Chapter Text
A Very Potter Visit
‘Morning, Gramps! Morning, Mum and Dad!’ Harriet Dursley shouted excitedly as she slid down the staircase. Vernon and Petunia Dursley grumbled in disgust, as usual, while Dudley and Pepita beamed and laughed as their seven-year-old daughter landed onto the floor with a thump.
‘Mind, Harriet,’ giggled Pepita, who was choking on the piece of tuna sandwich she had been eating, ‘what’s been feeding you Felix Felicis?’
A look of horror swiped through Petunia Dursley’s face, and left almost as instant. Dudley, sensing this, shot a warning look at his still giggling wife.
‘Don’t you remember, Mum? Uncle Harry’s coming to visit today with James, Albus and Lily! I just can’t wait to see them again,’ the red-haired girl chuckled at the thought, her green eyes sparkling. ‘Too bad Jeanne and Jimmy are still sleeping.’
Now, both Vernon and Petunia’s face turned gloomier than ever. Vernon’s face even started to turn purple at the mention of their undesired relatives.
‘DO NOT – ahem!’ he yelled, stopping at a halt, as if considering the best words to put the phrase together before his granddaughter. He noted the peculiarity of his daughter-in-law and was not as daring nor as bullying to them as he had been to his nephew, years ago. ‘Harriet, I do not like your… er… tone of speaking!’
The sentence sounded very strange to him. He was not used to yelling at others without shouting something foul, nor without shouting something extremely loud. Also, by foul, I, the narrator, mean something that greatly disturbs the mind and directly or indirectly causes somebody’s mental condition to suffer.
Despite his comparatively calamity and gentleness of tone, his mild (according to himself) shout still made tiny Harriet run off, out to the garden and down the drive, bursting into tears.
‘Harriet!’ Dudley made a chase for his child, but not before throwing a nasty look at his parents. ‘Mom! Dad! Urgh!’
Pepita turned to her parents-in-law, muttering something that sounded like ‘Slimy old stuck-up dunderheads’ under her breath, and ran off as well to look for her daughter.
‘Hey, Harriet, what’s going on?’
Harriet looked up at the person she bumped into, her eyes blinded by crystal tears. It was her cousin Albus Severus, who was making his way to number four, Privet Drive with his brother James Sirius. Their parents and Lily Luna were far behind them.
‘Merlin’s beard. Your gramps are shouting again?’ James’ eyebrows narrowed. ‘Those stupid, nasty muggles. I’m gonna do the bat-bogey hex on them if we met.’
‘That’s mean, James. They just don’t understand,’ chimed in Albus, Harriet’s shy cousin who was the only one among three who bore the signature Evans eyes.
Harriet laughed a little. She felt much better now. She always felt wonderful whenever she was around the Potters. They felt more like home.
‘Where’s Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny, by the way? And Lily?’ she asked.
‘A good few miles away,’ laughed James. ‘Al and I were having a race—‘
‘He forced me to, Harriet. He FORCED me.’
‘So what? You were on! Lily didn’t join us because mum wouldn’t let her go—‘
‘It was because she wasn’t as stupid!’
‘Oh shut up, Snivelly! And dad’s bringing along Pads, you know, the pup Mum brought home? Aunt Hermione’s gift. So they couldn’t chase us either.’
Harriet remembered the tan, bushy-haired lady and the freckly, red-headed gentleman who, time by time, would accompany her cousin’s family to pay them a visit. Her father did not welcome their appearance a lot, yet not as detesting as her grandparents, who usually found tonnes of excuses to leave the house whenever they came. The case was different to her mother of course, and Harriet herself loved Aunt Hermione and Uncle Ron just as much as her own family. Just then, she realised James had been calling Albus something… weird.
‘Snivelly? Is that a new nickname?’ Harriet couldn’t stop herself from laughing.
‘Oh shut up! Don’t mention it!’ cried Albus.
James then explained to Harriet how he and Albus (‘It was only you! Nothing to do with me!’) found an old yearbook (1978) of their parents’ Alma mater, Hogwarts, in which there was a page of the graduates that year, filled with moving pictures of their grandparents Lily and James I and their friends, as well as one with a quintet, composed of James I, Lily, and three other boys, namely Sirius, Remus and Peter (‘who looked nowhere decent’, according to Albus) with a sullen-looking boy reading at the background.
