Neville Longbottom and the Philosopher's Stone

Part 1

It was a beautiful summer morning in the ordinary little village of Huddlesby when an owl flew down Preston Road towards the house at the far end. The house itself stood right at the edge of the village overlooking the rolling fields of rural Lancashire. It was an old, ramshackle, sprawling mess of a house with wild overgrown gardens and an old barn at the back which was falling into disrepair. Most of the locals of the village reckoned it was an old farmhouse, but none could remember any farming going on there for decades, if ever.

The house itself had always been something of an anomaly among locals of the village, which was otherwise a close, tight-knit community. It was a common source of gossip among regulars of The White Horse pub, where locals would gather to set the world in general, and Huddlesby in particular, to rights. Only the night before had three such hardy folk gathered round their pints of ale and discussed the house's strange inhabitant.

'A batty old woman and a menace, if you ask me,' said one, though nobody had asked him. 'Always wearing that ridiculous green get-up and shouting off at anyone who comes near. Never comes to any village events, never even seems to come down to the shops and doesn't own a car. How she feeds herself is anyone's guess. I reckon she's starving that boy up there.'

'Too true,' said another. The boy was a perennial topic when discussing this particular house, and made all the mysterious by the fact that few of them had ever seen him. Though the old woman had apparently raised the boy since he was a baby, he'd never attended school and didn't seem to even be allowed outside. Occasionally they'd seen his face in an upstairs window, but no more than that, and any kids that ventured on to the property to try and get a closer look were vigorously shooed off. Whose boy it really was, was anyone's guess.

'I heard he'd burned down his house – killed his parents. No one else would take him,' said the first man.

'Don't be ridiculous, Albert,' said the third. 'He was only a baby at the time. I heard they died in a car crash, that's why she doesn't drive, lost her son that way.'

'Whatever it is, she don't treat him right, that's for sure,' said Albert. 'We ought to do something about it.' But none did of course, for the ale was still flowing and there was plenty more gossip to discuss, like the other dotty old woman with the cats who lived a few doors down. That one kept them busy right up till closing time, and they forgot about the boy up at the farmhouse.