A/N: Firstly, I DO NOT OWN ANYTHING! Secondly, This Chapter is pretty much word for word, chapter two is when all the real fireworks begin.

Chapter 1

The Girl Who Lived

Number Four, Privet Drive was the last place you would expect anything exciting or unusual to happen. Mostly, this was because of the fact that the occupants simply didn't hold with all that nonsense, but the other reason was that they simply had no real reason for anything strange to happen at all.

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills for the big industrial sorts. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. Dursley was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors.

The Dursley's had everything they wanted, but they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it. They didn't think they could bear it if anyone found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Mrs. Dursley's sister, but they hadn't met for several years; in fact, Mrs. Dursley pretended she didn't have a sister, because her sister and her good-for-nothing husband were as unDursleyish as it was possible to be.

As it was, when Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up on the dull, gray Tuesday that our story starts, there was nothing to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. The happy couple proceeded as usual, Mr. Dursley walking out the door armed with his most boring tie and his gossipy wife leering across the fence at the neighbor's lawn. Neither one noticed the large, tawny owl flutter by, not that they had any reason to suspect an owl in the first place. So Mr. Dursley backed out of the drive without further ado, whistling a cheery tune as he started off for another long day of selling drill bits.

It didn't take long, however, for the perfectly normal Mr. Dursley to notice something not quite right about his cheerful Tuesday morning. In fact, the chipper tune he had whistled turned to a choking sputter as he pulled to the corner and spotted the strangest sight he had ever seen in his incredibly dull life. A cat that was quite clearly reading a map.

"What in the bloody hell? Impossible. I must be seeing things."

And with a quick shake of his head he sped off, absolutely refusing to look back at the extraordinary tabby cat now making its way down the sidewalk of Little Whinging. Unfortunately for Mr. Dursley, his day was only bound to get a little stranger the further he proceeded. On the edge of town, any thought of his daily orders were driven out of his mind by something else.

As he sat in the morning traffic jam, he couldn't help noticing that there seemed to be a lot of strangely dressed people about. People in cloaks. On any other day, Mr. Dursley might have put it off as some silly stunt, or even a show to raise funds for some oddball cause he hadn't heard of, but today it sent a wave of unease through his rather round belly.

"Just your imagination Dursley, get it together now. We don't buy into that lot of rubbish." Muttering darkly to no one in particular, Mr. Dursley firmly averted his gaze to the car ahead of him and forced himself to think about something, anything, but the oddly dressed people. A few minutes later, Mr. Dursley arrived in the Grunnings parking lot with his mind still fixed on cloaks and cats.

Perhaps it was this reason that Mr. Dursley sat facing the window this day. Usually, he sat with his back facing his office on the ninth floor. If he had, he might have not noticed the owls swooping past in broad daylight earning open mouthed stares and pointed fingers from the passerby's down below. Yet he did see them, and it happened the final straw for poor Mr. Dursley.

"Owls! Bloody owls! Absolute rubbish, I say! First that damned cat, then those- those freaks! Now OWLS? What next?" Mr. Dursley all but ran out of his office, ignoring the shocked looks of his underlings as he stormed towards the exit with his face turning a rather spectacular shade of purple.

It was in this manner, as Mr. Dursley stomped to his car, that Mr. Dursley overheard the topper to his increasingly trying day. "Did you hear? You-Know-Who is dead! Little Annabelle Potter killed the slimy git!" Potter. Mr. Dursley came to a sudden stop, his beady little eyes snapping away from polished shoes to a pair of young men dressed up in cloaks and weird looking robes.

"My mum found out this morning. She was a friend of Lily Potter, you know, it's a shame that her and her husband James died. Think of it, that poor girl growing up all alone." The younger of the two, a boy with a shock of stunning red hair and a spattering of freckles spoke, not even noticing Mr. Dursley going from purple to sheet white in the parking lot.

"I heard about that too, Bill. Dad overheard Dumbledore talking with the Minister about the Potter girl, he thinks Dumbledore is sending her off to muggles of all the people. Some relatives if he heard right." The latter, only a year or two older than the first, spat out with a clear look of distaste.

Whatever else the two strange boys may have said went unheard as Mr. Dursley scrambled into his waiting car and shot off out of the parking lot with a single, horrifying thought spurring his flight. Potters.

Later that evening….

