Work Text:
Petunia Evans Dursley is nothing if not stubborn. If she had chosen to, she could have closed her heart against the boy left on her doorstep the morning of November second, treating him as an extension of the sister who abandoned her. She could have convinced herself to hate the innocent child for the magic he surely had, that she didn't share, to protect herself from that same pain of separation when he too left her behind.
But Petunia was not quite that selfish. No, she set her stubborn heart on a different goal after she discovered her nephew on her doorstep. A goal that would spite her wayward sister: she would raise Harry better than Lily would have raised Dudley in her place. She would raise him with all the things a magical child might need, even if she didn't yet know what those things would be. And for that, she needed the advice of someone who knew the magical world.
A few trips to the library, and some scouring of phonebooks revealed that Severus Snape, Lily's horrid bully of a childhood friend, still lived in the slums of Cokeworth. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and all that.
If she had any other options, she wouldn't pick him, but she didn't, so dear old Sev it was.
A chilly Thursday morning in late November found her knocking primly on the door of a dilapidated house in Cokeworth, on the end of a seemingly endless row of connected houses in similar states of disrepair. Dudley was swaddled firmly against her chest, even though at nearly seventeen months old, he was far more fidgety than he had been in the first six months of his life when she had carried him everywhere this way. That left her toting Harry in a carrier that Dudley had recently outgrown, still with one hand free to knock on doors, or to wield her keys against any would-be muggers. She hated being back in this neighborhood.
She waited on the doorstep, and finally knocked again, sharper. She waited.
Just as she was raising her hand to knock a third time, the deadbolt clunked open, and a weary face scowled out at her above a tarnished chain that prevented the door from opening wide enough to let anyone in or out.
Unfortunately, this was precisely the man she was looking for.
He stared at her for a long moment. "What do you want, Evans?" he finally asked, too exhausted to be acerbic.
"It's Dursley," she corrected automatically, but she wouldn't be distracted from her true purpose. "Invite me in, won't you Sev? This isn't a conversation I want to have on the doorstep."
Despite the polite shape of her words, it wasn't a question. Whether Snape's scowl was at the demand, or at her pointed use of Lily's nickname for him, Petunia wasn't particularly bothered. She met his stubborn gaze and glared right back until he closed the door, removed the chain, and opened it wide enough to admit her.
"Won't you come in, Tuney," he invited her, stepping aside, and there was the venom she'd expected in his voice from the beginning.
"Thank you." She swept herself and the boys into his awful house, promptly, before he could change his mind and shut the door in her face.
"I suppose you've heard that Lily is dead," she asked without preamble, as soon as the door snapped shut behind her.
Snape's scowl deepened. "It is the only thing anyone will talk about," he enunciated stiffly, no hint of the accent that defined both of their childhoods.
Petunia approved. She had trained herself to sound like a proper Londoner as soon as she had moved out of Cokeworth in the first place. It was one of the reasons she'd been able to woo Vernon at all, considering he disdained their many classmates in uni who hadn't made the same effort she had.
"Lily is dead, and so is that awful man she married," Petunia reiterated, silently observing how Snape visibly reappraised her. She resisted the urge to scoff - as if calling Potter awful meant that she regarded Snape as any less of a bully. Lily just had terrible taste in men. "And some idiot saw fit to leave their child on my doorstep overnight in November-"
"They did what?" Snape demanded, interrupting her.
"Just left him on the doorstep overnight, in a basket, with no protection from animals and single flimsy blanket against the elements, and a letter, a letter to tell me my sister was dead."
"A letter," Snape echoed, his expression darkening dangerously. If Petunia had been anyone else, she might have taken a fearful step back, but she was too stubborn to even flinch as his voice dropped to a threatening hiss. "A letter and a flimsy blanket for their hero..."
She snorted in derisive agreement, vindicated by his anger. At least a wizard who had grown up in the normal world had something resembling common sense, unlike Lily's husband and the idiots he had called friends. She wouldn't have gone to any of them even if she knew how to contact anyone "I wouldn't have appreciated being woken in the middle of the night, but it would have been a damn sight better to deliver the news and my nephew directly to me than trusting me to stumble over them in the morning. What if I'd been on holiday? Did they even think before abandoning a child?"
Petunia choked back the tears before they could start. Harry might be all she had left of her sister, who she had still hoped she might someday, someday reconcile with, but she hadn't come to Cokeworth to show weakness.
She took a deep breath, centering herself. "The idiot who left him on my doorstep thinks he will benefit from growing up in the normal world, away from his fame. I won't argue that. But the fact remains that he is a magical child, and I am not a magical guardian. You are magical, and slightly less of an idiot than anyone else I have access to." There was, admittedly, no one else, but he didn't need to know that. She didn't want to grant him that leverage.
Snape sneered nastily at that description of himself. "You want me to raise this child with you? I thought you were married, Dursley."
"You would be my advisor, of course, not my husband!" she corrected sharply. Did he think she was propositioning him? How preposterous. She was married, and not that sort of woman. And she had seen through his bullshit since the day they'd met. She was far from interested in him. "Now are you going to help me out of the goodness of your shrivelled black heart or do I have to convince you?"
She almost hoped he picked the latter. She paid more attention than Lily thought, and she could puzzle together several tidbits of blackmail material.
"Suppose I were to agree to this harebrained scheme..." Snape prevaricated, his words still measured and precise. Petunia didn't bother to hide her victorious grin. That supposition was only half a step from agreement. She had him.
This looked to be the start of a deeply practical working relationship.