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.
Minerva now waited for Harry James Potter to bring him to a good friend of hers to take care of as the school year was still going on and could therefore not take care of a baby in the middle of classes. She had an uneasy feeling it was going to take longer than Sirius and she had thought for him to find the rat.
Unfortunately he was too good at hiding.
One of the things that helped him get out of detentions in school.
Minerva was brought out of her musings as Albus said something about fighting against the Dark and preserving the Light and poor little Harry. The headmaster was so far behind the times, it was sad.
There was no longer any separation between the Dark and Light side, and there was even greater representation in the Grey. You-Know-Who is actually just a very evil person who had been trying to push pure-blood ideals in the wizarding world (his name has actually been cursed since the beginning—Dumbledore is just too old and senile for the evil man to care if he says it). If he had succeeded, the wizards would have died off.
The only thing that Dumbledore got right is that Harry is the future of the wizarding world. However it is more accurate in the general sense. As in the younger generation is the future of the world? He's just focused on poor Harry for some odd reason.
"Would you care for a lemon drop?"
"A what?" No matter how often he said strange, random things, sometimes it caught her completely off guard.
"A lemon drop. They were kind of Muggle sweet I'm rather fond of."
"No thank you," she said, gathering her thoughts once again. She'd almost forgotten how he would always be up to date on the world of sweets as well.
It would take some time for the wizarding world to calm down after the fall of the darkest wizard since Grindelwald. As far as the auror team that had investigated the scene could tell, Lily Potter had performed some kind of blood ritual that had been sealed by her death to protect Harry from the next harmful curse sent his way.
Her last effort to kill him as she knew he would use the killing curse. It was his signature spell. She and Regulus Black had been working on something in the Department of Mysteries that was working to get rid of You-Know-Who for good. I'm sure you have guessed that it was the Horcruxes.
I know you're wondering how Regulus escaped the Inferi in that cave. Suffice it to say that Kreacher found some kind of loophole in his orders and—much like Dobby—found a way to save his life by going to Lily for help. It was a surprise to everyone that he went to a 'mudblood' for help but no one's complaining.
Of course most of this is not known to Dumbledore because as you've seen, he will say anything that comes to mind and he is behind the times. He would have condemned Lily for performing the blood ritual because it was dark magic or would have blamed it on something completely different like 'love.'
"No problems, were there?"
Albus' words jolted Minerva out of her thoughts once again, helping her realize that she had missed Hagrid flying in on the bike that Sirius had lended him so he could get Harry here safely. The one place no Death Eater would think to look for the cause of their master's death. Muggle country.
"No, sir—the house was almost destroyed, but we got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin' around. He fell asleep as we was flyin' over Bristol." Hagrid smiled proudly at the professors and held him out so they could see him peacefully sleeping.
Under that tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead, there was the soon to be famously lightning shaped scar. It jagged out across his face like a massive bolt in a thunderstorm. He'll have that scar forever.
Dumbledore took the baby, careful not to wake him, and brought him towards the doorstep of Number four.
Minerva hung back, to comfort the rather loud, crying half-giant but watched the feeble old man carefully to make sure he didn't drop the baby.
"Well," the headmaster said finally, "that's that. We've no business staying here. We may as well go and join the celebrations."
"Yeah," said Hagrid in a very muffled voice. "I'd best get this bike back to Sirius. G'night, Professor McGonagall—Professor Dumbledore, sir."
The two watched as he swung a leg over the motorcycle and kicked it off into the night.
"I shall see you soon, I expect, Professor McGonagall," Dumbledore said, nodding to her. He walked off down the street, clicking the lights back into place and disappearing with a crack!
Minerva had transformed into her cat form in the pretense that she was leaving but once she heard the headmaster leave, she emerged once again from the bushes warily. Twitching her tail, she slowly walked over to the sleeping baby. Looking from the baby to the door, she have a small hiss before putting a paw on the bundle of blankets and disappearing just as Dumbledore had earlier.
- - -
"Merlin! Minerva! Is that who I think it is?"
"Yes, Jane. I need your help, at least for this school year."