The next morning, Kirra had decided that the best person for her to inform about her scar would be her best friend who also happened to be her godfather.
Kirra leapt up from the bed, hurried across the room, and sat down at her desk; she pulled a piece of parchment toward her, loaded her eagle-feather quill with ink, wrote;
Dear Sirius, then paused, wondering how best to phrase her problem, still wondering how much she should tell him about her nightmares. Though she knew she could tell him anything, she wondered if he were in the right mind state to hear about all the horrors in her head.
Sirius had been in Azkaban, the terrifying wizard jail guarded by creatures called dementors, sightless, soul-sucking fiends who had come to search for Sirius at Hogwarts when he had escaped. Yet Sirius had been innocent - the murders forwhich he had been convicted had been committed by Wormtail, Voldemort's supporter, whom nearly everybody now believed dead.
For one glorious hour, Kirra had believed that she was leaving the Dursleys at last, because Sirius had offered her a home once his name had been cleared. But the chance had been snatched away from her - Wormtail had escaped before they could take him to the Ministry of Magic, and Sirius had had to flee for his life, leaving her once again.
Kirra had helped him escape on the back of a hippogriff called Buckbeak, and since then, Sirius had been on the run. The home Kirra might have had if Wormtail had not escaped had been haunting her all summer, and the fact that her and Sirius were meant to live their years ago after the first wizarding war ended, though sadly her life had been stolen from her too early.
It had been doubly hard to return to the Dursleys knowing that she had so nearly escaped them forever. Nevertheless, Sirius had been of some help to Kirra, even if he couldn't be with her. It was due to Sirius that Kirra and Harry now had all their school things in their bedroom with them.
The Dursleys had never allowed this before; their general wish of keeping Kirra and Harry as miserable as possible, coupled with their fear of their powers, hadled them to lock their school trunks in the cupboard under the stairs every summer prior to this.
But their attitude had changed since they had found out that Kirra had a dangerous murderer for a godfather - for Kirra had conveniently forgotten to tell them that Sirius was innocent. Kirra had received multiple letters from Sirius since she had been back at Privet Drive.
All had been delivered, not by owls (as was usual with wizards), but by large, brightly colored tropical birds. Hedwig had not approved of these flashy intruders;she had been most reluctant to allow them to drink from her water tray before flying off again.
Kirra, on the other hand, had liked them; they put her in mind of palm trees and white sand, and she hoped that, wherever Sirius was (Sirius never said, in case the letters were intercepted), he was enjoying himself.
Somehow, Kirra found it hard to imaging dementors surviving for long in bright sunlight, perhapse that was why Sirius had gone South. Sirius's letters, which were now hidden beneath the highly useful loose floorboards under Kirra's bed, sounded chearful, and in all of them he had reminded Kirra to call on him if ever Kirra needed to.
Well, she needed to right now. Finally, when sounds of movement could be heard from Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia's room, Kirra cleared her desk of crumpled pieces of parchment and reread her finished letter.
Dear Siri,
Thanks for your last letter. That bird was enormous; it could hardly get through my window. Things are the same as usual here. Dudley's diet isn't going too well. Tuney found him smuggling doughnuts into his room yesterday. They told him they'd have to cut his pocket money if he keeps doing it, so he got really angry and chucked his PlayStation out of the window.
That's a sort of computer thing you can play games on. Bit stupid really, now he hasn't even got Mega-Mutilation Part Three to take his mind off things. I'm okay, mainly because the Dursleys are terrified you might turn up and turn them all into bats if I ask you to.
A weird thing happened this morning, though. My scar hurt again and so did Harry's. Last time that happened it was because Voldemort was at Hogwarts. But I don't reckon he can be anywhere near me now, can he?
Do you know if curse scars sometimes hurt years afterward? Harry said i can send this with Hedwig when she gets back; she's off hunting at the moment. Say hello to Buckbeak for me.
- Stripes
Yes, thought Kirra, that looked all right. There was no point putting in the dream; she didn't want it to look as though she was too worried and she didn't want Sirius to worry too much about her, he already had enough on his plate as it is.
She folded up the parchmentand laid it aside on her desk, ready for when Hedwig returned. Then she got to hisfeet, stretched, and opened her wardrobe once more. Without glancing at her reflection she started to get dressed before going down to breakfast.
