In the London Borough of Islington there was a street called Grimmauld Place, a street that had become worthy of its name. At one point Grimmauld Place had been a decent neighbourhood, filled with a sense of community pride and good relations with the local authorities.
Sadly in the years since the end of the Second World War Grimmauld Place had gone downhill. During the war most of the children living on that street had been evacuated to the rural regions of Britain and most had never bothered to come back. If that wasn't bad enough, several families were hit by the mid-1970's recession and were forced to either sell up and move or were evicted.
Since then Grimmauld Place had become one of those rough neighbourhoods where no one really wanted to live. The fronts of the line of townhouses were grimy and unwelcoming, with paint peeling off of doors and window frames.
Several houses had smashed or boarded up windows and, no matter how often the local council sent around the bin men, there always seemed to be black bin bags sitting overstuffed on the steps of some homes, oftentimes torn open by scavenging cats and urban foxes looking for an easy meal.
Half of the street lamps did not work properly, either smashed or simply burnt out and as a result there were many darkened corners where teens liked to gather together to smoke, drink and generally make nuisances of themselves. The most noticeable evidence of their work, aside from the graffiti, was the burnt-out remains of a 1981 Ford Cortina which had been set alight six months ago after spending two years resting on a stack of bricks without its wheels.
On the opposite side of the road from the row of townhouses there was a small pocket park known as Grimmauld Square. Like the street around it, the park had once been a rather nice area that had fallen to neglect. Surrounded by rusting railings, it now consisted of a patch of uncut grass, several overgrowing bushes and couple of trees, one of which still bore the marks from when some of the kids had doused part of its trunk with petrol and set it alight.
And if all that wasn't bad enough, there was a storm drain located where Grimmauld Place met Finsbury lane which had been blocked up for as long as anyone could remember, meaning that anytime it rained (and it does that a lot in Britain) a large puddle formed there.
All of this was well known to the local residents and they had long ago given up complaining about it. It was all just a part of daily life for them and so it was, largely, easy to ignore.
Another thing that was easy to ignore was the apparent fact that, when the street had been built, there had seemingly been a mistake in the numbering of the houses, with House Number Eleven sitting beside House Number Thirteen with no Number Twelve in sight.
The residents of Grimmauld Place had long since come to accept that relatively innocuous issue as just a little amusement to have chuckle over whenever the local gossip ran dry and there was nothing on the news worth commenting on.
But just because they couldn't actually see Number Twelve didn't mean it wasn't there.
Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place was there, situated perfectly comfortably between Number Eleven and Number Thirteen. If anyone who lived in Grimmauld Place were to ever see Number Twelve for themselves, they would have unanimously concluded that Number Twelve was precisely the reason why their street had its name. For that house was, in fact, the grimiest, grimmest, mouldiest, darkest and seemingly oldest and most unwelcoming-looking house on the entire street.
There were a handful of people in the world who were able to see Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place in all its depressing, unwelcoming glory. Every single one of them thought the same thing; Grimmauld Place was the way it was because of Number Twelve. It was as if Number Twelve was some kind of disease that was affecting the rest of the street, with Number Eleven and Number Thirteen being almost as bad, but with each successive house down the line getting progressively better, with Numbers One and Twenty-three being the most decent of the lot.
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