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Chapter Text

On the first of November, Petunia Dursley was awoken by the sound of a child wailing.

She stood stupidly above Dudley's crib for several moments before realising that he was still sound asleep.  The sound had to be coming from somewhere else, which meant it wasn't any of her business.  And yet - surely if one of her neighbours' children was crying, it would be quieter through two sets of walls.  Surely if one of her neighbours had a child Dudley's age, she would have heard about it -

The sound was loudest near the front door.  That was what decided her.  There was no reason for a child that age to be out in the street this early in the morning.  Why, for all she knew the poor thing might have wandered out through an unlatched door or an open window, might be unable to work out how to get back home again, might at any moment be struck by a car or snatched up by a passing criminal - it was her duty, really, to rescue it.  Her duty as a mother.

Any thoughts Petunia might have had of handing the lost child back over to its negligent parents, smug in her heroism, were swept away the moment she saw the basket on her doorstep.

Vernon wasn't going to like it.  That was the thought that ran through Petunia's mind as she comforted the child - Harry - who was now reduced to snuffling into her shoulder.

Petunia hadn't told him about magic.  That had seemed to be the wiser choice in those first days after Hogwarts.  Lily might not have had the sense to cut and run, but Petunia did, and she failed to see why she should tie herself to some wizard who'd probably think himself enlightened for marrying a Mudblood when she could have a normal life instead.  And Vernon had seemed like the perfect choice: an ordinary man, someone who wouldn't have cared about magic even if he'd known about it.  Or respected magic, either.  He'd think it was all rot if Petunia tried to explain.

Also, Lily had hated him.  Which wasn't a particularly good reason to choose to marry somebody, but there was something Petunia found utterly galling about her sister's choice of husband.  Of course she'd managed to snare a pureblood - a rich pureblood, to boot - a rich pureblood who thought blood purity was utter rot, and who was clever, and handsome, and not a stuck-up prat like so many of the purebloods Petunia had met at Hogwarts.  He was perfect, and so was Lily, and didn't that just make them -

Dead.

Petunia swayed in her chair, feeling that old justified rage dissolve into nausea, and clutched Harry tighter to her.  Lily was dead.  She would never over-explain some basic magical principle to Petunia again.  Or accuse her of betraying her fellow Muggleborns.  Or steal the centre of attention without even trying.

That ought to feel better.  Really, it just felt... lonely.

The vicar at the church they'd attended as children would have said Lily wasn't really gone, not while she lived on through her child.  That was what he'd said after their parents' accident.  Petunia had thought it was rubbish then, and still did now;  Harry wasn't Lily any more than they'd been their parents.  They were their own people, all of them.  All they carried of their parents were... ghosts.  The startling colour of Harry's eyes, Lily's inability to hold a tune, the peculiar coldness of Petunia's hands during the winter.  That moment she'd looked in the mirror one dim morning a few years after her parents died and almost shrieked to see her mother looking back at her.

Ghosts.  That was all.  But the idea of sending those ghosts away - of losing the opportunity to see if Harry was bright the way Lily had been, if he had her mother's green thumb, her father's long thoughtful silences - that made Petunia clutch him tighter again.  Surely that couldn't be borne.

And yet... Vernon wouldn't like it.  That was going to be the sticking point.  He wouldn't want to take in anybody's child, even his sister-in-law's, especially after the stories Petunia had come up with to explain why she and Lily weren't in contact (except occasionally by owl post, and she hadn't been about to explain that).

She could lie.  She could convince him that anybody who heard about the affair would think it quite un-normal of them to send Harry to an orphanage, and that they were sure to hear about his mysterious appearance no matter how careful she and Vernon were to hide it, and that as a result they really had no choice but to take him in and raise him alongside their own son.  Vernon wouldn't like it, but he would be persuadable.  He might even agree that it was their duty to give Harry the normal upbringing his parents never could have.

There was no lie Petunia could tell him that would keep him from noticing Harry's eventual accidental magic.

Or - God.  She hadn't thought about Dudley.

When they'd been dating, she hadn't considered children other than a passing thought that they might have some, someday.  When they'd been married, Petunia had buried herself in normality so deeply for so long that the thought of her child potentially being magical hadn't ever occurred to her.  When Dudley was born, she'd had more important things to think about.  And now -

Purebloods thought that children with Muggle parents were more likely to be squibs.  Petunia had always thought that was rubbish - it was the sort of rumour that appealed very precisely to bigots, something that assured them they were better than everyone else and that they needn't fear for their own children, and so it had struck her as something that must have been created out of whole cloth - but she didn't actually know that it was a lie.  Maybe the reason she hadn't seen any magic out of Dudley yet was that he was as ordinary as his father.

Or maybe she just hadn't seen it.

What would Vernon do if he discovered his son was magical?  And that Petunia was too, had been the entire time?  Would a man so doggedly obsessed with normality really accept that?

Petunia rubbed Harry's back slowly, soothing him back to sleep, and wished Lily were here.

When Petunia made her way to Diagon Alley a few weeks later, it was bustling again.

She didn't have much of a basis for comparison; the worst of the war had happened after she'd left the magical world.  The last time she'd visited, when she'd come to pick up her school things for her final year at Hogwarts, it had been much quieter than this, though.  Everyone present had seemed nervous.  There'd been no real reason for it - all of the Death Eater attacks back then had been on private properties, and against people who'd made their opposition to the Dark Lord very obvious - but nobody had believed that would last forever.  And for someone who obviously hadn't cared about collateral damage, the back-to-school rush would have made a tempting target.

Now?  A little of that nervousness still remained, but most of the passersby seemed more assured in their safety - confidence bolstered, no doubt, by the steady stream of arrests the Prophet had been reporting.  No Dark Lord, no loyal Death Eaters left to launch revenge attacks... so people were out and about again.  Signs hanging from windows shouted about sales in squeaky voices, and Florean Fortescue was handing out samples with a broad smile on his face.  It wasn't quite idyllic, but it was close.

Petunia was almost tempted by the sales - almost.  But, despite the last few weeks of screaming arguments, she had so far managed to keep Vernon from finding out about magic, and she'd be damned if she gave up the moral high ground by giving up the secret and therefore admitting she'd lied to him.  That was more than worth having to get up at dawn to catch the Prophet's owls before Vernon could notice them.

No, she'd come to Diagon Alley here for a far more prosaic task than shopping.  If things continued the way they were, Petunia would need to find a place for her and the boys to live, and a way to support them without Vernon's money.  She wasn't sure that the Alley would be the best place to live - it would be difficult to hide Harry from the hysterical joy of the magical world, and the rent in magical areas was higher thanks to the pureblood desire to live away from Muggles - but it was certainly her best option for a job.  Petunia had no real qualifications anywhere but here, after all.

The trick would be coming up with a job she could do while looking after two toddlers.  Most jobs in the magical world, like in the Muggle one, weren't ones Petunia would be able to do from home.  She'd amused herself for a little while coming up with jobs she could - perhaps she could write those terrible bodice-rippers that'd been passed furtively around the girls' dormitories at Hogwarts, the ones where every other hero had a terrible curse that only true love could cure and almost every Muggleborn heroine was actually a long-lost pureblood heiress in disguise.  Not that she'd ever had much of a talent for writing - but then, Petunia had never thought those books particularly well-written either.

She wouldn't have the first idea what to write.  Frankly, the very idea was intimidating.  But it was something, she supposed - and that was more than she'd come up with so far.  Maybe that could be her back-up option if she really couldn't come up with any better options for work.

Petunia kept her eyes peeled for help wanted signs as she walked.  There were more than she had expected, but most of what she could see was for shop assistants and the like - probably because the sudden rush of shoppers had left businesses scrambling for staff they'd fired back when hardly anybody was coming to Diagon.  Nothing she could do while looking after children.

Nothing she could do yet.  Optimism didn't come naturally to Petunia, but she did her best to keep that in mind.  She was hardly the first single mother in history.  Other women had found a way to make it work, and she would too.

