Number four privet drive. A dull house in a dull neighborhood. A mirror reflecting every other house on the block – to anyone passing by.
Cradled inside this house was something entirely unique – not the little wizarding boy who occasionally slept under the stairs nor the mother who held too many secrets nor the spoiled boy who didn't understand the world nor the man who taught his son to misunderstand the world. No, in this house there was a spark.
Despite the occupant's obsessive need of normalcy, the house itself decided to be different.
Maybe it was that shipment of wood that appear out of nowhere as the builders were setting up the walls or the windows that seemed to show just a bit more than it should have when someone looked through them. Whatever it was that had made this house different, the house didn't care. It was just grateful for the difference. It couldn't imagine living like all of the other houses on the dull little street.
There wasn't much indication of the difference – no brownies hiding in the attic or fairies wandering about the backyard. It was a bit lonely, but number four privet drive was content to linger about the idea of what made it different. Happening to guide a mischievous mouse inside, just to rattle the mother or letting its floorboards shift into a steady creaking that sounded like footsteps just made life more interesting – if for the house, not the occupants.
In reality, number four privet drive was quite young – in terms of houses. It longed to explore the world outside of this dull little plot of land that only extended so far.
When the boy who didn't understand the world very well (and that was saying something considering the house understood very little of the world) came rumbling down its steps, spewing particles of house over the boy who occasionally slept under the stairs, the house saw its chance.
Either it could stay in this boring plot for the rest of its life or it could cling to the little wizarding boy in the hopes that he would venture out into the world. And the boy did. And the house realized how amazing the world was, where castle sang in voices as old as time and owls roosted upon tables and window sills alike. And it realized how terrifying the world was, with its monsters in human skin and its green fire that ended lives before they began. It learned the world three times over in the presence of that boy and when he finally laid down to rest, so too did the house, who would not have wished its burden on any other house.
As the boy laid down, the house realized what it had been all along, a home.