Happy Potter and the Smiling Stone

-Chapter 1- The Dumb's

Mr and Mrs Dumb of number four Prosaic Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly boring, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything giggly or exciting, because according to them it was nonsense, and they couldn't stand that.

Mr Dumb was the director of a firm called Grunt-ings, which made scary sharp things that didn't look friendly or cuddly. He was an obese, beef-loving man with hardly any neck, so it was very hard to lean his head back to laugh. He also had a mean looking candy man moustache. Mrs Dumb was stick thin, blonde and had twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbours ungrateful happy lives. The Dumb's had a mini son called Dum-Dum and in their biased opinion there was no fatter boy anywhere.

The Dumb's had everything they wanted, but they also had a dark secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover how dark and secretive it is. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs Potter was Mrs Dumb's sister, but they hadn't laughed together for several years, in fact, Mrs Dumb pretended she didn't have a sister, because she and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDumb as it was possible to be. The Dumb's shrieked to focus their mini minds on the Potters.The Dumb's knew they had a criminal son, but they had never seen him. This boy was another good reason for keeping the Potters away, they didn't want Dum-Dum giggling with a child like that.

When Mr and Mrs Dumb woke up on the gloomy, rainy Monday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that happy and joyful things would be happening all over the country. Mr Dumb failed to whistled as he picked out his most dull tie for work and Mrs Dumb tutted as she meanly slammed a screaming Dum-Dum in his baby chair.

None of them noticed a tawny owl flutter past the window.

At half past eight, Mr Dumb picked up his heavy briefcase, pecked Mrs Dumb on the cheek and tried to kiss Dum-Dum goodbye but missed, because Dum-Dum was now having a tanty and 'abstractly' decorating the old-granny walls with his cereal. "Little chubs" chortled Mr Dumb as he left the house. He got into his old car and unsafely backed out of number fours drive.

It was on the corner of the street that he noticed the first sign of something out-of-the-ordinary, a cat reading a map. For a second Mr Dumb didn't realise what he had seen - then he jerked his head around to look again. There was a tabby cat sitting on the corner of Prosaic Drive, but there wasn't a map in Mr Dumb's short sight. What could he have been thinking of? It must have been a trick of the sun. Mr Dumb blinked and stared at the cat. It stared back. As Mr Dumb drive around the corner and up the road, he stalked the cat in his mirror. It was now reading the sign that said Prosaic Drive, - no, looking at the sign; cats were too dumb to read maps or signs. Mr Dumb gave himself a little shake and put the cat out of his mind. As he drove towards town he thought of nothing exact a huge order of scary things he was hoping to get that day.

But on the pointy edge of town, scary things were driven out of his mind by something else. As he plonked his obese buttocks in the usual morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing a lot of weirdos about. People in... cloaks? Mr. Dumb couldn't bear people who dressed in clowny clothes -- it was like they wanted to be funny! Drumming his fat fingers on the steering wheel his eyes fell on a huddle of these embarrassingly ecstatic people that have never heard of personal space. They were whispering over-excitedly together. Mr. Dumb was absolutely enraged to see that a few of them weren't young at all; why, that man had to be taller than him, and wearing a vomit-green cloak! Who did he think he was? But then it struck Mr. Dumb that this was probably some stop stupid circus act - these people were obviously collecting for some ungrateful charity...
yes, that's it. The traffic finally moved on and a few minutes later, Mr. Dumb arrived in the Grunt-ings parking lot, his peanut brain back on scary things.

Mr. Dumb always sat with his fat back to the window in his cubicle on the ninth floor. If he hadn't, he would have found it way harder to focus on work that morning. He didn't see the owls swooping past in blinking daylight, though people down in the street did; they pointed and gazed, flies in their mouths as owl after owl after owl after owl broke the speed limit. Most of them had never seen an owl even at nighttime. Mr. Dumb, however, had a perfectly ordinary Monday morning (with no speed limits broken). He yelled at five different people. He made several important telephone calls and shouted a lot more. He was in a very ugly mood until lunchtime, when he thought he'd stretch his and walk across the road to buy himself a bum from the bakery.

He'd forgotten all about the people in dresses until he passed a group of them next to the baker's. He eyed them angrily as he passed. He didn't know why, but they made him uneasy. This bunch were whispering excitedly, too, and he couldn't see a single collecting tin. It was on his way back past them, clutching a large doughnut in a bag, that he eavesdropped into what they were saying.

"The Potters, that's right, that's what I heard yes, their son, Happy"

Mr. Dumb stopped dead. Evilness filled him. He peered back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something to them, but was too lazy to go up to them.

He waddled back across the road, leaped back up to his office, yelled at his secretary not to disturb him, seized his ancient phone, and had almost finished punching in his home number when he changed his mind. He slammed it back down and stroked his candy man moustache, thinking... no, he was being absolutely stupid. Potter wasn't such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a kid called Happy. Come to think of it, he wasn't even sure his nephew was called Happy. He'd never even seen the boy. It could've been Hopeless. Or even Harry! Or Happy... There was no point in worrying Mrs Dumb; she always got so upset at any mention of her sister. He didn't blame her - if he was related to someone like that...
He was.