Privet Drive
In Little Whinging, Surrey, a small suburb of London, surrounded by Wisteria Walk and Magnolia Crescent, one can find a quiet and neat residential area with well-tended row houses and front gardens which are like two peas in a pod:
Privet Drive, a rather short traffic-calmed street comprising some 20 row houses and merging into Magnolia Crescent.
One of these houses in Privet Drive has got a driveway and a front garden with blooming begonias surrounded by a low garden wall. Next to the entrance door of the house, that is decorated with small panes of glass at the upper door jamb, one brazen plate showing the house number Four is emblazoned.
Vernon, Petunia and Dudley Dursley – the only still living relatives of Harry Potter – are living here. On 1/11/1981 the Dursleys received reluctantly Harry after his parents' death and brought him up. Yet they neither gave him the feeling of love nor gave him the feeling of security and didn't regard him as a family member. Not at least this is shown by the fact that until his eleventh birthday Harry Potter had to live and sleep in the cupboard under the stairs, although there are four bedrooms inside the house.
But on this mentioned 11th birthday Harry is lucky to get the letter from Hogwarts - addressed to Harry Potter, cupboard under the stairs. The Dursleys were uncomfortable with someone knowing that Harry was sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs and so they decided that Dudley had to clear the smaller one of his two rooms, the playroom, for Harry.
Harry‘s room in 4 Privet Drive is rather sparsely furnished. There is a window through which Harry can let his snowy owl Hedwig fly, one bed with a removable deal board under it, beneath which he caches his friend’s letters and goodies during his stay in Privet Drive, a bed table with one lamp and one alarm clock, a desk and a wardrobe that has a mirror inside. Harry gets his food and drink through a cat flap inserted in the room door, when the Dursleys hold that Harry had got into mischief – as has been the case frequently lately. Therefore there are quite a few bolts and locks mounted onto the door, which the Dursleys use to lock Harry’s door on several occasions. Harry’s relatives make use of these apparatuses more often, as they are first of all trying to hide him from their neighbours, but they are frightened of Harry’s magical abilities, too.
Apart from Harry’s room on the upper floor there are also the Dursley’s bedroom, a bath, Dudley’s room – the largest one upstairs – and a spare room where aunt Marge, Vernon Dursley’s unmarried sister, is always sleeping during her visits at her brother’s and his family’s home.
On the ground floor, there is the Dursley’s perfectly furnished living room appointed with an antiquated sofa, a coffee table, a television and a boarded-up chimney which is replaced by an electric chimney fire. Several pictures of Dudley adorn the mantelpiece and some figurines are arranged on a small coffee table placed in a corner of the room.
From the window of the living room one has got a fantastic view onto Petunia’s bed of begonias, which has got such a height that one can hide himself between them without any problems. Even Harry makes use of this convenience often to follow the Muggle news when Petunia and Vernon have forbidden him to do so. One can go from the living room into the hallway of the house. Right next to the entrance door there is a small rest room, whose window you can see from the street, and right next to the living room there is a small dining room.
At the hallway’s end there is the kitchen adequate to the environment excepting the chimney, as it is something rarely found today, and the new widescreen TV that the Dursleys have positioned there so Dudley doesn’t miss his favourite television series all the time. From the kitchen one can get into the Dursley’s garden which is surrounded by a cultivated hedgerow. A lovingly arranged path leads through flowerbeds and lawns to a garden bench and a small greenhouse.
