Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling. I do not own Harry Potter.

Note: Short silly piece posted whilst trying to work out on an unconnected matter how many floors 'The New School' wing of an AU Hogwarts ought to have, and what the general layout should be? This is a one-shot.

There was a dark secret at number four, Privet Drive, that none of the Dursleys liked to talk about; a horrible, ghastly, secret, that was in utter defiance to the nice, normal, world that they wanted to live in.

There was a wizard, who lived in the cupboard under the stairs.

This was not just any old wizard, mind you, but one who had been a part of their lives for years, and whom they certainly didn't talk about in polite company.

His name was Severus Snape, and although he was in residence only during the Christmas, Easter, and summer holidays, that was quite often enough for the Dursleys, thank-you very much.

He'd done things to the cupboard under the stairs too – obviously, there wouldn't normally be space for so much as a child to live there properly, much less a full-grown adult wizard – and it now held a suite of candlelit rooms and a cavernous chamber in which he brewed and concocted goodness-knew-what mischief, and into which the Dursleys didn't dare venture, unless he was in residence, and even then seldom except when their need was greatest. Or at least not the adult Dursleys. Their son, Dudley, their precious 'Duddydums' had been ordered by Petunia and Vernon to keep away, so being a precocious child with a tendency to do the opposite of what anyone told him to do, he hadn't, and had become snared by the visitor's wiles.

And of course the slight oddity that was Petunia and Vernon's nephew (and Dudley's cousin), just couldn't help himself when the wizard was around, and was always down there, in the cupboard under the stairs.

The Dursleys (or at least the adult ones) didn't like having the wizard around, but it was 'for their security' and what could they do about it? And what was worse, there was a legal contract, where he was officially a lodger and paid rent and everything. They couldn't get rid of him without reasonable grounds such as non-payment of rent, or the house burning down or something, and even then he could probably take them to court and sue them or something unless it was a particularly good reason they had for his removal.

So the situation went on, and the Dursleys never talked about it…

Author Notes:

My excuse for writing this one is that I enjoyed (possibly ridiculously so) those first few sentences of this piece. Sadly it never went anywhere beyond the immediate situation. Ah well.

Presumably in this universe, there was some twist in the way that the first Wizarding War ended that meant there was no question of Severus Snape ever being able to infiltrate the Death Eaters again, and so Albus Dumbledore reasoned that (in the interests of increased security for Harry) he may as well send Severus Snape to live in Privet Drive and keep a direct, personal, watch over Harry Potter for at least some of the year.

This piece is a one-shot.