Disclaimer 1: This is fanfic. That means I do not own any of it. I just borrow it to play with for a little while and let people see the pathetic results if they really want to.
Disclaimer 2: I'm not making any money from it. It's just for fun.
Disclaimer 3: What isn't borrowed is all made up. None of this is real or most likely at all realistic. Please don't trust any of the information in here. Most likely you know more about whatever I'm writing about than I do.
Disclaimer 4: Attitudes, views and opinions expressed by the characters or in the story are not necessarily those of the author. Even when writing Science Fiction or Fantasy I do not tend to attempt to create perfect/better worlds in which everybody gets a happy end ... or whatever is best for them. Please accept that some characters will have a bad ending or be unhappy.
Disclaimer 5: I intend no insult to anyone. If I offend anyone I'm very sorry. Please understand that it was an accident as I tend to be very clumsy in these things.
Notes: This is an AU set in a future where children are ... not raised by their parents. I'm just going over the first Harry Potter book chapter by chapter, not making up an entirely new plot, though the consequences are much bigger than I thought when I first had the idea.
Harry No. 5 and the Philosopher's Stone
Chapter 1: The Boy who Lived
Mr. Vernon Dursley and Mrs. Petunia Dursley-Evans were a completely normal couple. They lived in a normal two-room flat in the employees' block of the Grunnings company area on the outskirts of London.
Mr Dursley spent most of his time working as Director of the Grunnings drill company, and Mrs. Dursley-Evans was the secretary of one of the minor department-heads under him. In the evenings she liked to entertain her husband by recounting all the office gossip that other people didn't mention in the hearing of the top management.
She was the only family Mr. Dursley had as his parents had declined the offer to meet him when he'd turned 16. Petunia herself however had met with her mother in her younger days and even had a younger sister who occasionally wrote to them.
Once they had even met up with Lily Potter-Evans and her husband James Potter. It had not gone well, though. Mr. Potter was ... Well, Vernon Dursley wanted nothing to do with the likes of him. He knew however that Petunia enjoyed the feeling of connection with her dead parents that her sister represented and so Vernon willingly signed the occasional letter or postcard to add his greetings to hers as long as he did not have to meet the Potters again.
Besides Lily Potter-Evans their family also included their one year old son Dudley who was being raised in one of the best nursery institutes in the country.
If Vernon was very exact it also included their nephew, the son of Lily and James Potter. Neither he nor Petunia really considered him their kin, though. In fact, Vernon couldn't even remember the child's first name. Not that it mattered as the boy had been born the same year as Dudley and was far from reaching an age to be able to bother his relatives.
If you didn't consider the Potters there was nothing at all unusual about Vernon's life and that was exactly how Vernon wanted it. And thus the overcast Thursday morning on which our story begins seemed perfectly ordinary when Vernon and Petunia got up, dressed and walked down to the company restaurant for breakfast.
During the meal they discussed drills and the company as they did every morning. Then Vernon kissed Petunia on the cheek and went to work. He rode the elevator up to his office on the ninth floor and spent a perfectly ordinary morning shouting at people and reducing his secretary to tears.
He missed lunch break due to an online conference with an oversees branch office and therefore decided to get some buns from the bakery across the street to tide him over until dinner. Once outside he couldn't help noticing a group of strangely dressed people standing on the side-walk and whispering excitedly. Vernon glared at their colourful robes angrily.
Why weren't they at work being productive? They couldn't be walking advertisements for a new holomovie as there was no inscription with the title anywhere in sight.
Perhaps they were on lunch break just like himself? Yes, they were probably actors or extras for a holomovie that was being shot somewhere nearby.
On the way back to his office he overheard a snatch of their conversation, though.
"Potter and Evans' little boy. Harry I think his name was?"
Vernon raced back up into his office, laid his buns on his desk and was just about to click Petunia's IM name when it occurred to him that neither Potter nor Evans was an at all unusual name. This Harry might be anyone's child, and even if they had been talking about his nephew it was the problem of the staff of whatever nursery institute he'd been placed in, and perhaps that of his parents. There was no reason to bother Petunia with it, though. It would only bring the existence of their unsavoury relatives to the attention of her gossip-mongering co-workers. No, they had nothing to do with it after all.
That evening when he came home after his usual two hours of overtime, Petunia flew right at him the moment he stepped through the door.
"Oh Vernon!" she exclaimed evidently very distressed. "Somebody attacked a nursery institute! It was destroyed! Completely destroyed!"
"Attacked a nursery institute?" Vernon could hardly believe it. "But who would do such a thing? Petunia, it ... it wasn't ..."
"What? Oh no, it was somewhere in Scotland. Our Dudley was nowhere near it. And they managed to save all the children in time, anyway. But several of the staff were killed and the whole building destroyed, and of course the terrorists died, too."
"Terrorists? But why would terrorists attack a nursery institute?"
"Oh, why do terrorists attack anything? They are simply awful people. Anti-feminists, they assume," Petunia explained. "You know, those madmen who want to force women back into the slavery of raising children and bar them from the freedom of doing productive work for their employers."
Vernon snorted. "I always suspected that their claims that they're doing it all out of love for children and all that rot of for the good of the little ones were just sorry excuses to cause a lot of havoc."
"Why, of course they are, when everybody knows that institutional upbringing by experts is the best and most economic solution for them as well as for the mothers and their employers. Though sometimes ..."
"Sometimes?" Vernon prompted.
"Well, sometimes I do wish I could have our little Dudley with me, could see him, hold him, watch him grow ..."
"Nonsense Petunia! Who's put such outlandish ideas into your head? Surely you don't want to be enslaved!"
Petunia laughed. "Of course not. I dare say I'd be tired of it and want to escape after just a few minutes of it, if I ever actually got the chance. It's probably just that I'm curious what he looks like. I'd like to know how children act and develop."
"Why Petunia, we'll get another development report and photo of him on his next birthday," Vernon reminded her. "Then we'll be able to see."
And with that the topic was finished for them ... until the next morning when Petunia received a letter from one Albus Dumbledore that contained a very strange request.