It was easier when Petunia focused on that.  Harder when she let herself dwell on everything else - like the sour knowledge in her gut that Lily had always been good at everything she'd tried her hand at, and would probably have already come up with some brilliant way to support the children if she'd been in Petunia's place.  Not that she would have, because she'd married a rich man, hadn't she, and she would have had full access to that fortune.  No need to struggle.

Not that Petunia wanted the Potter money.  Harry would have little enough of his parents; he might as well keep all of their last gift to him, enough money he'd never have to work if he didn't want to.  But if Lily had only thought to settle some kind of allowance on his guardians when she'd written her will... oh, that would have made things much easier.

She sighed, shaking her head.  There was no point in dwelling on something that hadn't happened.  What she needed to focus on was -

"I'm sorry," a voice said - a voice which, to Petunia's dismay, was addressing her.  "Are you..."

She blinked at the man standing before her.  Petunia hadn't seen Remus Lupin for years - not since Lily's wedding.  The years hadn't been kind to him, though she supposed he'd always looked older than he ought.

"Petunia," he said, apparently regaining his composure.  "I hadn't expected to see you here."

"Nor I you."  There were worse people to have been recognised by, but Petunia would rather not have been recognised at all, frankly.  "Are you well?"

"As I can be, under the circumstances."  Lupin shifted his weight, glancing around.  "Would you like to get a cup of tea?"

No.  But he clearly wanted to have a conversation, and Petunia would much rather they had it in private, so she followed as he led her to a quiet café.  They settled in a corner with tea and scones, and a banana each for the children.

"I'm glad you're all right," Lupin said.

Petunia had always found Lupin to be the most bearable of her brother-in-law's friends.  Pettigrew had seemed to find her forgettable; Black would have offered well-wishes too, but would have followed them up with a comment about how she hadn't been able to keep herself away from magic after all, smirking like he thought he'd told a joke.  Lupin, on the other hand, was quiet, well-read, and generally sincere.

"You as well."  Petunia paused.  "Though you can't have thought I was in much danger."

Lupin shrugged.  "I wasn't sure how well you'd hidden yourself.  There were a few cases of Muggleborns who were attacked while living in the Muggle world - we're not sure whether they were followed after visits to magical areas, or if they had traceable Floo connections, or if the Death Eaters had some other way of tracking them down we hadn't thought of."

"I see."  Lily hadn't mentioned that in any of their occasional letters.  "I wasn't at any risk of being followed, in any case.  I've had almost no contact with the magical world since I graduated."

Lupin's eyes flickered to the ring on her hand, and Dudley in the pram.  "I suppose you're back now because of..."

"Yes."  Petunia paused.  She'd been careful not to draw attention to Harry since they'd arrived in the Alley, but... "Do you want to hold him?"

"Oh!  If you think it'll be -"

Petunia bent and scooped Harry out of the pram before Lupin could argue himself out of it.  He squealed with delight when she dropped him into Lupin's arms, which was as good a sign as any that she'd chosen right.

"Oh."  Lupin closed his eyes and clutched Harry tight for a moment.  "I hadn't thought I'd see him again."

"Whyever not?" Petunia asked, picking up Dudley as he squawked in protest at being left in the pram.  "It's not as though you're a risk."

Lupin's face twisted.  "Nobody thought Sirius was, either.  I - I did ask Dumbledore, once I'd realised he must have been the one to hide him away, and he said he thought the less people who knew where Harry was, the better.  He's not wrong.  Though I can't imagine he expected you to come back here, after that argument you and Lily had."

"I suppose not."  Everyone in Hogwarts must have heard about it - they'd been loud enough, and it'd gone on intermittently for weeks.  Lily hadn't believed that Petunia really meant to leave magic behind; Petunia couldn't believe that Lily was stupid enough to stay.  And, since Lily had never been blessed with patience and they hadn't shared a common room, their arguments had almost always happened somewhere they were guaranteed to have spectators.  It had been awful.

"You aren't thinking of coming back," Lupin said, frowning.  "Surely not now."

"It's certainly safer now than it was when I left," Petunia snapped.  She regretted it almost instantly.  Lupin, with his well-worn clothing, might actually have some useful advice for her; better not to get him off-side.  "I...  My husband isn't likely to tolerate magic.  I hadn't thought it would matter then, since I hadn't ever planned on coming back here, but now..."

"Harry's already doing accidental magic," Lupin said.

"Yes.  Lily told me - we did write occasionally, you know.  I don't have the option of putting things off until Vernon liked Harry too much to get upset over it."  Not that it was likely he ever would have, but it was bad enough admitting this without explaining just how poorly she'd chosen.  "And I can't just leave him."

"No.  Of course not."  Lupin hesitated a moment.  "Still - it's hardly safe, coming back now.  I don't think any of Voldemort's supporters will be going out and attacking Muggleborns any time soon, but Harry - I think that would be a different story.  He's far too tempting a target."

"Which is why he's wearing a hat."  It had taken some effort to get it onto him, actually - Harry, it turned out, did not like hats, and keeping it on his head for long enough to apply a Sticking Charm had been a trial Petunia didn't want to repeat - but it hid the scar quite effectively, and meant that any passing adults couldn't see his eyes unless they actually crouched down to his level.  "One baby looks more or less like another.  I really don't expect people to start accusing any passing child of secretly being their saviour, Lupin."

"Maybe not," Lupin said.  "But surely if somebody were to try to guess where Harry had been sent -"

Petunia shook her head.  "How many people do you think actually remember me, Lupin?  I'm not Lily.  I've never had a gift for attracting others' attention.  And even if they did, do you really think anybody would expect me to come back here, after that fight I had with Lily?  It's not as though you expected to find me here."

"Well.  No.  But -"

"We won't live here, then," Petunia said with a shrug.  "Housing in Diagon Alley isn't exactly cheap, compared to the Muggle world.  I can just -"

"Wear a hat?"

"Or something else along those lines," Petunia agreed.  "I understand your concerns, really, but it's not as though I have any other good choices."

"No.  No, I suppose not."  Lupin grimaced.  "What a mess."

"I don't suppose you'd have any suggestions about what kind of job I could hold down while looking after these two?  There's certainly no way I could manage it in the Muggle world."

"Ah."  Lupin leaned back in his chair, bouncing Harry with an absent look on his face.  "Right.  I see the problem.  And it's not as though you can drop a child who's performing accidental magic on a regular basis off at a Muggle daycare, or Harry at a magical one, the way things are right now -"

"Unless," Petunia said, a sudden thought striking her, "you'd be interested?  You clearly missed Harry, and this way you'd be able to be around him all the time."

But Lupin was already shaking his head.  "I'm sorry.  I'm not staying in Britain - I've already made arrangements for a job on the continent.  I don't mean to stay here for very much longer."

Petunia stared at him for a moment, mind whirring.  If what Lily had suggested to her was correct, then -  "How on earth can you have a job already, if you've been fighting here?  The war's been over for less than a month!"

"I was over there, actually," Lupin said equably.  "Undercover, in a manner of speaking, with some rather unpleasant allies of Voldemort's.  But I had the luck of falling in with some people who disagreed with their politics as well.  One of them offered to help me out if it turned out I couldn't stand to stay here when I came back for the funerals.  And as it turns out..."

"Well," Petunia said, not quite able to keep the bitterness out of her voice.  "It's lucky for some, I suppose."  Not that she wanted to walk away from Dudley and Harry, of course - but to have the option just to leave -

"Yes.  Which is not a common occurrence in my life, so I hope you can appreciate I intend to hold onto it."  Lupin paused, the calm expression on his face falling away momentarily to reveal uncertainty.  "I - even if I hadn't planned on leaving, I don't think it could have worked out.  I have a - a magical malady, of a sort.  It makes it very difficult for me to hold down a job, or really any kind of long-term responsibility.  I don't think I could have trusted myself to look after children."

It was none of Petunia's business.  She knew that.  But - a magical disease that made him difficult to employ but didn't keep him from doing some kind of long-term undercover assignment for the war, that didn't make him look any more unwell than he ever had (perhaps he'd had it for a while?) or keep him from using magic...  It couldn't be readily infectious, or surely they wouldn't have let him out of St Mungo's.  What on earth could it be?

"Did you go on to NEWT Potions?" Lupin asked, snapping Petunia out of her thoughts.

"I - yes.  Not to Lily's standards, of course."  Petunia knew Lily hadn't meant anything by it, of course - nobody was up to her standards, except the Snape boy, and it wasn't as though they'd even been speaking to one another by the time they left Hogwarts - but still.  It wasn't like she'd been bad at them.  Just... not good enough.

"I don't think I would've made it through if she hadn't tutored me," Lupin said, a small, sad smile crossing his face.  "Though I think she regretted taking me on - I did all right at the practical parts, but the theory was all well above my head.  Anyway - there's a shop down the far end of Diagon, just past the turnoff to Knockturn Alley, that sells pre-brewed potions.  They'll hire on anyone who got a passing NEWT as a brewer, and they don't care if you do it there or at home - I think a lot of their brewers are housewives wanting to make a few extra sickles, honestly.  I worked there for a couple of months just after I graduated from Hogwarts, out at the front counter."

"Thank you," Petunia said.  "I'll look into it when I have the chance."  Which might not be soon - she wasn't keen on the idea of bringing young children that close to the entrance to Knockturn Alley.  Still, it was good to have some more concrete ideas on where to look for work, as opposed to 'brewing, maybe'.

"I can take the children for the afternoon if you'd like," Lupin said.  "I'm not planning on leaving right now.  And, well - I've always hated job searching.  I can't imagine it's any better with small children in tow."

"They can be a little distracting," Petunia agreed.  "But I'm sure you have things to do - affairs to wrap up before you leave the country -"

"Not really.  I just... I wanted to see Diagon Alley the way it used to be before I left.  Though, now that I think about it - I have some of James's things I was going to put away for Harry when he was older.  Do you want them?"

"I hardly have anywhere to put them," Petunia said.  Vernon hadn't asked her to leave - yet - but she didn't think the current state of affairs would really be improved by dumping God only knew how much stuff into the spare room, some of which would likely be obviously magical.  "But perhaps once the children and I have a new place to live..."

"Of course."

They fell silent for a few moments.  Petunia had never spoken much to Lupin - a few words here and there when they'd been at the same events, largely because Petunia had been trying to show that she could get along with Lily's friends and Lupin was the most bearable one - and she wasn't sure how to continue the conversation.  Or if she should at all.  Perhaps it'd be better if she excused herself.

And yet...  Diagon Alley was brimming with excitement.  It reminded Petunia of spring in the greenhouses at Hogwarts, when the magical plants there pulsed so strongly with growth it was almost a physical sensation, exhilarating and dizzying by turns.  Everyone around them was ready to fling off the restrictions that had governed their lives for so long during the war.  Only they two were still in winter.

"It's strange, isn't it?" Lupin asked.

"Hm?"

"I know we weren't the only people who lost somebody.  He killed so many people, and every one of them must have had loved ones.  But it just... it feels like everybody forgot about that as soon as the war was over.  Like they don't care what happened to James and Lily, because Harry ended the war, and that's the important thing, right?"

"Yes."  Petunia couldn't keep her lip from curling.  That was it exactly - though she would have thought Lupin was too nice to say anything like that.

Then again, losing your three closest friends in one fell swoop would be enough to strip the niceness from anybody, she supposed.

It was a little while after that - when the crowds in the street outside had swelled with the addition of Ministry workers on their lunch breaks, and the café was no longer as quiet as it had been - when Lupin stirred, a frown on his face.  He glanced around and then cast something around them.  A spell to prevent eavesdropping, Petunia supposed, since the air had developed that peculiar deadened feeling she remembered from Hogwarts.

"I - there's something I perhaps ought to tell you.  If Dumbledore hasn't - though I suppose he might have..."

"Told me?" Petunia asked.  "I haven't seen him since I graduated."

Lupin blinked.  "You - then how did you find out about... what happened?  Not from the Prophet, Merlin forbid."

"He sent a letter along with Harry."  Petunia paused, considering her words.  "It didn't tell me much."

The letter had, for the most part, been an apology.  Dumbledore had explained what had happened, of course, and why he'd sent Harry directly to Petunia rather than having a more official handing-over that might have given the Death Eaters a chance to track her back to her home.  But most of it had been an attempt to lay the blame for Lily's death entirely at his own feet - because he'd come up with the idea to use the Fidelius charm rather than something else, and he'd been the one to approve making Black the Secret-Keeper, and he'd been the one to cast the charm.

Petunia hadn't paid much attention at the time.  She'd had more important things to worry about.  Now, with the space of a few weeks to drive back the sharpest edges of her grief, she wasn't much inclined to blame Dumbledore.  There wasn't a force in the world that could have made Lily use the Fidelius if she hadn't thought it was a good idea, and she'd probably gone straight to her personal library to research it as soon as he'd mentioned it as a possibility; if it'd had some obvious fatal flaw, Lily wouldn't have gone along with the idea.  And it wasn't as though anybody had seen Black's betrayal coming.

Petunia's eventual conclusion had been that she couldn't have expected much more from the exhausted leader of a war that had just ended in tragedy.  How else could Dumbledore have possibly responded, when he'd clearly expected that his clever idea would save Lily and James, not doom them?  Whatever it was that Lupin had expected Dumbledore to tell her was probably something he hadn't even been thinking about at the time.

Lupin was silent for a few long moments - so long that Petunia almost thought he wasn't going to finish.  Had his nerve failed him?  What could possibly -

"Dumbledore thinks Voldemort is going to come back."

"What?"

Petunia's first instinct was to deny it.  It couldn't possibly be true.  It couldn't be possible at all.  And yet...

If she were to ask any ordinary person off the street, they would say that magic was impossible.  Petunia herself proved that wrong.  If you could have magic, why not immortality?

The average wizard off the street would have a different opinion.  Magic was an everyday thing for them, but it was well known that immortality was a fool's game.  Wizards lived longer than Muggles, of course, and magic could enable one to extend one's life even further than that - witness that French alchemist Flamel - but the ability to come back from the dead?  No.  Wizards had tried, and the best they'd come up with was Inferi.

Lily had never really respected the rules of magic.  She'd seen them as guidelines at best, hindrances at worst: nothing more than a list of misunderstood observations, something one could think around if only one had the imagination.  Who was to say the Dark Lord hadn't felt the same way?  Or had some secret evil knowledge, the sort of thing that researchers buried because they knew no good could come from it?

"I see," she managed.

"I don't - I don't want it to be true," Lupin said, not meeting her eyes.  "But I don't know that I disbelieve it, either.  He survived a lot of curses that ought to have killed him, back then.  Nobody really talked about it.  I suppose it was because we didn't want to think it was true, or because nobody wanted to admit to trying to commit murder.  I've asked around, though, since the end of the war, and I certainly wasn't the only one who saw it happen."

"That's not supposed to be possible," Petunia said.

"Why do you think it never made it to the newspapers?  Nobody wanted to create a panic."  Lupin shifted Harry to his other arm, grimacing.  "None of us really wanted to believe it was happening, anyway.  It was taking all we had to protect people as it was, and then finding out we couldn't even take the bastard down -"

Petunia cleared her throat loudly, and Lupin froze, glancing over at Harry.  Harry, who had been babbling directly into Lupin's ear, didn't appear to notice.

"Ah.  Sorry."  Lupin patted the top of Harry's head.  "If it's any consolation, there's a very real possibility he's heard worse if he was ever awake when James and Lily were discussing the war."

"My son hasn't," Petunia said primly.  "I'll thank you not to corrupt him."

"I.  Yes.  Sorry."  Lupin cleared his throat.  "I don't think Dumbledore has any actual proof that it's going to happen - just gut instinct - but his instincts usually worked out fairly well during the war."

Petunia shrugged.  "Even if he's wrong, I'm sure at least some of the Death Eaters are going to wriggle out of taking any responsibility for their actions.  The Ministry's far too corrupt for them not to have their hooks into someone who can get them off."

Lupin grimaced.  "I wish I could say I disagreed with you, but I'm not sure that I can.  I do wonder what the Aurors are going to do - I can't imagine it'll go over well, considering how many of them were killed when they came across Death Eaters."

"Are there really enough of them left to be a major problem?"  Petunia could guess.  All the ones who'd really cared about Muggleborns being murdered would have been the ones who'd rushed into the fray, and almost certainly the ones who'd ended up dead.  The bigots would have survived, cockroach-like.

"Ha.  No.  I suppose not."  Lupin rubbed his face with his free hand.  "There's no way of knowing if it'll happen.  Or when.  But... please be careful when you come back here.  Enough people have died in this war already."

Petunia nodded, and didn't speak her first thought, which was that she didn't intend to get Harry killed.  Even if Lupin had thought she was a royal bitch at Hogwarts - which most of Lily's friends had, so there was a decent chance - he probably did care about her safety, just a little.  It had to have worn him down, watching so many people he'd cared about die.

"If I can get that brewing job you suggested, I could probably manage to avoid the magical world most of the time."  Petunia paused.  "Do you mind..."

"Of course."

Something twinged in her at leaving the boys alone with a near-stranger.  Petunia crushed the feeling ruthlessly.  Lily had clearly trusted Lupin with her child for Harry to be so comfortable with him now.  He wasn't about to abscond with the children, or abandon them in the middle of Diagon Alley.  And - as much as Petunia hated it - she couldn't afford to be so proud as to refuse help.  Not right now, when things were so precarious.  If she found out later, once she'd gotten a job and a home and stability, that Lupin wasn't worth Lily's regard - well, she could snub him then.

She bent to set Dudley back in the pram.  He squawked a protest, but was happy enough to snatch up the toys left there.  Petunia lingered a moment longer, one hand brushing through his fine blond hair, and then sat back up.

"If I come back and you aren't here," she said to Lupin, meeting his eyes square on, "or something has happened to them, you'll answer to me."

"Understood."

With that, Petunia stood and swept away.

Petunia tried her best to keep her mind on her two goals: getting a job, and returning to find Dudley and Harry safe and well.  But she couldn't keep her mind from dwelling, for the first time, on something she'd been dancing around since she'd found Harry on her doorstep.  There had been so much else to think about - that crushing grief every time she'd thought of her baby sister, her worries about Harry and Dudley and Vernon and magic -

But it couldn't go ignored forever.  Not if Lupin was right about the Dark Lord coming back someday.  Even if he weren't, though, Harry couldn't stay hidden forever; he'd go to Hogwarts eventually, and he'd have to face down everyone who thought that being the Boy Who Lived was something worthy of praise or blame.

Had Dumbledore really meant it when he'd written in the letter that he had no idea how Harry had survived? 

Had he known Lily so little?  Or had he guessed what Petunia was wondering now, with a slow sick feeling in her gut - that Lily had decided she loved her son more than life itself, and had set out to ensure she didn't outlive him?  And, if so - why lie?

That part was easier to guess at.  There had been a war; there might be one again.  There were ways to survive wars that were more likely to turn out well than flinging yourself in front of a curse meant for someone else, especially since anybody who might think to copy Lily wouldn't have any idea what magic she'd used to ensure her death actually did something.  Hide the magic, and Dumbledore also hid the temptation.

There was a part of Petunia that wanted to be furious at him for that.  Turning back the Killing Curse like that was supposed to be impossible - Lily ought to have that recognition, rather than getting brushed aside in favour of a frankly bizarre focus on the actions of a toddler - but no.  She knew better.  Lily wouldn't have cared, so long as Harry was all right, and it was the smarter choice.  A cold choice, but then she supposed that leading a war with such a high death rate was the sort of thing that would encourage a necessary coldness.

Petunia would have liked to have thought she wasn't capable of that kind of cold-blooded planning.  But Slytherin had taught her to recognise every part of herself, not just the ones she liked; and the same impulses that had led her to discreetly curse a would-be Death Eater who was planning to attack Lily back in Hogwarts could quite easily be directed in Harry and Dudley's defence now. 

Dumbledore was probably driven by his concern for Magical Britain as a whole.  Frankly, Petunia didn't give a damn about the country - as far as she was concerned, the fact that pureblood bigotry had ever led to a war in the first place was a good enough sign that the whole edifice was rotten - but for her boys?  Yes.  She could do more than a few hard things for them.  And, if Dumbledore was right, and the Dark Lord was inevitably going to return, she'd probably have to.

It would be wiser, probably, to flee.  Further this time.  Take the children and leave the country entirely, go to France or America or Australia and leave the whole bloody mess behind -

And yet.  Some small part of Petunia cried out against the idea.  Could she really flee her country and leave it to the Death Eaters?  Take Harry away from the land his parents had risked their lives to protect?

She could, of course.  Petunia had always been very good at ignoring that plaintive, dreaming voice in her soul.  Doing so had kept her from crushing herself under the weight of false dreams sparked by the strange things that happened around her, at least until Lily had done enough strange things herself that Petunia could trust it was real; and it had kept her whole in Hogwarts, when her desire to make friends or have romances would certainly have led bigoted purebloods to try to take advantage of her.  It was safer to remind herself that she was ordinary, despite her magic.  Lily had always been the special one.

But, in this case, there were practical matters to consider as well.  It would be hard enough for Petunia to establish herself with two children in tow in Britain; far harder if she also had to coordinate and pay for an international move, in a country where she had no contacts and her qualifications were even more useless.  And from what she'd heard, most other countries had made it significantly more difficult for magical Britons to immigrate or gain citizenship in the wake of the war.

It was, perhaps, a plan to keep at the back of her mind.  Moving would be easier by far in a few years when the fuss had died down and her bank account had filled up, and it would give her time to assess the situation.  Perhaps the Dark Lord wouldn't return for another fifty years, or at all.  Perhaps she could get into contact with Dumbledore and find out what his plan was - for surely he must have one, or at least the beginnings of one, if he was already warning his old soldiers to be on the lookout.

Perhaps all fleeing would do would be to put them outside whatever protections Dumbledore might be able to assemble, entirely unaware they were being hunted until it was too late.

No.  It would be better by far to take things slowly, and consider her options. 

And brush up on her curses.  Just in case.

The entrance to Knockturn Alley loomed on her left.  Petunia paused and glanced around; a little ahead of her was a tiny potions shop tucked between a café and a dark-windowed second-hand shop.  She straightened her shoulders and pasted a smile on her face.  She'd have more than enough time to worry about what might be coming later.

Chapter Text

This was not the future Petunia had imagined for herself.

She had wanted her mother's life: a neat house in the suburbs, a husband to provide for her.  Respectability.  This country cottage, with mud tracked through by heedless children and a potions room in the back and a riotous garden, was nothing like that.

But it wasn't as bad as she would have thought back then.  Petunia might not have loved potions, but her list of orders was ever-changing and far more interesting for it.  Out here in the country she didn't have to worry so much about people seeing her out and about and judging her for being a divorceé.  And the children liked it far more here than she suspected they would have in Little Whinging - Harry was always after her to show him brewing techniques, and Dudley spent far more time tending the back garden than Petunia herself could have stood.

(If she imagined sometimes that Lily was standing beside her as she brewed, telling her she hadn't chopped her sea slugs quite neatly enough - well.  That was Petunia's secret alone.  It would do the boys no good to hear her stories of ghosts they'd never met and never would.)

It hurt less, now, to see the echoes of those ghosts in her children.  There was a certain familiar wrinkle in Harry's brow as he pretended the vegetables he was chopping for dinner were potions ingredients that had to be sliced just so, an irritated snap in Dudley's voice when Harry pushed things a little too far that recalled memories of her mother, but... it was easier.  A recollection of happy times, rather than a reminder of her own personal tragedies.

That made it easier to talk about Lily to them, too, which Petunia was thankful for.  There had been a period when Harry and Dudley were toddlers when she'd been almost entirely consumed by bitterness - they'd been hideous screaming beasts who never let her sleep or have a moment to herself, let alone brew the potions she depended on to pay the bills, and she'd been so tired, and of course it had been Lily who'd died, hadn't it?  Lily was rich.  Lily had never seemed exhausted a moment in her life, not even when Petunia knew she'd spent the whole night out.  And Lily had made this creature and then abandoned him to Petunia, and she couldn't take it, not one more moment -

It had passed.  Eventually.  Petunia had found herself consumed by shame for those moments of weakness and the seething hatred for Lily they'd brought along with them, and she'd promised herself never to give into that weakness again, no matter how much of a misery Harry might become as he grew up.  She had to do better.

