Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone: Chapter 2 - The Vanishing Glass
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Chapter 2
The Vanishing Glass
Almost ten years have passed since the Dursleys discovered Harry Potter at their front door. Dudley is no longer a baby. He is now a large blond boy of almost eleven.
In the Dursley house it is almost like Harry does not exist - there are no photos of him anywhere. But Harry Potter is still there.
“Up, up,up! Wake up! Now! Let’s go!” Harry wakes up suddenly. It is his aunt screaming. She knocks on the door. “Up!” she yells.
Harry wakes up and tries to remember the dream he is having. It is a good dream. There is a flying motorcycle in his dream. He thinks he has had the same dream many times before.
“I’m awake,” says Harry.
“Well, get up! I want you to cook us breakfast. And don’t burn the bacon. I want everything to be perfect. Don’t forget - it’s Dudley’s birthday.”
Dudley’s birthday. Of course. Harry has forgotten. He gets dressed and opens the door to his room. He sleeps in a small, dark room under the stairs. It is more like a closet than a bedroom.
Harry is small and skinny for his age. Maybe that is because he lives in a tiny room under the stairs in his aunt’s house. The only clothes he wears are the larger clothes that Dudley does not use anymore. He has a thin face, black hair and bright green eyes.
He wears round glasses. Dudley is a terrible bully to Harry, and has broken Harry’s glasses many times before. Harry fixes them with lots of tape. The only thing Harry likes about his appearance is a very thin scar on his forehead that is shaped like lightning. Harry has had the scar for as long as he can remember.
He remembers asking his aunt Petunia how he got the scar. “You got that scar in the car crash when your parents died,” she tells Harry. “And don’t ask questions.” ‘Don’t ask questions’ - that is the first rule Harry learns in order to live comfortably with the Dursleys.
Harry is cooking breakfast when Dudley comes into the kitchen with his mother and father. Dudley looks a lot like Uncle Vernon. He has a large pink face, almost no neck, blue eyes that are always wet, and thick blond hair on his fat head. Aunt Petunia says Dudley looks like a baby angel. Harry thinks Dudley looks like a pig wearing a wig.
Suddenly, the phone rings and aunt Petunia talks quickly with the person on the other line. “Mrs. Figg has broken her leg. She can’t stay with him.” Aunt Petunia looks at Harry when she says this. Dudley looks horrified! That means that Harry will have to come with the family on his birthday adventure!
Aunt Petunia looks at Harry as if he has turned into a horrible creature. Uncle Vernon just looks angry. But Harry is excited. He turns to his aunt and says, “You can leave me here. I won’t blow up the house.” Harry likes the idea of spending the afternoon without the Dursleys. It will be like a vacation!
“I guess we have to take him to the zoo now,” says Aunt Petunia angrily. “We can leave him in the car.” “But it’s my special day,” cries Dudley. Dudley is not really crying. He only cires like this to get attention from his parents, and to get everything he wants. “I don’t want him to come!”
But Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon and Dudley have no choice - Harry has to come to the zoo with them. “I’m warning you,” says Uncle Vernon to Harry, “I’m warning you. You had better behave at the zoo or I will lock you in your room under the stairs until the new year!”
“I’m not going to do anything,” says Harry, “I promise!” But Uncle Vernon does not believe him. No one has ever believed Harry Potter.
Harry has a wonderful time at the zoo. In fact, he has the best morning he has had in a long time. But he knows that this perfect day cannot last forever.
After lunch they visit the reptile house. It is cold and dark inside, and filled with all kinds of lizards and snakes and other scaly creatures.
Dudley wants to see the biggest and most dangerous snake. It is a python that is so big that it could wrap around Uncle Vernon’s car twice and crush it like a toy. But at the moment, the python is sleeping. Dudley puts his fat face against the glass and yells to his father, “Make it move!”
Uncle Vernon knocks on the glass, but the snake does not move a scale. “Do it again!” Dudley orders his father. This time Uncle Vernon knocks loudly on the glass, but the snake continues sleeping. “This is boring,” says Dudley, and he walks away.
Harry looks into the python’s tank. He feels bad for the python. The only people who come to see the snake are stupid people who hit the glass and try to make the snake do something interesting. Harry thinks it must be worse than living in a small room under the stairs, where the only visitor is Aunt Petunia who knocks on the door to wake him up. At least, Harry thinks, he can visit the rest of the house.
Suddenly, the snake opens its small, black eyes. It raises its head very, very slowly until it is looking straight into Harry’s eyes. Then, it winks!
Harry looks closely at the snake. Then he looks around quickly to see if anyone is watching. No one is watching. He looks back at the snake and Harry winks, too!
Harry begins to speak to the snake, “It must be very annoying having to deal with all these stupid people who bother you all day.”
The snake nods its head up and down quickly. “Where do you come from?” Harry asks the snake. The snake points its tail at a little sign next to the glass. Harry looks at it. ‘Boa Constrictor, Brazil’. “Was it nice in Brazil?” asks Harry. The snake points its tail at the sign again and Harry reads: ‘This snake was born in the zoo’. “Oh, I see,” says Harry. “So, you have never been to Brazil?” The snake shakes its head from side to side.
Suddenly, from behind Harry, there is a very loud shout, “MUM, DAD! COME AND LOOK AT THE SNAKE! LOOK WHAT IT’S DOING!” It is Dudley! He has seen Harry talking to the snake. Dudley comes walking as fast as his fat body can move and pushes Harry hard to the floor. Then he presses his fat cheeks against the glass and looks inside the tank.
Harry looks up at Dudley from the floor, then suddenly, Dudley screams! The glass disappears and Dudley almost falls into the snake tank. The huge snake climbs out of the tank and slithers along the floor and out of the reptile house. All the people are screaming in fear and panic! As the snake passes quickly by Harry, he thinks he hears the snake say, in a low hissing voice, “Brasssil, here I come! Obrigado, meu amigo.”
Soon, Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, Dudley and Harry all leave the zoo. Dudley is still terrified - he thinks he was almost eaten alive by the snake. He keeps saying, “Harry was talking to the snake. Didn’t you see it? He was talking to the snake. You all saw it, didn’t you?”
When they get home, Uncle Vernon is so angry with Harry that he has difficulty speaking, “Go – under stairs – stay – no dinner!” Harry has lived with the Dursleys for almost ten years. Ten miserable years. He has lived with them since his parents died in that car crash. He doesn’t remember being in the car when his parents died. But sometimes, when he thinks very hard about his past, he remembers a vision of a bright green light and a burning pain on his forehead.
Harry believes this is a distant memory of the car crash. But he does not understand the bright green light. He cannot remember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never speak to him about them. And of course, he is not permitted to ask questions. Because of his isolation, Harry has always dreamed and dreamed of someone, some family he does not know, coming and taking him away. But that has never happened.
The Dursleys are the only family he has. But sometimes, strange things have happened to him. Strangers on the street have come up to him, very strange strangers, in fact. They look at him in a strange way. They wave at him as if they know him. One strange man, an old bald man with a long purple coat, shakes his hand without saying a word. But when Harry tries to look at these strangers more closely, they seem to disappear!
At school, Harry has no friends. Because Dudley is such a bully at school, no one likes to be around strange Harry Potter in his big, old clothes. The strange Harry Potter who wears round, broken glasses.
