UnWritten

The Boy Who Lived

Number four, Privet Drive was a small, perfectly kept home. It was such a pleasant looking place. There were flowers all around the house, and the lawn was perfectly trimmed, awaiting the fulfillment of a promise of rain from the ominous clouds in the sky. The windows were clean, the floors were clean, and there was no evidence—other than the pictures on the wall—that a little boy lived there at all. It was the home that every mother wishes to have; put together, pleasant looking, and clean.

The residents of the home, on the other hand, were anything but pleasant.

I would go on to explain why but they're not important to the story. All you need to know, is that they are muggles of the worst sort and you would not wish for any child of magic to live there any amount of time.

Fortunately for one named, Harry Potter, it was not the case.

The morning after James and Lily Potter died at Godric's Hollow, the wizarding world was as careless as you could be after finding out that the Dark Lord had been defeated. By a baby, no less.

The muggles at number four Privet Drive hardly noticed. Oh, sure the walrus of a man thought something funny was going on when he saw the funny dressed people on the street and heard the news about he owls flying all over the place in broad daylight. But when he went to bed that night, it all left his mind.

The cat, who you know as Minerva McGonagall, sat on that garden wall all day long, waiting for Dumbledore, as you do. Poor Minerva had to endure the muggle's obnoxious ways of trying to get rid of a cat when he got home and wait longer still until the street lights came on. The old man had taken his time in getting there, that's for sure.

When the old headmaster finally did show up, he proceeded to use his wonderful device that absorbed the light from the lamps along the street. If one of the muggles in the houses nearby happened to look outside, they would not be able to see a thing. He walked along the pavement with hardly a care in the world. A small tabby cat caught his eye on the garden wall well before he reached Number Four. He chuckled, and muttered, "I should have known."

As he reached the garden wall, he happily sat beside the cat and relaxed. "Fancy seeing you here, Professor McGonagall."

The poor man. Not much longer before he showed up, Minerva couldn't stand waiting anymore and left to some obscure bushes to...take care of business. (She had been sitting on a wall all day for Merlin's sake!) The cat he was now talking to had taken her spot purely out of coincidence. He would have been right, of course, had he gotten to the neighborhood just five minutes sooner.

"I thought you would have been here sooner, Albus." She popped up next to him on the opposite side the cat was on. She looked down at the old man, the crinkle by her eyes betraying her amusement at the situation.

"Oh, no, far better to come in the cover of the dark; I'm sure that the Dursley family would appreciate our thoughtfulness." He said happily, and rather innocently. "I know how they want to keep this world of ours a secret."

Minerva now gave him a look that bordered on disbelief. Surely the headmaster would not be so senile as to completely miss just how horrible the Dursleys really were. She decided to leave that point alone for the time being and sat herself next to him on the wall. She knew who they were waiting for. The lovely half-giant with the barely year old son of Lily and James Potter.

Sirius Black had contacted her earlier that morning to say that he was going to go after Peter Pettigrew and asked that she look after Harry until he got back. As an auror, he had a duty to follow through on this case. It had also been one of the things that James and Sirius had discussed after switching Secret Keepers. While they had trusted Peter at the time, they had started to see signs in their jumpy friend that something was not right. James and Sirius wanted to make sure that justice was brought if the unthinkable were to happen.