Falling onto her bed after sweeping off the junk Dudley had thrown upon it, Alexandra closed her eyes, trying to cheer herself that she had a little more than five years before leaving this hellish prison. In the meantime, she would continue to imagine all the dreadful accidents which would befall her "family" when she could finally leave.
28 July 1991, 4 Privet Drive, Surrey, England
After Dudley's epic swim in the zoo's pool, life returned to normal quickly in Little Whinging. Apart from the fact that the words hippo, zoo and pool were now forbidden in the household, the Dursley family returned to its disgusting habits. The summer holidays started, and Dudley proceeded to destroy, explode, annihilate or damage the quasi-totality of the things he had received upon his birthday. The new cine-camera had been torn apart by one of Mrs Figg's enraged cats, the remote-control aeroplane crashed on a neighbour's roof, and the racing bike was literally pulverised trying to ram the car of Headmistress Roemmelle (Dudley narrowly avoided being escorted to the police station on this one). With school over, the Dudley's gang did not miss an occasion to reform and practise Alexandra-hunting (although Piers had apparently nicknamed it "Freak-hunting") and they visited the household every single day, which forced Alexandra to spend as much time as possible outside Little Whinging. In these long periods of solitude, she used her abilities to steal what she needed, wandering around to search new stealing grounds, doing physical exercise to maintain her endurance, and wondering about the future.
For once, there was a light in the usual darkness. When school started in September 1991 she would go off to secondary school and she wouldn't be in the same establishment as Dudley. Her cousin had, gods only knew how (though she had suspicions bribery might be involved), obtained a place at Uncle Vernon's old school, Smeltings. His great friend Piers Polkiss was going there too. Alexandra, on the other hand, had not gotten such privileged treatment (despite being third in her year while Dudley was at the bottom of the rankings) and was going to Stonewall High, the local secondary school. Dudley, naturally, thought this was a very funny situation.
"They stuff people's heads down the toilet first day at Stonewall," he told Alexandra. "Want to come upstairs and practise?"
"No thanks," said Alexandra. "The poor toilet's suffered enough with you on it, I refuse to do further damage." Then she calmly began to walk away, preparing to run when Dudley would work out that she'd insulted him.
On July 17th, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, supposedly leaving Alexandra at Mrs Figg's house. As the woman had broken her leg tripping over one of her cats (which it seemed had decreased her love for the species in question), Alexandra wasted no time in leaving her side and the putrid odour of cat food and cat dejections.
That evening, Dudley paraded around the living-room for the family in his brand-new uniform. Smeltings boys wore maroon tailcoats, light orange knickerbockers and flat straw hats called boaters. They also carried knobbly sticks, which Vernon claimed they used for hitting each other while the teachers weren't looking. This was supposed to be good training for later life, which Alexandra wholeheartedly approved of, as long as it was for the training of brutes and bullies.
As he looked at Dudley in his new clothes, Vernon said gruffly that it was the proudest moment of his life. Petunia burst into tears and said she couldn't believe it was her Ickle Dudleykins, he looked so handsome and grown-up.
Alexandra, however, didn't trust herself to speak. The sentences that would have come out would have been too humiliating and sarcastic. At eleven, Dudley looked positively ridiculous in his new uniform, being quite on a way to becoming as large as he was high. At the speed he was growing, her cousin would undoubtedly need a new uniform before May 1992. Not laughing or smiling at this spectacle was one of the hardest things she had done in her life.
Then came July 28th. Alexandra's birthday. As usual there was no birth cake or any presents. Not that she waited on the former or the latter, this hope had died long ago, and her eleventh birthday was treated with all the ignorance the Dursleys had towards insignificant events in which there were no possible gain to be made.
However, there was a horrible smell in the kitchen when Alexandra went in to cook breakfast that morning. The odour seemed to be coming from a large metal tub in the sink, where things looking like dirty rags were floating in a grey liquid.
"What is this thing?" he asked Aunt Petunia. Her aunt's lips tightened as they always did if she dared to speak in her presence.
"Your new school uniform." answered Petunia.
Alexandra peered into the bowl again, this time with disgust plain on her face.
"Oh," she said with all the sarcasm she had in her. "I didn't realise the uniform had to smell so strongly."
"Don't be stupid," snapped Aunt Petunia. "I'm dyeing some of Dudley's old things grey for you. It'll look just like everyone else's when I've finished."
Alexandra did not believe a word of this, but thought it best not to reply, as the argument would be pointless: her aunt had obviously already made her mind on the subject. She sat down at the table and shivered at the idea of wearing that on her first day at Stonewall High – like she was wearing bits of a dead, putrid animal, in all probability. Sighing, she realised she would have to use some of the stolen money she kept in reserve to buy a proper uniform for her classes. There was no way she would go to school in these dregs.
Dudley and Uncle Vernon then came in, both looking like walruses with wrinkled noses because of the smell from Alexandra's supposed new uniform. Uncle Vernon opened his newspaper as usual and Dudley banged his Smeltings stick, which he carried everywhere, on the tables.