The Potter Twins and the Chamber of Secrets

II

As with the previous summer, Harry and I spent the next week and a half locked in our bedroom. The only difference was that this time we had marginally more space than the year before. Vernon only let us out to inform us that he'd had a letter from the Ministry of Magic - one warning us not to use magic outside of school and threatening prosecution if we did it again, even though it had been Dobby who performed the levitation charm.

"You're not allowed to use magic," Dudley taunted to us, when we brandished our wands at him.

"You're not allowed to use magic!" Vernon hissed, when he found us doing our summer homework.

"You're not allowed to use magic," Petunia insisted, when we asked her to let the owls out and said we'd get them back within an hour.

Overall, the summer had gotten progressively worse. Harry and I were beginning to wonder if we'd ever get back to Hogwarts, if Dobby had achieved his counter-productive aims, if we'd been forgotten.

"Life sucks," I moaned one morning, when Vernon had gone so far as to put bars on the window of our bedroom.

"Yeah, it totally does," said Harry. It wasn't really like Harry to agree with me when I was being pessimistic. He usually reprimanded me for being so whiny, but the situation was getting us both down.

I imagine things would have gone even further downhill if Ronald Weasley and his brothers hadn't turned up in a flying car. No, that is not a joke. That's what actually happened.

We'd both finished summer work and we're pretty much bored out of our minds, so the two of us were jolted out of our skins when there was a loud rap on the window, through the bars that Vernon had fitted on. I turned round to see the identical grins of Fred and George Weasley, sitting in the front of a blue Ford. Ron was in the back; he waved when I saw him.

The unusual thing about this Ford was that it wasn't on the ground, hence why George had been able to knock on the window. The car was flying, floating in one place. Harry rushed over to the window and pulled it open, and Fred yelled, "alright, Potters?"

"Shhh!" Harry hissed.

"Oh, right," George said. "We're not meant to be here."

"What are you doing here?" I asked in disbelief.

Ron's head disappeared for a moment and then he popped up with a large chain with a clip on the end. "We're here to rescue you, of course," he grinned. "Get your things!" He passed me the clip through the bars. I attached it to the metal and watched in awe as Fred gunned the engine, wrenching the bars off the window with a horrible crack. There was yelling from the other bedrooms, and Harry climbed into the back and beckoned frantically as I hauled the trunks and owl cages towards the window. Ron helped us lift them in, just as Vernon burst through our locked door and sprinted towards me.

I took a flying leap towards the open back door of the car, landed in the footwell, and yelped as Vernon grabbed my ankle. Harry and Ron both took a hold of my arms and pulled, I howled at the strain in my joints, our uncle got yanked forward, and as Fred slammed his foot on the accelerator Vernon got pulled out of our open window and landed heavily in the bushes below. Petunia's fading screams rang out as the twins manoeuvred the car away and into the sky.

"You're free!" Fred laughed, a huge grin on his face that was replicated by Harry and I. We were free.