Chapter Text
When Petunia opened the door to grab the milk, she was shocked to find a baby on her stoop. When she opened the letter included with the sleeping child - she sank to the ground in shock, quiet tears falling down her face.
Her baby sister. Dead. Her nephew was left on the stoop in the cold for God knows how long. She was all he had now.
Nobody had known that Petunia had long since settled her grievances with Lily. The pair had pretended to hate each other still to protect Petunia from the ravages of the wizarding war. When Lily had become pregnant just months after Dudley was born, they had met in secret, exchanging hand knitted baby clothes for each other's child. That day in the museum would be the last memory she would ever have with Lily.
Petunia scooped Harry up off of the porch, pressing her nose into the knit cap on the toddler’s head. She inhaled deeply, the smell of her Lily-flower’s perfume still lingering on Harry’s clothes.
There was only one thing to do. She would have to call that awful boy. Surely he loved Lily enough to help Petunia with the child of the only common ground Petunia Evans and Severus Snape had shared.
Petunia walked back inside her house, using her hip to swing the door shut behind her. One arm was full of the half-asleep child, and the other braced him with the letter in her hand. Vernon came down the stairs, tie hanging untied around his neck.
He took in the sight of her, crying with a child in her arms. “What’s happened, Pet?” He reached out to shift the boy into his strong, thicker arms. “Who’s this little guy?”
“My sister-” She gasped in a breath. “Lily is dead. We’re to raise her son. This is Harry.” Her shoulders shook as her breathing rattled. “We have to do right by my sister, Vern. He’s all I have left of my family.”
As if on cue, Harry finished waking up and began crying. “Mama-” he whined. “Mama mama mama.”
Vernon began to bounce and sway him automatically while he blinked, processing the information. “I’m up for a promotion at work. Things will be tight but we can afford it.” He said over Harry’s whining and distress. Petunia went past Vernon, and he followed her into the kitchen.
Petunia put the kettle on, before taking Harry from Vernon. Harry blinked through tears, sniffling, still half crying.
“Harry, dear, it’s okay. It’s going to be okay. We’re here for you.” Petunia wiped away his tears. “I’m your Auntie Petunia and this is your Uncle Vernon.” She gave him a tight hug in her arms. “Vernon, go get Dudley. The boys can watch Sesame Street while I call Severus. Lily gave me numbers where I could reach people, if I ever needed help.”
Harry snuffled a bit, sighing as he relaxed into her arms, starting to calm down. Vernon crept out of the room quietly to not upset the balance.
Vernon entered Dudley’s room, turning off the fairy lights strung around the room then flipping on the overhead light. The shutters on the windows were already closed for the season, the only light artificial. “Duddikins, it’s time to wake up.” The three year old sat up slowly with groggy eyes.
“Uptime.” He whined softly, before struggling to his feet. “Watch toons?” He said brightly after wiping the sleep from his eyes.
“Yes, baby, your Cousin Harry has come to live with us. You’re going to watch cartoons together while Daddy goes to work at the big bad drill factory.” Vernon grinned as Dudley laughed.
“Cousin Harry play cars?!” Dudley screeched in delight.
“I don’t know if Cousin Harry plays cars. You can surely ask.”
At Dudley’s grabby up-hands, Vernon swung the three year old up and into his arms, bringing him downstairs to the den where Harry was sitting on the rug, holding a car, completely engrossed in the telly where Count Von Count was counting Cookie Monster’s cookies.
“Be gentle, Dudley. Harry’s a lot smaller than you. Inside voices okay?” Vernon said, before the gentle giant moved over to the kitchen counter where Pet stood with a small notebook in her hand.
She set down the notebook, shuffling over to him to deliver a kiss. She held him by both ends of his tie. “I do love you so much, Vern. any other man would have had words to say about this whole situation.”
“Well,” Vernon said shortly. “It’s not like his kind did very well looking after our family. We’ll just have to look out for our boys better than anyone else could.”
Petunia kissed him soundly once more before tying his tie.
