"Dumbledore you can't. I've been watching them all day. You couldn't find two people who are less like us. And they've got this son — I saw him kicking his mother all the way up the street, screaming for sweets. Harry Potter come and live here!"
"It's the best place for him," said Dumbledore firmly. "His aunt and uncle will be able to explain everything to him when he's older. I've written them a letter."
"A letter?" repeated Professor McGonagall faintly, sitting back down on the wall. "Really, Dumbledore, you think you can explain all this in a letter? These people will never understand him! He'll be famous — a legend — I wouldn't be surprised if today was known as Harry Potter Day in the future — there will be books written about Harry — every child in our world will know his name!"
"Exactly," said Dumbledore, looking very seriously over the top of his half-moon glasses. "It would be enough to turn any boy's head. Famous before he can walk and talk! Famous for something he won't even remember! Can't you see how much better off he'll be, growing up away from all that until he's ready to take it?"
Professor McGonagall opened her mouth, changed her mind, swallowed, and then said, "Yes yes, you're right, of course."
After taking the child from Hagrid's massive arms, Dumbledore and Professor McGonagall bent forward over the bundle of blankets. Inside, just visible, was a baby boy, fast asleep. Under a tuft of jet-black hair over his forehead they could see a curiously shaped cut, like a bolt of lightning.
"Is that where — ?" whispered Professor McGonagall. "Yes," said Dumbledore. "He'll have that scar forever."
"Couldn't you do something about it, Dumbledore?"
"Even if I could, I wouldn't. Scars can come in handy. I have one myself above my left knee that is a perfect map of the London Underground. "
And with that, a young child's fate was sealed - or was it?
Petunia enjoyed this time of day the most, early in the morning before her two strapping boys had risen from their beds. This was her chance to read the gossip columns in the daily paper while peacefully enjoying her first cup of tea. Only after this much loved ritual would she start making the large breakfast her men folk required. This was her normal way to start the day and Petunia hated anything that interfered with her oh so normal life.
Discovering a baby on your doorstep when you went to fetch the morning paper was certainly not something that could be considered normal. That the baby had his tiny fist clutching a letter addressed to Petunia Dursley immediately ruled out any chance of mistaken identity, the child had been deliberately left at number four Privet Drive's doorstep.
The chill that saw Petunia draw the quilted housecoat tighter around her thin body wasn't purely down to this year's first touch of frost on their front lawn. That a baby could survive out here, never mind be ignored by both the milkman and the paperboy, reeked of something she was desperately trying to forget even existed. The reports on the news of owls behaving strangely and weird light shows in the sky began to make some sense to the housewife, only something cataclysmic in the magical word would see this child end up here. Lily's eyes staring at her from this child left no room for doubt to his identity.
Petunia was reluctant to take the Potter child into her home but what choice did she have? if she left him there then the neighbours were bound to notice eventually, that couldn't be allowed to happen. Vernon was awoken by his clearly upset wife, that he couldn't smell his bacon cooking provided a further clue to just how upset she was. Seeing the letter clutched in her hand had Vernon sitting up in bed and reaching for his reading glasses.
After reading the words on the strange paper, Vernon blew his top. "Who do these bastards think they are, that they can dump their unwanted rubbish on our doorstep and expect us to look after their mess? I'm sorry to hear about your sister Petunia but we will not be raising her son. We'll just give him back and explain we don't want the little freak."
It was a very nervous Petunia who answered her enraged husband. "The letter said that the boy living here would provide some kind of protection for our family, for Dudley, shouldn't we..."
Her husband cut right across her. "That's a load of tosh, designed to get us to take the boy in. If our family is in danger then we call the police, I would rather put my faith in them than some crackpot who leaves babies on doorsteps in November."
"But Vernon, where would we give him back to? An orphanage?"
"The boy will be better amongst his own kind, didn't you say once that they had their own government?"
"Yes, but I wouldn't have a clue where to find it. I visited a place called Diagon Alley once when Lily had just turned eleven, I never went back there again."
"That will have to do then. I'll go there and hand the sprog over to the first respectable person I see. Put this letter back in the envelope and they can have that as well. I'll want my breakfast first though."
Petunia recognised an order when she heard one and rushed downstairs to the kitchen. As she was cooking breakfast, it gave her time to reflect on the wider implications that the Potter child currently in her living room signified, Lily was dead. She attempted to rationalise why that news didn't hurt her more and could really only come up with one answer.
As far as Petunia was concerned, the girl she knew as Lily Evans started the process of being dead to her from the first year the redhead left on that train to Scotland. Lily finally completed that journey the day she angrily proclaimed Vernon Dursley wasn't good enough for Petunia Evans. Petunia drew no comfort from the thought that Lily's own marriage had apparently been a direct contributor to her death at the age of only twenty one.
Vernon was in a foul mood. He'd walked up and down Charring Cross Road at least a dozen times and all he had to show for it was sore feet. That wasn't exactly true, his left arm was numb from the weight of the child he had resting there. Vernon had seen plenty of what he would consider 'freakish' people walking up and down too, but they all seemed to disappear the instant he took his eyes of them. He had resorted to staring but something always seemed to catch his attention just before they disappeared.
The child was starting to girn again but Vernon had the Dursley patented answer for that, his mother swore by it and it had worked on his own son. One of Dudley's old dummy tits dipped into a tiny pot of honey soon quietened the child, the boy liked it so much his little hand closed over Vernon's meaty finger.