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11 Years (And 9 months) Ago
“What will my mother say?! Ooohhh, I bet she’ll write my wretched sister! I just know she will! It’ll be another reason for Lily to prance about and look down on the rest of us. As if this can even compare to her freakish behavior and whatever disgusting spawn she’ll produce,” Petunia Evans spat out. She paced back and forth and wrung her hands. “We have to fix this as quickly as we can. A summer wedding. It’ll be sudden, but we’ll assure them we’ve been planning it. Just a lovely surprise.”
On a beige couch in a perfectly respectable but perfectly dull home, her unplanned - surprise! - groom sat. Vernon Dursley was older than Petunia by a good 7 years. He was three times her size and his watery blue eyes could flash with spite and aggression. By all accounts, he should have been the scarier one. Appearances were deceiving though.
Petunia spun on the spot and fixed him with a searing gaze. “You’ll get me an expensive ring of course.”
After listening to her rant and ramble for close to an hour, it took Vernon a moment to catch up. “Oh, yes, yes. Only the best for you, Pet.”
“And you’ll be quite ready for my wedding plans - financially.”
Vernon puffed up a bit at that. “I provide like any decent husband. I -.”
“If only you were more decent before this!” Petunia snapped.
Vernon reared back at the accusation. For a half-second, it looked as if he might answer back, defend his honor in this matter. Then, his eyes flicked to Petunia’s middle. They flicked away quickly and he flushed. You see, Vernon Dursley had done something unconscionable in Petunia’s mind: he had made her a...disreputable woman.
They would get married that summer, rushing to the altar with a fixed smile in place. That wouldn’t change much. Every person attending the wedding could do basic maths. They would remember the date of the wedding, and they would remember the event that followed. They would know that there were not 9 months between the two.
Petunia - stubborn as she was - still insisted she got pregnant on her wedding night.
She even named the child after her late father as a tribute: John. Little John Dursley had Vernon’s dark hair, but he’d inherited her father’s gray eyes and wicked smile. “He’s going to be trouble,” his grandmother cooed.
‘He already is,’ Petunia thought.
The funny thing about blatant lies is that the liar always knew they lied, and it was all so obvious and ridiculous that they constantly feared someone would call them on it. This is the fear Petunia Dursley nee Evans lived in, and it was honestly...quite sad.
She constantly fussed over her baby without actually touching him. “He’s so big. The doctor’s say he’s got a condition,” she’d say.
She’d try to speak and socialize, mingle among the wives of her husband’s coworkers and her uptight neighbors, but she’d be pushing along a squalling baby that made her twitch and wince with each disruptive cry.
She’d wash in the morning and feel a telling sag in her stomach, and she ate less and less until she was so bone thin you couldn’t tell she’d had a baby only months ago.
She became convinced that everyone saw her as a slag. If not because they’d figured out his conception date, then because she was too young to have a screaming, squealing baby that chucked on her new top and brought a smell to dinner parties. It was simply too much of a burden for a young wife and her ambitious husband.
So, she began to send him away. It was just to her mother after all. “He’s with my mother. She’s a poor widow. All alone. This is her first grandchild, and we live so far away.” Her all-too-knowing mother accepted him every time. She even seemed a bit reluctant to give him back.
“Are you certain you’re feeling well, Petunia,” her mother asked just once. Petunia stiffened and gave her a quick nod and raised eyebrows. She sighed. Reaching out, she tucked Petunia’s short dark hair behind her ear. “You should smile more.” When Petunia’s face remained stiff, she held her face in two hands. “You’re beautiful when you smile.”
Petunia’s lips moved upward, and she really was pretty when she smiled.
Four days later - when the child was a little over a year old - her mother died. It was a foolish accident on a friend’s stairwell. In between Petunia’s quiet despair and her raging anger, a little voice whined, “Who will take him now?”
There were babysitters as often as possible, but she couldn't let anyone think she wasn't taking care of her child. She was a good mother, she insisted.
Soon after that disaster, her freakish sister told her she was getting married as well. Petunia, of course, dismissed the invitation, dismissed the man, and dismissed her sister from her life. Her dear departed mother could no longer force her to endure the awful connection.
Lily slammed her invitation down on the table and snarled, “Come if you want, Petunia. Either way, I will have a blissfully happy wedding.”
Petunia gave an indelicate snort.
Lily’s eyes narrowed. “After all, we’re getting married due to love. Not pregnancy.” Lily sucked in a sharp breath after she said that, as if surprised by her own daring.
Petunia’s eyes seemed to bulge in her skinny face.