‘We checked the previous pages,’ said James wickedly, ‘and it appeared that that boy was also called Severus! A Slytherin, that is, true disappointment. He had his name crossed out and re-written as “Snivelly”! And—aha! That’s it. Albus Snivelly Potter! How does it sound, Ickle Harriet?’
Just as Harriet was about to answer, her large father and relatively small mother came bursting through the bushes on the pavement.
‘Oh, by Jove! Finally found you dearie… Oh, hi there James. Hi there, Albus,’
‘Good morning Aunt Pepita. Good morning Uncle Dudley,’ the boys said dully.
Dudley nodded his head curtly at the boys. He was never very fond of them. Suddenly, his thick brows scrunched up as two tall, lean figures appeared around the street corner, holding the hand of a smaller silhouette of a little girl, carrying a black puppy in her arms.
‘Uncle Harry! Aunt Ginny! Lily Luna!’ Harriet exclaimed as she ran over to embrace her cousin, who looked nearly identical to her, except that the latter had hazel eyes instead of emerald ones.
‘Hi Harriet,’ Lily pulled herself free from her cousin’s excited clutches, grinning, ‘I’ve got something for you.’ She turned to Ginny. ‘Mom, can you please carry Pads for a moment?’
After gently transferring the puppy into her mother’s arms, Lily took a little cloth bag from her satchel and handed it to Harriet.
‘Here. See if you like it.’
Harriet opened the bag to see a little glass bottled stoppered with a cork. Inside the container was half a bottle of transparent liquid, shimmering under the sun. On the card attached to it, written with the neat and beautiful handwriting of Lily herself, was Developing Potion.
‘What’s this?’
Lily, seeming to have sensed the angry glares at her from her elder brothers, for making them bake under the hot summer’s sun, thought for a moment, and proposed to Harry to enter the Dursley House first. James and Albus, much relieved, chased each other into the Dursleys’ front yard. Dudley immediately made a wild run for the boys, reckoning they would transfigure the house in some way. Everyone left behind smiled at the sight, especially Harry and Pepita. The latter, fighting against her urge to burst out laughing, led her guests into the two-storey building.
Vernon and Petunia Dursley was most displeased at the sight of the intruding young men of nine and eleven respectively, and left the house almost as instant as they could, trying their best to avoid being in contact with the magical community.
‘It’s a developing potion,’ beamed Lily, as she untied her shoelaces at the porch. ‘A potion that makes photographs move, you see, like this.’ She gave the amazed Harriet a picture of the Potter household, with five people waving at them.
‘Wow,’ Harriet gasped. She had never seen anything like that before. ‘But… I’m muggle. Can I develop my pictures too?’
‘I think so,’ Lily scratched her chin. ‘However, this is the first potion I’ve ever tried to make. I’m not sure if they’ll work as great as dad’s.’ She smiled at Harry.
Lily Luna Potter, true to her namesake, was a lovely, dreamy girl who can sometimes be very absorbed in her own thoughts, and had fiercely red hair and a knack for potions. She also believes in the existence of nargles.
It was a very pleasant day for Harriet. Not that she wasn’t happy for the rest of her life, but she felt genuine happiness with the Potters. Uncle Harry and Aunt Ginny were far better parents than hers, she believed. Both Dudley and Pepita loved Harriet a lot, but Dudley was always angry and Pepita seemed to find every situation, good or bad, funny. Harriet often felt excess energy in her, which cannot be let out, causing strange things to happen around her. Plants, especially herbs, would flourish whenever she neared one, and sometimes she thought flowers talked to her. She dared not tell her parents that, not unless expecting another outburst from her father, or a series of uncontrolled laughter from her mother. She found the Potters easier to talk to, especially given that Uncle Harry could talk to snakes.
‘Hmmm,’ he would say, ‘it seems that we’ve got a particularly talented herbologist witch in this house. I must tell Neville. Don’t worry, Harriet. This is your talent – what makes you Harriet Dursley. Use it wisely.’ Continued then with a talk about his experience as a Parseltongue.
‘You should be expecting your Hogwarts Letter,’ Aunt Ginny would beam. ‘Also, don’t mind what those muggles say about it. You’re perfectly normal – just as sane as anyone else. They’re only jealous that you are special because you believe in yourself and they’re not, as they let others judge their lives. Remember, everything’s possible if you’ve enough nerve.’