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Small gusts of wind rustled the bushes that framed Privet Drive’s entryway and laid beneath the diamond-style window that currently had the blinds drawn closed. The sounds of the leaves scraping against the brick wall of the house was almost inaudible from inside the house itself. The weather was neither too hot nor too cold, the sun was blazing away in the clear blue sky merrily and all seemed well. Everything was perfectly normal.
Two young children sat on the floor of this totally normal house situated in a totally normal street. If not for all the blinds in the house being drawn closed, the Dursley family would have been just like any other family on their street. But the blinds were drawn, and the inside of their house was anything but normal. Dudley sat with his back pressed against his mother’s legs as the toy truck he held in his hands rattled with each harsh motion it was put through. Petunia’s willowy figure was completely dwarfed by the whale of a man sitting right up against her on the couch. Vernon had his eyes firmly glued to the newspaper that was clenched in his hands, but he hadn’t turned a page in over five minutes and rather looked like he was attempting to burn a hole into the printed pages via his gaze alone.
The last member of this family could hardly be considered the same age as the chubby kid across from him just based off of looks alone. Dudley had more meat on his bones than a two year old should have at his age, and Harry looked more akin to a stick-insect than a child. He was smaller and his baby fat seemed to have been burned away- a worrying sign if anyone managed to look. Which was why the curtains in each room had been drawn shut. Nobody could criticise the Dursley’s parenting if they only had one son of course.
The glimmering emerald eyes of the two year old were fixated on the three people opposite him. Harry hardly had any toys to play with unlike Dudley, so he was reduced to picking at the threads of the rug with fingers that hardly could coordinate with each other. His attempt to find something to play with was stopped by a harsh glare from Petunia and a sharp, “Stop boy.” From her thin lips that made both Dudley and Harry stop in their places, green and blue eyes worriedly watching the woman before she laid a hand on Dudley’s head and smoothed his blond hair down with a loving touch, coaxing him back into playing while she glared at Harry from across the living room. The skin around her nose had pulled up into multiple wrinkled grooves that told of her disgust when faced with the second child in her house.
Harry had managed to not fiddle with the rug once he had been reprimanded, his attention slowly moving to other things in the room that he could play with- his little baby brain latching onto the darkening stem of a rose that was housed inside a glass vase that showcased the contents of itself off through the warped glass. After a great deal of stumbling and crawling forwards until he reached the coffee table, Harry had managed to stand up long enough to pull the decaying rose free from the vase without tipping it over. Although a few droplets of sugar-infused water had managed to land on one of the magazines neatly lined up on the wooden surface of the coffee table.
While the other Dursley family members were distracted by the boxy television that was repeating re-runs of an old 80’s sitcom, Harry held the rose in his two tiny hands with a surprising level of gentleness considering his age. His eyes were locked onto the faded pink-to-gray colour that the drooping petals had been for a while, his fingers adjusting the hold on the thick stem caused a bloom of pain to radiate from his palm where one of the thorns managed to nick his skin. A light bead of red blood streamed down the side of the brown stem. A moment before Harry felt tears well up in his eyes- something amazing happened. The decaying petals seemed to unwilt in front of his eyes, turning from gray, to a discoloured pink and then finally to a vibrant fresh pink rose. A smile bloomed across his face just like the new flower before him and he held it out to Vernon across from him, almost pointing it at him before he babbled out in a high voice, “Abra Kadabra!”
Of course, his speech wasn’t perfect for being a two year old so his words got all mangled up- not like that should have mattered. But it did. Because when Vernon lowered his newspaper to tell off the child that was just trying to get his attention- he was struck in the face by an acrid green bolt of power, not even a choked noise being able to leave his open lips before he collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut. His frame went deadly still for an additional moment before it slumped over onto Petunia’s thin body, trapping her underneath her now dead husband.
The inhabitants of No. 4 Privet Drive currently alive went deadly still, the house itself almost seeming to hold its breath before Pertunia let out a howling screech that would have put any banshee to shame. Dudley immediately dropped his toy and covered his ears as the sound his mother was creating, a very displeased expression on his chubby young face before he evidently had enough of it and crawled away from his mother over to the television to shove his face closer to the grainy images being displayed there.
Young Harry was giggling and clapping his hands as much as he could with the rose still held in his fists. Not even the shrill screaming from his Aunt could distract the child from continuing to play with the rose. Although the black charring along the rose petals brought some measure of sadness to his young mind. Once a few minutes of uninterrupted screeching filled the living room Harry looked up from his burnt rose and held a small finger up to his mouth, ‘shushing’ Petunia as he pointed the rose at Vernon’s corpse again. “Shh… He sleeping.” Harry said in an obvious tone, like Petunia was silly for screaming her head-off at her husband falling asleep on her.
His quietly spoken words did manage to shut Petunia up however, her eyes as wide as a bugs’ as she wriggled and squeezed her way from underneath Vernon’s dead weight. Upon being able to stand on two right feet -unsteady and prone to falling- Petunia snapped a hand out to grab Dudley’s wrist, dragging the kid out of the living room without hearing his complaints of pain or how he started to cry about it. A loud slam of the door brought the entire house to a quiet state of existence. The television was quietly spouting off quips to a laugh track, the leaves outside brushed against the brick wall of the house. And Harry Potter continued to play with the blood-smeared, curse-charred rose behind the drawn curtains of No. 4 Privet Drive. A totally normal house.