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They had always thought something was wrong with them. All that the Potter twins could remember was a life of misery, which seemed like the only version of normal to them.
Being pushed into puddles by their cousin when they could only just walk, clothed in cheap, second or third-hand waterproof coats which were soaked through. Being forced to call the tiny cupboard under the stairs their room until they became too big and then shared the small room upstairs that was once their Aunt Petunia's closet.
Harry and Marlie used to think it was normal, to be bullied by their cousin, forced to do all the chores and be told off for things that they couldn't control. They thought it was normal, to not be loved by the family they lived with.
Until they attended school, and could understand what was going on around them. The few friends that they would make for all of a day or two, would tell them tales of their homes, where they had all the up-to date toys or gadgets, who were tucked in at night by a bed time story, and not have their only food option to be the greasy leftovers of whatever Vernon, Petunia and Dudley hadn't eaten.
They thought it was normal for one of them to have a brusie the size of a tennis ball on their leg because their cousin pushed them down the stairs, or scratches all up their arms because Dudley lured a cat to them, or forced them to fall into brushes.
But it wasn't normal. It wasn't normal to be covered in injuries caused by your cousin, or be so underweight that the clothes they were given hung off of them like they were stick people.
It wasn't normal to wear grey and dark clothes, or clothes that looked like they came from generations older than them - which most were. It wasn't normal for their hair to grow at that abnormal rate and it certainly wasn't normal to have matching lightening bolt scars. One on Harry's forehead, one by Marlie's temple.
They weren't normal. Nothing about how they lived, what they wore, how they ate or how they treated was normal. They shouldn't be like that, and shouldn't have nightmares of a glowing green light.
And they found that nothing about Harry and Marlie Potter was normal on the night of their eleventh birthday. Strange things had been happening in the weeks leading up to the 31st of July.
Strange amounts of owls had been seen in Little Whinging and the surrounding areas. For days now, even on Sundays, there had been letters addressed to both twins, with a weird crest on the back.
Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had moved them out of the house, then to a hotel. But the letters followed, in their hundreds. And on the very day of the twins' birthday, not that any of the Dursley's had remembered, Uncle Vernon had moved them into some rickety, stone building on a rock in the ocean.
