Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

Every family has its little quirks, something that sets them apart from other families, but not the Dursleys; they liked being ordinary. Vernon Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, known for its finely made drills. He was a very large, blonde man with very little neck and a highly impressive moustache. His wife, Petunia, was thin and bony, with perfectly groomed dark hair and a neck that quite made up for her husband's lack thereof. This came in handy, as she spent a lot of her time peering over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The Dursleys had a young son named Dudley, and in their opinion, there was not a finer child anywhere in the world.

The Dursleys had a perfect, normal life; it was all they ever wanted. However, they also had a secret, and their greatest fear was that somebody would discover it.

Vernon and Petunia hated to think of what would happen if anybody found out about the Potters. Mrs. Potter was Petunia's sister, but they hadn't seen one another in several years; in fact, Petunia Dursley pretended that she didn't have a sister, because Mrs. Potter and her good-for-nothing husband were about as unDursleyish as anyone could be. If the Potters ever showed up at the Dursleys' house, well, what would the neighbors think?

The Potters had baby twins, a boy and a girl, a little younger than Dudley, but they had never seen them. They were another reason for keeping the Potters away; they didn't want Dudley mixing with children like that.

When Mr. and Mrs. Dursley woke up one dull, grey November morning, there was nothing about the cloudy sky above them to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country. Vernon Dursley hummed as he picked out a hideously boring grey tie for work, and Petunia spouted neighborhood gossip as she forced a wailing Dudley into his high chair.

None of them noticed a large, tawny owl flutter past the window.

"I think Dudley rather enjoyed this Halloween," Petunia commented, eyeing the overflowing plastic jack-o-lantern on the kitchen counter. "At least more than his last one." Dudley Dursley had spent the better part of his first Halloween being stuffed into a pumpkin costume that clearly couldn't hold him, and the rest of the evening being rolled from house to house, screaming the entire time.

"Good for him," Vernon said with a smile, sitting down and allowing Petunia to pour him a cup of coffee and set a plate of eggs and sausage in front of him. "He was surely the most handsome young frog on Privet Drive. No competition."

At half-past eight, Mr. Dursley picked up his briefcase, gave his wife a peck on the cheek, and tried to give Dudley a good-bye kiss but missed, because Dudley was now having a massive tantrum and throwing his bits of scrambled eggs all over the dining room.

As she watched her husband leave, Mrs. Dursley waved through the front window. When she saw him leave the neighborhood, she turned around to her little Dudley, her darling angel, her pride and joy (who was currently spitting up on himself).

"Come on, sweetheart," she said tenderly, wiping his face with his bib. "Let's get you a bath."

Petunia carried her baby boy upstairs and set him in the bath. Dudley, for some reason, hated baths. As soon as his feet touched the warm water, he would burst into tears and start splashing water all over the bathroom. By the time the bath was over, Petunia was usually just as wet as he.

Mr. Dursley started noticing strange things the moment he pulled out of the drive and glanced at the corner. That was when he spotted it – a cat reading a map. For a moment, Mr. Dursley didn't know what to think. He jerked his head around to look again; there was indeed a tabby cat sitting on the corner of Privet Drive, but he could see no map. What could he have been thinking? It must have been a trick of the light, or the extra cup of coffee he'd had that morning. Mr. Dursley stared at the cat for a good few moments, and the cat stared right back. He continued to watch the cat as he drove around the corner and up the road. It took him a little while, but he finally gave himself a little shake and put the tabby cat out of his mind. As he drove into town, he thought of nothing except a large order of drills he was expecting that day.

On the edge of town, however, drills were driven out of his thoughts by something else. As he sat in the everyday traffic jam, he noticed a lot of oddly-dressed people walking about; people in cloaks. Mr. Dursley hated people who dressed in funny clothes – the getups you saw on young people these days! He assumed that this was some strange new fashion. He rapped his fingers irritably on the steering wheel, and his eyes fell on a huddle of these weirdos standing not too far away. They were all whispering excitedly together, and Mr. Dursley was enraged to see that a few of them weren't young at all; why, that man had to be older than he was, and he was wearing an emerald green cloak! The nerve of him! That was when it struck Mr. Dursley; this was probably some ridiculous stunt - these people were surely collecting for a charity…yes, that had to be it. The traffic started to move again, and a few minutes later, Mr. Dursley was in the Grunnings parking lot with his mind back on drills.