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By the time Kirra arrived in the kitchen, Harry and the three Dursleys were already seated around the table. None of them except for Harry looked up as she entered and sat down.
Uncle Vernon's large red face was hidden behind the morning's Daily Mail, and Aunt Petunia was cutting a grapefruit into quarters, her lips pursed over her horse-like teeth. Dudley looked furious and sulky, and somehow seemed to be taking up even more space than usual.
This was saying something, as he always took up an entire side of the square table by himself. When Aunt Petunia put a quarter of unsweetened grapefruit onto Dudley's plate with a tremulous "There you are, Diddy darling," Dudley glowered at her.
His life had taken a most unpleasant turn since he had come home for the summer with his end-of-year report. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had managed to find excuses for his bad marks as usual.
Aunt Petunia always insisted that Dudley was a very gifted boy whose teachers didn't understand him, while Uncle Vernon maintained that "he didn't want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway."
They also skated over the accusations of bullying in the report - "He's a boisterous little boy, but he wouldn'thurt a fly!" Aunt Petunia had said tearfully. However, at the bottom of the report there were a few well-chosen comments from the school nurse that not even Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia could explain away.
No matter how much Aunt Petunia wailed that Dudley was big-boned, and that his poundage was really puppy fat, and that he was a growing boy who needed plenty of food, the fact remained that the school outfitters didn't stock knickerbockers big enough for him anymore.
The school nurse had seen whatAunt Petunia's eyes - so sharp when it came to spotting fingerprints on hergleaming walls, and in observing the comings and goings of the neighbors -simply refused to see: that far from needing extra nourishment, Dudley had reached roughly the size and weight of a young killer whale.
So - after many tantrums, after arguments that shook Kirra and Harry's bedroom floor, and many tears from Aunt Petunia - the new regime had begun. The diet sheet that had been sent by the Smeltings school nurse had been taped to the fridge, which had been emptied of all Dudley's favorite things - fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers and filled instead with fruit and vegetables and the sorts of things that Uncle Vernon called "rabbit food."
To make Dudley feel better about it all, Aunt Petunia had insisted that the whole family follow the diet too. She now passed a grapefruit quarter to Harry and Kirra. They noticed that they were a lot smaller than Dudley's.
Aunt Petunia seemed to feet that the best way to keep up Dudley's morale was to make sure that he did, at least, get more to eat than Harry. But Aunt Petunia didn't know what was hidden under the loose floorboards upstairs.
She had no idea that Harry and Kirra were not following the diet at all. The moment they had got wind of the fact that they were expected to survive the summer on carrot sticks, Kirra had sent letters to her friends with pleas for help, and they had risen to the occasion magnificently.
Well that was until recently... Mattheo and Theodore had stopped sending her treats for about a week now and she hadn't got a single letter from either of them, she was worried that something had happened to them, luckily the Weasley twins, Maxine, JJ and Jasper were all still talking to her.
She had asked Jasper if Mattheo and Theodore were okay and told him that they hadn't been talking to her and he had told her that he didn't know what was happening as he hadn't seen then all summer.
Uncle Vernon laid aside his paper with a deep sniff of disapproval and looked down at his own grapefruit quarter. "Is this it?" he said grumpily to Aunt Petunia. Aunt Petunia gave him a severe look, and then nodded pointedly at Dudley, wh ohad already finished his own grapefruit quarter and was eyeing Harry's with a very sour look in his piggy little eyes.
Uncle Vernon gave a great sigh, which ruffled his large, bushy mustache, and picked up his spoon. The doorbell rang. Uncle Vernon heaved himself out of his chair and set off down the hall. Quick as a flash, while his mother was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of Uncle Vernon's grapefruit.
Kirra heard talking at the door, and someone laughing, and Uncle Vernon answering curtly. Then the front door closed, and the sound of ripping paper came from the hall. Aunt Petunia set the teapot down on the table and looked curiously around to see where Uncle Vernon had got to.
She didn't have to wait long to find out; after about a minute, he was back. He looked livid. "You two," he barked at Harry and Kirra. "In the living room. Now." Bewildered, wondering what on earth they were supposed to have done this time, they got up and followed Uncle Vernon out of the kitchen and into the next room.
