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Chapter Text

Aunt Petunia was looking at Harry with reluctant admiration as he entered the Dursley kitchen.

Harry paused mid-step, suspicious. This wasn’t the usual drill. His aunt's usual method of greeting was flinching, ignoring, or glaring at him with the kind of restrained horror one might reserve for unwashed laundry crawling with beetles.

But now, as he pushed open the door to the kitchen, she was eyeing him over her cup of tea like she was seeing something she almost, sort of, didn’t mind being related to.

Hermione—bless her—had, luckily before their departure from the Hogwarts Express, given Ron a crash course in how to operate a ‘fellytone’ after realizing he had no idea how it worked. Ron had blinked at the receiver like it might bite him at first, but thanks to Hermione’s firm coaching, he managed to smoothly introduce himself as “Arnold, from Manchester," when Uncle Vernon picked up.

It was only natural, of course, that for the last hour, they'd spend the whole phone call debating whether Snape's hair was naturally greasy or the result of a botched potion accident, and repeating, "my father will hear about this!" in increasingly high-pitched squeaks.

In the present moment, Aunt Petunia sniffed delicately. "Well," she said crisply, "at least we agree on something."

Harry blinked with confusion.

“I was passing near the staircase,” she said with a lofty shrug, like that explained everything. “Hard not to hear when you’re practically shouting to the great heavens in that contraption.”

Harry flushed. He had been a bit loud, responding eagerly in shouts of laughter to Ron, mimicking the drawls of the two people they detested the most at Hogwarts.

Petunia took a delicate sip of tea, then added with a surprising flicker of smugness, “You described Severus Snape perfectly, by the way. That man was certainly something dreadful. Hair like he washed it with fryer oil. Nose as hooked and sharp as a medieval torture device. Positively slithered about the place, didn’t he?"

Harry stared at her.

“You knew Snape?”

Chapter Text

“You knew  Snape?”

Harry’s voice cracked slightly on knew. His brain scrambled to slot Snape—the greasy, brooding dungeon-dweller—into the same universe as Aunt Petunia, who ironed her napkins before eating and Febreezed the air before opening the mailbox. It was an unholy Venn diagram of people who hated him, and yet should never, ever overlap.

Petunia's lips pressed into their usual tight line as her shoulders stiffened, bracing herself for a story she’d rather not tell.

"Oh, yes," she said, tone as clipped as kitchen shears. "That awful, awful boy. Always slinking around the hedges in those same ragged trousers year round, with hair greasy enough to fry bacon in. Oh, he thought he was terribly clever, whispering to Lily about magic this, potions that—"

Petunia's voice suddenly caught off, and her hand trembled slightly as she reached for a teacup. Her eyes flickered for a brief second, caught in something like regret or guilt, before they hardened once more. 

“Anyways," she continued, voice sharply, "he was a dingy little thing from Spinner's End who trailed after my sister like a lost pup. The two of them were always off in their own world, turning pencils into porcupines, making the daffodils sing opera, that sort of freakish nonsense. Then one summer, Lily came back from that place and—” she waved vaguely, “nothing. Wouldn’t talk about him. Wouldn’t answer when I asked.”

"So, my mum and Snape were...friends?"  Harry croaked, unsure how to feel. A thousand questions tangled in his throat, none quite coming out.

Petunia gave a short, sharp exhale. Not quite a sigh, but more like she was trying to blow the memory away. “Of a sort,” she muttered. “Not that I approved."

Silence settled between them. 

Harry fiddled with the handle of his mug, torn between feeling slighted that no one had ever mentioned this part of his mother’s past and feeling oddly grateful that, for once, his aunt had let something slip through her usual wall of silence. Petunia stared into her tea like it had personally insulted her curtains. 

Then, quietly and without looking at him, she said: “I never liked him. Not just because of the magic. Because he was always there. In the way.”

Harry didn’t answer. He couldn’t. That sentence felt raw, a tangled stitch of grief and jealousy, knotted and left to rot.

But then, as if sensing the air turning too thick, Petunia jabbed a finger toward the window and snapped sharply: 

“And that nose of his! Honestly, if someone hexed it down a size, maybe he'd stop sticking it in places it doesn't belong."

