Vernon and Petunia Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive lived in a very nice neighbourhood, in a very nice house, with a very nice garden, but they were not really very nice people.

Ten years previously they had woken up to find their orphaned niece on their doorstep, and since that day they had done their level best to forget that she existed.

They had done a fairly good job of it too.

In ten years, Privet Drive had hardly changed at all. The sun rose on the same tidy garden and glinted off the brass number four on the front door; it crept into their living room and illuminated the few hardy dust-motes that escaped Petunia Dursley's hoover. Only the photographs on the mantlepiece really showed how much time had passed.

Ten years ago, there had been lots of pictures of a fat, rosy-cheeked toddler wearing different coloured bobble hats and looking upset about it—but Dudley Dursley was no longer a baby. Now the photographs were all of a large blond boy, riding his first bicycle, on a roundabout at the fair, playing a computer game with his father and being hugged and kissed by his mother and looking upset about it.

There was no sign or trace of a little girl in any of the lovely house's sunlit rooms. Yet Jane Potter was still there.

The sun was just rising past the horizon when Jane got slowly out of bed and dressed for the day. She shook out her spring dress and the jumper she wanted to wear that day and was unsurprised when a spider dropped onto her bare foot and scuttled away into a far corner. Jane was used to spiders. After all, the cupboard under the stairs was full of them, and that was where she slept.

Jane let herself out of her cupboard and padded down the hall into the kitchen.

The table was all but hidden beneath all of her cousin's birthday presents, and Jane could see at a glance that Dudley had likely gotten everything he'd asked for. A new computer, a second television, and a racing bike being just a few of the more extravagant items.

Jane reached out and touched the nearest of the gifts, admiring the crisp corners on the glittering paper and the fancy bow that Aunt Petunia had tied herself.

She smoothed a finger along the edge before jerking her hand away as though she'd been burned. She turned quickly away and went to put the frying pan on the cooker and flick the coffee maker and the electric kettle on.

While the pan was heating, she made her Aunt some tea and bolted down a quick breakfast of toast and marmalade for herself washing it down with a glass of milk.

Aunt Petunia came into the kitchen and took the tea without a word to Jane as she was pulling out the ingredients for Dudley's birthday breakfast. She sat down with the new issue of her favourite women's magazine and flipped through it as she sipped on her first cuppa.

Uncle Vernon came into the kitchen just as Jane was turning over the bacon.

"Bring my coffee, girl!" he barked, by way of a morning greeting. "And for god's sake comb your hair!"

Jane brought the coffee and set it by Uncle Vernon's elbow, and he was soon absorbed in his morning newspaper.

About once a week Uncle Vernon would look up over the top of his newspaper and shout that Jane needed a haircut. For a while her Aunt had taken her down to the salon and let the ladies there tut and fuss and cut away at her unruly hair, but it didn't matter how many haircuts she had, her hair always looked a tangled mess and soon Aunt Petunia stopped bothering.

Jane was frying eggs by the time Dudley came into the kitchen.

Dudley looked a lot like Uncle Vernon. He had a large, pink face, a short, thick neck, small, watery blue eyes and thick blond hair that lay smooth and flat on his thick fat head. Given ten years and a moustache and Dudley would look like a carbon copy of his father.

Jane almost pitied him.

She set the plates of eggs and bacon down on the table, maneuvering carefully around the gifts. Dudley was counting them.

"Thirty-six," he said, looking up at his parents. "That's two less than last year."

"Well, some of them are quite a bit bigger than last year—"

"I don't care how big they are!"

"Darling, you haven't counted Auntie Marge's present, see, it's here under this big one from Mummy and Daddy."

"Alright, thirty-seven then," said Dudley, he had his arms crossed over his chest and was turning red in the face.

Jane ate the last piece of her bacon quickly and stood from the table, clearing away her plate and Aunt Petunia's empty cup. She retreated to the safety of the kitchen counter and started doing the breakfast dishes.

