Give my son the story

Harry porter

Harry portter

THE LETTERS FROM NO ONE

There was a horrible smell in the kitchen the next morning when Harry went in for breakfast. It seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink. He went to have a look. The tub was full of what looked like dirty rags swimming in gray  water.

“What’s this?” he asked Aunt Petunia. Her lips tightened as they always did if he dared to ask a question.

“Your new school uniform,” she said. Harry looked in the bowl again.

“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t realize it had to be so wet.”

“Don’t be stupid,” snapped Aunt Petunia. “I’m dyeing some of Dudley’s old things gray for you. It’ll look just like everyone else’s when I’ve finished.”

Harry seriously doubted this, but thought it best not to argue.  He sat down at the table and tried not to think about how he was going to look on his first day at Stonewall High — like he was wearing bits of old elephant skin,  probably.

Dudley and Uncle Vernon came in, both with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Harry’s new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smelting stick, which he carried everywhere, on the  table.

They heard the click of the mail slot and flop of letters on the doormat.

“Get the mail, Dudley,” said Uncle Vernon from behind his pa- per.

“Make Harry get it.” “Get the mail, Harry.” “Make Dudley get it.”

“Poke him with your Smelting stick,  Dudley.”

Harry dodged the Smelting stick and went to get the mail. Three things lay on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon’s sister Marge, who was vacationing on the Isle of Wight, a brown enve- lope that looked like a bill, and — a letter for Harry.

Harry picked it up and stared at it, his heart twanging like a gi-  ant elastic band. No one, ever, in his whole life, had written to him. Who would? He had no friends, no other relatives — he didn’t be- long to the library, so he’d never even got rude notes asking for books back. Yet here it was, a letter, addressed so plainly there  could be no mistake: