Severus got out of the taxi he took at the London station. He had finally arrived in Privet Drive. But he didn’t like it already. It was too neat, too tidy for his liking. Walking towards the front door of number 8, which was to become his home, for who knows how long, he looked towards number 4. It looked normal enough. The garden seemed to be in a perfect condition, the windows were clean, even though he could see someone looking from behind a curtain. “The gossip-lover,” he thought to himself. The rest of the house didn’t reveal anything either. Minerva had told him some of the things she had seen on that day, ten years ago, and he agreed with her, on the bad choice Albus had seemed to have made. But what’s done is done, so now he had to concentrate on what had happened to Harry Potter, and where he was now. Perhaps the boy was a Squib, so he couldn’t do magic. But no, he dismissed the idea right away. Squibs were not even sent any letters from Hogwarts.

Seeing as how he was still standing outside his door, he opened it and walked inside. The house smelled clean and looked nice enough. The living room was done in blue colours, which he liked very much. The furniture was soft, but not too soft, and matched very well. Upstairs he had a big bathroom, a study, and two bedrooms. Downstairs there was also a kitchen and a door that led to the cellar. Severus was happy with the cellar, because it meant that he could still experiment with potions, even so muggles wouldn’t notice. After he had unpacked his clothes and personal stuff (he had shrunk them at Hogwarts so they fit in one bag), he went to take a walk through the neighborhood.

It looked pretty much the same in the entire street. Only his garden wasn’t as well kept as the others, but he would work on that. It wouldn’t do to stand out too much in here. Besides, he rather liked gardening. He would just grow some usefull herbs and plants for his potions and cooking. Severus walked out of Privet Drive and entered a nearby park. At this hour (10 o’clock) it was pretty abandoned. Only a really fat boy was there, with his friends. It seemed as if they were destroying the swings. He heard the name Dudley once, and saw it belonged to the fat boy. So that was supposed to be Harry’s cousin. He hoped Harry wasn’t just as fat. No wizarding students were that fat. Not seeing any sign of a boy with black hair, he walked back to his house. He would begin his search tomorrow.

The Next Day:

Today, Severus really needed to do some shopping. And seeing as how this woman, Petunia, from number 4, was also going, he decided to go to the same shop. So he walked a bit behind her, looking around. People were going to the shops, or to work, so he looked pretty normal, except for his hair of course. He had tied it in a pony tail, so it looked more muggle like. He also was wearing muggle clothes, still in black though. He wore black slacks, that fit him nicely, and a black button up shirt, with long sleeves. The top two buttons were undone, so you could see a bit of his collarbone. All in all, Severus was attracting some attention from the females around him. He did notice their stares, but thought they just looked because he was new around there, he didn’t think of himself as good looking. Even though Severus was one of the more observant people in the world, he was oblivious to those things.

Anyway, Petunia had entered a supermarket and so Severus followed. He bought several things he would like to eat and also some snacks and something to drink. He would come back when he ran out of this food. He went to the register, to pay, and bumped into Petunia.

“Oh, I am so terribly sorry. I hope I didn’t hurt you,” he said. Petunia wanted to snap at him first, but when she turned around, she shut up. He was the man who had moved in at number 8, and seeing as how she was always so very curious, she decided to be nice and take advantage of the situation.

“Oh, well, it doesn’t really matter, Nothing’s hurt or broken, so I’ll be okay. But, I hope you don’t mind me asking, are you the new owner of number 8 at Privet Drive?”

‘Bingo’ thought Severus. “Yes, I am, actually. Why, do you live in that street as well?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

“Yes, I do. I live there with my husband, Vernon, and my son, Dudley. We live at number 4,” she smiled at him. “Perhaps, you would like to come for dinner tonight, so you can meet them?” she asked.

Inwardly Severus was cringing away from her, he thought she was an awfull woman. But outwardly, he remaind polite and said: “Of course I will. If you do not mind the extra work it will be.”

She smiled again. “The work won’t be any trouble at all. My ...son, likes to help me cook.”

Severus noted the way she hesitated for a bit, when she said ‘son’. He also noted she hadn’t mentioned anyone else living with them. He hoped that Harry was still with them somewhere, instead of having to look for him who knows where.

“At what time should I be at your house, then?” he asked.

“Well, you can come around six thirty. So you can drink something with my husband before dinner. Will that be allright, Mr... eh,”

“Oh sorry, how impolite of me. My name is Snape. Severus Snape.”