Uncle Vernon closed the door sharply behind the three of them."So," he said, marching over to the fireplace and turning to face Harry and Kirra as though he were about to pronounce them under arrest. "So."
Kirra would have dearly loved to have said, "So what?" but she didn't feel that Uncle Vernon's temper should be tested this early in the morning, especially when it was already under severe strain from lack of food. She, therefore, settled for looking politely puzzled.
"This just arrived," said Uncle Vernon. He brandished a piece of purple writing paper at Harry and Kirra.
"A letter. About the both of you." Kirra's confusion increased and as she looked across at her brother she could see that he was just as confused as she was. Who would be writing to Uncle Vernon about them? Who did they know who sent letters by the postman? Uncle Vernon glared at Harry and Kirra, then looked down at the letter and began to read aloud:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, We have never been introduced, but I am sure you have heard a great deal from Harry about my son Ron and heard from Kirra about my other two sons Fred and George. As Harry and Kirra might have told you, the final of the Quidditch World Cup takes place this Monday night, and my husband, Arthur, has just managed to get prime tickets through his connections at the Department of Magical Games and Sports.
I do hope you will allow us to take Harry and Kirra to the match, as this really is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity; Britain hasn't hosted the cup for thirty years, and tickets are extremely hard to come by. We would of course be glad to have Kirra and Harry stay for the remainder of the summer holidays, and to see them safely onto the train back to school.
It would be best for Kirra and Harry to send us your answer as quickly as possible in the normal way, because the Muggle postman has never delivered to our house, and I am not sure he even knows where it is .Hoping to see Kirra and Harry soon,
Yours sincerely, Molly Weasley
P.S. I do hope we've put enough stamps on.
Uncle Vernon finished reading, put his hand back into his breast pocket, and drew out something else. "Look at this," he growled. He held up the envelope in which Mrs. Weasley's letter had come, and Kirra had to fight down a laugh.
Every bit of it was covered in stamps except for a squareinch on the front, into which Mrs. Weasley had squeezed the Dursleys' address in minute writing.
"She did put enough stamps on, then," said Kirra, trying to sound as though Mrs.Weasley's was a mistake anyone could make. Her uncle's eyes flashed.
"The postman noticed," he said through gritted teeth. "Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That's why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was funny."
Kirra and Harry didn't say anything. Other people might not understand why Uncle Vernon was making a fuss about too many stamps, but Harry and Kirra had lived with the Dursleys too long not to know how touchy they were about anything even slightly out of the ordinary.
Their worst fear was that someone would find out that they were connected (however distantly) with people like Mrs. Weasley. Uncle Vernon was still glaring at Kirra, who tried to keep her expression neutral.
If they didn't do or say anything stupid, they might just be in for the treat of a lifetime. They waited for Uncle Vernon to say something, but he merely continued to glare. Harry decided to break the silence. "So - can we go then?" he asked
A slight spasm crossed Uncle Vernon's large purple face. The mustache bristled. Kirra thought she knew what was going on behind the mustache: a furious battle as two of Uncle Vernon's most fundamental instincts came into conflict.
Allowing the twins to go would make Kirra and Harry happy, something Uncle Vernon had struggled against for thirteen years. On the other hand, allowing Kirra and Harry to disappear to the Weasleys' for the rest of the summer would get rid of them two weeks earlier than anyone could have hoped, and Uncle Vernon hated having Harry and Kirra in the house.
To give himself thinking time, it seemed, he looked down at Mrs. Weasley's letter again. "Who is this woman?" he said, staring at the signature with distaste. "You've seen her," said Harry. "She's my friend Ron's mother, she was meeting him off the Hog - off the school train at the end of last term."
"Dumpy sort of woman?" he growled finally. "Load of children with red hair?" Kirra and Harry frowned. She thought it was a bit rich of Uncle Vernon to call anyone "dumpy," when his own son, Dudley, had finally achieved what he'd been threatening to do since the age of three, and become wider than he was tall.
Uncle Vernon was perusing the letter again."Quidditch," he muttered under his breath. "Quidditch - what is this rubbish?"
Kirra felt a second stab of annoyance, "It's a sport," she said shortly. "Played on broom- "