8.

Darius Potter

It started out the same as always. I woke up to the beeping of my alarm, got dressed in a nice long-sleeved black shirt and a pair of black slacks, brushed hair (arranging the mess on top of my head carefully) and teeth, walked out into the kitchen… and found a table-suffocating mound of presents had been placed there in the middle of the night.

Oh, shit, yeah, that was right. It was Dudley's eleventh birthday. It looked as though he'd gotten a new laptop he'd break, a new racing bike he'd never use, and a second bedroom television to replace the first one he'd put his foot through when his favorite program had been canceled. (I'd actually had to convince my cousin to get rid of a broken television.) Among other things, anyway. Dudley's birthdays were always overkill.

I made myself some tea, and walked out into the front garden in the dewy dawn to watch the sunrise. I sipped at my tea and enjoyed the silence and the beautiful spectrum of colors and shades across the sky, above the boxy white houses of Privet Drive, and once the sun had risen, I tended to the flower beds. They were all very traditional English garden. Then I wiped myself off, put on a bit more scented hand lotion, and walked out into the kitchen to get breakfast ready. It was a three-day weekend and it was Dudley's birthday, so I decided on coffee (for Uncle Vernon), tea (for me and Aunt Petunia; Darjeeling, a compromise between my aunt's desire for tradition and my own desire for adventure), orange juice (for Dudley), and a frittata. A frittata was somewhere between an omelette and a quiche. Mine had asparagus, yellow onion, white mushroom, packed spinach, coconut oil, bacon, and eight eggs.

Aunt Petunia came out first. She saw that I was making breakfast, sniffed because there was nothing to scold, and her heels clacked back upstairs to go wake her husband and son. Uncle Vernon came down next, button-up shirt straining over swelling belly, and he barked, "Comb your hair!" by way of a morning greeting.

"I did," I said calmly, still working on breakfast.

"Don't you back-talk me, boy! It doesn't look like it! And make sure to clean all that up after you're done." He waved in the general direction of the mess I'd made of the kitchen. "And where's my coffee and morning newspaper?!"

"On its way," I said, robot-like, suppressing a few choice things I could say, and I walked out onto the front step. I took up the morning newspaper, and a cup of coffee from the kitchen, and placed them in front of Uncle Vernon, who harrumphed and opened the paper irritably. He was henceforth Not To Be Disturbed.

Occasionally, I disturbed him anyway just to annoy him.

It was always a bit disheartening to put all that work into making a meal for my relatives only to have it taken for granted so, still irritated, I put the plates of breakfast on the kitchen table carefully around the presents, put tea and orange juice next to Aunt Petunia's and Dudley's places, and then retreated upstairs with my own plate of breakfast and cup of tea. Breakfast was the only meal in which I was allowed as much food as Dudley and I wanted to enjoy it in the privacy of my own bedroom.

Besides, I knew how breakfast would work anyway. It happened the same every year. Dudley would count his presents, count incorrectly, insist there wasn't enough presents, be corrected, threaten to throw a tantrum and insist there still wasn't enough presents, and then be catered to by his mother and father. He would then rip open the cornucopia of gaudy presents given to him each birthday - today's count should total at least at thirty six, and if there wasn't something made of genuine gold in there it wasn't a real birthday - and proceed to discard or break most of them sometime within the next few weeks. The broken presents would build up in his room until he couldn't enjoy it in there anymore. He would then throw another tantrum and the broken presents would be removed for him.

And they said I didn't know my cousin.

I locked my bedroom door, and then proceeded to vent with lots of angry art on my bed for a while, munching on frittata and sipping tea until I calmed down and began to enjoy the process of creation, letting my emotions run out, letting go of them with a sense of peace.

There was a sharp knock on my bedroom door and I looked up.

"Mrs Figg has broken her leg," said Aunt Petunia through the door. "She doesn't want you to come over today. Marge is too far away and she doesn't like you in any case, Yvonne is on vacation in Majorca, and your little friends are both at a resort with their families for the three day weekend."

It sounded like she thought all those people had a lot of nerve, not being here when she needed them to be.

"You're not staying in the house and wrecking it by yourself, so you're coming to the zoo with us," Aunt Petunia finished. "Come downstairs. Piers and Dudley are already waiting down in the hall." She walked away.

I sat there frozen in a state of surprise. I wasn't sure how to feel. On one hand, I'd never been to the zoo before. On the other hand, I'd be going with the Dursleys and Piers.

Either way, I shrugged, stood, stowed my art underneath the loose floorboard below my bed, put my iPod and iPhone in my pockets, and headed downstairs to meet with the Dursleys and Piers at the foot of the grand staircase.

Uncle Vernon pulled me aside and threatened to flay me to within an inch of my life if I "paraded any of my oddness" on Dudley's birthday. He meant no accidental magic. I stood there icily, glaring at him, until at last he stormed off in a huff.