Harry almost choked on his tea. 

For a moment, the tension eased. Petunia didn’t smile exactly, but her voice lightened a fraction. 

“Now, don’t get me wrong,” she said, folding her arms primly, “that school of yours has always sounded like a madhouse masquerading as an education, run by a man who lost the plot a long time ago. Letters from your headmaster Dumpledee come like clockwork to our household, all in that looping handwriting, trying to justify the absurd.”

She paused, narrowing her eyes. “Our last one read: ‘Dear Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, over fifty years of neglected plumbing at Hogwarts and a former student’s basilisk living in the pipes, nearly led to your nephew’s demise for the fifth time this year. Fortunately, your nephew avoided becoming dinner tonight.’”

Petunia waved a hand. “Honestly, I've pieced together enough between Lily's bragging and that headmaster's letters over the years. Floating staircases that trap children, dead portraits that can follow you around and gossip, ghosts on the faculty...It's well and truly a magical soap opera on a shoestring budget." 

"But speaking of teachers," she continued, suddenly jabbing an accusatory finger towards the garden, as if a greasy silhouette was haunting her hydrangeas, "The fact that Snape was ripe for hiring, out of all the people? From what I knew growing up, and everything I heard you say about him, he's easily the most miserable wretch in the entire school."

“My friend Ron calls him the dungeon bat," offered Harry. 

Petunia sniffed. "Please. Bats at least have the decency to hang upside down out of sight. He was always lurking where you didn't want him."

They sank back into silence again. Less sharp now, edges softened.

Harry reached for another biscuit.

Petunia didn’t stop him.

Chapter Text

Petunia Dursley had always prided herself on maintaining a life free from magical nonsense. And yet, she found herself awake past midnight, folding laundry that had already been folded, scrubbing an already gleaming sink, and absolutely not thinking about Severus Snape.

She loathed him. No, loathed was too gentle. She despised Severus Snape with the kind of generational fury usually reserved for rival gardeners or neighbors with better roses. His name still made her jaw clench. That oily boy who stole her sister to that world, slinking around Lily like a dark smudge. Always muttering strange things and turning up like mildew.

And now, that same boy was somehow a professor. Of children. Teaching her nephew.

With a grimace, she grabbed her toothbrush from the bathroom counter and opened the door, only to collide with a dim blue glow from Harry's cracked bedroom door. She peered in.

There, in the thin shaft of moonlight from the hallway, sat her nephew cross-legged on the floor, buried beneath a lumpy blanket fort of parchment, inkwells, and glowing textbooks. His wand glowed dimly, casting flickers of blue across his spectacles.

“What in the name of decency are you doing?” she hissed, clutching her bathrobe. 

Harry jumped, "Homework. If I don’t finish it, Snape will dock points. That’s his favorite bloody hobby."

Petunia blinked. Something about that sentence ignited her.

Snape. Points. Power.

Snape, a teacher, grading students behind his desk? Snape, deciding what marks they'd would get? Absolutely not.

She sniffed, folding her arms. "Well, at least you’re studying. Just don’t set anything on fire."

Harry stared at her. She didn’t retract the statement.

And the next morning, she told Vernon that Marge wasn’t coming this summer.

Over the last two years, Petunia Dursley had received no fewer than fourteen letters from Albus Dumbledore, each more maddening than the last. They came in bursts, usually after incidents involving Harry. The tone was always infuriatingly calm, and the explanation sounded more like a riddle than an actual apology. “Regrettably, your nephew was involved in an altercation with a rogue broomstick,” or “We recently had a loss of property due to spontaneous pixie-related combustion."

Now, Petunia wasn’t one to let strange occurrences go unexplained. She was the sort of woman who tracked neighborhood bin placement patterns and report irregular hedge heights to the council. Magic made her skin crawl, but gossip? That was different. And Dumbledore, curse him, gave her just enough to burn with curiosity. The more absurd the story, the more she wanted to know who, what, and exactly how many rules were broken.

She never answered. But she read every word. And she remembered.

