LITMIR.BIZ

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case upstairs into the spare bedroom, taking as long as he could.

      By the time he got back to the kitchen, Aunt Marge had been supplied with tea and fruitcake and Ripper was lapping noisily in the corner. Harry saw Aunt Petunia wince slightly as specks of tea and drool flecked her clean floor. Aunt Petunia hated animals.

      ‘Who’s looking after the other dogs, Marge?’ Uncle Vernon asked.

      ‘Oh, I’ve got Colonel Fubster managing them,’ boomed Aunt Marge. ‘He’s retired now, good for him to have something to do. But I couldn’t leave poor old Ripper. He pines if he’s away from me.’

      Ripper began to growl again as Harry sat down. This directed Aunt Marge’s attention to Harry for the first time.

      ‘So!’ she barked. ‘Still here, are you?’

      ‘Yes,’ said Harry.

      ‘Don’t you say “yes” in that ungrateful tone,’ Aunt Marge growled. ‘It’s damn good of Vernon and Petunia to keep you. Wouldn’t have done it myself. You’d have gone straight to an orphanage if you’d been dumped on my doorstep.’

      Harry was bursting to say that he’d rather live in an orphanage than with the Dursleys, but the thought of the Hogsmeade form stopped him. He forced his face into a painful smile.

      ‘Don’t you smirk at me!’ boomed Aunt Marge. ‘I can see you haven’t improved since I last saw you. I hoped school would knock some manners into you.’ She took a large gulp of tea, wiped her moustache and said, ‘Where is it that you send him, again, Vernon?’

      ‘St Brutus’s,’ said Uncle Vernon promptly. ‘It’s a first-rate institution for hopeless cases.’

      ‘I see,’ said Aunt Marge. ‘Do they use the cane at St Brutus’s, boy?’ she barked across the table.

      ‘Er —’

      Uncle Vernon nodded curtly behind Aunt Marge’s back.

      ‘Yes,’ said Harry. Then, feeling he might as well do the thing properly, he added, ‘All the time.’

      ‘Excellent,’ said Aunt Marge. ‘I won’t have this namby-pamby, wishy-washy nonsense about not hitting people who deserve it. A good thrashing is what’s needed in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Have you been beaten often?’

      ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Harry, ‘loads of times.’

      Aunt Marge narrowed her eyes.

      ‘I still don’t like your tone, boy,’ she said. ‘If you can speak of your beatings in that casual way, they clearly aren’t hitting you hard enough. Petunia, I’d write if I were you. Make it clear that you approve the use of extreme force in this boy’s case.’

      Perhaps Uncle Vernon was worried that Harry might forget their bargain; in any case, he changed the subject abruptly.

      ‘Heard the news this morning, Marge? What about that escaped prisoner, eh?’

* * *

      As Aunt Marge started to make herself at home, Harry caught himself thinking almost longingly of life at number four without her. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia usually encouraged Harry to stay out of their way, which Harry was only too happy to do. Aunt Marge, on the other hand, wanted Harry under her eye at all times, so that she could boom out suggestions for his improvement. She delighted in comparing Harry with Dudley, and took huge pleasure in buying Dudley expensive presents while glaring at Harry, as though daring him to ask why he hadn’t got a present too. She also kept throwing out dark hints about what made Harry such an unsatisfactory person.

      ‘You mustn’t blame yourself for the way the boy’s turned out, Vernon,’ she said over lunch on the third day. ‘If there’s something rotten on the inside, there’s nothing anyone can do about it.’

      Harry tried to concentrate on his food, but his hands shook and his face was starting to burn with anger. Remember the form, he told himself. Think about Hogsmeade. Don’t say anything. Don’t rise —

      Aunt Marge reached for her glass of wine.

      ‘It’s one of the basic rules of breeding,’ she said. ‘You see it all the time with dogs. If there’s something wrong with the bitch, there’ll be something wrong with the pup —’

      At that moment, the wine glass Aunt Marge was holding exploded in her hand. Shards of glass flew in every direction and Aunt Marge spluttered and blinked, her great ruddy face dripping.

      ‘Marge!’ squealed Aunt Petunia. ‘Marge, are you all right?’

      ‘Not to worry,’ grunted Aunt Marge, mopping her face with her napkin. ‘Must have squeezed it too hard. Did the same thing at Colonel Fubster’s the other day. No need to fuss, Petunia, I have a very firm grip …’

      But Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were both looking at Harry suspiciously, so he decided he’d better skip pudding and escape from the table as soon as he could.

      Outside in the hall, he leant against the wall, breathing deeply. It had been a long time since he’d lost control and made something explode. He couldn’t afford to let it happen again. The Hogsmeade form wasn’t the only thing at stake – if he carried on like that, he’d be in trouble with the Ministry of Magic.

      Harry was still an underage wizard, and he was forbidden by wizard law to do magic outside school. His record wasn’t exactly clean, either. Only last summer he’d got an official warning which had stated quite clearly that if the Ministry got wind of any more magic in Privet Drive, Harry would face expulsion from Hogwarts.

      He heard the Dursleys leaving the table and hurried upstairs out of the way.

* * *

      Harry got through the next three days by forcing himself to think about his Handbook of Do-it-Yourself Broomcare whenever Aunt Marge started on him. This worked quite well, though it seemed to give him a glazed look, because Aunt Marge started voicing the opinion that he was mentally subnormal.

      At last, at long last, the final evening of Marge’s stay arrived. Aunt Petunia cooked a fancy dinner and Uncle Vernon uncorked several bottles of wine. They got all the way through the soup and the salmon without a single mention of Harry’s faults; during the lemon meringue pie, Uncle Vernon bored them all with a long talk about Grunnings, his drill-making company; then Aunt Petunia made coffee and Uncle Vernon brought out a bottle of brandy.

      ‘Can I tempt you, Marge?’

      Aunt Marge had already had rather a lot of wine. Her huge face was very red.

      ‘Just a small one, then,’ she chuckled. ‘A bit more than that … and a bit more … that’s the boy.’

      Dudley was eating his fourth slice of pie. Aunt Petunia was sipping coffee with her little finger sticking out. Harry really wanted to disappear into his bedroom, but he met Uncle Vernon’s angry little eyes and knew he would have to sit it out.

      ‘Aah,’ said Aunt Marge, smacking her lips and putting the empty brandy glass back down. ‘Excellent nosh, Petunia. It’s normally just a fry-up for me of an evening, with twelve dogs to look after …’ She burped richly and patted her great tweed stomach. ‘Pardon me. But I do like to see a healthy-sized boy,’ she went on, winking at Dudley. ‘You’ll be a proper-sized man, Dudders, like your father. Yes, I’ll have a spot more brandy, Vernon …

      ‘Now, this one here —’

      She jerked her head at Harry, who felt his stomach clench. The Handbook, he thought quickly.

      ‘This one’s got a mean, runty look about him. You get that with dogs. I had Colonel Fubster drown one last year. Ratty little thing it was. Weak. Underbred.’

      Harry was trying to remember page twelve of his book: A Charm to Cure Reluctant Reversers.

      ‘It all comes down to blood, as I was saying the other day. Bad blood will out. Now, I’m saying nothing against your family, Petunia’ – she patted Aunt Petunia’s bony hand with her shovel-like one, ‘but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then she ran

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