So she told them stories.  The happy ones were easier, so those were the ones Petunia focused on: Lily animating flowers when she was seven, or how utterly excited she'd been in the run-up to her first year at Hogwarts.  The way her face had shone at the Feast on her first night there.  The stories Lily had told her about her ongoing feud with the Marauders, whose pranks had interrupted her study time.

Petunia didn't tell them everything, of course.  How was she supposed to explain to children that Lily's dislike for Harry's father had actually begun because he and his friends had been a set of miserable bullies, or that Lily's best friend back then had joined the Death Eaters - let alone answer all the questions about that war that would bring up?  How could she talk about their later years at school without old resentments rising up her throat and choking her?  She had loved her baby sister with the same fierceness that she loved Harry and Dudley now, but it had been so terribly easy for that to curdle into jealousy.  How was she supposed to explain that to a little boy who just wanted to know his mother?

So she didn't.

There was time.  They could grow up first.  Maybe when they were older they'd understand some of it at least - though Petunia hoped, the sort of hope that was like peeling paint laid over the top of seething fear, that neither Harry nor Dudley would ever understand the way she'd felt about Lily in the years before her death.  They ought to be spared that.  They ought to be allowed to have an uncomplicated love, of brothers in all but name.

Remus Lupin came to visit every so often, usually after his latest job had fallen through.  The boys always greeted him with excited shouts, not only because he brought gifts (though the secondhand books and gizmos he brought them were well-loved).  As far as Harry and Dudley were concerned, their Uncle Remus might as well have been family.  They had little enough otherwise; Vernon had given up keeping in contact years ago, when he realised Petunia had no intention of giving in and Dudley was far too 'tainted' by her 'abnormality' to be moulded into the proper young man he'd imagined raising.  And who else was there?  Some distant cousin she and Lily had never known existed, probably.  Harry's closest remaining relatives on his father's side were apparently Death Eaters.  Petunia thought it was best that particular relationship remained an estranged one.

He had the particular importance, in the boys' eyes, of being the only one who had any really good stories to tell about Harry's father.  Remus had agreed not to tell them anything that might be too difficult to explain at their ages - Petunia suspected he was as loathe to explain the failures of his youth as she was - so it was all rather Boys' Own, a mixture of Quidditch victories, harmless pranks carried out on wholly deserving victims, and heroics.  Harry hung on his every word.

Sometimes Remus would bring a broom along with him, a secondhand one he'd been patiently rehabilitating after a stint at a broomstick factory had taught him enough of the art to feel comfortable fixing it up.  On those trips, Petunia would spend afternoons head-down in her potions room, doing her best not to listen to the excited shrieks outside.  She trusted Remus not to let the boys fall when he took them up higher than their child-safe brooms could manage, and she'd plastered the little meadow behind their house with cushioning charms in any case, but she wasn't sure she could actually watch it.  Listening was bad enough, but she hadn't been able to force herself to put up silencing charms, mind full of unlikely scenarios in which they somehow managed to escape every safety measure and end up injured while she couldn't hear them.

By silent, mutual consent, Remus never stayed long enough for his visits to extend over the full moon.

And at some point during every visit, one night when the boys were soundly asleep and neither of them had anything better to do, she and Remus would go into her potions laboratory, seal everything breakable away, and duel until they were too exhausted to go on.

Petunia had meant it when she'd said she knew how to look after herself.  If Slytherin had taught her anything, it was the value of never being unprepared.  She'd taught herself obscure curses from near-forgotten books in the back of the library, because if the baby Death Eaters trying to hex her couldn't work out how to undo her spells it'd distract them.  And - despite Remus's doubts - she had made friends there, of a sort; she'd been the only Muggleborn in Slytherin at the time, but there'd been plenty of halfbloods who'd taught her their old tricks as a sort of apology for the fact that she'd be the one drawing all the fire from then on. 

She'd even been taught a few spells by pureblood girls.  They hadn't thought that the Dark Lord's politics were wrong, exactly, but they'd disagreed with the violent way he was carrying them out.  Maybe they'd seen helping Petunia as a sort of penance for the fact that they'd never actually try to do anything to try to stop him.  But she hadn't cared why they were helping her, as long as the hexes were something that'd sting enough to make any attackers think twice.

It had been a long time since Hogwarts, though, and Petunia wasn't so proud as to pretend she wasn't out of practice.  With only the occasional duel, she'd never be able to go toe-to-toe with a real Death Eater... but she ought to be able to escape.  If the Dark Lord decided to break out some of his old followers she might be able to do more than run - Azkaban didn't seem as though it would be good for one's duelling skills - but that would be chancy, and Petunia knew better.  Run, and make sure the boys got out ahead of her.  That was the plan.

She wasn't sure how well she'd keep to that plan if Black were there.  That strange numbness she'd felt in the first little while after Lily's death, and the tearing grief afterwards, had faded with time, but her feelings towards Black had done quite the opposite.  He might not have cast the spell that killed Lily, but he'd come close enough for Petunia's tastes.  She wanted him to find out precisely how deeply she hated him before he died.

She hadn't told Remus that.

Perhaps he'd agree with her.  His life had been blown to pieces every bit as much as Petunia's had, after all.  But she wasn't sure Remus was quite vengeful enough a person to feel comfortable with the idea.  Some people, faced with betrayal, got angry; some people just hurt.  It was easier for her, since she'd never given a damn about Black to start with.

They had only spoken about Black once, years ago, when Remus had been so raw he'd clearly been unable to help himself.  What had haunted him most had been the questions.  Why had he done it?  What could possibly have compelled him to betray the man he'd claimed to love as a brother and the child he'd sworn to care for as his own?  How, after all those years of friendship, could he possibly have brought himself to kill Pettigrew?  They had struck Petunia as being the questions of a man who desperately wanted answers, not revenge, no matter how grim Remus might have looked when Petunia asked what might happen if Black ended up face-to-face with Harry somehow.

With any luck, she'd never have to worry about any of that.  With any luck, Dumbledore was wrong.  They could have peaceful lives, undisturbed by the last gasps of a war that should have died when Lily did.

Realistically, of course, that couldn't happen - there were still ex-Death Eaters out there, and Petunia was sure their children wouldn't welcome Harry and Dudley to Hogwarts any more than they'd welcomed Petunia and Lily - but she could hope.  There would be children there who'd been brought up to view the Death Eaters' ideology as despicable, and Muggleborn children like herself who had no idea about any of it.  They'd make friends.  They'd be happy.  They wouldn't let the bigots keep them down.

It was hard sometimes for Petunia to convince herself of that, when the nights were long and dark or when she had to visit Diagon and the children whined about being left behind again.  But she persevered.

(And sometimes she couldn't help but wonder whether Lily would have done this.  Would she have run overseas?  Taken a home in Diagon Alley and dared the Death Eaters to attack her?  Tried to give Harry and Dudley the ordinary childhood she and Petunia had, or immersed them in magic?  Would they have been happier, if Lily had been in her place?

She'd never know.  It still haunted her.)

She couldn't keep Dudley and Harry safe forever.  Petunia knew that.  Even if they'd been utterly ordinary, magic nothing but a thing out of fairytales, someday her boys would have left to make their own way in the world.  But she could give them this - a home where nobody treated them as anything other than ordinary children.  A sanctuary until Hogwarts, and a place to hide away from the world in the summers.  That would have to be enough.

Petunia had danced around the topic of Lily's death for years.  It was morbid, she'd told herself.  Did the children really need to hear that?  Wasn't it enough to know that she had existed, and loved Harry more than herself, and then died?

Things couldn't stay like that forever, of course.  It was easy enough to ignore when the children were tiny and more curious about the world around them than the past; and easy to brush aside when they were slightly older and distractible; and somewhat less easy when they were older again, but listened when she said they weren't old enough yet.  Sooner or later, though, it had to come to an end.