Once both Dudley and Petunia were clean and dry, she decided to take him outside to play. She spread a soft blanket out in the back yard and started introducing him to the various types of flowers in her garden.

"See this one here?" she said. "This is a daffodil. And this is a petunia, just like Mummy!" Dudley giggled and grabbed at the petunia. His mother, who was frighteningly protective of her flowers, guided his hand away. "Want to go see Mummy's lilies?" Petunia picked up her baby boy and carried him through the neatly trimmed hedges to her "secret garden." This was where she grew her bright pink lilies.

"Oh!" she gasped. The lilies were no longer bright and beautiful, as they had been last time she checked on them. They were brown and shriveled. Dead.

Suddenly, she became aware of Dudley's excited gurgles. He was pointing up into the sky at something. Petunia followed his gaze and gasped again. Owls filled the sky, all hooting and screeching loudly. Petunia had seen very few owls in her life, but she knew enough about them to remember that they were nocturnal birds. So why were so many of them flying about?

Mr. Dursley always sat with his back to the window in his large, ninth-floor office. He didn't see all of the owls swooping through the air in broad daylight, though nearly everybody on the street did. Mr. Dursley, unlike the general population of Surrey, had a perfectly normal, owl-free morning. He yelled at five different people, made several important telephone calls, and shouted a little bit more. He was in a rather good mood until about noon, when he decided to stretch his legs and walk across the road to buy himself a snack from the bakery.

Mr. Dursley had forgotten all about the people in cloaks until he passed a group of them next to the baker's. He stared at them angrily as he passed by; he didn't know what it was, but something about these people made him uneasy. This bunch of them were whispering excitedly too, and Mr. Dursley couldn't spot a single collecting tin between them. When he passed them again, clutching a chocolate frosted doughnut in a bag, he managed to catch a few words that they were saying.

"The Potters, that's what I heard-"

"Yes, their daughter, Emma-" Mr. Dursley stopped dead. Fear flooded him. He looked back at the whisperers as if he wanted to say something, but thought better of it.

He dashed back across the road, hurried up to his office, snapped at his secretary to leave him alone, and grabbed his telephone. He had almost finished dialing his home number when he changed his mind. He put the receiver down again and stroked his moustache, thinking…no. He was being stupid. Potter wasn't such an unusual name. He was sure there were lots of people called Potter who had a daughter called Emma. Come to think of it, he didn't even know if his niece was called Emma. He'd never even seen the child. Her named could have been Ellie. There was no point in worrying Petunia; she always got so upset at any mention of her wretched sister. He didn't blame her; if he'd had a sister like that…

Dudley was napping now, and Petunia was sitting in the kitchen alone. She had a pen in her hand and a piece of paper in front of her. Only two words were written on it:

Dear Lily,

What would she say to her sister though? I saw some owls today, and my lilies are dead. What did you do? No, that didn't sound good at all. But still, something was going on, and there was no way to ignore it. Perhaps she could start with casual questions. It's been some time. How are Harry and Emma? They're about Dudley's age, right? Just then, the clock in the hallway struck five. Vernon was leaving work. Petunia was determined to keep all of her petty concerns to herself.

Mr. Dursley left the building at five o' clock exactly, and was home twenty minutes later. He planned to keep all of his thoughts to himself. Petunia surely didn't want to hear anything about her sister, and Vernon would have liked to ignore her again as well.

I'm being stupid, he thought to himself as Petunia chattered away over dinner about how nice it would be if Dudley became friend with that new baby boy Piers down the road. This couldn't possibly affect us.

That night, as the two of them lay in bed, Petunia thought again about her sister. I'm being stupid, she convinced herself, listening to the sound of her husband's snores. This couldn't possibly affect us.

