Number Four Privet Drive: By the time Dudley turned ten Petunia and Vernon Dursley had to admit there was something alarmingly unnatural about the place. Things moved themselves, books and newspapers and clothes, or would get lost and reappear somewhere strange, in the oven or dangling off the tree in the front yard. Food would go missing from the refrigerator. Sometimes dinner would go missing straight off their plates, and they'd stare at the plate, confused, wondering how they could have already finished and why they were still hungry.
And, although they'd never seen or heard another soul besides the three of them, the pervasive, tingling sense that there was something living in their house, whenever Petunia was alone in the kitchen, that awareness in the back of her neck that something was standing directly behind her, maybe just a foot away- she turned around and there was nothing- and that one time that Vernon woke up suddenly, sometime after three in the morning, knowing something malevolent was next to their bed, watching them- his heart sped up, but he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the ceiling, breathing shallowly, until it went away.
They spoke about it in roundabout ways with forced, nervous casualness, knowing that addressing it directly might make the situation altogether, horrifically worse- "I'll need you to go get another gallon of milk, Vernon, I must have forgotten it-" even though Vernon had just watched Petunia unload the groceries and put two gallons of milk in the fridge- "Of course, is there anything else we need while I'm out?" and Vernon made a list with most of the groceries Petunia had just unloaded, but he steadfastly did not allow his brain to notice the repetition; it didn't matter where the milk had disappeared to, or what it was that had taken it, he was a practical man, not a fearful one, so the way to deal with the horror that had set up residence in his home was simply to replace things that disappeared, move back furniture, and when he knew there was something sitting in the fourth chair at the table, sweat and talk loudly about the weather and work and traffic.
Dudley, who had shown promise of growing into a precocious, extroverted child, nowadays spent his time in the house white-faced and nervous, spoke little and only when spoken to, woke up screaming from nightmares but refused to tell Petunia what they were. Children, even Muggle children, always see more than adults, being less practiced at telling themselves what they are seeing. Petunia quickly stopped asking him about his nightmares but instead let him sleep between her and Vernon, for the little protection they gave, whispering, "It's not real, darling, it's not real," wishing the words didn't sound flatly dishonest even to her own ears.
And one of those nights Dudley whimpered, "It hates me for I have a family, it wants to hurt me," and Petunia quickly covered his mouth and said quickly, "Shh, darling, it's not real," but what she meant was, don't speak of it.
Once when the ten-year-old walked past the staircase, out of the corner of his eye he saw the outline of a door. When turned to look at it, the wall was solid, and he bit his lip and quickly walked on.
Whatever lived in Number Four, Privet Drive stole all kinds of things, but it loved to steal Dudley's things the most- toys, action figures, posters, books, pens and colors, his new school uniform Vernon had bought him for school in September. Sometimes they would return, hours or days or months later, somehow grotesquely defaced- the pages of the books turned blank, or the face of the action figure twisted into a glare. Sometimes they never returned. Dudley threw out the ruined toys and told Petunia he had lost them, or maybe a friend borrowed them and didn't return them. Petunia smiled tightly and didn't say anything about how he had been losing everything, lately, and he didn't really have any friends, lately.
-/-
-/-
-/-
How To Remain Unseen: There is a Cloak engineered by one Ignatius Peverell, that has been passed down by his descendants, but the workings are understood by none, and it is the only of its kind. When James Potter died, Albus Dumbledore possessed the cloak. There are demiguise, magical creatures that have the ability to turn invisible at will, whose pelts can be harvested and sewn into cloaks that become slowly opaque over several years of use. There is the Disillusionment Charm, which gives a person the appearance of whatever is directly behind them.
There is also a slightly different class of spells, perhaps not true invisibility, which leaves the person quite visible but simply unnoticeable, one of those millions of details the brain simply filters out. For personal use there is the Notice-Me-Not charm, but wizards have used powerful runic variants of the same type of magic to hide buildings or even entire magical communities from Muggles.
But the accidental magic of children is difficult to classify, difficult to understand; there is little science, or even repeatability, to the extraordinary magic children are able to wield at unpredictable times. Living in the cupboard under the stairs- yes, there was a door, but the Dursleys had somehow forgotten it- was a small child named Harry Potter, who from the age of one was steadfastly ignored as much as possible without being physically neglected, told each morning through the door to stay in his cupboard and pretend he didn't exist. First the boy became unnoticed, then unseen, and finally, Petunia and Vernon Dursley forgot entirely they had ever taken in Lily Potter's orphan son in the first place.
