Disclamier: Characters, settings, and ideas similar or used in the Harry Potter series all belong to J. K. Rowling.
That said, I would really appreciate any reviews and please follow if you want more chapters!
Number 4 of Privet Drive was once home to a family called the Dursleys. Only a little while ago, slightly wilted sunflowers burst from either side of the narrow walkway up to the cleanly kept front door, which was scrubbed and polished everyday by Mrs. Dursley. The green grass was usually freshly mowed and tamed, without a sign of weeds. The weeds, of course, had long been dealt with. Absolutely nothing about the Dursleys was unusual in any way, and you couldn't find anyone who hated nonsense more than the Dursley family.
Mrs. Dursley was a thin, bony woman with a long neck who liked to peer through the back hedges to spy on what her neighbors were doing during the day. She scrubbed and cleaned the house until all of the kitchen's marble countertop shined and all the branches of the back hedges were neatly trimmed.
Mr. Dursley, on the contrary, was a large man with a thick mustache and had almost no neck at all. He almost never cleaned the house but did drills at a company downtown, and liked to yell and complain a lot.
They had a son, Dudley, who was very large like his father, only even larger. Dudley won a lot at wrestling, mainly because he was enormous and weighed almost the size of a young whale.
However, there was also another boy who lived at Number 4 Privet Drive, but nobody knew much about him, except that he was rather skinny and had black hair that stuck up at the back. This boy was Harry Potter.
The Dursley's departure from their house was very sudden. None of the neighbors knew what to think of it, and in fact, they still didn't know what really happened. All that was known, was that one day quite a while ago, all of the Dursleys had gotten up early in the morning, made a racket, packed their things into their car, and had drove away. Dudley was having a fit when the car disappeared around the corner, yelling at the top of his lungs and waking their neighbors on Privet Drive. Nothing was known about the other boy who lived with them.
It was a very strange business indeed, but of course, nobody questioned it at the time. They all just thought the Dursleys was leaving for an abrupt holiday somewhere, and the boy had simply been left behind. After all, it was summer at the time. And when it's summer, most people are just quite irritated to be woke up so early by loud screaming and wailing coming from the streets.
But a few months later, school was starting and Dudley still hadn't showed up for Smeltings. The headmaster of Smeltings was a nice but plump man, and ignored Dudley's absence for the first week or so, thinking that Dudley might have gotten sick and hadn't been able to report. But then another few weeks passed and the headmaster couldn't ignore it any longer or it would be considered it improper, so he decided to give the Dursleys a friendly call and put in a note about Dudley. But he couldn't reach anyone there. Little did he know that the Dursleys had cancelled their phone line a week before they'd left.
So, curious and disapproving, the headmaster decided to board a bright yellow school bus one afternoon and kindly asked the driver to take a little detour at the end of his route to the Dursley's house. The bus driver agreed nervously. He wasn't sure if the headmaster would quite enjoy this bus ride, especially with such feisty children aboard.
Indeed, it was an unnerving bus ride for the headmaster. "Feisty" might've been an understatement. As they each came on the bus, they bonked their headmaster hard on the head with their Smelting's stick and spat in his face. When the headmaster felt like he had gotten bonked hard on the head more than what he could stand, he stood up and shouted a bit at the children. But instead of ceasing the bonking, it only made it worse. There were already many dark bruises forming on the headmaster's head as the last child stepped off the bus, giving his headmaster an evil smirk and one last BONK! as he passed him at the front seat of the bright yellow school bus.
With his patience worn thin, the headmaster stumbled off the bus in front of the Dursley's house, grumbling complaints to himself and rubbing the sore spots on his head. He winced when he touched a particularly sensitive patch.
When he caught sight of the Dursley's normally well kept house, he instantly forgot about his head and almost tripped over his own two feet in surprise. Astonished, the headmaster pinched his arm very hard and cried out in pain. "Not a dream, not a dream," he muttered mindlessly to himself.
A few months without being cared for had done its deed to the poor house. Cobwebs covered the top corners of windows and the front porch, and mice lurked in the dark, overgrown bushes. The white panels of the house, formerly often wiped by Mrs. Dursley, were now gray with dust. The front lawn of the house was overgrown with grass and all sorts of weeds, and the headmaster could tell that the backyard was off in no better shape. A new sense of curiosity replaced his previous annoyance as he stood, motionless and staring, at the house that once looked so clean and spotless.
Perhaps it was because the headmaster was so deep in his thoughts that he didn't hear car wheels squeaking along the road and pulling to a stop behind his school bus. He also didn't notice when a car door slammed loudly on the street behind him. But a sudden tap on his shoulder did the job of startling him, and the plump headmaster stumbled backwards in surprise. Collecting himself, he saw that he was in fact facing a much taller and thinner man who held a black briefcase in his right hand.
"Sorry," said the taller man, peering down at the headmaster with an apologetic look. "I thought that perhaps, you were Mr. Dursley. But clearly, I am mistaken."
The headmaster straightened to his full height, which wasn't very impressive as it only brought him up to the other's shoulder. "That's all right," he said kindly, though sounding a bit flustered. He straightened his neck tie smartly. "So you're looking for the Dursleys too, aren't you?"
