The quiet road of Privet drive in the town of Little whinging in Surrey was, to all passive observers, the epitome of boring and sameness. Those observers would be right, the worst thing to happen there in even the elders memory was the appearance of a boy on the doorstep of number 4, followed by the quick sending of the lad to an orphanage.
"Nasty business that." Some would reply when they would talk about it behind closed doors. Others would claim "Couldn't be a worse group of people to leave a baby with."
But that was nearly a decade ago and nothing has happened on privet drive for some time. Sure, once upon a time, there were some small childish pranks pulled by the local kids of who Dudley Dursley is the leader. But eventually the kids pulling pranks grew out of them. So life on Privet Drive has been quiet to say the least. So why are there suddenly a hundred plus owls flying around and sitting on rooftops.
"It was the most magnificent thing I've ever seen." One of the residents would exclaim, when prompted by the news a few days after the fact, followed by blushing and retreating inside when spotting their neighbour being able to witness his burst of animated movement.
"The most unexplainable instance of mass owl activity in recorded history, perhaps of all time." Exclaimed the radio news reporter,
A nice lady named June Mansonia.
"All of the experts are baffled and intend to capture some of these owls to check for signs of disease or something that can help explain this phenomenon." The reporter carried on after a moment "so far they have eluded all attempts to capture them, 'its as if they vanish when we do manage to catch one' one animal control expert stated when we interviewed him earlier today." Finally finishing the segment by postulating that "Perhaps they are trained owls if they're smart enough to escape custody. Perhaps its a magic trick by..." the radio was cut off mid sentence by an enfuriatied petunia for even the mere mention of magic. However this force of habit turned out to not work. Somehow 'they claim her darling boy was magical.
For this family the sudden appearance of owls was both terrifying and completely explainable. They just didn't want to say the words.
"I want to read one of the letters, they are mine and I want them" a boy named Dudley whined."It's not fair, it's not." He continued
"It is clearly a prank from one of your little friends, maybe the polkiss lad." Vernon responded "You boys used to prank each other all the time, silly as it was, perhaps he's decided on one last big prank."
"Then let me read one, I want to see what he has to say."
"They are all blank." Vernon countered believing that would resolve the matter, how wrong he was.
"LET ME SEE." Dudley erupted then continued in a quieter voice "if they're blank then you can just throw them out." Knowing they had been beaten they hand him the letter, faces pale, 'this cant end well' they thought in unison.
At the same time 100 miles away a young boy was sitting in an orphanage wishing to be taken away from there into a better life. Becoming bitter after a few moments knowing there was nothing else out there for him.