Aunt Petunia obviously scented danger too, because she said quickly, "And we'll buy you two brand new presents while were out today, popkin. You can pick them out special. How does that sound? Is that all right?"

Dudley thought for a long moment. His face twisted up in concentration.

Finally, he said, "So I'll have thirty…thirty…"

"Thirty-nine, sweetums," said Aunt Petunia.

"Oh." Dudley sat down heavily and grabbed the nearest parcel. "All right then."

Uncle Vernon chuckled.

"Little tyke wants his money's worth, just like his father. Atta boy, Dudley!" He ruffled Dudley's hair.

At that moment the telephone rang and Aunt Petunia went to answer it. Uncle Vernon continued to read his newspaper and Dudley tore into his gifts.

Jane watched behind the curtain of her hair as he unwrapped the racing bike, a cine-camera, a remote-control aeroplane, sixteen new computer games and a gold wristwatch.

When Aunt Petunia came back into the kitchen, she looked angry and upset.

"Bad news, Vernon," she said. "Mrs. Figg's broken her leg. She's in hospital for the afternoon and can't take her."

She glanced in Jane's direction. Jane busied herself with a stubborn bit of grease on the frying pan.

The Dursleys were so wrapped up in their silly little lives that they often forgot they had a niece. And they preferred it that way. But there were some occasions that required a bit of forethought and thinking about Jane always put the Dursleys in a mood.

Every year on Dudley's birthday his parents took him and a friend out for the day. They went to adventure parks, hamburger bars, or the cinema. Every year they left Jane behind. Sometimes with their neighbour, Mrs. Figg, who lived two streets away and was over-fond of cats. Sometimes with Aunt Petunia's friend Yvonne. Sometimes they left her at the library. Sometimes Jane had to beg the librarian for bus fare because they forgot her there, and if she wasn't home in good time she'd have to sleep on the back porch, but this was still Jane's favourite way of being managed.

She held her breath.

"What are we going to do?" said Aunt Petunia.

"We could phone Marge," Uncle Vernon suggested.

"Don't be silly Vernon, she hates the girl, and I hate getting phone calls about it."

When the Dursleys needed to speak about Jane they often spoke like this, as though she wasn't there—or rather, as though she was something very nasty that couldn't understand them.

If the Dursleys had been paying any attention whatsoever they would have noticed that for all her quietude their niece was a very bright girl. By the age of six she had learned what most adults didn't figure out until their early thirties—how to take care of herself. And she'd been doing a fine job taking care of them too.

But the Dursleys had never paid attention and they weren't about to start now.

"What about your friend, what-her-face—Yvette?"

"Yvonne. She's on holiday in Majorca," snapped Aunt Petunia.

"I c-c-could…" Jane muttered.

"What was that?"

"N-nothing," stuttered Jane, realizing she'd made a mistake by drawing her aunt's attention.

"You know I hate it when you mumble, girl. Speak up!"

"I c-could stay here," Jane said, as loud as she dared, feeling very bold.

Aunt Petunia looked as though she'd swallowed a lemon.

"And come back to find the house in ruins, stupid girl!"

"If we wanted your opinion, we'd give it to you," barked Uncle Vernon.

Jane shrank a little and retreated back behind the curtain of her hair. She quietly began putting the dishes away. The Dursleys continued to talk as though she weren't there.

"I suppose we could take her to the zoo," said Aunt Petunia slowly, "And leave her in the car…"

"They fine for that now, Pet!" Uncle Vernon protested. "Five thousand pounds! I'm not paying it—"

Dudley began to cry loudly. Big fat, fake crocodile tears. He hadn't really cried since he was quite small, but he knew very well that if he screwed up his face and wailed his mother would give him anything he wanted.

And, sure enough, Aunt Petunia was at his side in an instant.

"Oh, pookie pie, don't cry!" she cried. "Mummy won't let her spoil your special day!"

"I don't want her!" Dudley shouted between great hiccupping sobs. "She always spoils everything!"

Jane didn't see how that could be true seeing how her cousin only saw her when she was making his meals or cleaning his room.

Just then the doorbell rang— "Oh, good lord, they're here!" said Aunt Petunia frantically, smoothing down her skirt and fluffing her hair— and a moment later, Dudley's best friend, Piers Polkiss, walked in with his mother.

Dudley stopped pretending to cry at once.

Half an hour later, Jane, who couldn't believe her misfortune was in the back of the car with Piers and Dudley, on her way to the zoo for the very first time in her life.

Her aunt and uncle hadn't been able to think of what else they could do with her on such short notice and Mrs. Polkiss had been asking questions.

If there was one thing that the Dursleys couldn't abide it was being the subject of gossip. They feared the low opinion of their neighbourhood more than they wanted to be rid of Jane, and anyway she was hardly noticeable, they reasoned.

Still, before they'd left Uncle Vernon had taken Jane aside.

"I'm warning you," he'd said, putting his large purple face right up close to Jane's, "I am warning you now, girl, any funny business, anything at all and it will be no meals for a week."

"Y-yes Uncle Vernon," Jane said, looking at her feet.

Her stomach sank right then and there. The problem was, strange things happened around Jane. Objects moved of their own accord, garden snakes stopped to have a teatime chat, plants grew large and wild, and there was no use telling the Dursleys that she didn't make any of it happen.

Once Aunt Petunia had braided her wild hair into a long plait and cut it all off in an effort to 'stop her looking like a gormless hoodlum'. It had been awful and ugly and Jane had cried quietly in the bathroom as she imagined what all the girls at school would say when they saw her. She was already laughed at for her stutter and her outdated clothes and her thick old-man specs but her hair had always been her pride and her shield.

The next morning she'd been so happy to find it had all grown back, exactly as it had been before, that she hadn't minded missing a week of school and being locked in her cupboard. Try as she might though she couldn't explain how her hair had grown back so quickly. Every book she'd ever read said it should be impossible.

Another time she'd got into terrible trouble for being found on the roof of the school kitchens. One of the meaner girls in her class had been trying to grab the book in her hand and Jane had spun on her heel to run away, wishing she could just disappear, and just like that she was sitting on the chimney.

It took them five hours to find her.

The Dursleys, of course, couldn't have cared less what she got up to except that she'd been sent home with an angry letter from the headmistress. Uncle Vernon had shouted at her until she couldn't stop trembling that time. And her books couldn't explain that one either. She'd read a thousand-page treatise on physics and gravity just to be sure.

She had a name for these episodes. She called them her 'odd-turns' a polite term for what the Dursleys would call her 'freakishness'.

There would be no odd-turns today though. Jane was determined. As long as she could fade into the background and kept close so she didn't miss the return to the car there would be no reason for anyone to take the time to remember she was there.

While he drove, Uncle Vernon complained to Aunt Petunia. He loved to complain about things. People at work, the council, the bank, and other people's small children were a few of his favourite subjects. This morning it was motorbikes.

"…roaring along like maniacs, acting like they own the road. Irresponsible, Pet! These young hoodlums have no consideration for the rules of the road, weaving in and out of traffic like they own the whole bloody place…"

A lady on a motorbike overtook them.

Jane thought she looked very cool in her leathers and shiny black helmet.

Come to think of it she'd just had a dream about a motorbike. It had been flying. It had been a good dream but Jane knew better than to mention it. The Dursleys were so determined to be normal they would never see the fun in the idea of a motorbike that could fly. Only the danger.

They arrived at the zoo in good time but as it was a very sunny Saturday it was still crowded with families. Uncle Vernon managed the long wait by complaining loudly about queues.

The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers large chocolate ice-creams at the entrance and, because the smiling lady in the van had asked what Jane wanted before they could hurry her away, they bought her the cheapest thing on the menu. A lemon ice lolly that tasted like summer.

