money to me,” Harry replied calmly. “You just concentrate on getting the work done.”
Next day, Monday, Harry and Box set off for town and the electrical supplier located therein.
“I can’t imagine what has gotten into those two,” said Mrs Privet, pulling back the curtain, watching Harry and Box step up to the bus. “One day they are mortal enemies, and the next they are bosom buddies.”
Sitting at the kitchen table, studying the remains of his son’s fried breakfast, Mr Privet asked, “Any more where this lot came from?”
Town was busy; Harry hated towns, there were far too many Muddles in them for her liking. “Which way?” she asked, narrowly avoiding a youth speeding passed, on a motor scooter.
“This way,” said Box, pointing up the hill.
It was a long walk, up that hill, to where the best electrical supplier in town was located. Unaccustomed to such extreme walking, Harry’s legs soon began to ache. “Why couldn’t they have built their shop at the bottom of the hill?” she complained. Then remembering that it was Muddles she was talking about, she laughed, saying, “No, don’t answer that.”
As they stepped into the old shop, the bell over the door jingled signalling their arrival. An ancient man standing behind a dusty old counter studied them over the top of his equally as dusty spectacle lenses. “Can I help you?” he asked.
“I certainly hope so,” said Harry.
“Box handed the man their list of requirements.
“Hmm,” he said, making his way through the long list, “a most unusual mixture of items… What is it you said you were making?”
“We didn’t,” Harry snapped.
“We’re making a transmitter,” Box lied, thinking this approach better than his cousin’s confrontational one.
“A transmitter, you say,” said the man, pushing his grimy glasses up to the top of his head. Harry wondered how he had managed to see through them at all.
“Yes,” explained Box, “but it’s only an experiment, nothing big, you know…”
“You really need a licence, you do know that?”
“We do, but it’s only an experiment, for school, and a temporary one at that.”
“Hmm,” said the man, reaching under the counter for his order book into which he began writing. “In that case, I suppose it’s all right.” When he had finished copying Box’s list into his book, he stepped through a doorway leading into the rear of the shop and disappeared from sight.
Relieved that they were getting their supplies, Box turned away from the counter and studied the electrical advertising posters sticky taped to the walls. Harry stared out the window, bored.
After waiting for a good twenty minutes, they heard the sound of slow footsteps signalling the return of the old man. Puffing and panting he emerged through the doorway, carrying two cardboard boxes, one under each arm, loaded with electrical items, that he plonked down heavily on the counter. A cloud of fine dust rose high into the still air. Harry coughed.
“There you are,” he said, “everything you were a wanting. Some of these things were stashed way back to the rear of the shelves, hadn’t sold any of them for years. Thought I never would. Just goes to show, doesn’t it?”
“Thanks,” said Box. “How much do we owe you?”
“I have the bill in here somewhere,” he said, rummaging about in one of the boxes. “Ah, here it is.” He handed it to him. Box almost fainted when he saw how much it amounted to.
Snatching the bill, Harry said, “Give that to me.” After inspecting it, the final figure that is, without flinching as much as an eyelid, Harry opened her shoulder bag and withdrew a small purse.”There you are,” she said, offering three golden coins to the man, “and you can keep the change.”
Inspecting the coins, he said, “Are you sure? These are worth an awful lot more that the bill amount to!”
Without saying another word, Harry opened the door and instructed Box to carry the boxes. Grabbing hold of them, struggling under their weight, he followed her out from the shop, asking, “Where did you get those coins from?”
The Hybrid New Wand
It was decided (by Harry) to assemble the hybrid new wand in the privacy of Box’s bedroom, where there was a workbench, with plenty of tools at the ready. Harry might have been worried that Box’s parents would see what they were up to, had it not been for all the locks and bolts he had installed on the door. With them secreted inside, and with all of the locks and bolts set firmly in place, Mr and Mrs Privet had no hope of seeing anything.
“What can they be doing, up there?” said Mrs Privet one evening, when the two cousins were upstairs, secreted within the confines of the small bedroom.
“Didn’t you tell me they were making a radio?” said Mr Privet as he turned over the page of his newspaper.
