Chapter Text
She knew when Dudley was a little boy. Petunia knew that her baby was magic.
She had seen it in her sister, after all, even had her wretched son to compare her own child to. Lily’s magic gene did not die with her – wizardry ran rampant in both the little rascals sleeping soundly under Petunia’s watchful eye.
She had tried to rationalize it. Perhaps Dudley was born under a lucky star. Perhaps the universe just naturally bended in his favour. The older he got, the more she realized, though, that she could not keep it secret from Vernon any longer.
Maybe he would come to accept it. Maybe he would even come to love his wizard son despite his hatred of anything alien, but Petunia had also seen Vernon yell at, threaten little Harry at the tiniest hint that the boy was unlike him. In another life, she would have joined her husband and berated her nephew, just not when she knew that her Dudley was probably going to be whisked away to the same school as Lily Potter one day.
“Mommy,” the little blonde boy mumbled in his sleep. It was all she needed. Deep in her heart, she knew she made a terrible choice when she married Vernon Dursley. She knew that Dudley Dursley would grow up to be a hateful boy, just like his father, but it felt so good to pretend when it was just Harry at stake. Now she had to make the most difficult choice in her life, for Dudley.
Leaving was never easy. It was how Petunia wound up in her childhood house in Cokeworth. The haunting image of Lily had finally got the better of her. In truth, she did not know where else to go. Before, Petunia would always leave her demons behind, but now the demons had got too close. She paid her respects to her late parents and moved into the house that had been empty for years now the very next day. The house was lonely, but she knew that eventually it would become a home.
She remarried. Jonathan Smith was silly, spontaneous, and imaginative, everything that Vernon wasn’t, and at times Petunia wondered how she ended up with a man like him. Jonathan was a teacher. He loved working with kids and absolutely adored Dudley and Harry. The latter especially, she was afraid, would drive any man away with that scar of his and the fact that he was her nephew, not her son. But Jonathan adored them all.
The day Dudley first displayed accidental magic in front of Jonathan was the day Petunia’s fears were put to rest. Her instinct was to cover her baby boy and flee the house she made her home. Life taught her to dread for their lives – anyone could seem nice enough until they witnessed any of her relatives’ little tricks. She knew how dreadful humans could be. Jonathan, though, he took the child in his arms and reassured him that everything was going to be fine. When Harry turned his hair blue, he was startled, but eventually laughed it off and even grew to like his hair (although he had to, unfortunately, dye it a less conspicuous colour sooner than any of them would have liked). He took her seriously. Listened to the tragic story of her sister, and grew to love and support both boys, cousins raised as almost-brothers.
Petunia would always slightly resent Harry. She could never quite look him in the eyes. Even so, whenever she mistreated him in any way, she took out the blanket he was brought in and wept. She knew she was never a good sister, could never be enough for the black-haired boy. Whatever she was or was not, Petunia Smith was first and foremost a complicated woman. What was right was never easy.
Harry grew up with a cousin whose father did not want him to bear his last name, an aunt who could not look him in the eyes and was so used to running that she was still struggling to confront her demons, and powers none of them fully understood. It was by no means a perfect home. The house was not lonely, though. Dudley was a tiny bit spoiled, just a bit more doted on than him, but he felt just as alone as his cousin in a non-magical environment. In a way, he was a friend.
Petunia had always lamented being a muggle. ‘A bitter woman, jealous of her younger sister’ – it sounded a bit ridiculous, even now. She had always wanted just a piece of Lily’s world for herself, selfish as it may have been. Sometimes, though, she would tell herself that there must have been at least a little magic in her. Dudley was a miracle. He could grow up to be what she never got be. He could go to Hogwarts. He would not have to be left behind.
Petunia Smith may have been a muggle. As she watched her children grow, though, she felt magical alright.