After that, we all got in the car and headed for the Surrey City Zoo.

I texted August and Samantha back and forth during the drive. We joked about all the new presents Dudley had to ruin, and how clueless my aunt and uncle were when it came to my magic. Dudley and Piers chattered on about some new video game in the seat next to me, and Uncle Vernon complained about things in one long, multi-subject rant to Aunt Petunia as he drove. (Announcing his narrow-minded and largely negative opinions to the world was one of Uncle Vernon's hobbies. His favorite topic of complaint was me, however.)

It was a sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded with families. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice creams at the entrance. I ordered before they could hurry me away, thereby forcing them to buy me a Fudgesicle. I felt rather smug about it, too.

We walked around all morning, looking at the different animals on display. I preferred to silently observe the animals with interest, reading the plaques that came with each enclosure. Dudley and Piers were again different. They spent the first half of the morning shouting, "LOOK, IT'S A TIGER! LOOK, IT'S A LION!" They spent the second half of the morning complaining that the animals weren't doing enough "cool stuff."

We ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrum because his Knickerbocker Glory didn't have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and I was allowed to finish the first.

After lunch, we went to the reptile house. Aunt Petunia stayed outside, but everyone else went in. It was cool and dark in there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found the largest snake in the place. It was a gleaming brown Brazilian boa constrictor, longer than a large car length and thicker than a tree branch.

Dudley spent a few minutes with his nose pressed against the window, ordering his father to bang on the glass until the snake moved. Dudley whined and Uncle Vernon knocked, but the snake was uncooperative. It sat completely still with its head facing the wall. I admired its silent, miserable rebellion.

Dudley at last shuffled off, moaning about boredom. Piers stood there for a few minutes longer, looking lingeringly at the snake, but finally he trailed off, heading to more interesting territory. I moved in front of the boa constrictor's tank, feeling rather sorry for it. It must be a hard life, being stuck in a tiny tank, sleeping all day.

Then suddenly, something strange happened. The boa constrictor turned around, and raised its head until its eyes were on a level with mine. It winked.

"... Did you just wink at me?" I asked disbelievingly.

The boa constrictor hissed out a laugh. "Just wanted to see what you'd do, amigo. My God, are your kin always that stupid?"

"No," I said, like talking to a snake was something I did every day, "sometimes they're worse. Sorry about that. They're only distant relatives - I don't remember my parents."

"Neither do I," said Amigo gloomily. "I was born and raised in this stupid tank." He had a low male hissing sort of voice. "So everyone could gawk at me."

"It's a hard life," I admitted. "Hey - do you know - how am I talking to you?"

"You are a Speaker," said Amigo in surprise. "I sensed it when I first beheld you. Animals know these things, you know."

I reached back, surprised - and felt that prickling up and down the back of my neck. Of course. Magic.

"Have you ever met any others like me?" I asked quickly, excitedly.

"No," said Amigo, shaking his head. "I have heard only rumors. But if you'd like me to relay those rumors…" He suddenly gave a sly, sideways smile. "You could always use your powers to let me out of this tank."

I laughed and Amigo scowled. "Sorry, Amigo," I said, "but you'd eat somebody or be caught long before you reached Brazil. I feel bad for you. But not that bad."

I wasn't exactly someone you bullshitted easily.

Amigo was starting to attract attention, so I stepped back into the shadows as people charged forward to gawp at the reared snake. I looked casual, hands in my pockets, but I was thoughtful. Snake speak. Another manifestation of my powers.

I could never understand Aunt Marge's dogs, and no other zoo animal's language had been mysteriously deconstructed for me. For some reason, it must be only snakes that did it.

How interesting.

A few days later, once school had started again, I sat down across the library table determinedly from August and Samantha.

"Okay, I have it all figured out," I said. I'd had time to think about it and come up with a plan. "I'll speak each word in this dictionary to a picture of a snake. We'll come up with a series of symbols dictating what each sound is, and then we'll write down what word each collection of sounds means. We'll move from words to grammar."

Samantha plunked down a brown journal in which we would scribble down our complete study of snake speak.

"I'm going to teach you guys snake language," I said decisively.

And so we began. This time, speaking softly to the snake picture inside the encyclopedia, I could hear it - the strange hissing that was all anyone else could understand.

That night, I had a very strange dream. A giant envelope decorated with the insignia of a castle came looming up before me. I saw two shadowy male figures in windows within the castle.

I woke up feeling like I was waiting for something.

I sat up and tried to piece this together. A letter. A letter either portraying or leading to a castle… in which there were two men who must be important to my future.

A letter would be coming soon, that much made sense, and it would lead to me meeting new people, including two men… but I couldn't understand how a castle was going to factor into my future.

Sometimes I really did wish my Seeing Dreams made more sense.