"Yes, I am," he agreed, giving a long look at the house. Then he looked down at the shorter man, wondering why in the world he might also be looking for the Dursleys. "Sorry, but who might you be?"
"I," said the headmaster, drawing himself up proudly with a fond look on his face, "am the headmaster at Smeltings. It is the very finest school of education for young children!"
"Ah," said the taller man, nodding approvingly. "Might you know Mr. Dursley? I think he mentioned once that he went to Smeltings as a little boy."
"Yes, yes," said the headmaster, sounding rather hasty. "I do remember him well. He was—er—quite the model student to his peers. But it's his son that I'm looking for—Dudley, Dudley Dursley," he added quickly. "And how do you know Mr. Dursley, may I ask?"
The tall man smiled down at the headmaster. "Why, Mr. Dursley works for me!" Then he turned his gaze towards the abandoned house, frowning. "It was very strange indeed, the first morning when he did not show up for work, but I thought that perhaps something came up and he was unable to inform me of the matters, that sort of thing. But it has been a few weeks now that he hasn't been coming to work—you know how he's the kind of man who is so immensely dedicated to his job—that I started to get a bit worried." He gestured towards the house. "I suppose his leave is more than just a standard departure, eh?"
"Hmm," said the headmaster politely. He had thought quite the opposite of Mr. Dursley in his schoolboy years, but perhaps people could change in a matter of years, as it had been quite a long time since the headmaster had last seen Mr. Dursley. Not wanting to upset the other, or demolish Mr. Dursley's career if he ever decided to come back, the headmaster began rather hurriedly, "Oh yes, he was quite the—"
"No need to elaborate," the man interrupted, the frown still stationary. "He must not have been as committed as he'd seemed to be, of course, or he wouldn't have left so abruptly, leaving his co-workers to fend for themselves," he mused. "It's been about a month already, though he's never missed so many weeks of work. I supposed it was about time to take a step further this afternoon and come pay him a visit personally, and it seems that you have had the same thought as well."
The headmaster wasn't, in fact, at all surprised that Mr. Dursley had been missing from work. "Well, I'll say. Dudley was supposed to show up at school in September, you know, and it's been quite a few weeks now, too."
He stopped, wondering if he should continue talking as the other didn't seem to be listening. But as the taller man continued to look at the house, the headmaster decided to fill the silence.
"At first, I thought he might be sick, you know, because that sort of thing does pop up once in a while, but one can't be so sick as to miss a month of school. So yes, like you said, I decided to pay them a visit. And it so seems that coincidentally, we both came at the same time on the same day."
By now, all of the residents on Privet Drive were peering out from behind their curtains at this strange exchange. It definitely isn't often that you see a bright yellow school bus on Privet Drive as the Dursleys insisted on driving Dudley to school themselves. And how often is is that the newest, shiny model of the fanciest car would also be on Privet Drive at the same time? And what is the chance that these two people would be talking on the middle of the street like old friends, discussing about quite similar matters?
The two men ignored the spectators that had gathered to watch this peculiar exchange. They both exchanged a few words of confusion of recent events, but both agreed that they should, in the least, ring the doorbell.
"After all," the headmaster reasoned, "you can't very well clean the house if you're sick. But perhaps, they might come out and answer if someone is at their door."
But the two men, who ended up covered in layers of spider webs, did not succeed in finding the Dursleys. They took turns ringing the doorbell endless times, until they both had large, unsightly blisters on their index fingers.
"I think we should give up," said the tall man at last when the sky began to dim. He carefully bandaged up his finger as he spoke. "Eh, would you like a bandage as well?"
The headmaster was in fact staring at the house and thought he saw a dark, moving figure in the upstairs window, and jumped at the question. "What?" he cried in alarm, startling the other. Then he shook himself into reality. "Sorry, I thought I saw—dear me, it must've been the lighting, it must've been," he murmured. I'm too young to be seeing things, he thought, his heart beating rapidly. Then he remembered his acquaintance's question regarding the bandage. "Oh! Well, thank you very much, your offer is very kind, of course, but I think I'll pass on this one. My wife is a nurse, you see, certified from the very best nursing school there is, and she'll see to it when I get home." He coughed a little then, realizing that he was rambling.
The taller man nodded graciously, though curious at what would surprise such an educated man like himself. "If you don't mind me asking, what did you see that startled you so terribly?"
Now that the headmaster thought of it, he didn't know what to say. He couldn't very well say he thought he saw a ghost. "I—I thought I saw a cloaked figure on the upper floors," he confessed, stammering. "Must've been a trick of the light. Nobody would be so rude as to not answer the door."
The taller man nodded politely. Like the Dursleys, he didn't approve of imagining things. But so to think of seeing a cloaked figure inside an abandoned house is quite a mystery, and like the headmaster, he couldn't come up with a better explanation.
Finally, the taller man said, "You know, it's getting quite late and I have family who is expecting me at dinner tonight. I'm afraid we should just forget the business of the Dursleys vanishing off the face of earth until they show up one day."
The headmaster reluctantly agreed; what else could he say? He boarded the yellow school bus, shook the bored driver awake by the scruff of his neck, and the three men headed on home.