哈利波特与魔法石05-At the zoo with Dudley

（单词翻译）

　　It was a very sunny Saturday and the zoo was crowded withfamilies. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers¹ large chocolateice creams at the entrance and then, because the smiling lady inthe van had asked Harry² what he wanted before they could hurry himaway, they bought him a cheap lemon ice pop. It wasn't bad, either,Harry thought, licking it as they watched a gorilla³ scratching itshead who looked remarkably⁴ like Dudley, except that it wasn't blond.
Harry had the best morning he'd had in a long time. He wascareful to walk a little way apart from the Dursleys so thatDudley and Piers, who were starting to get bored with the animalsby lunchtime, wouldn't fall back on their favorite hobby of hittinghim. They ate in the zoo restaurant, and when Dudley had a tantrumbecause his knickerbocker glory didn't have enough ice cream on top,Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Harry was allowed to finishthe first.
Harry felt, afterward⁵, that he should have known it was alltoo good to last.
After lunch they went to the reptile⁶ house. It was cool and darkin there, with lit windows all along the walls. Behind the glass, allsorts of lizards⁷ and snakes were crawling and slithering over bitsof wood and stone. Dudley and Piers wanted to see huge, poisonouscobras and thick, man-crushing pythons. Dudley quickly found thelargest snake in the place. It could have wrapped its body twicearound Uncle Vernon's car and crushed it into a trash can -- but atthe moment it didn't look in the mood. In fact, it was fast asleep.
Dudley stood with his nose pressed against the glass, staringat the glistening⁸ brown coils.
"Make it move," he whined⁹ at his father. Uncle Vernon tappedon the glass, but the snake didn't budge¹⁰.
"Do it again," Dudley ordered. Uncle Vernon rapped the glasssmartly with his knuckles¹¹, but the snake just snoozed on.
"This is boring," Dudley moaned. He shuffled¹² away.
Harry moved in front of the tank and looked intently at thesnake. He wouldn't have been surprised if it had died of boredomitself -- no company except stupid people drumming their fingerson the glass trying to disturb it all day long. It was worse thanhaving a cupboard as a bedroom, where the only visitor was AuntPetunia hammering on the door to wake you up; at least he got tovisit the rest of the house.
The snake suddenly opened its beady eyes. Slowly, very slowly,it raised its head until its eyes were on a level with Harry's.
It winked¹⁴.
Harry stared. Then he looked quickly around to see if anyone waswatching. They weren't. He looked back at the snake and winked, too.
The snake jerked its head toward Uncle Vernon and Dudley, thenraised its eyes to the ceiling. It gave Harry a look that saidquite plainly:
"I get that all the time.
"I know," Harry murmured through the glass, though he wasn'tsure the snake could hear him. "It must be really annoying."The snake nodded vigorously.
"Where do you come from, anyway?" Harry asked.
The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign next to theglass. Harry peered at it.
Boa Constrictor, Brazil.
"Was it nice there?"The boa constrictor jabbed its tail at the sign again andHarry read on: This specimen¹⁵ was bred in the zoo. "Oh, I see --so you've never been to Brazil?"As the snake shook its head, a deafening¹⁶ shout behind Harrymade both of them jump.
"DUDLEY! MR. DURSLEY! COME AND LOOK AT THIS SNAKE! YOU WON'TBELIEVE WHAT IT'S DOING!"Dudley came waddling¹⁷ toward them as fast as he could.
"Out of the way, you," he said, punching Harry in theribs. Caught by surprise, Harry fell hard on the concrete floor. Whatcame next happened so fast no one saw how it happened -- one second,Piers and Dudley were leaning right up close to the glass, the next,they had leapt back with howls of horror.
Harry sat up and gasped¹⁸; the glass front of the boa constrictor'stank had vanished. The great snake was uncoiling itself rapidly,slithering out onto the floor. People throughout the reptile housescreamed and started running for the exits.
As the snake slid swiftly past him, Harry could have sworn a low,hissing voice said, "Brazil, here I come.... Thanksss, amigo."The keeper of the reptile house was in shock.
"But the glass," he kept saying, "where did the glass go?"The zoo director himself made Aunt Petunia¹³ a cup of strong,sweet tea while he apologized over and over again. Piers andDudley could only gibber. As far as Harry had seen, the snakehadn't done anything except snap playfully at their heels as itpassed, but by the time they were all back in Uncle Vernon's car,Dudley was telling them how it had nearly bitten off his leg, whilePiers was swearing it had tried to squeeze him to death. But worstof all, for Harry at least, was Piers calming down enough to say,"Harry was talking to it, weren't you, Harry?"Uncle Vernon waited until Piers was safely out of the housebefore starting on Harry. He was so angry he could hardly speak. Hemanaged to say, "Go -- cupboard -- stay -- no meals," before hecollapsed into a chair, and Aunt Petunia had to run and get him alarge brandy.
Harry lay in his dark cupboard much later, wishing he had awatch. He didn't know what time it was and he couldn't be sure theDursleys were asleep yet. Until they were, he couldn't risk sneakingto the kitchen for some food.
He'd lived with the Dursleys almost ten years, ten miserableyears, as long as he could remember, ever since he'd been a babyand his parents had died in that car crash. He couldn't rememberbeing in the car when his parents had died. Sometimes, when hestrained his memory during long hours in his cupboard, he came upwith a strange vision: a blinding flash of green light and a burn-ing pain on his forehead. This, he supposed, was the crash, thoughhe couldn't imagine where all the green light came from. He couldn'tremember his parents at all. His aunt and uncle never spoke¹⁹ aboutthem, and of course he was forbidden to ask questions. There wereno photographs of them in the house.
When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of someunknown relation coming to take him away, but it had never happened;the Dursleys were his only family. Yet sometimes he thought (or maybehoped) that strangers in the street seemed to know him. Very strangestrangers they were, too. A tiny man in a violet top hat had bowedto him once while out shopping with Aunt Petunia and Dudley. Afterasking Harry furiously if he knew the man, Aunt Petunia had rushedthem out of the shop without buying anything. A wild-looking oldwoman dressed all in green had waved merrily at him once on a bus. Abald man in a very long purple coat had actually shaken his hand inthe street the other day and then walked away without a word. Theweirdest thing about all these people was the way they seemed tovanish the second Harry tried to get a closer look.
At school, Harry had no one. Everybody knew that Dudley's ganghated that odd Harry Potter in his baggy²⁰ old clothes and brokenglasses, and nobody liked to disagree with Dudley's gang.