Harry & Katherine Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

I woke to the prodding of a human finger jabbing my right side. I groaned and stared up into the big, bright green eyes of my big brother, Harry. We oddly looked nothing alike. He had jet-black hair, I had blonde. He had bright green eyes. I had eyes that flickered from green to blue depending on what I'm wearing. He was a short 5'2, and I was a tall 5'4. One of our only physical similarities was that we wore glasses. Only his were thin-rimmed black, hand-me-down from our biological father, and mine we're more “in with the times” bronze square glasses. They suited our character, however. The biggest difference between us? He had a scar, the shape of a lightning bolt, slightly to the left of his forehead.

And yes, did you catch that? I said BIOLOGICAL father. We don't have our biological parents. We live with our Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and cousin, Dudley Dursley. Before I start on our complaints, let me say something about Harry and my parents. We know practically nothing about them. All we know is who we look like: Harry is practically a clone of our dad, James, but has our mum's, Lily, eyes. I look mostly like our mum, but I was just lucky enough to get dark blondish, straight hair, Lily's fair complexion, and I think I got her sister's (That would be Aunt Petunia, gross!) eyes---Blue! I am actually quite happy with the way that I look. Harry is too, from what I can tell.

Now onto the complaints, but it'll be short. Aunt Petunia must do EVERYTHING that her Dudders requests. There's even a spare room upstairs to fit all of his cree-ap (crap), when it should be Harry and my room. Instead we are forced to sleep crammed in a cupboard under the stairs. Nice, right? Uncle Vernon is one heck of a guy. He has the shortest temper the world has ever known, and he too, is under the Dudders Spell. He is always talking about his job making drills, which actually hauls in a fair amount of money, and he's always this annoying shade of lilac, and when he gets angry, a vein in his forehead throbs. Appealing, right? And Dudley Dursley takes after his dad: fat, annoying, incompetent, and makes it his goal to make Harry and my life a living hell for us. He's a real bully. I'm surprised he even has friends at that school he goes to...Whatsit? Smeltings. That's it. Smelting. Smell. Smelly. Ew.

“Get up, it's five thirty...” Harry poked me again. “Katherine...Get up.” Harry kept on poking my sides. “Get up.” Poke. “Get up.” Poke. “Get up.” Poke. “Get---”

“I'm up!” I paused, looking at Harry's face. “Sorry, I just hate our new wake-up time that Uncle Vernon has set for us just so he can get coffee before he leaves for work.” Harry pulled me up by my shoulders upright in my little cot. He flashed a toothy smile at me. “S'all right, we could both use some sleep. Even the mirror thinks my eyes have lost their shine...Look at me, I'm talking to my mirror.”

“Nice.” I said rolling out of the cot, and groggily putting on my bronze, square glasses. Harry pushed up his own. They always seemed to fall of his face at least ONCE a day, usually at the worst times.

Once out in the kitchen, Harry started to brew some coffee. Whirr, drip, drip, driiiiiiiip.....The coffee machine practically peed the coffee into the pot. Once it was done, Harry removed it from the machine and poured some quickly into a mug. It had “Good Morning, Let the Stress Begin” written around the mug. Harry put down the blue mug, and began to pull ingredients for french toast---Something I am quite a winner at making.

Bump. Grunt. Bump. Grunt. Bump. Grunt. “Damn stairs!” Uncle Vernon snarled as he was chugging his fat self down the steep, steep stairs in our house. After a minutes worth of groaning and grunting, a shadow fell in the archway of the kitchen. “Morning, Uncle Vernon.” That was like our own little inside joke. Morning instead of Good Morning. A morning in the house is never good, and it's either spelled 'Morning' or 'Mourning'. Luckily none of the three people out of the inside joke have caught on yet, and I don't think they ever will. It would be an insult to them...Ha!
“Children,” Vernon nodded to us, and we nodded back to him. He picked up the mug and left the kitchen. “Yes...” I muttered slinking down into a chair.

I then stood and began on the french toast. Mix eggs. Add sugar. Add cinnamon. Add milk. Mix again. Soak bread. Fry bread on pan. And then serve four amazing tasting, french toasted bread on plates and watch as everyone becomes amazed. Unfortunately, there was little syrup left. An alarm rang upstairs.

Dudley's waking up.

My eyes widened as I thought about what I had done to him that night.

His room is rather bland, décor wise, but full of expensive gifts and other electronics. Like I said in the beginning: All his broken things were in Harry and my supposed-to-be room. Inside the door, there was a dresser on the middle of the wall to your left, and a full bed to your right pressed against the wall with a small, square nightstand with his ugly little alarm clock sitting slightly squatly beside it. Directly on the wall ahead of you, there was a window, and everything on that side of the wall was where he kept all his fancy crap. On the fan smack in the middle of the ceiling, was a long chain dangling low enough so that Dudley would only have to use half his arm to turn on the fan. It had a soft toy at the end of it.

While he was sleeping, I rigged his room full of booby traps. I had placed twenty whoopie cushions all around his room and a couple in his bed. Once carefully placing each one all blown up, I took maple syrup (Thus the shortage of syrup for the toast.) and drew an 'X' across his chest. Then took shaving cream and sprayed a hairdo on his head and a pillow. Once that was done, after carefully stepping back out of the ring of whoopie, I went to Aunt Petunia's sewing box and grabbed a color of yarn that she bought four years ago (When I was seven.) and had never used. I then went back to Dudley's room and made a spiderweb with the yarn.

I ran the yarn around every drawer knob, door knob, each window crank, and everything else I could get the thread to go through---or around---easily. In order to get out, I had to army crawl under all the yarn above me. As I was getting prepared to leave, I made the fatal mistake: one of my elbows hit a whoopie cushion, and only one thought went through my mind as I lay there in the middle of the floor.

I am so totally SCREWED.

I grabbed Senior Whoopie and blew the plastic farting machine up again and placed it back where it was. I could hear Dudley groan and my eyes widened. “Holy crap!” I whispered. Dudley didn't move. Maybe he's allergic to the syrup? Nah, he's fat, of course he eats syrup. Allergic to shaving cream? Possible. He doesn't shave yet. Damn, my life just flashed before my eyes. TIME TO GET OUTTA HERE! I army-crawled as fast and as soundlessly as I could out of his room.

The alarm stopped. Chances are, he just slammed his beefy hand on the top of his poor alarm clock who must be touched by that every morning.

I turned to Harry. “Harry, I'm gonna die. I rigged his room last---” A bloodcurdling scream was heard all around the house. I leaned into Harry's ear. “Pray for me.” He patted my shoulder and shook his head to clear his eyes of his long, shaggy, black hair. He needs a haircut. In fact, Uncle Vernon says that about once a week. But whenever he takes Harry, over the course of the next week, all his hair is grown back. It's rather peculiar. I guess boy's hair just grows fast. “Don't worry, if we're going down, we're going down they way we came. Together.”

I loved the strong line. It was something he's always said to me, and I have a feeling, that could be used against someone to his benefit.

We never heard Aunt Petunia get out of her bed. Dudley eventually stopped his screaming and Harry lead me up the stairs to his room.

Harry took one look into Dudley's room. “Nice job.” When I looked in the room, the fan was running, and Dudley was covered in feathers. The syrup had soaked into his clothes and stuck inside his fat folds, and most of the whoopees had been deflated. The shaving cream was smeared all over his pillow, blankets, face, hair, and the collar of his nightshirt.

Waiting, waiting, waiting, aaaaand....THUD! Dudley tripped in the web of yarn. “Yeeeaaaah,” Harry and I said in unison and we high-fived. I still didn't know where the feathers came from. “Dude, I never did the feathers. Where'd the feathers come from?” Harry smirked. “Me. Before I woke you up. I was really careful, don't worry.”

Pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat. Twelve soft noises of a pair of feet coming up the stairs. Aunt Petunia. Harry facepalmed has hand over his scar and muttered. “We are so dead.”