300 words exactly. :) I'm not dead, and I haven't abandoned Cease to Exist. I'm just really busy right now with the whole lets-get-me-into-college gig. I'm half done with the next chapter though, and I'm working on it when I get the chance. Thanks for your patience! I did warn that there would probably be some absences, but I hadn't expected this long of one.
Sometimes Harry got odd looks for saying that it was his relatives' home rather than his home. He didn't understand them. It wasn't as if he owned the land on which Number Four Privet Drive was built. It was also just a house to him. It had never been his home, could never be his home as long as his relatives were there.
Most people recognized that, albeit unconsciously. When the wizards had come for him, they had said that the letters that Uncle Vernon had disposed of in ways just as creative as their arrival were addressed to his relatives' home. His friends talked of sending letters to him, but always said they sent them to his relatives' home, not his home.
If it had ever been revealed that there weren't actually any blood wards on Number Four Privet Drive despite Dumbledore's silver instruments reporting of their existence, no one should have been surprised.
If anyone had ever asked Harry, he would have told them that Hogwarts was his home, and had been his home since he had seen it as a firstie coming off of the boats.
On the existence of the blood wards...no one had failed to recognize 'Potter' as a pureblood name. And despite James Potter's marriage to a muggleborn, the Potters were an Ancient House with many blood ties to nearly every British pureblood House. It would be truly unlikely that there was no one that the scion of House Potter would be related to in a school like Hogwarts.
Given the extensive wards on the school, it was unlikely that any extra protection would be noticed. So it wasn't.
There was no room for little boys who grew up in cupboards in the world of Albus Dumbledore.