She smiled at him one more time, before leaving the shop. He smiled back briefly, and was inwardly planning on how to take advantage of this situation. He would take his wand with him. Some tracking spells worked better when being really close to the person you wanted to find. So perhaps, when he was inside number 4 he could use the spell to see if Harry was near. He also knew a spell that could tell if someone had ever been in a building, and how long ago this person had been there. These would come in handy tonight.

Finishing his shopping, he went over some plans for the rest of the day, while working in his back yard. He didn’t want to see anyone right now.

That evening he was ringing the door bell right on time. The really fat kid, Dudley, opened the door for him. Sickenly polite he asked Severus if he could take his coat. Severus gave it to him, deciding to use a cleaning charm on it when he got back to his own home.

Then Dudley took him into the living room, where a fat man was standing. He presented himself to be Vernon, and immediatly started rambling about Drillings, the company he was working for. Severus shut him out after a few minutes. He only nodded once or twice and asked some questions. In the mean while he was trying to determine if the sounds in the kitchen were made by one or two people. Sometimes it sounded like it, and sometimes it didn’t. He knew that the fat boy, Dudley had gone upstairs. After all, it was hard to miss the small earth quake that had caused. He hoped they would put the boy on a good diet, but he didn’t think so.

Finally, dinner was ready. Severus was lead into the dinning room. It was decorated rather nicely for muggles. Severus had been to really high class dinners in the wizarding world, but this could do too. The food didn’t taste too bad either. What was a bit disturbing was the way Dudley had been eating, but Severus locked him out, and survived the dinner. He had the idea that Petunia had made some dishes, but not everything. She didn’t smell right for that. Because of all the potions Severus had to make, his nose was rather well developed (and no, we’re not talking about the form of his nose in this case), so he could smell those things.

After dinner, he asked if he could use the restroom, and quickly left the living room. Softly, he walked towards the kitchen. No sounds were coming from there, so when he peered inside, he wasn’t surprised to see the kitchen empty. He was surprised however, to see that pratically everything had been cleaned up already. So unless these muggles suddenly had a house elf, there had to have been someone else in this room. But the trouble was, this person had to have been very quiet, because Severus hadn’t heard anything.

Then Severus decided to go to the restroom and use the spells. Once in the restroom he locked the door and tried the tracking spell. It did do something. It actually started spinning for a while, till it stopped, pointing at the floor. Severus tried it for several other times, and it gave the same result. Trouble was, he was standing on the ground floor, and Vernon had told him they didn’t have cellar, because they had been having rats in it once. So they had closed their cellar and had it thrown full with cement. Perhaps the spell was still malfunctioning then. At Hogwarts and his new home it hadn’t worked proparly either. This could be caused by a blockage, or the person you were looking for was too far away.

Next Severus tried the other spell. The results were stunning. According to the paper, that held the answers, Harry had been in the house for quite some time. But somehow he had and had not been there after two years. Severus didn’t know what this could mean. So Harry had been in the house since then, but on the other hand, he had not been? He decided to find out more about that later. For now, he would join the Dursleys again and later contact Albus about this. It seemed this search could be even more interesting than he had thought.

Downstairs he made the excuse to go home, saying it was more tiring than he had thought to move and then being so busy. Petunia and Vernon let him go, with sickening sweet smiles.

Severus cleaned his coat right away when he got home. He didn’t want to catch some disease from that fat boy. He was glad Dudley was going to a private school, so he wouldn’t have to teach that thing... he shuddered at the thought.

When sat in his chair, he started to think about all the things he had found out today. Harry had been there for the first two years. So when he was three something had happened to him. The question was, of course, what had happened and why were there still traces of the boy in the house? The way the tracking spell was acting was worrying. Could there perhaps still be some room beneath the house? But then, he hadn’t seen a door in the kitchen and besides, why would you keep someone in a dark place under your house. Of course, he had known people who did such things, but they had been loyal followers of Voldemort, and had been either killed or thrown into Azkaban.

No, all this didn’t make him feel right, and neither did the very clean looking kitchen make him any happier. He would tell this all to Dumbledore, and see if he had any other instructions.

So that night, a worried Albus heard all the news his spy had for him, and after a long silence he just nodded and let Severus proceed with what he was doing. Albus would think this over on his own, and would later on always regret having left Harry at that doorstep all those nights ago.