A "Harry"ed Me - I

1999

A thin lanky child sat in the verandah, with her legs propped up, resting a fat book on them. She was reading the book with wonder and glee. Curious eyes watched her from the depths of the room. The owner of those curious eyes came out into the sunlight looking over the lanky child’s shoulder to get a glimpse of what she was doing. The child was at first taken aback, then found herself staring into the thick glasses of her older cousin. The child’s eyes had a twinkle which puzzled her cousin, a scrawny child with two thick braids reaching her shoulder. She sat down beside her young cousin and listened to her talk about magic and dark wizards and godfather and broomstick ( there was some dragon and a weird sounding creature called hippogriff… Azkaban?? ). Everything sounded very strange to the other child but somewhere she felt an urge to know what magic those brightly coloured books wove on her young cousin. She ran inside with an indignant air. She knew that the books she read were a lot more exciting than those wildly coloured magic books.

Both the girls played and talked at night for a while. The younger girl started yawning and got up to leave. She picked up one of the books and smiled at her sister as she left. The lamp cast dim shadows around. The older one sat there looking at one of the books. It was the thinnest of all those coloured ones her cousin had. She picked up one and looked at it. It had a nasty pink book cover with a boy’s face on it. He had huge round glasses on. He was looking at a bright train puffing pearly white smoke. The back cover had a tall man with a white beard wearing a royal blue robe with stars on it. She opened it after having stared at the book for a long time .Her eyes moved along the first few lines, the first few pages; she had a puzzled look on her face, the sequence of events not making any sense….

She read on and on; her eyes blurred with sleep, read through the last lines of the first chapter…those lines which was going to make her life chimerical..something that she would cherish all her life..which was her childhood…

“A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs.Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding uptheir glasses and saying in hushed voices: "To Harry Potter -- the boy who lived!

Those dark rimmed round glasses....Thank you Div for making me see through them...life truly became wonderful:)