Chapter Text
Summer in Little Whinging never changed. Dry lawns, bored kids, suspicious housewives and narrow-minded husbands; all the hallmarks of upper-middle-class British suburbia, in other words. The husbands went to work, came home, furtively mowed or watered the lawn at night and pretended the other husbands weren’t doing the same; the wives gathered for tea, or birthdays, or really any excuse to gossip and talk each other down; the kids started little gangs and staked out this or that alleyway or tunnel against the other kids and their little gangs.
In the midst of all this comfortable normalcy, the Dursley family, of 4 Privet Drive, took comfort in being as aggressively and fastidiously normal as anyone else. The husband, Vernon, took great pride in his lawn being green and lush, and he made a point of shoving his water bills under the nose of anyone who dared question it, to prove he wasn’t using more water than he should have been. And with the water he saved by not watering his lawn, why, he could keep his ostentatious green sedan at peak cleanliness with weekly ablutions!
And the wife, Petunia, took great pride in her garden being the brightest of them all, all the roses and agapanthuses and pansies providing a refreshing riot of color and greenery to match their deep green lawn. Her little gossip society met in her backyard more than anyone else’s, and she thrived on being the unofficial queen of the social pyramid.
Meanwhile, their son, Dudley, was nearly as large as his father and barely even fourteen! Two years of boxing and self defense had honed him into a husky young man indeed; all that focus on the physical meant he had fallen behind in his academics, but his parents were proud of him anyway.
But when anyone questioned the reason for their lawn to be so healthy, Vernon and Petunia both had a habit of going quite deaf until the questioner changed the subject. Because the real reason for their suburban prosperity was due to their niece, Hazel Potter, being a witch. A confident young witch with a powerful wand, three racing brooms, a trunk full of spell books and fancy wizarding clothes, and no shame at all about standing at her window in the dead of night and casting spells over the lawn and garden to keep everything green and blooming.
She could still remember the conversation at the start of the summer, hardly a week ago…
“Home again!” Vernon declared, pulling into his driveway at last. “Get your rubbish upstairs, Hazel, then come back down so we can talk.”
“Yes sir,” she replied, hefting her owl cage and her trunk and dragging them behind her. “What’s up with them, Duds?” she asked her cousin as he grabbed the other end of her trunk to get it up the stairs.
“Probably the yard,” he responded, easily hefting the bulky container. “It died after you left last year, and they’re pretty sure you had something to do with it.”
“How awful.” They brought the trunk into her room and set it at the foot of her bed, and Dudley left to go to his own room. Meanwhile, Hazel put the cage on the dresser, but paused when she noticed the fish bowl was empty. “Aw man.”
She went back downstairs, where her aunt and uncle were waiting in the dining room. “What happened to the fish, Aunt Petunia?”
“It- it died, Hazel,” she responded tersely, trying to look at least vaguely sympathetic. “You knew it was getting old, didn’t you?”
“I suppose. Can I have an apple?” No one said no, so she grabbed a bright golden apple, rinsed it off and bit into it. “Mm, my favorite.”
“Now see here, girl, about the lawn!” Vernon cut in aggressively, though about half what he was capable of. “You’d think we wouldn’t notice it had died after you left last year? What’d you DO to it?”
She heaved a sigh and sat down. “I didn’t kill it, if that’s what you’re implying,” she said tartly. “If you must know, I was keeping it alive the whole time I was here. Every night I’d stand at the window and cast spells to-”
“Alright, alright!” he shouted, going slightly purple in the face while Petunia winced and hissed. Hazel fought the urge to roll her eyes, and bit into her apple instead; how could they still be so jumpy about magic?
“So, you thought you’d be cute, did you?” he went on after he got hold of himself again. “Thought you’d bring your nonsense out and practice, did you?”
“Uncle Vernon, I was trying to do you a favor, that was all,” she replied innocently. “I know you both love having the greenest lawn and the best garden in the neighborhood, and you won’t get that the Muggle way. Not in this heat.”
“The what way?” Vernon blustered.
“It’s their word for people like us, Vernon,” Petunia whispered, hardly moving her lips. “Normal people.”
He shifted and growled and muttered under his breath, and Hazel didn’t bother trying to listen in. She just finished her apple and got up to put the core in the recycling. “Thank you for the apple, Aunt Petunia,” and she bowed. “May I go now?”
“No you ruddy well can’t, sit down!” Vernon said heatedly, thumping the table with his palm. “What about the lawn! And the flowers?!”
“What about them? Surely you don’t need me doing my nonsense to your lawn, do you?” She sat down again and leaned back, letting him stew and simmer and stammer. “Just spit it out, Uncle Vernon, please? Just get it over with and say whatever it is you have to say, it’ll be alright.”
“Don’t be cheeky with me, girl,” he growled, calming down slightly. “No one found out last year, they don’t need to find out this year, right?”
That made her raise her eyebrows in feigned shock. “What’s in it for me? Last year I was happy to do it without anyone noticing, and I know you were happy with the results. But now you know and it’ll be awkward and stuff if I keep doing it, so why should I keep doing it?”
Vernon took a deep breath, and his face turned red again, but Petunia stalled him with a hand on his arm. “Don’t you blackmail us, you ungrateful brat!” she hissed. “You think you can sit there, bold as brass and do nothing around here to earn your keep?”
“Dudley doesn’t do anything,” Hazel pointed out. “Are you really gonna try and force me to do magic?”
They winced at that word, just like wizards winced at the mention of Voldemort, and Hazel had to try not to laugh. “Look, at the end of August is something called the Quidditch World Cup, it’s a huge sporting event and everyone’s gonna be there. If you let me leave for it when the time comes, and don’t make a fuss about me practicing and doing homework in my bedroom over the summer, then I’ll keep the lawn and garden nice and green and lush for you. Will that be fine?”
