ᴀ ᴅ ʀ ɪ ᴇ ɴ ɴ ᴇ [1]

01. snakes

chapter one

SNAKES

• ────────⋅☾ ☽⋅──────── •

"UP! GET UP! NOW!" Aunt Petunia yells outside the door, her shrill voice the first noise of the day.

I sit up and shake Harry awake; he slept right through it.

"Harry," I whisper yell when he still doesn't wake, "Harry, get up!"

Finally Harry rolls over, mumbling something about motorbikes, gropes around for his glasses, which I stick on his face, and opens his brilliant green eyes.

"Morning, Ada," he groans, "d'you have a good sleep?"

I chuckle darkly.

"Of course not," I reply, digging out a pair of socks from underneath my bed. I pull them on, along with the beaten, black converses that used to belong to my second-cousin, thrice-removed.

"Nightmares, again?" Harry asks.

"Na," I say, and laugh at the expression on his face, "I didn't even risk going to sleep."

I fix my long, thick, snowy hair back in a loose ponytail, and pull a simple burgundy T-shirt off the shelf in front of me, slipping it on. Aunt Petunia's back outside the door.

"Are you up yet?" she demands.

"Nearly," Harry groans.

"Well, get a move on, I want you to look after the bacon, and, between the two of you, try not to burn it. Everything needs to be perfect for Duddy's Birthday."

I curse. Luckily, Harry groans at the exact same time, so Aunt Petunia doesn't get the full blast of my foul-mouthedness.

"What did you say?" Aunt Petunia snaps. She's sharp, that woman.

"Nothing, nothing," Harry and I say in unison.

As soon as Aunt Petunia's footsteps have faded, Harry groans even louder.

"Dudley's birthday," he complained, "how could I have forgotten?"

• • •

The table is almost hidden beneath all of Dudley's birthday presents. It looks strangely alike garish Christmas shopping windows into which a convenience store has tried to cram one of every item it sells.

It seems as though Dudley has gotten the computer he wants, not to mention the second television and the racing bike. Why Dudley wants a new racing bike is a mystery, as Dudley is very fat and hates exercise - unless, of course, it involves punching somebody.

Dudley's favorite punch-bag is Harry, as he soon realised that every time he punched me, he somehow ended up with a broken leg or busted computer several hours later. Harry is a fast runner though - or at least much faster than Dudley.

Perhaps it has something to do with living in a small cupboard, but both Harry and I have always been small and skinny for our age. This however, is the only similarity in our appearance. While Harry has a thin face, knobbly knees, messy, jet-black hair, bright green eyes behind sellotaped glasses and a thin scar on his forehead, I have unnatural pale skin that feels as hard and cool as marble, snowy hair that falls to my shoulders, long, strong legs, high cheekbones and unnerving eyes - green, but so pale they're almost grey.