Jami Evans and the Sorcerer's Stone - Year 1

Zoo Incident

In the reptile house a few hours later, we had stopped to stare at a few of the magnificent creatures. Dudley, being the annoying git he was, was whining to Uncle Vernon about a snake that wouldn't move.

"Make it move." He whined at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped on the glass, but the snake didn't budge.

"Do it again." Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped on the glass smartly with his knuckles but the snake just snoozed on. I would do that if I was the snake and someone as dumb as the Dursleys would do that to me.

"This is boring." Dudley moaned. He shuffled away.

Harry and I moved in front of the tank and we stared down at the snake. I wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredom itself--no company except stupid people drumming their fingers on the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse than having a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was Aunt Petunia hammering on the door to wake you and your sibling up; at least we got to visit the rest of the house.

The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly, it raised it's head so it met our eyes. It winked.

Harry and I looked at each other then back at the snake. We both peered around to see if anyone was watching. They weren't. We both looked at the snake and winked back.

The snake jerked its head towards Uncle Vernon and Dudley, then raised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave us a look that said clearly: "I get that all the time."

"I know." Harry muttered, as if the snake could hear us.

"It must be really annoying." I added.

The snake nodded vigorously.

"Where do you come from anyways?" Harry asked.

The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to the glass. We peered at it. Boa Constrictor, Brazil.

"Was it nice there?" I asked.

The boa jabbed its tail at the sign again and we read on: This specimen was bred in the zoo. "Oh I see--so you've never been to Brazil?" Harry asked.

As the snake shook its head, a deafening shout behind Harry and I made all three of us jump. "DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'T BELIEVE WHAT ITS DOING!"

Dudley came waddling over as fast as he could. "Out of the way, you." He punched me in the ribs.

Caught by surprise, I fell hard against the concreate floor. Harry knelt down to see if I was okay. What happened next happened so fast no one saw how it happened-- one second, Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next they had leapt back with howls of horror.

I sat up and gasped; the glass front of the boa constrictor's tank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly, slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile house screamed and started running for the exits.

As the snake slid swiftly by us, I could've sworn a low, hissing voice said, "Brazilll, here I come... thanks, amigos..."

The keeper of the reptile of the house was in shock. "But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"

The zoo keeper himself made Aunt Petunia a cup of strong, sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley could only gibber. As far as we had seen, the snake hadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as it passed, but by the time we were all back in Uncle Vernon's car, Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worst of all, for us at least, was Piers calming down enough to say, "The twins were talking to it, weren't you, James, Harry?"

Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house before starting on us. He was so angry he could hardly speak. He managed to say, "Go -- cupboard -- stay -- no meals," before he collapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him a large brandy.

I turned over, seeing Harry look at his watch. I wanted to say something about the incident, but I didn't think Harry wanted to talk to me at the moment.

We'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserable years, as long as we could remember, ever since we'd been babies and our parents had died in that car crash. We couldn't remember being in the car when our parents had died. Sometimes, when I strained my memory during long hours in our cupboard, I came up with a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light. This, I supposed, was the crash, though I couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. I couldn't remember my parents at all. Our aunt and uncle never spoke about them, and of course we were forbidden to ask questions. There were no photographs of them in the house.

When we had been younger, Harry and I had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take us away, but it had never happened; the Dursleys were our only family. Yet sometimes we thought (or maybe hoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know us. Very strange strangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowed to him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. After asking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushed them out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking old woman dressed all in green had waved merrily at me once on a bus. A bald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand in the street the other day and then walked away without a word. The weirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed to vanish the second we'd tried to get a closer look. At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's gang hated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy old clothes and broken glasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang.