Chapter Text
Nella dodged Dudley’s Smeltings stick - his aim was getting better already, and she filed that worry away for later - and went to get the mail.
Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Aunt Marge, a brown envelope that looked like a bill, and a letter. For Nella.
Miss N. Potter
The Cupboard Under the Stairs
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging, Surrey
Nella stared at it lying there on the mat as if it were a snake that would bite her. No one, in her entire life, had ever written to her. Who would? She had no friends, no other relatives, she hardly ever left the house, unless it was to weed the flowerbeds or go to Mrs Figg’s or hide from Dudley at the park down the road.
Nella picked it up.
The envelope was thick and heavy and made of yellowish parchment, and somehow she knew it hadn’t come from Mrs Figg. The emerald green ink glimmered faintly as she turned it over and saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms: a lion, an eagle, a badger, and a snake, all surrounding a large letter H.
“Hurry up girl!”
Nella jumped and nearly dropped the mail at her uncle’s impatient bark. She quickly slid her letter under the door to her cupboard and hurried back into the kitchen. “S-sorry, Uncle Vernon.”
“What took you so long?” he barked, snatching the bill and postcard out of her hands.
“I w-was looking at the postcard,” Nella lied quickly. “Isn’t that lighthouse beautiful?”
Uncle Vernon grunted and flipped over the card. “Marge is ill,” he reported.
Nella was ignored for the rest of the meal. After breakfast, Nella cleared the table, did the dishes, took out the trash, and washed the living room windows, before Aunt Petunia told her to get out of the house for the afternoon. She was going to do some vacuuming and didn’t want Nella underfoot, tracking dirt from room to room.
Nella headed down the street to the park. The way the adults in the neighborhood talked about it, it wasn’t even a nice park, but it was away from Number 4, and Dudley rarely felt like walking so far to bully her. There was almost never anyone else around, so Nella had her pick of the swings or the squeaky merry-go-round or the slide that was somehow always too hot to slide down. Sometimes, if the Dursleys had gone out and the weather was especially fine, Mrs Figg would bring Nella here for a picnic of slightly stale sandwiches and slightly sour strawberries and slightly dry tea cakes, and she would tell Nella about the time she’d found Tufty under the slide as a kitten.
Nella slipped into the park through the gap in the hedge. She preferred this to the creaking gate that always announced her arrival. There was one big, old oak tree, older than the entire neighborhood, at one end of the park. There had been a plaque once, something about how the tree was old and needed to be protected, but it had been taken away for repairs after some sort of vandalism, and it hadn’t been put back. The tree had great, sweeping branches that were bigger around than Nella was, and Nella figured the tree could look after itself. If she was quick and quiet about it, she could slip into the park and climb up among the leaves without any of the nosy ladies in Wisteria Walk noticing and telling her off. Nella scrambled up to her favorite branch and lay back to look at the dancing leaves overhead. It was quite a comfortable spot, all things considered.
Nella headed for home when the sun began sinking toward the rooftops of Wisteria Walk. If she was late for dinner, she wouldn’t get any, but if she was too early, she’d make Aunt Petunia angry for getting underfoot. It was a horrible sort of waiting game, but Nella had grown quite good at it over the years. She’d head home and peek through the kitchen window. If Aunt Petunia was working on dinner, she’d go in and offer to set the table, so that even if she was earlier than her aunt would like, there was a point to her being there. If she was still cleaning somewhere else in the house, Nella would hide in the hydrangeas in front of the living room window and listen for signs her aunt was heading to the kitchen. If she was still there when Uncle Vernon came home, she could tell him she was pulling weeds.
She knew something was badly wrong when she came around the curve by Number 8 and saw that Uncle Vernon’s car was home. She glanced at the slowly sinking sun. He shouldn’t be home for at least an hour yet. She slowed down to think. Uncle Vernon never came home early. Maybe he was ill? Maybe something had happened to Dudley? Whatever it was, she had a sinking feeling in her gut that she was late.
Sure enough, the front door opened as Nella reached the end of the driveway. “Get in here,” Uncle Vernon growled, glancing around to make sure none of the neighbors were watching.
Her heart felt like it was trying to climb out of her throat as she scooted past him through the door. At first, she couldn’t think what she could have done to upset him, but then she saw her cupboard door standing open. Aunt Petunia had been vacuuming.
The letter.
“Kitchen, now.”
Aunt Petunia was sitting at the table, a cup of tea in front of her, the strange letter lying beside it. She looked pale and upset.
“Sit,” her uncle barked, shoving Nella into a chair across from Aunt Petunia. “So…”
Nella bit her lip. This was bad.
“Your aunt called me at work today,” Uncle Vernon said with forced calm. “Said you’d had a letter. Said you’d hidden it in your cupboard.”
Nella didn’t answer. She didn't think her voice would work with her throat all knotted up around her pounding heart.
“Well? What have you got to say for yourself, girl?”
“I-I’m sorry," she croaked. "I didn’t m-mean to hide it — not really. It surprised me is all, and I didn’t know what to do, so I figured I’d deal with it later on. Th-then I forgot about it. I’m sorry you had to come home early, Uncle Vernon.”
“You’re sorry, are you?”
“Y-yes, sir.”
“An accident?”
Nella nodded, though she knew it couldn’t possibly be this easy, not if Aunt Petunia had called him home from work. The letter was open now, the envelope ripped nearly in two and that thick, yellow parchment crumpled and creased. Something in the letter had upset them, possibly even more than the simple fact of Nella receiving it.
Uncle Vernon’s voice was a dangerous hiss. “And when I asked you what took you so long this morning, and you fed me some rubbish about pretty lighthouses, I suppose that was an accident, too?”
“I —“
“Quiet!” Uncle Vernon roared, swatting Nella upside the head hard enough to knock her glasses askew.
Nella went very still, clasping her hands in her lap to stop herself from touching her stinging ear.
“You are in enough trouble already, girl. You lied this morning. You lied again just now. You hid this letter on purpose. You knew you weren’t meant to have it. And all this cost me half a day’s work on one of my biggest accounts! You’ll be paying for all of that when we’ve finished here, make no mistake! What I want to know right now is how much of this letter you read before your aunt interrupted your scheming.”
“N-none of it, Uncle Vernon,” Nella said. “I swear. I w-was still trying to —“
“You’re a nasty little liar,” Aunt Petunia snarled suddenly, gripping her teacup so hard her fingertips turned white. “How do you expect us to believe anything you say, you little brat?”
“No, I swear! I didn’t even open it!”
Uncle Vernon hit her again, this time across the face, and her cheek warmed to match her ear.
“Please! I didn’t open it! Th-the seal! I hadn’t broken the seal! It was still sealed, wasn’t it?”
Her uncle looked at her aunt, who nodded once, her lips a thin white line.
Uncle Vernon sagged in obvious relief, which only confused Nella more. “The fact remains, you’ve caused all sorts of trouble for your aunt today, girl. Now, we’re going to go upstairs and wash the lies out of that treacherous mouth of yours, and then you’re going to come down and help your aunt get dinner on the table, and if I hear one single word of backtalk, you’ll wish you’d never been born. You understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
***
When he got back from work the next day, Uncle Vernon visited Nella in her cupboard. Nella swallowed hard and winced at the lingering taste of soap at the back of her dry throat. Of course she hadn’t been allowed to eat any of the dinner she’d helped make the night before, and Aunt Petunia hadn’t even left her the usual crackers and water this morning.
She scooted into a corner to make room for her uncle’s bulk as she tried desperately to think if there was anything else for him to be angry about. She hadn’t made a sound all day since thanking her uncle for letting her out to use the bathroom before he left for work that morning, so she couldn’t have disturbed Aunt Petunia. The cupboard was temporarily spider-free, thanks to her aunt’s vacuuming the day before. Her stolen lightbulb was safely hidden away in the mouse hole beneath the lowest stair at the end of the cupboard, and her clothes were neatly folded on the narrow shelf at the head of her bed. Still, she didn’t dare speak as he stared around at the tiny space.
“I hear you were very good today,” he said at last. “Not a peep out of you. You know you did very wrong yesterday hiding that letter, don’t you, Nella?”
Nella nodded at once. “Yes, Uncle Vernon. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sure you are.”
“I didn’t mean to hide it,” Nella offered timidly. “I just… I’d never had a letter before. I didn’t know what to do with it.”
“And now you do, don’t you? You bring them straight to me or your aunt. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And it wasn’t really for you, anyway. It was a mistake.” Nella knew this wasn’t true — it had had her cupboard on it — but she didn’t argue. Uncle Vernon forced his face into a rather painful-looking smile. “Your aunt and I have been talking today… You’re really getting a bit big for this cupboard, aren’t you? We thought it might be nice if you moved upstairs, into Dudley’s second bedroom.”
“W-why?” asked Nella, sensing a trap but unable to see the shape of it.
“Don’t ask questions!” snapped her uncle, the smile gone without a trace. “Take your things upstairs, now!”
Nella was able to carry all her things upstairs in one trip. Dudley’s second bedroom, which was usually filled with all the toys and things that wouldn’t fit in his first bedroom, was nearly empty. Gone were the broken televisions, the empty birdcage, the bent air rifle, and the unread books. All that was left in the room was the bed, the desk, the wardrobe, and an empty bookshelf. She put her clothes in the wardrobe and sat down on the bed that was so much softer than her old one in the cupboard, but she couldn’t enjoy it. She could hear Dudley’s tantrum downstairs, and she lay back and resigned herself to a lot of running and hiding in her future.
***
The next morning at breakfast, everyone was rather quiet. Dudley was in shock. He’d cried, screamed, flipped the kitchen table, been sick on purpose, kicked his mother, and put his Smeltings stick through the television set in the living room, and still, he didn’t have his second bedroom back.
Nella was in pain. Dudley had caught her three times with his Smeltings stick so far this morning. As his parents seemed to feel that this was a healthier outlet for his frustrations than the tantrums of the day before, they didn’t even bother to comment when he caught her for the fourth time, whacking her around the shins underneath the table. However, when the mail arrived, Uncle Vernon took a bizarre sort of pity on the limping Nella and made Dudley go and get it. They could hear him banging things with his Smeltings stick all the way down the hall.
“There’s another one!” he shouted. “’Miss N. Potter, the Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet drive —“
With a strangled cry, Uncle Vernon leapt from his seat and ran down the hall. There was the sound of a scuffle in the hallway, and several bangs from the Smeltings stick, but then Dudley and Uncle Vernon reentered the kitchen. Both were red-faced and breathing hard. Uncle Vernon had Nella's letter clutched in one hand, and he seized her right ear with the other.
“Go to your cupboard — I mean, your bedroom,” he wheezed at her, dragging her out of the chair and shoving her toward the hall. “Dudley — go — just go.”
Dudley shoved past Nella and stormed up the stairs. At the top, he lashed out suddenly with the Smeltings stick, knocking Nella’s feet out from under her. He plopped his full weight down on top of Nella’s back and smashed her face into the carpet.
“I dunno what sort of freaky trick you pulled this time,” he hissed, “but that room is mine. You’ll get out, if you know what’s good for you.”
Nella couldn’t get a breath in past her cousin’s crushing bulk, but he seemed satisfied with her pained wheeze, and he climbed off of her and finished storming into his bedroom, slamming his door hard enough to knock photos off the wall. Nella crawled into her own room and shut the door as quietly as she could, hoping she wouldn’t be blamed.
Lying on the floor next to the furnace vent, she could hear her uncle’s voice from the kitchen.
“I won’t have one in the house, Petunia!”
Aunt Petunia said something indistinct but clearly worried.
“We’ll ignore it! Best way to deal with these people. If they get an answer, they’ll think they’ve got us on the ropes! We ignore them, and they’ll give up on the girl. You’ll see.”
Later that night, Nella paced her new room, trying to keep her mind off her growling stomach. She hadn’t been let out for lunch or dinner that day, and she’d only managed a slice of toast and half a fried egg before the mail had arrived that morning. Aunt Petunia had brought her a sleeve of soda crackers and a bottle of water before she went to bed, but Nella was rationing them, in case the situation with the letters got any worse. Someone knew she had moved out of her cupboard, and they seemed to know she hadn’t received her first letter. Surely that meant they’d try again?
If she was going to be blamed for the letters anyway, she decided she’d rather at least know what was going on. She’d often daydreamed of long-lost relatives coming to rescue her from her aunt and uncle’s house, but what if there really was someone with the power to do something to help her? She’d never really dared hope for such a thing before. And if it was someone wanting to take her away, she couldn’t understand why her aunt and uncle were so upset about it. They hated Nella. She’d have thought they’d jump at any chance to be rid of her.
Over the next few hours, she talked herself into and out of her plan, but in the end, as the first pinkish tinge rose over the houses on Privet Drive, she decided she had to do something. She had to know who the mysterious letter writer was and what they wanted. If it made things worse, so be it. It was making things worse already.
Nella picked up her sneakers and tiptoed downstairs without turning on any of the lights. She was going to wait for the postman on the corner of Privet Drive and get the morning’s mail first. She knew where he parked each morning to do the deliveries for the street. She would hide in the bushes in case the Dursleys came to find her, but with a little luck —
Nella leapt into the air as something big and squashy on the doormat let out a groan under her foot. Uncle Vernon was lying at the foot of the front door on an air mattress, clearly making sure Nella didn’t do exactly what she’d been trying to do. He shouted at Nella for about half an hour, hit her with her sneakers from time to time to emphasize important points, and then told her to go and make him a cup of tea.
Nella shuffled miserably off into the kitchen, and by the time she got back, the mail had arrived. She could see three letters addressed in green ink.
“Uncle Vernon —“ she began, but Uncle Vernon was already shredding the letters into thin strips before her eyes.
Nella was sent out to weed the back flower beds without breakfast, and when she came inside again hours later, it was to discover that Uncle Vernon had stayed home from work. He’d nailed up the mail slot and installed a deadbolt lock on the door to Nella’s new bedroom, and he seemed quite pleased with his handiwork. He allowed Nella a shower and a sandwich, and then locked her in her bedroom for the night with a satisfied smirk.
***
On Friday, no less than a twelve letters arrived for Nella, pushed under the front door, or slotted through the sides, and a handful were even found jammed in around the window frame on the back door.
Uncle Vernon stayed home again, burned all the letters, and boarded up all the cracks around the front and back doors, so no one could go out. He made Nella hand him the nails while he lectured her about respect for property, and then he sent her back to her room again without any food. While this was in no way fair, Nella knew she’d gotten off incredibly easy.
***
On Saturday, Aunt Petunia relented and told Nella she could have breakfast, only to shriek as she discovered twenty-four letters rolled up and hidden inside each of the two dozen eggs their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon bellowed at the poor woman who answered the phone at the dairy, Aunt Petunia ran the eggs and letters through her food processor and made Nella eat the resulting paste.
“Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?” Dudley asked Nella in amazement as she hung her head over the toilet afterward, her stomach aching.
***
On Sunday morning, Uncle Vernon unlocked Nella’s bedroom door looking tired and rather ill, but happy. “No post on Sundays,” he said cheerfully as he held the door open for Nella. “No damn letters today!“
Something came whizzing down the kitchen chimney as they walked into the kitchen and caught him sharply above the eyebrow. A moment later, dozens and dozens of letters came pelting out of the fireplace like bullets. The Dursleys ducked, but Nella lunged forward, trying to catch one.
“Out! OUT!” Uncle Vernon seized Nella by the hair and dragged her out into the hall. As soon as Aunt Petunia and Dudley had cleared the door, he slammed it shut. They could still hear letters bouncing off the walls and floor.
“V-vernon, dear?” Aunt Petunia sounded terrified.
“We’re going away,” he answered, a muscle ticking in his jaw. “Pack some clothes. Five minutes.”
Ten minutes later, they had wrenched their way though the boarded-up front door and were in the car, speeding toward the highway. Dudley was sniffling in the backseat. His father had hit him upside the head for holding them up while he tried to fit his television in his sports bag. When the tears didn’t get him any sympathy, he got angry and demanded to know where they were going, but Aunt Petunia didn’t know, and Uncle Vernon seemed incapable of speech.
By nightfall, Dudley was howling mad. He’d never had such a bad day in his life. He was hungry. He’d missed a whole day’s worth of television programs he’d wanted to see. And he’d never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer. Nella bore the brunt of his bad mood, in the form of slaps and kicks and pinches, but as her aunt and uncle also seemed to think this whole mess was her fault, they once again did nothing to curb Dudley’s temper.
They stopped at last at a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city. They ate greasy sausage rolls for dinner, but Dudley wrestled most of Nella’s away from her. Her aunt and uncle took one of the two creaky beds in the room, and Dudley took the other, while Nella sat up on the windowsill, listening to the Dursleys snore, staring down at the lights of passing cars and wondering where the letter writer was now.
***
They ate cold scrambled eggs and stale toast for breakfast the next day. Dudley complained loudly about the food, but Nella, who hadn’t had a proper meal in days, wolfed it down before her cousin could decide he wanted her helping as well as his own.
They had just finished, when the woman from the front desk came over to their table. “’Scuse me, but are you Miss N. Potter? Only I got about an ‘undred of these at the front desk.” She held up a letter so she could read the green ink address:
Miss N. Potter
Room 17
Railview Hotel
Cokeworth
Nella reached for the letter, but Uncle Vernon caught her hand and dragged it beneath the table in a crushing grip. The woman stared, but Nella knew better than to make a sound, even as her eyes watered.
“I’ll take them,” said Uncle Vernon, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.
Back at the car, Uncle Vernon pulled Nella aside, twisting her ear viciously. “You listen here, girl. Next letter you touch is going to get you your fingers broken. Understand?”
“Y-yes, Uncle Vernon,” Nella whimpered, unable to nod with his grip on her ear. The fingers on her right hand were already stiff and swollen from her uncle’s grip. She wasn’t so sure they weren’t broken already, but she certainly didn’t want to see how much worse he could damage them.
***
“Daddy’s gone mad, hasn’t he?” Dudley asked dully that evening, when Uncle Vernon had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared without a word. “It’s Monday. The Great Humberto’s on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television.”
Nella started. She’d forgotten what day it was entirely. Tomorrow, Tuesday, would be her eleventh birthday. It wasn’t as though her birthdays were ever really special or fun — last year, she'd gotten a pair of Uncle Vernon's old socks and a bad sunburn from staying out all day doing yard work — but still, you weren’t eleven every day.
After an hour or so, Uncle Vernon came striding back, grinning broadly. He was carrying a long, thin package and bouncing a little as he walked.
“Found the perfect place,” he called as he unlocked the car. “Come on! Everyone out!”
It was very cold outside the car, and great, fat drops of rain had begun to fall.
“Storm forecast for tonight,” said Uncle Vernon gleefully, pointing to a large rock way out to sea. Perched atop the rock was the most miserable little shack imaginable. “Come on! I’ve already got us some rations, and a gentleman in the shop kindly agreed to lend us his boat!”
He ushered them into a rickety-looking old rowboat bobbing on the iron-gray waves. He rowed for what felt like hours, and by the time they reached the rock, Nella felt sure she’d never be warm again. Finally, he led them up a worn set of stone stairs and into the horrible little house. The inside was, if anything, worse than the outside. It smelled strongly of seaweed. The wind whistled through gaps in the wooden walls. There were only two rooms, and the fireplace was damp and empty.
“Could do with some of those letters now, eh?” said Uncle Vernon happily. The manic cheer was almost more frightening than the furious silence of the car ride had been. Nella didn’t think the letter writer would give up just because they were out at sea, and she was terrified of what would happen when Uncle Vernon woke up to thousands of letters collapsing the roof or something.
Uncle Vernon passed out the “rations,” which turned out to be a banana and a bag of chips for each of them. Dudley inhaled his meager dinner and then wrestled Nella’s banana away from her. She had the fleeting satisfaction of seeing his face fall when he opened the banana peel to see the pulpy mess he’d made of it, but then her stomach gave an almighty growl, and the satisfaction was gone.
As night fell, the promised storm settled in around the hut on the rock. Salty sea spray misted in through the walls, and a fierce wind made the whole building shudder. Aunt Petunia found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and Uncle Vernon went off to the lumpy bed in the next room, and Nella was again ignored. She scavenged a ragged bit of fabric from beneath the sofa and curled up on the driest bit of floor she could find.
Nella dozed fitfully as the storm grew more and more ferocious. She hadn’t slept a wink the night before, and Dudley had prodded her awake with a nasty smirk any time she’d fallen asleep in the car, but still, she only managed a few minutes of sleep at a time. She could tell by the lighted dial on Dudley’s watch, which hung over the edge of the sofa on his fat wrist. Her eyes would drift shut, and then she’d inevitably be woken by a particularly loud howl from the wind, or a thunderclap, or a fresh cloud of sea water soaking into her inadequate bedding. She was freezing cold, and her stomach ached, her crushed hand was throbbing, and Dudley was snoring like a chainsaw.
At two minutes to midnight, Nella considered waking Dudley up, just to annoy him, but then she decided he’d probably just hit her again, and she didn’t really want her first few minutes as an eleven-year-old to be spent trying to halt a bloody nose. She had nearly decided to just try and forget about her birthday altogether, when a resounding crash shook the entire shack.