Vernon cleared his throat, looking across the room to where Harry was holding a car and Dudley was zooming cars across the street map rug. The most annoying segment in his opinion was on the telly.
“La la la la, la la la la, Elmo’s world.” The puppet sang out to the enraptured Harry.
“Looks like the boys will be just fine.” He crooked a small smile at his wife. Gosh, he thought. She was beautiful even with her eyes rimmed in tears. Her prominent nose just made her face more interesting to him. “I love you, Pet. We’ll get through this together. You and me, against the world.”
Petunia gave him a weak smile, resting her hand gently on his cheek. “Against the world.”
He wrapped her in a tight hug, kissed her forehead, and followed the hallway to his briefcase. He took one look back at her, mouthed another ‘I love you’ at her, and was out the door for work at a quarter past seven.
Petunia took a glance at the notebook she had discarded on the counter, before turning to the whistling kettle.
She would see to breakfast. Then she’d go to the shops and get things for Harry’s room. She would make do with the shed for her crafting supplies in their extra room. They still had Dudley’s crib in the shed - she could set it up during Dudley’s midday nap.
Then she would call Severus Snape.
—----------------------------------
Petunia had never considered herself luckier than when she set up Dudley’s old Pack ‘N Play in Dudley’s bedroom for Harry to sleep in for their midday nap. Vernon bought it for her at an outrageous price the day she got her first ultrasound. They had never used it, it had just sat in Dudley’s closet.
Dudley went down easy, but she had to hold Harry until he fell asleep, rocking in her arms under the twinkling fairy lights. She hummed a soft melody that she and Lily had sung obsessively as children. It was about faeries and creatures of the night.
They had dreamed that one day they would grow up and walk into the woods. They would be taken away together with the Fae and they would live forever and read all of the books in the world hand in hand.
Tears fell down Petunia’s face again as she laid Harry down in the Pack ‘N Play. Lilyflower would never get to sing to this precious gem ever again and she couldn’t do a single thing about it.
Her airway constricted as she choked back a sob, inching out of the room. She grabbed the baby monitor on her way out, closing the door extremely slowly so it wouldn’t make a noise.
When she made it down the stairs and into the kitchen, she was making a soft keening sound, tears in a rapid freefall. For the first time all day she allowed herself to feel all of her grief. It was overwhelming. All consuming. Something welled up deep inside of her. It felt like something was hammering on a wall inside of her chest.
As quickly as it came, it was gone - the only thing in her chest was the searing blinding agony of losing Lily.
Petunia let herself keen, sob, and cry for a good half an hour before she wiped her face with a damp rag and packed it all back into a neat little box so she could focus on doing rather than feeling.
The first task she set out to do was clearing out the third bedroom. She gathered her sewing and painting supplies making almost no noise besides her little huffs and puffs and shoved them mostly into the cupboard underneath the stairs. She left her sewing machine and the fold up table, as well as her chair on the patio under a tarp for Vernon to fit into the shed when he had spare time.
Then, she painstakingly carried the crib pieces into Harry’s room. She dug the Ziploc bag of hardware out of her pocket and set it up according to the instructions she had folded up in the Ziploc bag.
By the time she had finished, it was nearly two. She spared a moment to wash her hands and face before she entered Dudley’s room. The opening door had Harry standing up against the side of the Pack ‘N Play bouncing his knees, one hand on the side of the cot and the other arm holding a stuffed toy.
Petunia could already see a keen and even temperament in Harry that Lily had never had. He had spent the morning adjusting- occasionally asking for mama, da, and pad , but had calmed down in spades once Dudley had given Harry a black dog stuffed toy.
Harry had said “Pad!” and the boys had been fast friends. As much as a 15 month old and three year old could be.
Petunia pulled Harry out of the folding crib up onto her hip. She walked over to Dudley’s toddler bed and ran her fingers through his hair. “It’s time to wake up, Duddikins.”
—------------------------------
A high pitch ringing sound blared through the tiny cottage at Spinner’s End.
Severus bolted upright, groaning as the phone and his hangover lanced through his head in a sharp migraine.
The only people who had the number were take out places…. And Lily.