Jane had the best morning she'd had in a very long time. She was careful to trail a little behind the Dursleys so that by lunchtime she had slipped their mind entirely and could enjoy the animals in peace. She watched the penguins swimming in the underwater viewing area and the girl lions play fighting over a bright red ball.

She even got to eat lunch.

They ate in the zoo restaurant and when Dudley threw a tantrum because his knickerbocker glory wasn't big enough Uncle Vernon shouted at the staff until they gave him another one and shoved the old one at Jane with a sharp demand to: "Get rid of that rubbish!"

She got a new plastic fork from the lady at the service counter and ate it herself sitting in the sunshine behind the rubbish bins outside.

It was lovely. Which was why Jane should have known it was all too good to be true.

After lunch they ducked into the indoor exhibits because Aunt Petunia had begun to complain about the heat of the day. They started with the aquariums and quickly moved on to the reptile house after being scolded for tapping on the glass.

It was cool and dark in there, with the only light coming from the backlit terrariums. Behind the glass all sorts of lizards and snakes were crawling and slithering over bits of wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see poisonous cobras and thick, man-crushing pythons.

Dudley was quick to find the largest snake in the place. It was a massive creature with glistening brown coils and an understated diamond pattern, it looked big enough to crush a car like a tin can but was fast asleep under a heat lamp.

Dudley pressed his nose against the glass, staring.

After a moment he whined to his father, "Make it move!"

Uncle Vernon rapped on the glass.

"Move!" he shouted, but the snake didn't budge.

Dudley banged on the glass with a meaty fist.

"Move!" he bellowed.

The snake just snoozed on.

"Ugh, boring," Dudley huffed, before shuffling away.

Jane excused herself from conversation with a gorgeous Egyptian asp to move in front of the tank. She stared at the snake for a long moment and tucked her hair behind one ear, smiling a bit to herself.

"It's alright, they've moved off," she told it.

The snake blinked open one beady eye and ever so slowly raised its head so that its eyes were level with her own. Then it slow blinked at her and gave her a snaky smile in return.

"Ssssspeaker," it hissed.

Jane thought it might have been a girl snake from the voice.

She glanced over her shoulder to be sure the Dursleys weren't paying her any mind and let her mouth stretch into a full-blown grin.

"Awful, aren't they? My relatives."

The snake shifted dismissively.

"That issss humanssss for you."

"It must be r-really annoying, but, lucky for both of us, my uncle and cousin are easily bored."

The snake hissed out an agreeable noise bobbing her head.

"Where do you come from?"

She had learned quickly that all the snakes in captivity wanted to talk about was home and how much better it had been in the 'old days' like gossipy old biddies. Since she was the only person she knew of who could talk to snakes, she'd endured all the complaints. Still, she couldn't help but compare them to Mrs. Figg who lived alone except for twelve cats and couldn't converse on any subject that wasn't her poor dear babies.

"I've alwaysss been here."

Jane glanced over at the little golden placard next to the tank.

"Brazillian Boa Constrictor. Bred in captivity," she read, aloud.

She touched her fingers to the glass nearest to the snake, a sudden and unexpected sympathy welling up inside her.

"That's me as well. Bred in captivity."

The boa constrictor raised her head so that her eyes were level with Jane's and she had the feeling she was about to say something important when a deafening shout made both of them jump.

"Dudley! Mr. Dursley! Come look at this snake! You won't believe what it's doing!"

Dudley rushed towards them, shoving Jane out of his path.

"Out of the way!"

Jane fell hard on the concrete floor and skinned her palms. It stung but not too badly.

She looked up and blinked. It had happened so fast she almost didn't catch it. One moment the glass was there, and then it was gone. Dudley and Piers were leaning right up close to the glass and they both tumbled into the enclosure. They scrambled back with howls of horror as the boa constrictor uncoiled herself rapidly and slipped over the edge, slithering out onto the floor. She slid over Jane's legs and shoulder, a warm heavy weight that was a soft as suede, and in Jane's ear she hissed: "My thanksssss, Sssspeaker."

And then she slithered away.

People throughout the reptile house started screaming and running for the exits, and when Jane turned to look back at the tank, the glass had reappeared and Piers and Dudley were trapped inside.

Hours later, the keeper of the reptile house was still in shock.

"It's not possible," he kept saying. "Completely inconceivable."

The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia, who had been in complete hysterics when she found them, a cup of strong sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers and Dudley were gibbering wrecks though they'd never been in any danger.

Uncle Vernon wouldn't stop shouting.

By the time they were back in the car and on their way, Dudley was telling them all how he was sure the snake had nearly bitten off his leg, while Piers was swearing it was seconds away from squeezing him to death.

It was almost funny, until of course Piers had calmed down enough to say, "It crawled right over Jane, didn't it, Dud? She's lucky it liked her or you'd be down a cousin!"

Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the house, which gave Jane another hour of respite, but as soon as Mrs. Polkiss' car had cleared the drive he rounded on Jane.

He was so angry he could barely speak.

"Go," he growled.

And Jane went.

She scurried into the safety of her dark little cupboard and winced when Vernon slammed the door after her and threw the outer latch.

As she lay down in the dark, she wasn't really worried, exactly. She'd been locked into her cupboard before, but, if she ever really, really needed to, she could always seem to get out. It had just been a long time since one or the other of the Dursleys had thrown the outer latch. She'd been getting used to having free reign of the house.

She sighed heavily into the blackness and listened to the muffled voices of Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia in the living room. By now Uncle Vernon would be ensconced with a brandy and Aunt Petunia with a tea and they'd be deciding how long her punishment would last. It was a familiar routine.

While Jane hadn't been entirely accurate in saying to the boa constrictor that she'd been bred in captivity she had lived with the Dursleys for ten miserable years. Practically her whole life and certainly all the bits she could remember.

Her parents had died in a car crash before she could walk. She couldn't remember being in the car of course but there was a nasty scar that cut right through her eyebrow and down her cheek like a bolt of lightning so she must've been there and just got lucky.

Most days she didn't feel particularly lucky.

Sometimes if she strained herself in the long stretches of blackness when she was locked away in her cupboard, she could recall a blinding flash of green light and searing pain. This, she supposed, was the car crash but there were no other memories of before to accompany it. No memories of her mum and dad.

Her aunt and uncle never spoke of them, and she was forbidden to ask, even if she could work up the nerve. There were no pictures either. Nothing from Aunt Petunia's girlhood, or of Jane and Dudley's grandparents. It was as though Aunt Petunia had sprung, fully-formed, into being the day she started dating Uncle Vernon.

When she'd been younger, Jane had whiled away many an hour daydreaming of some long-lost relation showing up on the stoop at Number Four and taking her away. But it hadn't happened. And eventually Jane had learned that it hurt less to stop wishing and to put away the dream then it did to keep dreaming it and continue to be disappointed.

She'd put away many such dreams over the years.

That it would be different once she was in school. That her teacher would believe her when she explained why she hadn't finished her work. Or that if she did everything they ever asked of her exactly right that the Dursleys might start to like her, even if it was just a little bit.

That she could make a friend.

That one had been silliness right from the get-go. No one cared one whit about Plain Jane Potter, with her ugly scar and her coke-bottle specs and her odd turns. She was different from ordinary people, and she learned early on that whatever she needed in this world she'd have to get herself.

Or go without.

Hello all! My first time posting something new here on ffn in quite a while so apologies for any formatting bugs. This piece is for the Alternate Sorting Challenge on HPFC. I really fell in love with the idea of a really powerful female friendship between Hermione and Jane and this story is going to be a vehicle for that. Just what would have happened if Harry had had more in common with Hermione than Ron? It's going to be an adventure figuring that out in this rewrite!

Anyone with ideas, comments, or criticism please do let me know in a review! Hearing from you all is really what makes fanfic worth publishing!