AN: I am neither rich or blonde nor does my name start with a J, there in lies the problem (for me anyways) I do not own Harry Potter.
Chapter one
Private Drive was a quiet place in Little Whinging. It's residents were off the hard working, middle class kind and it showed. Neat box like houses arranged in a perfect crescent, with jewel like patches of equal sized gardens both to the front and back of the houses, and neat laid drives in perfect alignment with freshly painted garage doors. Shiny black motor vehicles stood gleaming on these drives and lacy or flower curtains hung in freshly polished windows. Most residents chose black or cream gloss paint for their window sashes, doors, and garages. They also chose to have perfectly clipped lawns, and low box hedges or their gardens. To the front of their houses, the drives were laid in a neat Herringbone pattern of grey stone and to the rear, patios were laid the same. Inside the houses magnolia prevailed on the walls and the floors were mainly carpeted in finely woven cream. Picture rails hung tastefully posed pictures of the families living there (or their relatives), while all the fixtures and fittings were in cream with gold. Overall it was a very respectable, if slightly boring corner of Surrey.
Mrs Petunia Dursley however, did not give a rat's tail about conforming to such sheer banality in her existence. She did not believe in following the crowd and when, as a freshly married couple, her husband and herself had moved into the only detached property in the street she had torn up the rulebook and set tongues wagging. Despite her dislike of anything out of the ordinary, Petunia had good taste in decorating and wanted her family home to be as welcoming and as comfortable as possible. At first the changes she made to the house were not noticeable to her nosey neighbours as the were inside the house. She spent months planning and sourcing materials to make her house perfect. Behind the glossily painted front door she merrily worked away, transforming the house into a home. She (and yes she did do it all herself thank you very much) decide on soft waxed oak flooring for the whole of the house, with rugs and stair liners for softness. All the doors in the house were of waxed oak and with bronze handles shaped as an opened rose. In the hall she carried the soft oak half way up the walls, and painted the top half a soft stone colour, the warm yellows of this she picked up in a brown and cream stripped stair runner and doormat. The banister was also of oak, but she chose a warm bronze for the metals in it. The kitchen was painted in the same colour with splash backs and work surfaces of the palest sanded limestone, while the cabinets were of varnished oak. The bath room had tiles of the softest green, shot through with bronze and walls painted a slightly darker green, a bronze shower head stood over a scroll topped bath, which itself was cream and bronze, the same as the rest of the suit. In the living room she chose an enclosed gas fire simply because it was the most efficient at the time and the black and bronze appliance set off the dusky bronze and red she had chosen for the soft furnishing of the room. After painting the rest of the room in the same soft stone as the hallway, she decided it needed more warmth and after much humming and harring she painted a free style opened rose in Dusky Bronze and red on the wall with the fire. The upstairs bedrooms were all painted a different colour. The smallest was painted a warm peach, with cream highlights. The designated guest bedroom was painted cream with lilac and bronze wallpaper on the bed head wall. The second largest bedroom she painted in different shades of blue and bronze. The large master bedroom she choose a soft dove grey and dusky pink.
Satisfied with the inside of the house, and unaware the gossips had started when she had hung the simple coloured but luxurious curtains at the window, Petunia turned her attention to the external areas of the house. She ripped up the boring grey stonework of her patio and drive, the relayed it with the soft ochre- red of old stones in the same pattern. She sanded all the external woodwork back to true, swaying precariously on the ladder as she did so, and then varnished it a deep mahogany colour. The gardens were subject to the same treatment. She removed all of the hedges in the rear garden and replaced them with honeysuckle and climbing roses to cover the, now stained dark green, fence work. Widening the borders she edged them with the same soft coloured old bricks and planted them full. Lilies, Iris, Hollyhocks, Foxgloves, Lupins, Fuchsias and Hydrangeas all glowed with reds, pinks and oranges whilst jostling for space. She filled large pale terracotta pots on the patio with all sorts of herbs, letting their scent mingle with that of the flowers. In the middle of the jewel bright lawn she added a birdbath. The front garden kept most of its low hedging, with only the corner shrubs being replaced by Hydrangeas. Under the front bay window she dug a half moon border and filled it with spring flowering bulbs, autumn flowering perennials and winter green, resolving to buy summer bedding plants yearly.
Immersed in her happy world and three full years after they moved in, the Dursleys found they were pregnant with a son. Vernon was overjoyed, Petunia's joy only tempered slightly by the wish (somewhere deep in the back of her mind) of sharing this with her sister. Vernon returned from work many times that winter to find her staring out of the kitchen wind one hand place gently on her growing stomach another on the sun catcher they had been gifted anonymously at their wedding. She pulled herself together by Christmas day, much to his delight, and shared in the festivities during a rare visit from her parents and the two weeks his sister Marge spent with them. The new year brought a feeling of deep contentment for Petunia, that was only tinged with bitterness when her parents seemed more enthused with the idea of her sister being pregnant than herself. Towards April her mood turned and she started to feel hemmed in and a little unloved leading to a screaming match over the phone with her mother at the very end of the month. Before she could ring to apologise a young police officer turned up on her doorstep on the 3rd of May with the news that her parents had been killed in a suspicious car crash. The guilt and grief drove her to an early pregnancy, and her son was born 7th May at home with no one else around them. By the time the ambulance arrived she had cut the cord herself and was breastfeeding her apparently unharmed son. The physically pulled the boy from her arms to check them both over and it was not until two weeks later she was allowed to hold her son again. By then he had forgotten that first touch, as newborns do if placed in an incubator with little human interaction, and struggled against her refusing to feed. When they arrived home she stowed all the letters that had arrived during her hospital stay into a box and got Vernon to place it in the attic. She had missed her parent's funeral during her stay in hospital and when Vernon suggested she contact her sister she threw the bottle she had been warming at him and burst into tears. Neither noticed the innocent looking sun catcher in the window spark and begin to spin on its own.