To the average person, number 4 Privet Drive was a normal house. That was how it's occupants - Vernon and Petunia Dursley - liked it. They liked normality. However, it was only a façade.
Petunia had a very unusual nephew. Harry Potter, for that was his name, was a wizard.
He was 15 years old - almost 16 - and would be going into his sixth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry the following September.
Harry's 'freakishness' was the Dursleys' best kept secret. He had been taken in by them when he was only a year old, after his parents had been killed by the Dark Lord known as Voldemort. Not that they had done it willingly, nor treated him well. He had been forced to sleep in a cupboard for 10 years of his life, only gaining a room when the Dursleys fear being discovered by 'his sort of people'. He had been worked like a slave, doing chores and housework and being punished without food or water if he messed up. He was malnutritioned with a short, thin frame, pale skin, messy black hair and emerald green eyes.
When he was younger, he had dreamed that some mystery relative, or even his parents, would come and rescue him from his hellish life. He gave up on it after a few years, and when he learned the truth about his parents, he realised that having a loving family was something he was never going to have.
Oh, but how wrong he was.
…::-::…
At an undisclosed location in Scotland, King James Potter, ruler of Magical Britain, stood overlooking the sea. There were tears in his eyes as he looked out over the dark, murky waters, for the next day was his son's 16th birthday. His son, who had gone missing when he was only a year old - Prince Harold James Potter.
That day, almost 15 years before, there had been an attack on the castle. In the skirmish, Harry had been taken and James' closest friends - Remus Lupin and Sirius Black - had been killed in the fracas.
He had been betrayed by his friend that night - or, at least the man he had considered to be one. Peter Pettigrew had sold him out, and had escaped before he could pay for his crimes.
However, James still lived in hope - hope that, one day, his son would return to him. And it had grown, at that point, for on every heir's 16th birthday, they grew in magical power, often gaining physical changes, and got a small tattoo on their inner wrists - unique to only the family.
He just prayed that Harry was found.