(minor corrections, 9th March, 2014)
Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter (either specifically, or generally with regard to canon).
Note: The following is a one-shot set in an alternate universe where Albus Dumbledore overlooked one very important thing in his haste to get Harry established in number four Privet Drive...
It was on the seventh of November, 1981, that Albus Dumbledore received a letter with a muggle stamp on it, forwarded by the Ministry's squib agents in the Royal Mail who picked letters for Hogwarts out of the conventional post system.
It was addressed: 'For the immediate attention of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Re: Boy-Who-Lived nonsense, Bloody Urgent' and had a clearly marked return address on the back of the envelope of a house in Surrey with which Albus was familiar.
He doubted Petunia and Vernon had anything that could truly be of earth-shaking importance that needed to be said – they probably wanted tips on how to change nappies or young Harry's favourite foods or something – but it was probably best to see what they wanted and if necessary to soothe their frazzled nerves.
Albus opened the envelope and started to read the letter and within moments both his eyebrows had gone up and he actually winced. He must have been overstretching himself recently. Of course that would have happened.
He abandoned his breakfast, and went looking for his deputy.
"Floo-call the ministry for me, Minerva, and ask them to have a team of obliviators on emergency stand-by this morning, if you would please, dressed for muggle liaison. I may require their presence in Surrey at some point today. There is something of the utmost importance which I quite naturally overlooked, and which may be complicated to fix."
"Surrey, Albus?" Minerva gave him an accusing look.
"This is nothing to do with the Dursleys and Harry, Minerva. Well not in that sense, although they are certainly upset, and not unduly so either. And I may be gone for some time."
"What did you mean by this?" Petunia Dursley raged. "Ever since the night you left our nephew on the doorstep along with that letter full of stories about dark-lords and claiming you'd done some sort of hocus-pocus for our 'own good', absolutely nothing works in this house except the cold water from the mains and the gas stove, and you need matches to light the latter. No central heating. No television. No radio. No fridge or freezer or even toaster. Vernon's had to take Dudley and stay in a nearby hotel, leaving me to camp out in the kitchen with my freak sister's little freak. And it's affecting the neighbours, too. It's taken out the electricity on half the street."
Albus knew exactly what the problem was: strong magical wards of course interfered with electrical devices of almost all kinds, and he had installed incredibly powerful and complex magical wards – for Harry's own protection – over number four Privet Drive a few nights ago prior to leaving Harry here.
He couldn't blame Petunia for being angry at him. He should have foreseen this.
The trouble was, it was probably too late now to dismantle or adjust the wards without losing the protection (including on Harry) altogether.
"Just an unexpected technical hitch, Petunia." Albus said in his best soothing manner. "Now I'm sure it's going to be possible to make this right, if we just sit down and discuss this like rational adults…"
'Fixing' the ward problem proved highly costly to Albus. He had to resign from his position on the ICW as a matter of course, for causing such a potential major breach of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, and he needed to call in a tremendous number of favours to actually halfway start to clear up the mess which he had initiated. It was a good thing he didn't have any heirs or relatives who had hopes of inheriting anything from him, as he had practically nothing left now of his own to leave them. His expenditure on wonderful new robes had had to be sacrificed, too, for the Greater Good.
In the end it proved impossible to devise any means of mitigating the effect of the wards on electrical devices – the wards were far too powerful for anything but the simplest of devices such as battery-operated torches to survive in their presence – and since Albus couldn't afford for the Dursleys to move, that meant they needed house-elves to make life in an electricity-less environment tolerable for them, as muggles, for the next fifteen or so years. But since they'd be unable to entertain, or anything, anyone from the regular world, and were 'having' to put up with house-elves (no matter how useful they might be), they had demanded a job for Vernon with a stupendously high salary and of great respect and importance. Albus had in the end pulled some strings and got Vernon a job with Gringotts. Apparently Vernon amused the goblins, and they used him to deal with customers they found annoying and to foreclose on witches and wizards who couldn't pay their debts. Dudley getting a chance to follow his father into a halfway decent position, and being guaranteed a top-notch education at somewhere that met with the Dursley's approval had had to be included in the deal, too.
And then there'd had to be a cover story, to explain why the electricity was out in most of the rest of the street – and why it couldn't be fixed – and compensation paid to the Dursley's former neighbours, who now needed new homes. That had caused Albus and the Ministry of Magic a good deal of bother and hard-work (and had involved several uncomfortable meetings with the muggle Prime-Minister who made her opinions quite vocally known on the whole debacle). And since empty homes would look odd, Albus had reluctantly had to concede to a number of wizarding families he trusted (such as the Weasleys) moving in on Privet Drive. At a stroke, Albus had effectively inadvertently created a new wizarding community on the edge of commuter-belt Surrey centred around The-Boy-Who-Lived, which was a long way from what he had originally intended.
Albus' plans for Harry Potter to grow up safe and well away from the wizarding world, unaware of his background or fame, had been brought tumbling down by the very wards Albus had installed as the intended capstone of his plans.
Author Notes:
It's established in canon that in places such as Hogwarts electrical devices (in general) simply fail. It seemed not too far a stretch to me to imagine a universe where the wards Albus Dumbledore erects in Privet Drive (wards tied into a protection potent enough to bounce a Killing Curse back on a dark lord) have a similar deleterious effect on electrical devices (and life in general) in Privet Drive.
I assume that Albus Dumbledore would have given Petunia some directions on how she could contact him (not that she apparently ever wanted to do in canon as an adult) in his accompanying letter when he left Harry on the doorstep; even if he didn't, she is known to have written to him at least once as a child, so apparently has some idea of how it can be done by a non-magical person. Petunia's letter to Albus in this story was rather strongly worded and to the effect of 'come and fix this at once, you lunatic, or I'm dumping my nephew in an orphanage to see if that fixes everything'.
As regards the extent to which the Dursleys are cosseted in exchange for their continuing cooperation, Albus regards the protection on Harry as very important and he's tied it (in this story) to Harry living at Privet Drive with his aunt (and presumably cousin). He's painted himself into a corner - he can't afford to have the Dursley's disavow Harry, but he's made it impossible for them to live anything remotely resembling normal lives without their moving. So that means lots and lots of soothing words, and house-elf servants, and a highly paid job for Vernon. Yes, it's a job in the magical world, but it's a job as a banker - one of the most respectable careers around in the 1980's - at a highly exclusive London bank whose name and dealings might conceivably even extend into the muggle world. And it's my view that it's at least possible (if she could talk to witches and wizards and realise how the glory could rub off on her) that Petunia might be able to put up with 'freak' society given how important Harry actually is in it. (Plus somewhere inside her, there's possibly still that little girl who was upset at not being able to go to Hogwarts.)
If I had the time and energy, I might have added a brief rewrite of Albus' 'first' visit to Privet Drive (where he leaves Harry) at number four at the start of this piece. In it Albus would have done his deluminator thing to put the lights out, put Harry on the doorstep, clicked his deluminator again, and left without ever noticing that the lights never came back on in half the street.
Anyway, that's it for this one. I was interested in writing a sketch of how Harry's background situation could have been different, based on an aspect of the ward situation I hadn't seen addressed very often (if at all) in fanfiction, but it's done now and I have other ongoing projects I need to get back to...
Good luck to anyone else it inspires.