There were times Petunia had been tempted to come up with an elaborate lie to tell them.  The truth was such an awful thing to tell to anyone, let alone a child, and perhaps it would be easier that way.  It would only last so long, but perhaps if she could put the real story off until they were almost at Hogwarts...

She could tell them, perhaps, that it had been an accident.  Lily and James had left Harry with her for the night and gone out on the town, maybe.  A car had lost control and ploughed into a crosswalk, far too fast for them to realise what was happening, far too hard for it to be survivable.  The Muggles at the scene had tried their best, but...

Petunia might have spent too much time thinking about it.  But she couldn't let Harry or Dudley grow up hating Muggles, which meant it had to be an unavoidable accident, sheer bad luck rather than malice - nor could she tell them something that made them disdain science in favour of magic, so they couldn't have survived long enough to make it to a hospital -

She couldn't tell them that.  Petunia knew that, no matter how tempted she became at times.  It would hurt Harry too much to know that she'd lied to him.  So she bit back the urge to lie and just put them off, over and over again, until they wouldn't let her any more.

"It isn't fair," Dudley said.  "We're not babies.  We're nine and a half!  Almost ten!  And it can't be that bad.  Harry's too nice to ask, but I know he wonders -"

Petunia very much doubted that.  This scene - Dudley stubbornly insisting, while Harry lingered in the background sighing sadly - struck her as something they'd come up with together in the hope that she'd give in if Harry looked yearningly enough at the photo of Lily on the mantelpiece.

But Dudley wasn't wrong.  There was a strict limit to how far she could drag this out: once they made it to Hogwarts, everyone around Harry would know the story, and Petunia was sure at some point somebody would be rude enough to bring it up with him directly.  She had to tell him before they left, ideally with enough lead time that he had a chance to adjust to the idea.

She would have liked to put it off longer.  Forever, maybe.  But nine and a bit years old wasn't too bad.

"All right, then," Petunia said with a sigh.  "Come over here, Harry.  Sit down.  I suppose you are old enough now to hear the full story."

"I don't understand," Harry said slowly, when she was finished.  "I - how could anybody do that?  Any of them - Voldemort, or Sirius Black -"

"It's 'cause they're evil," Dudley said.  "And you're not, so of course you don't get it.  They're like - um - like Daleks.  They don't care about hurting normal people like us."

In other circumstances, Petunia might have laughed at the assertion that any of them were 'normal people'.  She certainly wouldn't have thought so when she was their age and frightened of her own strangeness - and neither would any of Dudley and Harry's classmates from the village school they'd attended for a few years, who could watch Doctor Who in their own living rooms rather than in a garden shed as far away from the untrammelled magic in the house as possible.  Here and now, it just reminded her with a sharp ache in her chest how innocent her boys were.

"I'm glad Black got caught," Dudley added.  "'Cause he might've gotten Harry, right, if he hadn't been?  Because he's the godfather?"

"He might have," Petunia said.  "I have a better claim, and Lily's will listed us both as possible guardians - she had quite a few options, actually, which I think is because she was worried about what might happen if they only chose one person and that person was killed or injured, as happened to a number of people during the war.  But the Ministry tends to give guardianship preferentially to witches and wizards over Muggles, and given that at the time I was living in the Muggle world and married to a Muggle, it's possible that they would have sent Harry to him instead."

"Good thing they didn't," Dudley said.  "Can you imagine?  He could've done all sorts of horrible things to Harry.  Or raised him to be evil too!"

"I... suppose so, yes," Petunia said.  As unlikely as she found that prospect - Black had never struck her as somebody with the patience or good sense necessary for child-rearing - it was probably better that they focused on that than the more likely option, that he'd killed Harry and been done with it.

"I'm glad too," Harry said, and darted forwards, wrapping his arms around Petunia in a brief hug before retreating again, red-faced.  He and Dudley had been like that lately, much to Petunia's dismay.  So far she'd managed to keep herself from clinging too tight when she got those infrequent embraces - something she feared would scare them off entirely - but it was getting harder.  Hopefully they'd recover from this sudden fit of 'maturity' before they left for Hogwarts.

Sometimes, when she stopped to think about it, Petunia could hardly believe how long it had been.  It felt as though it ought only to have been yesterday that she'd been cradling a wrinkled, squalling Dudley against her chest, or hiding the moving photograph Lily had sent her of Harry in the back of an old book where Vernon wouldn't see it - and yet there they were, sprinting past as though growing up was a competition they wanted to win.  Six, eight, ten years old.  Soon they'd get their Hogwarts letters, and she'd have to fight back the temptation to take them away from here one more time.

It would be so easy.  Not, perhaps, quite as easy as it would have been when they were toddlers, too young to know what Hogwarts was and have developed strong opinions about attending - but still easy.  The French had stopped guarding their borders as fiercely as they had during the war, and like the British Ministry, they didn't understand the Muggle world well enough to prevent people slipping over the Channel by non-magical methods.  From there Petunia could go nearly anywhere she liked.  If the Ministry realised that Harry Potter had disappeared, they might eventually think to have a Muggleborn check flight records - but would it occur to them to check the French ones?

The boys would never forgive her, and oblique conversations with Remus late at night had convinced Petunia that they'd be safer here with allies than in hiding without them.  She'd long since resigned herself to staying put.  It was a lovely fantasy, though. 

And, perhaps, a useful plan to keep in the back of her mind if those allies ever turned out to be less reliable than she hoped.

Late one night, when they were both too sore to spend another moment duelling and too wound up to sleep, Petunia found herself talking with an unfortunately maudlin Remus.  She normally found him quite easy to get on with - Harry and Dudley adored him as much as he adored them, and so he was ordinarily quite happy just to talk about them and their successes - but when he was in this mood, he might well choose to talk about something she'd prefer to let lie.  Like Lily, or Sirius Black, or the Dark Lord.  So when he chose instead to steer the conversation to her... as uncomfortable as it made Petunia, she supposed she'd better let him.

"Do you know what you're going to do when they go to Hogwarts?" Remus asked.

"Oh, panic, I expect."  Petunia smiled at the expression of consternation on his face.  "What do you think, Remus?  I'm sending them far away - entrusting them to staff who include that bastard Snape, who wasn't worth Lily's time long before he was a Death Eater, and who I expect will take against the boys simply because of who they're related to -"

"He could have grown up," Remus said, unconvincingly.

"He did," Petunia said.  "Into a Death Eater.  I don't relish the idea of sending my boys to a school where he teaches - and that assumes neither of them will be under his direct care.  Imagine if one of them - or both of them! - ends up in Slytherin!"

"It won't be that bad," Remus said.  "Dumbledore will be keeping an eye on them - on Harry especially, I imagine.  He'll make sure nothing too bad can happen to them."

"I'd prefer nothing bad at all," Petunia muttered, but she subsided, leaning back to glare into the fire rather than raining down any more imprecations on Snape's name.

"That wasn't what I was asking, in any case," Remus said after a little while.  "You've been trapped doing... well, more or less the same thing ever since you graduated.  Marriage, and then a baby, and then another baby while you juggled work... once Harry and Dudley leave for Hogwarts, you can do whatever you like.  Surely you aren't planning to stay here forever?"

"Surely you aren't expecting me to go gallivanting across the world?" Petunia rejoined - but he wasn't entirely wrong, either.  Years of scrimping and saving had left her in a far better financial position than she'd been immediately after leaving Vernon.  Harry's school fees had been paid for by his inheritance, and Lily had also left Dudley a fund for his school fees should he need them, which Petunia hadn't been too proud to take.  She could, if she wished, quit her job and close up the house the moment the Hogwarts Express left.  Go and have the kind of adventure Lily would have loved, if only she hadn't been caught up in something rather more important.  Seek out an apprenticeship in whatever field she might be qualified for.  Become a professional dueller.  Whatever she liked, really.

"You don't strike me as a gallivanter, no," Remus said.  "But you do have options."

"I suppose so."  Not that Petunia had any idea what options she might take up.  "Maybe I'll just... I don't know, visit Diagon Alley a little more frequently."

Remus blinked.  "That's it?"

"Perhaps you forget," Petunia said, a little more waspishly than Remus probably deserved, "but I haven't gotten to go wandering the world, this past decade.  I've been trapped here with two small children, afraid that if I stopped in Diagon Alley too frequently somebody might recognise me and realise I'm the one taking care of Harry.  I won't pretend it's all been some great trial - there are far worse lives I could have had, frankly - but it'd be nice to get out every once in a while."

Not that things were really as bad as she was suggesting.  Petunia had wondered, every once in a while, whether she might have ended up living an even more constrained life if she hadn't divorced Vernon.  It was true that she didn't often have the chance to speak to adults other than Remus - she had some casual friends in the nearby village where Dudley and Harry had attended school for a while, but there was only so close she could get to people who she had to keep so many secrets from - but it wasn't as though things would have been much different if she'd still been married, was it?  She'd still be keeping a fundamental part of herself secret.  Not to mention Dudley.  Vernon would never have agreed to withdraw him from school to hide abilities he had no idea existed.

Maybe Dudley's accidental magic would have been less dramatic if he hadn't known about magic.  Petunia's had been, after all.  And he and Harry had done a very good job of egging one another on in their attempts to use magic deliberately; surely that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't known what the odd occurrences around them really were.

It was a hard way to grow up, not knowing what your magic was.  Petunia knew that from experience.  If she'd been thinking when she'd met Vernon, she would have remembered that, and wouldn't have risked having a child with someone she didn't think she could tell about magic.

She'd solved that problem, at least, and given Dudley and Harry a happier upbringing than they'd have had in Little Whinging.  Petunia hadn't solved everything else - like Dudley's resentment of the father who was so embarrassed to have been divorced that he'd decided to pretend neither of them existed - but she wasn't sure there was much she could do for that, really.  Only time could heal that particular wound, she suspected.

Life had gone on, after that realisation.  Dudley had cried and sulked and, eventually, cried himself out.  After that he'd started hanging on Remus's stories about James in much the same way Harry did.  Petunia wasn't sure that idolising a man she knew hadn't been perfect was a good idea, but she didn't think she or Remus could stop either of them from doing it.  That was a bridge they'd have to cross when they got to it.

Petunia would have preferred her life to have less problems she could only solve at some vague future date.  It was rather unnerving, knowing they might come home to roost at any moment.  But there was little she could do about it, so she simply did her best to live in the moment, the way the boys often did.

"Which house do you think you'll be in?" Dudley asked.  Petunia paused on the stairs.  It wasn't as though she hadn't heard them discussing Hogwarts before, but... well, she could be curious, couldn't she?

"Gryffindor, obviously," Harry said.  "Like my mum and dad.  And Uncle Remus."

"I dunno," Dudley said.  "I reckon you could be a good Slytherin, too."

"Why?"

"Well, you're more like Mum than I am," Dudley said, in the tone of someone who couldn't believe he had to explain this.  "You like potions.  And you're all snappy like her sometimes too."

"I like potions because my mum did," Harry muttered, but he didn't sound terribly upset.  "Maybe I'm really like my dad, and we just don't know."

"Uncle Remus would've said."

"I guess."  They were both silent for a few long moments, and then Harry sighed loudly.  "Anyway.  Where do you want to go?"

"It'd be nice to be like Mum," Dudley said, "but I don't think I'd actually be a very good Slytherin, do you?  And I don't know if I care enough about books and stuff to be a Ravenclaw.  So I guess it's either Gryffindor or Hufflepuff.  How do you tell if you're a brave sort of person, anyway?  Do something awful and see if you're frightened?"

"Surely you wouldn't do it in the first place if you weren't brave, though," Harry said.  "Because you'd be too scared.  But I reckon you'd be a good Hufflepuff, because they're supposed to be hard workers and you've spent heaps of time working on that other broom with Uncle Remus."

"I wish he'd tell me how you actually make them," Dudley said.  "I wanna make my own.  That'd be way more fun.  And I reckon it'd be pretty cool anyway, knowing how to make stuff like that."

"I bet there's a book in Hogwarts that says how.  Aunt Petunia says the library's huge," Harry said.

"That means I'd have to spend heaps of time looking, though," Dudley said.  "There might be someone who knows, though... we can't be the first people to think making a broom would be cool, right?"

"No way," Harry said.  "But I bet we'll be the first ones in our year!"

It was at this point that Petunia stuck her head into the room and asked the boys to go mow the lawn, which they wandered off to do with a minimum of grumbling.  She did love Harry - far more than she'd thought she'd be able to when he was tiny and a horror - but there wasn't a bad idea he wasn't tempted to try out.  If she didn't supply them with a distraction, he'd probably convince Dudley that they ought to start work right now, or sneak into Diagon Alley to find a book that could teach them how to build a broom now, rather than when they made it to Hogwarts.

Harry's magic tended to protect him from his bad ideas, to an extent.  He'd bounced the first time he'd fallen out of a tree - after which Petunia had started layering Cushioning Charms onto all of the ground around the house, not just the parts where Remus took them flying - and the potion he'd exploded when he and Dudley sneaked into her potions room behind her back at the tender age of six hadn't touched either of them.  But Petunia preferred to put her faith in something rather more dependable than accidental magic.  Better no accidents at all than an accident barely averted.

Remus had assured her that the magic required to make an actual broomstick would be well beyond Harry and Dudley when they started at Hogwarts.  Petunia sincerely hoped he was right.  It was possible that they'd be distracted from their plans by classwork and friends and new experiences, of course, but -

Her own Hogwarts experience, if she ignored the would-be Death Eaters and the looming threat of war, had been a relatively sedate one.  But Petunia knew all too well what kind of trouble a clever child who wanted to know how magic worked could get into; that had been Lily's experience, one that'd landed her in the hospital wing more than a few times.  Harry hadn't shown any inclination to the kind of pranks his father had spent so much time playing, thankfully, but Petunia knew he'd been almost as clever as Lily had.  It wasn't a combination that left her with much faith in Harry's ability to avoid trouble.  And, of course, where he went Dudley would follow.

It eased something in Petunia, knowing that.  Not that she would have admitted to it had they asked - she would have asked them that old chestnut about whether one of them would jump off a bridge too if he'd seen the other doing it, and pointed out they ought to learn to think for themselves - but it was comforting to know that they were so certain in their love for one another.

She'd been so jealous of Lily, back then.  It had been all right when they were younger, when Petunia's knowledge that Lily was prettier and cleverer and more popular than her had been counterbalanced by her certainty that she would always be the oldest sister, and that Lily would always love her best.  But then it had turned out that magic was real, and that Lily was braver than her too, and better at it; and then she'd befriended Snape, of all people, just because he could tell her about Hogwarts; and then Petunia had been sorted into a House full of people who despised her for her blood status, and Lily had attracted friends and admirers as easily as breathing, and -

Dudley didn't begrudge Harry his easy way with book learning or his talent on a broom.  Harry admired Dudley's fascination for and knowledge of devices both magical and mechanical, but there wasn't a scrap of jealousy in it.  Petunia wished she'd been as good-humoured about Lily's gifts as they were when she'd been their age.  It wouldn't have changed anything in the end - there was nothing she could have done to have pried Lily away from the war, no matter how much time she'd spent dwelling on things she might have tried - but at least they would have been closer before the end.  At least Petunia wouldn't have had all these regrets haunting her.  Harry and Dudley would - she hoped, with every desperate fibre of her being - be spared that.

The last summer before Hogwarts went by far too quickly.  Dudley and Harry would have disagreed with Petunia, if she'd asked - though she didn't need to, as they spent what seemed like every waking moment wishing they could go to Hogwarts now, debating which class would be the best, making and discarding plans for their future...

Petunia didn't tell them she wished time would flow slower instead.  They wouldn't have appreciated it.  At least she knew Remus agreed with her; his in-between-jobs visit that summer stretched for far longer than he would normally have allowed himself, with two breaks to 'visit friends' over the full moons and no attempt to leave otherwise.  Petunia herself took on less brewing jobs than she normally would have so that she could savour those last months.