Outside of Number Four, the strange little tabby cat sat still as a statue with its unblinking eyes fixed intently on the Dursley house. It didn't so much as quiver when a car door slammed on the next street, nor when two owls swooped overhead. In fact, it was nearly midnight before the cat moved at all.

A man appeared on the corner the cat had been watching, appearing so suddenly and silently you would have thought he had simply popped out of the ground. The cat's tail twitched and its eyes narrowed.

Nothing like this man had ever been seen on Privet Drive. He was tall, thin, and very old judging by the silver of his hair and beard, which were both long enough to tuck into his belt. He was wearing long robes, a purple cloak that swept the ground, and high-heeled, buckled boots. His blue eyes were light, bright, and sparkling behind half moon spectacles and his nose was very long and crooked, as though it had been broken at least twice. What the residents of Privet Drive didn't know was that this man was Albus Dumbledore.

Albus didn't seem to realize that he had just arrived on a street where everything from his name to his boots was unwelcome. He was busy rummaging in his cloak, looking for something. But he did seem to realize he was being watched because he looked up suddenly at the cat, which was still staring at him from the other end of the street. For some reason, the sight of the cat seemed to amuse him. He chuckled and muttered, "I should have known."

After a few more moments of rummaging, Albus pulled what seemed to be a silver cigarette lighter from his pocket. He flicked it open, held it up in the air, and clicked it. The nearest street lamp went out with a little pop. Twelve more times he clicked, and twelve more lights flickered into darkness until only the lights left on the whole street were two tiny pinpricks in the distance. Dumbledore slipped the Put-Outer back inside his cloak and set off towards Number Four where the little tabby cat still glared from its perch on a wall.

"Fancy seeing you here, Minerva."

He turned to look at the cat, but it was suddenly gone. Instead, Dumbledore was smiling at a rather severe looking woman with square spectacles set low on her nose exactly where the pale markings around the cat's eyes had been. She too was wearing a cloak, yet hers was a deep emerald. Her black hair was drawn up into a tight bun, and the look on her face gave the distinct impression that she was ruffled.

"How did you know it was me?" she asked.

"My dear Professor McGonagall, I have never seen a cat sit so stiffly." A faint hint of amusement crinkled the corners of Dumbledore's eyes, earning an instant scowl from the woman.

"You would be stiff if you had been sitting on a brick wall all day." She snapped. Professor McGonagall shot a sharp look at Dumbledore and continued. "Is it true what they're saying? That last night Voldemort turned up in Godric's Hollow…and that Lily and James Potter are-are…that they're…"

Dumbledore bowed his head.

"If that's true, then Annabelle…Surely you can't mean to leave her here of all the places!" McGonagall had jumped to her feet on a soft gasp.

Neither of them seemed to notice the soft yellow glow of lamp flaring to life behind the curtain of Number Four, or the soft creak of the door as Dumbledore sighed. He opened his mouth to speak, oblivious to the thin woman slowly making her way across the postage stamp lawn in her slippers.

"Where is she?" Mrs. Dursley's shrill voice cut through whatever Dumbledore had intended to say. He turned sharply, his twinkling blue eyes widening slightly when he spotted her. He gave her a polite nod that only served to make Mrs. Dursley sour expression worsen. "Petunia, it's a pleasure to see you again." He greeted.

Mrs. Dursley sniffed somewhat rudely and twisted her overly long neck this way and that looking for something that was obviously not there. A low rumbling sound broke the silence around them. It grew steadily louder as they looked up and down the street for some sign of a headlight; it swelled to a roar as all three looked up to the sky – and an enormous motorcycle came thundering out of it to land with a screech in front of them. Mrs. Dursley let out a frightened squeal, but Dumbledore merely smiled at the newcomer.

If the motorcycle was enormous, it was nothing compared to the man sitting astride it. He was almost twice as tall as a normal man and easily five times as wide. Long tangles of bushy black hair and beard hid all but a pair of shiny, dark eyes and cold reddened nose. The giant of a man had hands the size of trash can lids, and tucked into one was a small, quivering bundle of pastel pink blankets.

And just barely peeking out of said blankets, an even smaller baby girl was just visible, her vibrant green eyes peering curiously up at the sky. Underneath a tuft of red hair still bright with youth, a curiously shaped scar cut jaggedly across the girl's forehead.

END A/N: I know, it's really rough. Rate and review please!