"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby. Yeh look a lot like yer dad, bet yeh've got yer mom's eyes."
-Hagrid, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Chapter 4, p. 47
The Muggles who lived in Grimmauld Place did not expect anything magical to happen in the small village in which they lived. In fact, only one resident of Grimmauld Place wanted anything of that sort to happen, but her story does not start until later. For now, the only magical thing happening was going on in a house that, by Muggle reckoning, did not exist. Number 12 Grimmauld Place had not been built, these Muggles say, only 11 and 13. A mistake, they continue, made by the contractor, or some other person, and then all talk ceases to exist about the happenings of this house. But, if you know where to look, you'll see that, cleverly situated so that only magical-folk can see, number 12 does, indeed, exist. And it is here that the beginning of the end starts.
Two men, if you could call them that, sat rather comfortably in number 12. One was rather stout, with messy blond hair and dull blue eyes that seemed to have seen too much of the world. The second could hardly be called human, was more snakelike, with no hair to speak of and dark, cold eyes. The conversation occurred, though they did not know it, 2 years before the death of the stout man.
"Wormtail," said the snakelike man. "I have come up with the only plan in which I can finally kill Harry Potter."
"Y-yes, my lord?" The stout man stuttered fearfully.
"To kill him before he was born." The snakelike man said in his high, keening voice.
"B-but how?" The stout man asked.
"To start," The snakelike man continued, "with his parents."
"But L-Lily and J-James are already dead!" The stout man squeaked.
"Here, and now, yes. The Ministry has began to create more and more powerful Timeturners. Ones that will help us considerably once we get a hold of them. And poor Mister Potter will be dead before he knows what hit him." The snakelike man cackled an awful high laugh that sent shivers down the stout man's spine.
Two years and two hundred miles away, a boy came into existence, tripped and fell. And a night from that, the boy called Harry Potter awoke with a start.
