natalie to jolt away from the door and race toward the kitchen, pretending to have been in there the whole time, doing their chores and going about cleaning breakfast.

Petunia came back inside in a flurry, completely ruffled and unkempt, as though as she ran she had been being chased by the owls as well.

She promptly set to work baking, ignoring the twins pointedly as she went about cracking the eggs into her bowl.

However, with every egg she cracked, no yolk or white spilled out, only crumpled letters. She began frantically cracking them as the twins were in the living room, Natalie reading and Harry simply lounging across the couch, his legs draped across his sister's lap.

It seemed the more Uncle Vernon tried to stop the letters from coming, the harder they tried to get into the house.

How strange.

Petunia was the first victim, staring at the multitudes of cracked egg shells, and only crumbled letters in her bowl. She promptly let out a disgruntled shout, ripped the letters to pieces and discarded the carton of eggs.

After an entire week of the antics, it was finally Sunday.

Tension had reached almost a boiling point. Uncle Vernon was at his breaking point, and as Harry was going around with cookies, and Natalie was refilling the teacups with any drinks the Durselys so wished, he continued on and on.

"Fine day, Sunday." He hummed, uncharacteristically jovial, "In my opinion, best day of the week. Why is that, Dudley?"

He looked at his son expectantly.

Their cousin was so busy gorging himself on the cookies Natalie had baked after lunch that he didn't answer.

But Petunia was visibly anxious, watching her husband seemingly spiral in his seat.

Instead, Natalie did, rolling her eyes, "Because there's no post on Sundays?" She inquired, already assuming the answer.

Her brother handed their uncle another cookie as he sat up in excitement.

"Ah, too right you are, Natalie!" He grinned as he sat back in his chair, "No post on Sunday, hah! No blasted letters today! No, sir. Not one single bloody letter, no not one."

As I sat down the last cup of tea, both Harry and Natalie noticed a shadow soar across the living room window.

They crept to the window, finding hundreds...maybe even thousands of owls perched across the neighbourhood.

But Vernon was still going on, "No, sir, not one blasted, miserable-" As he was talking a letter suddenly zipped from the fireplace and smacked him right in the face, shutting him up.

There was a slow rumbling as the house began to shake and Harry grasped Natalie's wrist, drawing her protectively to his side.

Then as millions of letters burst from the fireplace, she broke free of his grip, laughing uproariously in joy as the Durselys shrieked in fear around her. Finally they might be able to get their letters.

Harry followed her, smiling as he realised now they might finally get to figure out what the letters said.

Their cousin was not so keen, he was screaming and crying as his mother pushed him to cower behind the lounge, "Make it stop! Please, make it stop!"

Petunia and Vernon continued to howl as the twins jumped to catch the letters swirling in the air like a tornado.

"What is it?" Dudley kept whimpering, "Please, tell me what's happening!"

Natalie jumped onto the coffee table, knocking the teacups she'd placed over and onto the carpet, uncaring of the mess.

She snatched a letter victoriously and grinned as she started to bolt back to the cupboard, Harry racing after her as he grabbed his own letter.

However, Vernon leaped up as well, chasing after them as he bellowed, waving letters away from his face, "Go away! Agh! Give me that! Give me those letters!"

They were inches away from the cupboard when he snatched us both up. Natalie screamed, writhing around, still gripping her letter to her chest.

"Let me go! Let me go!" She shouted as Harry screamed, "Get off!"

Vernon restrained them both on the floor of the foyer as the piece of wood he blocked the letterbox with burst from the screws and fell to the floor with a thud.

More letters came pouring in from the slot. Their uncle's eyes went wide in disbelief as he continued to scream in both fear and rage.

"They're our letters! Ours!" Natalie cried out, "You can't have them!"

"Let go of us!" Harry spat as he too tried his best to break out of their Uncle's iron grip.

"No!" He bellowed, "That's it! We're going away! Far away! Where they can't find us!"

Petunia and Dudley were up from behind the couch, watching the scene unfold as they continued to hide behind the door frame to the living room. Both of them wore twin expressions of pure shock.

But Dudley turned to look up at his mother and whimpered, "Daddy's gone mad...hasn't he?"

Petunia watched her husband, a horrified expression on her face as though she was fearing her son might have been right.

Perhaps Vernon had finally gone mad...