Vernon and Petunia looked at each other, silently arguing as the need to stand out from their neighbors argued with the need to not let Hazel have anything nice or to have any kind of fun. Eventually the lawn won, and Vernon slumped back in the chair. “Fine, girl, have it your way! But if that lawn slips up at all you’re not going anywhere until September, got it?!”
“Understood, sir.” She stood up again. “Was that everything?”
“Get out!” Petunia snarled. “I don’t want to see you again until dinner time!”
Since then she could have restored the yard in an instant, but she didn’t want it to be too obvious so she spaced it out over a few nights, and now they had an award-winning yard all over again. And she, for the price of twenty minutes at the window every night, had the whole summer all to herself to do whatever she wanted.
For now, ‘whatever she wanted’ consisted of doing her homework and playing around outside, or hanging out with Dudley and his pals. Which mostly consisted of riding bikes up and down the streets and picking on little kids, and sometimes a card game or two when the tunnels weren’t being fought over by other kids.
They even ran into Jessica and her little posse once, and Hazel was surprised to see that she was, for the first time in her life, taller than the other girl. “Been a while, hasn’t it?” she called out, crossing her arms and gazing levelly at her old tormentor.
“Oh look, it’s Lady Potty!” she taunted back, going to square up. “Look at you! Trying to be as big of a cow as your cousin back there?”
“Hey!” Dudley growled, stepping up.
“Easy, Duds, I got this,” she murmured, putting out a hand to stop him. “I can’t help it if I’m better than you at everything, Jessica. I kicked your ass before even with all your little friends backing you up, and I can damn well do it again right the fuck here and now!”
Whatever false bravado Jessica might have had was no match for Hazel’s honest confidence in herself. She saw it in the girl’s eyes, the exact moment she realized they were as outmatched now as they had been before. “Whatever, like I’ve got time to mess with you! Let’s go, girls!” and she strutted off, dragging her ‘friends’ along with her.
“See?” Hazel relaxed and smirked at Dudley. “She’s nothing to worry over.”
“What if she comes back when we’re not there?” Piers asked.
“Then I’ll show them how hard we’ve been practicing,” she replied. The lot of them were in boxing and martial arts now, but no one went as hard as Hazel and Dudley did. Sometimes they even fought each other, though they both held back when that happened.
All in all, it was a decent summer break, until the evening she was in the bathroom and found blood in her knickers. She froze up at the sight, and her mind panicked as it sought a reason for why she was bleeding into her underthings. “Period,” she muttered, getting a grip on herself with Occlumency. “It’s, it’s just your period, nothing to- nothing to fret about.”
She finished using the toilet and washed off, then wrapped a towel around herself and went to the door. “Aunt Petunia? Aunt Petunia, can you come up here, please?”
A few moments later, her bony aunt came up the stairs. “What is it, Hazel?” she asked suspiciously, eyes narrowed.
“It, um.” She felt herself blushing, and gestured frantically for her to come into the bathroom. “I’m bleeding, Aunt Petunia! From down there!” she whispered.
Petunia looked up, saw the little red stain on the inside of her knickers. “You should soak them in cold water as soon as you see it, you know,” she said after a few moments, crossing the room and running the sink. She pinched the soiled article and dropped it into the water once it was full enough. “Does it hurt? Do you feel strange?”
“No, I- I didn’t feel anything different at all,” Hazel replied nervously.
“Hm.” For a moment they regarded each other carefully, then Petunia sighed. “Wait here, I’ll get a pad and some clean underwear for you.”
“Okay. They’re still in the top drawer.”
Her aunt left, and hardly a minute went by before she came back in. “Wipe yourself off, first. Now, this is probably too big, but you won’t need it more than a day or so, alright?” She showed Hazel how to put it on, and when everything was where it had to be, she felt a lot better. “Do you… do you need me to explain what all this means?”
“Er.” She was sure she already knew, but it’d be best to make sure, instead of relying on hearsay. “Yes, please, Aunt Petunia.”
“Alright. Not in here, though.” She opened the door and went downstairs, and Hazel followed.
“Everything alright?” Vernon asked, looking up from the TV.
“Yes, it’s under control. Both of you need to stay in here until Hazel and I come back in. We need to have a woman’s talk.” Dudley and Vernon both blanched and looked away at that; Petunia rolled her eyes and beckoned Hazel onward, and they stepped out into the back yard, where they sat down and breathed the fresh garden air in. “So, the reason you’re bleeding is…”
It went on for a while, Petunia explaining things in a clinical manner and Hazel absorbing as much as she could. She didn’t say that most of this would never apply to her, since she was into girls; she really doubted this tenuous new peace would last much longer after that came out.
“...so basically, don’t sleep around, make your partners wear protection, and always wash off,” Petunia eventually summarized. “Do you understand?”
Why was it her job to make sure her partners put a rubber on? Hazel wondered. Outwardly she nodded. “Yes, Aunt, thank you.”
“See that you don’t forget, either.” They went back inside, and went about the rest of their evening in peace.
Before bed that night, Hazel wrote a letter to Madam Pomfrey:
Dear Madam Pomfrey,
I just had my first period this evening. I know Muggles have pads and things, so surely witches must have some way of handling this. Can you send me something?
Hazel Jade Potter
“Take this to the hospital wing, Hedwig,” she whispered, waking her owl with a treat and a gentle caress. Hedwig hooted at her and held still while she tied the roll to her leg, then took off out the window on silent wings. She watched her fly off, then went about her nightly routine.