Disclaimer: I searched through my whole 16 meter-squared apartment but I couldn't find my papers proving I own Harry Potter. I found lots of unpaid bills though – anyone willing to take them off my hands? ;)
A.N.: Please don't expect regular updates from me – my schedule is way too crazy for that. Sorry for all that feel slighted – as an avid fanfiction reader I know very well how it feels to have to wait for ages. Still, I simply can't manage it. I admire people who can and wonder how they do it.
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Sometime in early 1979
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Mrs Robins from number 7 had been living in Privet Drive for a long time, longer than any other of the neighbours. The house had been her husband's. However, by the time the Dursleys arrived on Privet Drive, she had already survived her Edgar – God bless his soul – by about 30 years. And her memory was still just as perfect as it had always been.
She remembered the portly man that had come here one late afternoon in May nearly fifteen years ago with his bride-to-be to look at the newly-empty Number 4, which was the house exactly opposite Number 7.
She even remembered the previous tenants, Mr & Mrs Butterfield, a couple in their late thirties whose weekly fights were better entertainment and more original than any soap opera. She could watch and hear it all from her veranda. After the grand finale – apparently Mrs Butterfield (neé Fairley) had caught Mr Butterfield in a compromising situation with her favourite cousin, her male cousin, one to many times – they had finally divorced and moved out. Later she learned from the same cousin's – who had spent all evening preparing the garden for a very high-class romantic proposal – loud rant on the phone, that after a very quick and private shotgun wedding, Mr Butterfield had apparently taken a one-way ticket to Hawaii with Mrs Butterfield's transsexual step-brother. However, Mrs Robins had already suspected that something fishy was going on and had come prepared with two big bowls of popcorn and a big pot of her favourite bland of tea.
After that disastrous evening, none of the Butterfields or the Fairleys had ever returned to the house, which is why Mrs Robinson never quite knew what had become of Mrs Butterfield. Had she moved in with her twenty-something year old pony-tail wearing piano teacher? Or had she entered a life of glamor in London or Paris with the French business man that had come around once or twice to pick her up in his beige limousine? Rumour had it that Mrs Butterfield had had a nervous breakdown and entered in the convent, but Mrs Robins doubted that. From her position on the veranda she had observed Mrs Butterfield's behaviour over years and Mrs Robins was quite certain that when presented the choice between becoming a nun and a sex worker, mutually exclusive as they were, Mrs Butterfield would pick the latter each and every time.
The Dursley couple that moved in about 4 months later couldn't have been more different from the Butterfields. The Dursleys were disgustingly normal and very very boring. There were no overt displays of affection, no screaming matches, no make-up sex (- neither Mr, nor Mrs Butterfield (and guests) had ever cared to close their curtains-), no suspiciously interesting friends or relations… After a few weeks Mrs Robinson came to the horrifying realization that she might even have to invest in a TV. That was how dire the situation had become.
Even when the little Dursley was born, nothing really changed. True, there now was screaming all day and all night, but it wasn't interesting. Mrs Robins despaired and bought a TV. Nevertheless, she was an elderly woman, and, as we all know 'old habits die hard', which was why she still threw a quick look at Number 4 every day before she went to bed even though it had been nearly two years since the Dursleys had moved in.
That was the only reason why she did not miss what happened on that night on the first of November, 1981…
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A.N.: Review please!