a haunted house
Somewhere along Privet Drive there is a house. It appears to be a very normal house. The bushes are always trimmed neatly and there's a lovely begonia bush out back. The stone path is well worn and the shutters are painted a lovely shade of brown.
The insides also appear to be very normal. The kitchen is well-loved down to the cracked coffee mug that collects dust in the cabinet. The floor is scratched around the table from the chairs scraping. There are three bedrooms each one with a bed and dresser. The carpet is worn down in familiar paths and one of the steps on the staircase creaks.
At first glance, there is a house on privet drive no different than any other house. Indistinguishable from it's neighbors, the house sits unperturbed. Upon closer inspection though, one may start to notice it's oddities.
The begonia in the backyard blooms all year, even in the winter months, and the shrubs never seem to need tending. There are divets in the stone around one of the upstairs windows, as if something had been screwed in around it. The shutters even, at times, seem to droop giving the house a dreary expression.
Inside, there are three locks on the cupboard under the stairs. The cupboard itself houses a small cot, a collection of green army soldiers, and a long-dead torch, all covered in a thick layer of dust. One of the bedrooms upstairs is plainer than the rest, not as many posters hung up on the walls but the ones that are don't seem to come down. There are nails in the walls where pictures once hung.
It's just a house, Dudley thinks when he returns years later. He sits in that cupboard under the stairs with all its locks on the door and repeats this to himself. It's just a house and he was just a child. They both were.
