The Problem With Wizards
By Redfeathersky
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter nor do I lay claim to any of its characters or ideas.
If there was one thing Vernon Dursley realized when he made his nephew clean out the attic at the tender age of seven it was that he never should have allowed the boy in the attic to begin with. His nephew, a freaky little creature by birth, had found the one thing that could and would drive the entire Dursley family off its rocker for many years to come. The boy had found an obsession in the form of an old violin. The trouble with it was that the child didn't have a clue as to how to play it and yet wouldn't stop playing it in dreadful high pitched squeals that rivaled the sound of nails on chalk board.
Now the question was what to do and how to get rid of the old instrument. Vernon of course had already forcibly taken it from his nephew's scrawny fingers and dumped it in various trash bins all over the city. Yet that blasted contraption would somehow find its way into his nephews hands at three in the morning when the boy would begin the morning squeal waking up the household with loud piercing screeches and scrapes.
Vernon had even broken the violin right before his nephew's large pitiful green eyes and thrown the wooden instrument to the ground in front of him. The boy had looked shell shocked picking up the pieces as if they were an ancient and precious totem used to being handled with the utmost of care. But of course that night at three am on the dot the screeching sound of a perfectly put together violin once again awoke the household to realize that it was not going away.
By the fifth attempt at getting rid of the violin, (once even by burning it in a trash bin outside and dancing around happily chanting its demise) Petunia Dursley commented absently that it was odd how the screeching and riffing of the violin seemed to have been getting better. Vernon blamed her that next morning at three when he heard the impossible instrument call them to the new day once again.
It was uncanny, impossible, and absolutely intolerable that no matter what method Vernon tired his nephew would sulk to his cupboard under the stairs cry and then miraculously happily play the very object he'd been sad about in the first place that next morning. At Vernon's almost eleventh attempt on the violin's life Petunia Dursley said enough is enough and suggested they give in and take the boy to lessons. That next morning after being awoken again at ungodly hours Vernon agreed.
This oddly enough seemed to be the only good decision Vernon Dursley ever made in regards to his nephew. His attempts at cutting the boy's unnaturally messy black hair never worked and in fact when he tried to shave the boy's head, after several failed attempts at taming the wild mop, the boy's hair only grew longer then the last attempt and longer still at the fifth and sixth until Vernon Dursley compromised and bought the boy a hat to hide his head.
It became a weird routine in the Dursley household, there was always something about his nephew the patriarch despised and attempted to get rid of and in retaliation the object of Vernon's ire seemed happy to shove it back in his face repeatedly to remind him his efforts were in vain. If Vernon stopped feeding the boy, the child would miraculously always have food in his hands. If Vernon forbade petunia to clean the house for a week and then demanded his nephew do it. The house would suddenly be unable to get dirty and would not abide a speck of dust on its surface. Once Vernon refused to allow his nephew out of his cupboard and then miraculously the cupboard refused to be locked from that moment ever more. When Vernon wouldn't let his nephew have a cookie the cookie jar floated to the boy over the table. And when a letter came addressed to Harry Potter, Cupboard under the stairs, Number four Privet Drive Vernon moved his whole family across the country to escape only to have a giant break into the shack Vernon had found in the middle of the bloody ocean and tell the boy he was a wizard.
At this point Vernon Dursley learned a very valuable lesson. Instead of threatening the giant with a rifle he'd purchased he let the large man in, gave him some tea and asked him very politely to please take his nephew wherever the child wanted to go. He had had quite enough fighting an untrained wizard who's accidental magic was particularly vindictive.
Instead Vernon took his family home, had a wonderfully uninterrupted sleep for the first time in four years and reveled in the natural normalcy of a life without wizards. Which of course meant something unnatural had to happen in the house in the form of full grown chickens bursting out of the eggs in the fridge that next morning.