Lily looked down at the ground for a moment, her shuffling steps guilty. Then, she continued, “You know the funny thing, Petunia? I never cared about it. Neither did mum. It didn’t matter that you made a baby or that you were engaged to a man I found quite disgusting. We still showed up at your wedding. We clapped for you, we smiled for you, and we wished you a fantastic life because that’s what we wanted you to have - no matter what.”
That was a sanctimonious lesson in there, Petunia thought. “Get out.”
Lily looked sad for a moment before shaking her head and hardening her jaw. “Give my nephew a kiss for me.”
That night Petunia, stubborn and unyielding, refused to kiss her son.
But, as the years passed, things settled. Petunia settled. She dropped John off less and touched him more. He was still a reminder of the mistake, the early accident she and Vernon made but it faded to the back of other’s minds. That was good enough.
Really, John prepared her for Dudley.
When Dudley came, everything was perfect. He was the spitting image of her husband. There was no anxiety about what people would think or hurry to correct matters. The night she brought him home, she sat on the couch and held him close to her heart. Yes, that was her perfect child.
Petunia dealt with John and doted over Dudley. There was a fragile peace.
Until Harry James Potter showed up.
As terrible a child as he was (in her high opinion, at least), she hated him. She tried teaching her children to hate him too. John was already five though. He was too old to see the bright-eyed baby as a threat. Dudley disrupted John’s life more than that one did. In fact, he was quite curious about the thing under the stairs. He didn’t even know its name.
He took to peeking in on it and speaking to it with a small frown. “Where’d you come from? I don’t got no aunt.”
One day, it cried and cried and Petunia went upstairs and ignored its wails. John peaked in on him again, opening the cupboard door and sitting on the floor in front of it. It continued to cry and his frown deepened.
“Hush up,” he said.
When it didn’t stop, he poked the little thing in the stomach and it paused in surprise. He poked again, and it stared at him. In fascination, he poked a third time and the thing giggled. So began a poking fest punctuated by gurgly laughs that called the attention of John’s mother.
She was upset. She forbade John from touching the thing, which only made John even more attached. Harry, John later learned his name was. Harry Potter, the child of John’s forgotten aunt.
John took to following him around when Harry took his wobbly steps around the house, steering him away from his glaring mother and huffing father. Harry was a bit like a doll to him, a babbling action figure John claimed as his own. After much hesitation, his mother allowed it. At least she didn’t have to deal with the thing too much.
John taught him to say the name John and the name Harry, in that order. He was bossy and rough, but he didn’t yell and he didn’t hit. As Harry grew up at Number 4 where yelling, snapping, and snarling were all he got from his aunt and uncle and wacks and taunts were all he got from Dudley, he worshiped John.
John favored him too. He took Harry with him wherever he could and he told him all his secrets. Harry held them close and solemnly swore to tell no one, not ever.
Like the story of how John beat up a boy in the park for calling him thick. Or how he rode his bike through Aunt Petunia’s garden when he got in trouble for calling Dudley thick. Or, especially, the secret of the lighters.
See, Uncle Vernon was a smoker - “That nasty habit!” Aunt Petunia exclaimed - and he had lighters in every nook and cranny in the house. Harry even found one stuffed beneath the cot in his cupboard. His uncle got so many because he lost them and was convinced his wife was confiscating any she could find. He didn't suspect John.
John opened up the box and Harry’s eyes went as wide as saucers because there were all of Uncle Vernon’s missing lighters. “Why do you got those?” Harry asked in awe.
John smirked. “One of these days, I’m gonna use 'em to burn down all the houses on this stupid little street.” Harry’s eyes grew wider and John scoffed. “Don’t be scaarreed. I’ll break you from the cupboard first.” He leaned forward conspiratorially and Harry copied the action. “How’s bout it? What house would you like to burn down?”
Harry shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He could just imagine his Aunt’s screaming if she heard their talk. John was always so fun, so brave and unafraid of his parents when Harry ran. Harry licked his lips and blurted out. “This one!”
He needn’t have worried. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon didn’t pop from the shadows to drag him away to the cupboard and curse his wickedness.
John just nodded readily. “I’ll bet.”
After that day, Harry didn’t think much of the lighters or of John’s promise to burn down the neighbors home. He remembered it though. When the fire alarms at the school went off and the teachers ushered them out, Harry remembered.
The kid that called John stupid stumbled around the corner, eyes wide and breathing hard as he ran clumsily past Harry.
But John didn't come.
Harry pressed himself flat against the wall as the teachers rushed kids past him.
But John didn't come, and Harry suddenly knew that he wouldn't.
‘Don't see me. Don't see me,’ he thought, and he ducked behind the teacher’s back to pelt toward John’s class. The flames leaped up from the walls and the smoke made his throat itchy, but he didn’t have to run far. Just around the corner, there was John.
He stood in the middle of the hall with the walls on each side of him alight. He stared at the fire in fascination. He reached out one hand toward the flames. Harry tried to shout at him. (Don’t touch fire! You don’t touch fire!) The itching in his throat got worse when he opened his mouth and he choked and spluttered instead. He needn’t have worried. The flames retreated from John’s hand. He pulled the hand back and the flames followed it. Back and forth. Back and forth.
Behind Harry, he heard stuttered steps. A teacher was there, looking for missing kids maybe. Maybe looking for Harry or John. Her eyes were wide with fear, and her hand covered her mouth. She took a few steps back and let out a strange, low keen.
John heard it. When Harry turned back to him, he was staring back at them. His breath was coming fast, seemingly having no issue with the air that was now making Harry cough to clear the itchiness of his throat and making his eyes water.
The teacher stumbled back further, turned, and prepared to run.
John shouted, “Wait!” and the fire on the left wall suddenly shot outward, hitting Harry and the teacher. Harry saw rather than felt the flames swallow him. He heard someone’s screams, but he felt no pain. He felt light, like he was flying through the flames and nothing could touch him.
All at once, the fire left his vision and the lightness disappeared and he, Harry, was flying across the hall at full speed until he dropped to the floor painfully, smacking his head and drifting into unconsciousness.
He was in a different hallway, but he didn't know that.
That was the last time he saw John Dursley.
When he awoke, he was being tended to by a medic and nobody knew how he got knocked out in an area far from his classroom or why the teacher hadn’t noticed him when she evacuated her students. She couldn’t be asked though. She was dead.
And John was gone.
None of the teachers Harry asked knew where he was. The students he demanded answers from sneered and said maybe he was hiding from Harry. His aunt and uncle ignored his pleas. In fact, they ignored him for days. They didn’t even yell at him, just spoke over and around him like they couldn’t hear. Dudley was sent to Marge and Harry was left with a neighbor, a Mrs. Figg who knew nothing more about John. Two days after the fire, the Dursleys were in London. Eight days after the fire, they finally returned.
John wasn’t with them.
“Where’s John?” Harry demanded the moment they got home, while Dudley pounded to the kitchen fridge.
Without warning, his aunt’s hand flew from her side and hit his face with a resounding smack ! Dudley froze at the entrance to the kitchen. His normal joy at seeing Harry punished wasn’t even present. His mother’s eyes were bulging in anger and his father was huffing like a bull and even he hadn’t a clue why.
Harry put a hand to his cheek.
Petunia wiped her hands on her skirt. “I don’t want to hear that name again.” Her eyes flicked to Dudley and they were left shocked yet again when she didn’t soften an inch. “Not from either one of you.”
Harry felt his eyes water. He didn’t know whether it was from the sting of the slap or the nonsense of her words.
“It’s all been explained to the school. I don’t want to hear of you pestering them about the incident.”
She wiped her hands again. Uncle Vernon clapped a hand on her shoulder.
“Go to your cupboard,” she told Harry. Her voice went into a high sweet facsimile. “And have a seat at the table, Diddy. I’ll make you something to eat.”
They remained frozen in their spot until Petunia snapped at Harry, “I said go!”
Harry hurried to his cupboard and pulled the door shut behind him. He heard his aunt step by, securing the lock as she moved to the kitchen. That night, when Dudley went to bed, he heard moving and pounding and mumbling. When he was let out the next morning, every single picture of John was gone and the third bedroom upstairs was boarded up. Each empty space on the wall was filled with a picture of Dudley. The family picture that hung above the fireplace was gone and replaced with a picture of Vernon and Petunia when they were years younger. “Our third date,” Aunt Petunia would later coo to guests until they took a new family picture to replace the old, just them and Dudley.
A few weeks later, Harry and Dudley returned from school and Petunia and Vernon informed Dudley they had moved many of his toys to the ‘extra room.’ He’d have room for many others. And that was all, wasn’t it? No pictures. No room. There was no funeral either, though Harry wondered if he died.
Harry didn’t say the name again. He was confused but there was also an ugly, bitter feeling arising in his gut. Three months after his disappearance, Harry found John’s bravery or at least that’s what it seemed like. That feeling of burning in his blood. He turned to his aunt in front of the school and said, clearly, “I won’t forget him.”
Her hand twitched and he thought she might slap him again, but she didn't and said nothing. Not then. Not when he got home. Not when his uncle got home. It was well and truly forgotten by her - just like John was.
And that’s when Harry Potter decided they were terrible. They could tell Harry he was a useless waste of space and he might have even believed them. But tell him John was a waste? That he was forgettable? No, John was better than all of them. The Dursleys knew nothing about nothing and, while John’s face and voice might fade and wither with time, Harry would never, ever forget he existed or that these horrible people erased him.