Months, and then weeks, and before she knew it there were only days left.  The boys' first visit to Diagon Alley that they could remember had gone by without anybody recognising Harry - no thanks to his and Dudley's inability to stop giggling about the large hat Harry had worn over his scar.  Their trunks had been packed and repacked, as if in an attempt to bring about the beginning of term faster, and their usual questions to Remus about James had given way to questions about Hogwarts specifically.  What were the classes like?  What about watching a real Quidditch game - or playing one?  Where were all the secret passages?  Remus, to his credit, was doing his best to steer them towards practical things, like how badly he'd regretted only bringing one pair of shoes his first year at Hogwarts.  It wasn't doing much to puncture their excitement, though.

And then Petunia shuffled downstairs one morning, her bleariness not doing much to disguise the anxious churning in her stomach, and found two trunks waiting by the front door, and two boys twitching in their seats at the kitchen table, and a hot breakfast waiting for her.

"Don't worry," Harry said, apparently noticing the nerves on her face.  "I didn't let Dudley cook.  He just made the tea."

"I chopped the mushrooms!" Dudley said.  "Carefully.  I didn't cut myself."

"But we thought," Harry said, "it's an awfully long trip, so we have to leave early, and neither of us could stay in bed any longer anyway so why not make breakfast?"

They stared up at her, waiting for a reaction, and Petunia gave in.  "Thank you.  That was very kind of you.  You were careful?"

Harry sighed deeply.  "You sound like Uncle Remus.  It's not like cooking bacon and eggs is any more dangerous than helping you brew potions!"

"You do normally have adult supervision when you're in my lab," Petunia pointed out, sitting down to serve herself some eggs.

"Well, yes.  But he was all twitchy.  So I told him if he was going to keep moving around like he wanted to grab the frypan out of my hands, he should go outside, because if he did that that'd actually be more dangerous than cooking without an adult.  And then he did."

"He's never actually seen you teaching us how to brew safely before, Mum," Dudley said.  "I don't think he really trusted we could do it."

"I see."

Behind Dudley and Harry's heads, something moved in the window.  Remus ducked into view, mouthed I was here, don't worry, and then disappeared again, presumably to come back inside and collect his own breakfast.  Petunia relaxed a little.  Not that Harry wasn't quite competent around a flame, or Dudley around a knife, but she'd still much prefer there was an adult in the vicinity while they were using them.

It wasn't long before they were ready to go.  After some discussion, Remus and Petunia had decided to travel part-magic, part-Muggle: it was far too great a distance for non-magical transport to be practical unless they wanted to go the night before, Petunia hadn't ever installed a Floo for security reasons, and while neither of them actually expected to be attacked on the train platform, they couldn't deny that the Apparition points on the platform were good places for an ambush, either.  So they Apparated to a little-used Apparition point nearer to London and caught a train from there instead.

Everything went well.  And quickly.  Before Petunia knew it they were rising from their seats, ready to step out into King's Cross Station, and Dudley was handing Harry a hat he'd apparently secreted in his school bag.

"You need your disguise hat," Dudley said, not trying to disguise the smirk on his face.

"No, I don't!  It's stu-"  Harry paused.  "It's a very nice hat.  Very, um, fashionable.  But I don't need it because everybody's going to know who I am soon anyway, so why bother?"

"Come on, we need to leave the train before the doors close," Petunia said, hoping that would be enough to break up the inevitable scuffle.  It was very kind of Harry to pretend the hat she'd made him was fashionable, but it was also an utter lie, so she could understand why he didn't want to put it on again.  Unfortunately, it had turned out that his curse scar was peculiarly resistant to both magical disguises and Muggle makeup, so her best option had been to find a hat that a Muggle boy Harry's age might choose to wear and then modify it until it covered both the scar and his distinctive hair.  The end result had been... unflattering.

"But his hat!" Dudley said, taking advantage of his greater height and weight to attempt to shove it over Harry's head as soon as they paused to load their trunks onto a trolley.  "He needs it!"

"I don't!"

They continued squabbling as Remus and Petunia led them through the station.  Petunia kept her eyes peeled for other magical people as they went.  Most wizards wouldn't have come to this side of the barrier, of course, but she spotted a few normal-looking families escorting a teenager with an owl in a cage, and she remembered meeting a few of Lily's friends in the station when they'd been children, ones whose parents had thought knowing how to navigate the Muggle world was an important skill.

And then they were there in front of the barrier.  Harry snatched the hat out of Dudley's hands and stuffed it deep into his own school bag.  Remus slipped through first, and then the boys nodded firmly at each other and followed.

Petunia paused for a moment.  There was no point in nerves.  If there were danger on the other side Remus would have warned them.  And she'd known this was coming, hadn't she?  She'd known that someday she'd have to hand them over to the magical world.  She couldn't keep her boys safe and hidden forever.

With a deep breath, she stepped through the barrier.

Dear Aunt Petunia,

We're here!  At HOGWARTS!

Dudley and I agreed we'd write the first letter together because we'd be writing the same stuff probably and sending it on Hedwig together, so Dudley is leaning over my shoulder and making suggestions about what I ought to write but I'm doing the actual writing bit.  Dudley says we need to tell you the most important bit first so: we got sorted!  Into different houses!  I guess I knew it could happen but it was still a surprise.

I got into Gryffindor which I guess you expected maybe, because of Mum and Dad.  But it's still really exciting!  Everyone was really nice!  The hat actually had some funny suggestions about where else I could get sorted, but I'm not putting it in the letter because I told Dudley and he said I shouldn't because if anyone saw me writing about it they'd be funny about it, and he's usually pretty clever about stuff like that.  So you'll have to ask me about it at Christmas when we come home because I'll probably forget by then, because we're at HOGWARTS and I bet lots of exciting things will happen all the time!

But Dudley got sorted somewhere that was really a surprise, but I think it's great!  He got into Ravenclaw!  He says the hat said he's got an inquiring mind and he does, really, because he's always thinking about how things work and wanting to do stuff like making broomsticks and stuff.  And he's already made loads of friends, he got one of the prefects to come over and show us how to spell 'inquiring' and she was really nice.  Dudley never said anything about wanting to be in Ravenclaw but I bet he did really, because he didn't look surprised at all when the hat said -

The sentence ended abruptly in a large greyish blotch of ink, as though the ink bottle had been tipped over and the ink-siphoning charm used hadn't quite done the job.  Petunia suspected the boys had started an impromptu wrestling match over Harry's suggestion that Dudley had been secretly hoping for Ravenclaw.  She probably ought to have been more worried about it - it was far too early in the term for them to be getting in trouble over a fight in the Great Hall - but Petunia couldn't keep a laugh from bubbling up instead.  Children.  Honestly.

She folded the letter up to save for later.  Goodness knew she hadn't been much of a letter-writer during her own school days; she'd do better to savour this than to rush through it and find herself waiting anxiously for the next.  Perhaps she'd read the next part later, once Remus had returned from his early-morning walk to the nearby village.  He'd said he wanted to buy a paper, but Petunia knew better: he'd been seized by the same irrational attack of nerves that'd woken her before dawn, and he'd needed something to do that had kept him from staring around for an owl every few minutes.  Petunia had taken advantage of Dudley and Harry's absence to pull their rooms apart and scrub all the surfaces she couldn't normally access.  At least the boys weren't here to ask why she didn't just use her wand, like she hadn't told them a thousand times it was easier to tell which bits she'd missed when she did it by hand.

They'd made it.  Safely.  The train hadn't crashed, and they hadn't been murdered by would-be Death Eaters, or bullied so badly they couldn't manage a letter, or somehow improbably refused entrance into Hogwarts.

Tomorrow, Petunia was sure, she'd find something else to worry about.  She'd made a list of potential problems once, in an attempt to calm her nerves about sending them to Hogwarts; that mistake had haunted her ever since.  But for now -

For now, she could relax, and allow herself to be every bit as much delighted about her boys' first success at Hogwarts as they were.  With any luck, it would be the first of many.