“Yes, I did…”
“I see the wholesale price of fruit and vegetables is going up again,” Mr Privet mumbled, without giving the children, and what they might or might not be getting up to, a second thought.
Mrs Privet said nothing, but she listened intently, worried for the safety of her only son.
“Holly, did you hear me? I said the price of fruit and vegetables is going up again!”
“That’s nice, dear,” she replied. “I am so happy to hear that…”
Mr Privet turned another page of his newspaper, where he saw an article about owls dive-bombing children in the local park. “What on earth will be happening next?” he growled. “The world has gone barking mad.”
Over the following week, Harry and Box spent every waking minute in the confines of his small bedroom; Box at his workbench creating, crafting the new hybrid wand that his cousin so desperately wanted, and Harry in charge of the existing one, helping him to understand, and to meld the two seemingly incompatible standards. It was a long process, transferring her wand’s powers into the new electro magical creation, but Box persisted, and when he was in the final stages, with sparks, smoke and all sorts of magical phenomena going on around them, something quite unexpected happened. Harry’s wand, instead of shrinking away into nothingness, as Box had said out it would do, stopped short from doing this. When it was about the size of a matchstick, it stopped shrinking and it stubbornly remained at that size no matter how hard they tried to finish the process. In the end they had to accept that although the process had been a success, the last vestiges of power in her old wand remained stubbornly there – within it, the matchstick wand. With the new electro magical wand all but complete, the two cousins emerged from the bedroom tired and weary, yet happy they had achieved their objective.
“The only thing left is to test it,” Harry whispered as they made their way down the stairs.
“Can we do it now?” Box asked, impatient to see if his efforts had been successful.
“No, we’ll do it later, when no one is here,” Harry whispered as she opened the kitchen door.
“It’s good to see both of you, away from that stuffy old room,” said Mrs Privet when the two cousins entered the kitchen. “How’s the radio coming on?”
“The radio?” said Box.
“The radio is all finished,” said Harry, digging her forgetful cousin in the ribs. Box’s eyes watered.
“Any lemonade?” Harry asked, casually opening the fridge door as she spoke.
After giving each of them a glass of lemonade, Mrs Privet said, “Now go inside to the dining room, dinner is just about ready. Then calling her husband, she said, “Laurel, dear, Harry and Box have finished their radio…”
“About time too,” he replied. “They could have made a bomb for all the time they’ve spent up there.”
Hearing her husband making his way upstairs, Mrs Privet said, “Dinner is almost ready.”
“I’m just going for a piddle, be down in a jiff,” he replied.
Mr Privet did go for a piddle, but he omitted to say that he was also going to see if he could take a peep at the newly finished radio…
“There you a
re,” said Mrs Privet, placing two huge plates on the table in front of the children. “Shepherd’s Pie, your favourite, Box.”
Her son wasted no time in tucking into his favourite meal; he was absolutely famished after a week of such intense work, having missed so many of his meals.
Prodding her meal dismissively with her fork, Harry’s eyes looked upwards; she was worried.
“Don’t you like it, Harry?” Mrs Privet asked politely.
This time it was Box who nudged Harry in the ribs.
“Pardon, what did you say?”
“I said don’t you like your dinner?”
“It was lovely,” Harry replied. “I enjoyed every bit of it,” she said, holding her empty plate for the woman’s inspection.
Mrs Privet’s jaw dropped. “How did you do that?” she asked in astonishment.
“Come on,” Harry whispered to Box, “let’s get upstairs; I think we left the door unlocked…
“Can’t I finish my dinner, first?”
“You have,” she said as she pushed back her chair and got up.
“But I haven’t,” Box protested, “In fact I’ve hardly begun…”
“Look at you plate, dummy.”
Staring down at his plate, Box was shocked to see that it too was as clean as a whistle.
“But I didn’t eat it,” he moaned, “and I’m still starving.”
“Have you forgotten about your father?” Harry hissed, annoyed that Muddles can waste so much timing thinking about food.
On the landing Mr Privet, Laurel, having spotted the door to his son’s bedroom having been left slightly ajar, was creeping surreptitiously