As the Dursleys drifted off, finally relaxed, the tabby cat that Vernon had spotted earlier was sitting on their front step. It didn't move at all. The slamming of a car door nearby might have spooked a normal cat, but this cat wasn't exactly normal.

Nor was the man who had just appeared on the corner, for that matter.

The man's outfit would have been enough to make Petunia Dursley faint. He had silver hair and a long, frizzy beard. He wore long purple robes, a pointed hat, and a matching cloak. His eyes were bright blue, gleaming behind his spectacles. The man's name, and quite a name it was, was Albus Dumbledore.

Albus Dumbledore strolled down the street, humming to himself, when he spotted the cat. He chuckled and gave it a friendly wave, as if greeting an old friend. He turned to get something out of his pocket, and when he looked up again, the cat was gone. In its place, an old woman dressed all in green brushed some dirt off of her robes and stood up off of the Dursley's front step.

"If this is the place you mean to take Emma Potter, Albus," she said, glaring at Dumbledore. "Then I fear for her."

"We've discussed this, Minerva." Dumbledore said, untangling a small silver lighter from his pocket and opening it up. "They're the only family she has. She'll be safe here." He clicked the lighter, and just like that, all of the street lamps went dark. Satisfied, he put the lighter that clearly wasn't a lighter back in his pocket.

"They're terrible! They won't treat her well! I watched them all day, they're the most disgusting sort of Muggles that exist! They've got a son, too, and he is just -"

"Emma's cousin." Dumbledore finished. "This is the way it has to be."

"But what about her brother?" Minerva asked. "Where is Harry going to go?"

"I've decided to separate them." He explained. "Harry is staying with the Larson family. I've arranged it with them, and he has been taken there already. It will be best for him, and Emma."

Minerva opened her mouth, changed her mind, swallowed, and then said, "Yes - yes, you're right, of course. But how is the girl getting here, Dumbledore?" She eyed his cloak suddenly as though she thought he might be hiding Emma underneath it. Dumbledore saw her glance and shook his head.

"Hagrid's bringing her."

"You think it - wise - to trust Hagrid with something as important as this?"

"I would trust Hagrid with my life, Professor McGonagall." said Dumbledore. Minerva McGonagall sighed and nodded grudgingly.

"I suppose so," she said. "But when is he -" In answer to her question, a low rumbling sound filled the air. The two of them looked to the street before them, searching for the source of the noise. It wasn't until they heard a sharp screech that they turned around.

The man on the motorcycle behind them was, to say the least, enormous. His big brown eyes gazed down at Dumbledore and McGonagall from behind a bush of unruly brown hair.

"Hagrid," said Dumbledore, opening his arms in welcome. "Everything went well, I hope?"

"Perfect, sir. She's asleep now, just drifted off. Try not ter wake her up."

He held out the bundle of blankets (which was smaller than his own hand) and allowed Dumbledore and McGonagall to peer inside. A baby girl lay fast asleep in the blankets. A little tuft of blonde hair just barely hid the oddly shaped cut on her forehead. It looked like a bolt of lightning.

"Poor child," McGonagall cooed, taking the blankets. "Couldn't you do something about the scar, Dumbledore?"

"She'll have it forever," Dumbledore shook his head. "Come on now, let's get this over with." Dumbledore took the child and set her gently on the Dursley's doorstep. As he pulled a letter out of the folds of his cloak and tucked it into little Emma's blanket, McGonagall put a hand on Hagrid's elbow to try to comfort him (he was sniffling rather loudly).

"She'll be fine." she reassured him. "Calm down, Hagrid."

"I'm going ter go take this bike back to Sirius," Hagrid said. "He loaned it ter me so I could take Emma here. G'night, Professors."

Emma Potter yawned and shifted in her blankets without waking. She clutched the letter with her tiny fist and slept on, not knowing how special she was, not knowing what awaited her in her new life with the Dursleys. This was when her life took a turn for the worst.

Emma Potter was nobody on Privet Drive, and for the next ten years, that was how it would stay.