Chapter Text
Harry Potter was a very unusual boy, who lived in a very ordinary house, on a very ordinary street, in a very ordinary neighborhood. His aunt and uncle were perfectly normal of course, and their darling son, Dudley, was perfectly average. The Dursleys saw their ordinariness and normalness as a point of pride, and they were perfectly average until you looked a little bit closer.
It would be an insult to call Uncle Vernon a pitbull. To the dog. He was big and round, and had an impressive mustache that was the envy of all the men on the street. But his eyes were those of a shark, dead and cold, but his temper was explosive, and Harry Potter was frequently on the receiving end of it. In fact, the only time Vernon Dursley ever showed real emotion was when he was punishing Harry for things he had no control over and could never explain. It was almost like he relished unleashing his anger, and it never boded well for the unusual Harry Potter.
Aunt Petunia was everything her husband was not. Where he was big and round, she was tall and stick thin, and constantly had the look of someone smelling something particularly nasty. Her eyes could never be described as dead and cold, she was always feeling something, and when she looked at her nephew, the look in her eyes could only be described as white hot hatred and disgust. The only time that look wasn’t directed at Harry Potter was when she was sending it at the neighbors.
Dudley Dursley. The youngest Dursley. He was everything his father was and more. Big and round and slow, he was the terror of Privet Drive, Little Whinging. If there was a little kid crying in a bush, it was because of Dudley. If there was a broken window or an egged house, it was because of Dudley. In fact, if anything was broken, beaten, or damaged on Privet Drive, it was probably because of Dudley. Dudley liked breaking things, and his friends liked being friends with the biggest bully on the block and the schoolyard. The one thing Dudley liked most in the world, was tracking down his cousin, Harry Potter. It was rare that Dudley could find him, and when he did, it was rarer still that he managed to land a hit on Harry Potter, because Harry, despite his unusualness, was smarter than Dudley and faster.
Harry Potter. He was an odd looking boy, made odder still by his ill-fitting clothes that looked to be older than him. From his messy black hair, to his impossibly green eyes, to his knobby knees, to his always tan skin, Harry Potter stuck out on Privet Drive like a sore thumb. But the oddest thing about him wasn’t his unusual features, it was the expansive lightning bolt scar that covered most of his forehead. It was the first thing that the neighbors would see, when they would see him wandering the streets at hours that no child should be out at. New teachers, as Harry grew older, would always ask Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia about it at parent teacher conferences every year. And every year it was the mark that would keep him from making friends in his class. That Potter boy with the scar, they would whisper, he’s bad news.
And so it came as no surprise to anyone that, when the new school year rolled around, when the children of Little Whinging all headed off to school, Harry Potter was off to St. Brutus’s Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. But it would surprise everyone, just a little, that he never returned that summer, or any following summer, or any holiday. When asked, the Dursleys would say that he was at their summer program, that he needed the extra help to fix his unusual behavior. Eventually, as more school years and holidays and summers came and went without a single reappearance of the unusual Harry Potter, he became something of an urban legend in Little Whinging. Parents would tell their wayward children to watch their tone, lest they become like Harry Potter. This story would grow and grow and grow, to the point where no one could tell where the facts ended and the fantasy began.
Not that it mattered.
None of it was true. Yes, the Dursleys tried to send Harry Potter off to St. Brutus’. Yes, Harry Potter never stepped foot in Little Whinging again. But the story of how Harry Potter disappeared was far different than what any person in Little Whinging could have ever imagined.
On his eleventh birthday, a few days after the unusually erratic behavior of the Dursleys, on a rock in the middle of the sea, Harry Potter found out he was a wizard. And not just any wizard. The child of parents who thrice defied one of the darkest wizards to have ever lived in all of Britain, born as the seventh month died.
On his eleventh birthday, a very large man from a school with a very unusual name came and whisked Harry Potter away to a world that no one in Little Whinging could have ever imagined. And for a month, he returned to the very ordinary world of Little Whinging only to disappear once more, never to be seen again.