-/-
-/-
-/-
What Type Of Thing Is Harry Potter: Not given to philosophy, much, any how- still a young one, whatever type of thing it is, it loves to play as types of things as much as it believes itself to be. Being a spook is one of its favorite games, somewhere between a ghost (something left over, stuck in the doorway) and a playful bit of the house, given to making things disappear and playing pranks, although those pranks are maybe less on the light-hearted side of things. Scaring the Dursleys is funny, making fear permanently part of their lives is even funnier.
Harry Potter imagines that it and the cupboard are somehow related, because it knows the Dursleys can't see the cupboard, which means- whatever it means. Harry Potter isn't quite sure what would happen if it left the house, but it never has, and even in its most adventurous moods, it never feels the impulse to go outside.
Although sometimes Harry Potter thinks itself to be imaginary, it does enjoy doing things Dursleys do such as food and pissing and it's not quite sure whether it feels the need to do those things because of the type of thing it is or because it's copying the Dursleys. Harry Potter despises the Dursleys, of course, despises and hates them, but it also knows in the back of its mind that it's jealous even of their boring, meaningless, terrified lives, and so it watches everything they do with wide eyes and copies them, from perusing Vernon's newspaper to putting on Petunia's makeup in the bathroom mirror.
Dudley, of course, is the one Harry Potter despises and hates and is jealous of the most, and so Harry Potter follows Dudley around the house and steals his food off his plate and pulls his hair and at night it slides into his bed and whispers mean things into his ear. Harry Potter doesn't want to be anything like Dudley, the fat, cowardly, friendless ten-year-old, and yet Harry Potter never could even if it wanted to, never could be a proper boy with a mother and a father, and it never wanted to, but it wants to ruin it for Dudley as best as it can, for a tight, painful reason that it understands very well.
Sometimes Harry Potter plays to be a fourth Dursley, eating at the table and watching television and sleeping in the third bedroom instead of in its cupboard. The Dursleys carefully avoid looking toward certain parts of the room, and it cheerfully chats to Vernon and Petunia and Dudley, knowing they don't hear a word. It calls Vernon "Dad" and Petunia "Mum" and dresses up in Dudley's clothes. It's a funny game, but it's obvious Harry Potter is not and never will be a Dursley.
Harry Potter needs the Dursleys to survive, it knows, what would it do if it couldn't steal everything needs from them? Sometimes Harry Potter thinks how easy it would be to start playing slightly worse pranks on them, maybe cause an accident, someone trips just when they're walking down the stairs, maybe somebody leaves the gas leaking out of the stove and doesn't notice. Or simply an upended ashtray, a house up in flames, cupboard and all.
-/-
-/-
-/-
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: If there's a place that's actively helped complete more prophecies than any other, it's the bustling, busy office of The Daily Prophet, which employs more Seers than any other business in Magical Britain. As leaked research from the Department of Mysteries (published by the Daily Prophet) informs us, whether or not prophecies are completed highly depends on whether the prophecy- or some distorted version- gets back to the ears of those it pertains to, and before the Daily Prophet began employing Seers to get their news first, a majority of prophecies would end up unheard, and unfulfilled. Prophecies, like all knowledge, depend on being known to really affect anything.
It was not long after their employment of Sybill Trelawney that she gave the prophecy about You-Know-Who and The Boy-Who-Lived, and of course it ran the front page- one with the power to defeat the Dark Lord! The war could end! A little over a year later, the Dark Lord sought to eliminate the threat, and that night at the (supposedly Secret) Potter house, both members of the prophecy disappeared.
A mystery, of course, what happened, all quite mysterious, and for whatever reason the public found it difficult to fix their minds on that night at the Potter house (where was it again?) but the Prophet spun a tale of a Betrayal, a Mother's Love, and a Killing Curse Rebound that, with the curious fog around the true events of Halloween, quickly took that place in the public mind between legend and history where everyone has forgotten why they believed it but yet know it to be true. Like all stories in that place between legend and history, the characters involved became timeless and intangible, and by the time Harry Potter is eleven, most everyone has forgotten to wonder whatever has happened to him (as well as What-Was-His-Name, the other member of the prophecy, whose dead body, come to think of it, no one has actually seen). The Daily Prophet had given birth to another Harry Potter, one larger than life, more than human, the Savior of the Wizarding World, and this new Harry Potter- ever present in history books, plastered across posters, written about in children's essays, the Harry Potter of the prophecy- perhaps could be said to have a better claim on the name than whatever is living in The Cupboard Under The Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey.