Blue Roses ; Harry's dark twin

~2~

•The one where Harry can't pick up a letter (and an unsurprising reveal)•

The other side of the envelope bore a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms; a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake surrounding a large letter "H".

"Hurry up boy!" shouted Uncle Vernon. "what are you doing, checking for letter bombs?" He added, chuckling at his own joke.

Harry went back into the kitchen, still staring at the letters, he handed Uncle Vernon the rest and rushed over to Maia. "Hey, quick, look at this!" He told her excitedly.

"Wha-" Maia started but stopped as soon as she saw her letter. She instantly opened it, Harry following her the next second, but unluckily for them, Dudley noticed the commotion.

"Dad! Dad! They've got letters!"

Maia was almost taking the letter out when it was jerked sharply out of her hand by Uncle Vernon along with Harry's. "Who'd be writing to you?" he sneered, shaking the letter open with one hand and glancing at it. His face instantly went pale. "P-P-Petunia!"

Aunt Petunia took it curiously and read the first line, for a moment she thought she might faint, she clutched her throat and made a choking noise. "Vernon! Oh my goodness - Vernon!" They stared at each other for what felt like an hour, seemingly forgetting that both Harry, Maia and Dudley were still in the room, thoroughly confused.

Harry and Dudley both attempted to get the letter back though with no success. Maia could see it was a losing battle, nothing had ever affected Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon like this before. Thoughts were racing through her head as to the possibilities and before she knew it she was being kicked out of the kitchen along with Harry and Dudley. Dudley promptly started listening at the keyhole while Harry and Maia layed on the floor.

"Vernon," Aunt Petunia was saying in a small quivering voice, "look at the address, how could they possibly know where they sleep? You don't think they're watching the house?"

"Watching - spying - might be following us," muttered Uncle Vernon.

"But what should we do, Vernon? Should we write back? Tell them we don't want -"

"No!" he shouted finally, "no, we'll ignore it. If they don't get an answer ... yes, that's best ... we won't do anything ..."

"But -"

"No! We swore when we took them in Petunia, we swore we'd stamp out that dangerous nonsense! I'm not having one in the house, let alone two!"

"I just-"

"Petunia, have you forgotten what happened to your parents? I'm not putting our family at risk!"

That made the room go quiet for a while.

"Ok," she agreed meekly, "we'll just leave it."

From the crack they could see Uncle Vernon's shiny black shoes go from pacing around the kitchen to turning direction and heading towards the door. Harry and Maia sprinted back upstairs to the attic, Dudley wasn't quick enough and got the full force of Uncle Vernon's anger for probably the first time in his life.

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That evening when Uncle Vernon got back from work he did something that he had never done before; visited Harry and Maia in the attic. Well, stood at the bottom of the ladder in Dudley's playroom and instructed them to get down.

Harry practically jumped from the small hole in the ceiling, Maia was surprised he didn't break an ankle, and instantly asked him where the letters were while Maia slowly made her way down the ladder, not expecting the letters to either be legible nor even exist anymore.