Severus rose from his position on his couch, struggling to the phone.
He picked up the phone, knowing it couldn’t be her, knowing he had cried - sobbed - over her body, and he still answered, “-Lily?” In a broken whisper.
“Oh.. Severus.. I’m sorry. It’s Petunia.. I’ve only found out today… They left me a letter - and, well… They’ve left me Harry. On the porch. Like a discarded milk bottle.”
“On the porch?” He repeated numbly. “He left him on the porch.. With you.” Rage began to leak into his voice. “With just a letter?!”
“That’s what I’m saying.. I don’t know what to do. You and Lily were the ones with magic. Already I’ve caught him floating toys to himself and Dudley! What am I supposed to do?”
A wandless summoning charm had a hangover cure in his outstretched hand. “Where are you? I’m - I’m on my way as soon as you tell me where to go.”
His pareya instincts were on fire. The child of his submissive - the child of their alpha - left out like milk. Dumbledore had told him that he was sending Harry to the Evans’ - not Petunia.
“Number Four Privet Drive in Surrey.”
—---------------------------------------------
The neighborhood was so boring and normal it made Severus’s teeth hurt. The woman who answered the door was so like the girl he knew in childhood, yet so different. She had grown into her nose, and her genuine smile of relief when she saw him was unlike any expression she had worn for him before.
“Severus - Please come in. Vernon’s with the children in the living room.”
Severus entered the moderate, but plain home. He followed Petunia down the hall and into the room where a well built and relatively handsome man was playing with Harry and an older toddler.
Right on time to watch the older toddler summon a toy from the dining room and exclaim in joy, “I do it too!”
Petunia gasped and the man on the floor chuckled. “Look at what our Dudley can do with a little help from his cousin, Pet.”
“Vernon, don’t encourage them! What if the neighbors see?? There’s a strict ban on people without magic knowing about magic!” Petunia fretted nervously.
Severus gaped as he began putting the pieces together. Lily’s seals. Petunia must have had seals as well. He recovered quickly.
“Petunia, Vernon, I believe a grave disservice has been done to your family. Our family. I should explain… Lily should be here to explain…”
Severus held back his instinct’s demands to go into overprotective mode as he sat down with Petunia and Vernon to explain.
He first told them about how when Lily and James had gone to Gringotts at the end of seventh year, the goblins had found magic that suppressed who Lily was meant to be. That Lily was a Dragel - like Potter. When the goblins had ripped her seals out she had given a soul cry, calling all of her Earth-bound soulmates to her side. James, Sirius, Remus and Severus spent the two years after doing everything in their power to work together to make their submissive happy.
When the Dark Lord decided to target his family, he had helped them all go into hiding. James and Lily had gone together, and so had Sirius and Remus. He, as a spy in the Dark Lord’s camp, did his best to toe the line between two masters who could not know he was bonded to the family they were obsessed with.
He told them about Dumbledore placing seals on every child who was registered in the Hogwarts book of students, curating the children who could go to Hogwarts, curating the inheritances of those children. How the man ripped families apart with seals and compulsions.
It was then that he politely demanded permission to cast diagnostic spells on the four of them.
—---------------------------------
When Severus had begun pacing and cursing, Petunia did the only thing she could think to do to settle him down.
She dropped Harry right into his arms.
The pareya, now with a held target to fuss over, continued to pace at a reduced speed - bouncing and rocking the 15 month old into a comfortable sleep. Severus blinked through the tears, the scents of Lily and James still lingering on the child.
“Obviously something is wrong,” Petunia began. “How do we fix it?” She finished with determination.
Severus looked over at her, eyes still misty. “We go to the goblins, at the wizarding bank. Then, to Nevarah. It’s not safe for any of us in a realm where Albus Dumbledore can find us.”
“What will we do in this Nevarah place? We haven’t even got an emergency fund!” Vernon said fretfully.
“I am Lord Prince, I will provide for us until other things can be arranged.” Severus said in a tone that left no room for argument. “You’re all that’s left of my family and I’ll protect you like we always should have.”