That Thursday, as predictably as the sun setting over Privet Drive, Vernon and Dudley left for their weekly ritual: poker and boxing down at the club. Petunia cleaned the living room, refilled the sherry, and sat stiffly in her armchair just as Harry finished wiping down the kitchen counters.

He was about to head upstairs when Petunia said, casually, "Well? Don’t you have some dreadful update about one of those little monsters you go to school with?"

Harry paused, surprised.

"Because if I’m letting you clutter my house with cauldrons and spells, I might as well be entertained."

And that was how it started. Every Thursday at 7:15 sharp, after the last of Vernon’s loud laughter faded down the road, Harry would sit awkwardly across from Petunia as she poured her glass of sherry and fix Harry with a look that said, "Get on with it." 

At first, it was only insults about Snape.

“He’s got the voice of someone trying to cast spells through a nosebleed,” muttered Harry. 

"And the posture of a haunted coat rack," sniffed Petunia. 

 Then came the gossip.  

“Let me get this straight,” Petunia said one Thursday evening, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Your teacher had his own fan club?" 

"He had a special quill just for autographs," said Harry. "And Lockhart didn't teach, mostly combed his hair in reflective surfaces while making us recite what he ate for breakfast on his book tour.”

“And he was going to erase your memory?" 

Harry nodded. "It kinda backfired, though. He tried to use a charm to make us forget everything but ended up wiping his own memory away." 

"You're telling me your Defense Professor got amnesia from a spell he cast on himself?” Petunia took a long sip of sherry, incredulous. "And here I was thinking Vernon's accountant was the most incompetent hire I knew." 

The week after, they circled back to Quirrell.

“That was the twitchy one who smelled like old onions, wasn’t it?” she asked, pouring her Thursday sherry with practiced precision now. 

“Yeah,” Harry nodded. “The stutter was fake the whole time, though. And he was hiding Voldemort under his turban the whole year.”

There was a long pause.

Petunia set her glass down slowly. “Your school hired a man whose head was playing host to a terrorist… who had a dark lord literally fused to his skull...and nobody noticed?”

"He wore a lot of scarves," offered Harry. 

Then came the laughter. Sharp and startled and just a little bit scandalous. The kind that snuck up behind you and stayed longer than it should.

Petunia, to her mild horror, found herself developing a sort of... stiff affection for her nephew. Not fondness, certainly not warmth. But she began to admire his bite, his timing, the growing glint of dry wit in his smirk. 

She began clipping out photos from The Times of eccentric columnists, fringe theatre actors, and anyone draped in enough velvet to be mistaken for a curtain to show Harry. Just in case, she claimed. "One of them’s bound to turn up teaching Defense Against Whatever-They-Call-It."

She even made him tea. Once.

Remus Lupin climbed aboard the Hogwarts Express, thoughts whirling with curiosity. He had never met Harry Potter. Not properly. But he was curious. 

He had known James well. And while he loved his friend fiercely, there were moments when James had leaned a little too easily into arrogance, into cruelty. Especially where Severus was concerned. And he had known Lily, kind and principled. 

He wondered what the boy would be like. 

Then he heard it.

"Potter," came a drawl from further down the corridor. "Have you seen the new professor? His robes look like they were woven by a blind banshee."

A beat of silence.

And Harry’s voice replied, not loud and brash like James might’ve, but crisp and polished. A bit posh. Amused, maybe even faintly cutting. 

"Funny coming from someone who looks like a vat of hair gel exploded on them. What role are you auditioning for anyways, Over-Groomed Evil Heir #2?" 

Then the door to the compartment burst open, and Draco Malfoy stumbled out, ears flaming.

Remus, lips twitching, adjusted his tattered cloak and rapped on the doorframe.

"Mind if I sit in?"

Chapter Text

By the time the train pulled into Hogsmeade Station, the rain was coming down in sideways sheets. Lupin had been dozing behind his patchy sleeve for most of the journey, offering the occasional amused glance whenever Ron and Hermione escalated from bickering to full verbal war over Crookshanks and Scabbers.

Harry didn’t mind Lupin’s quiet calm. There was something about the professor that that reminded Harry vaguely of the eye of a storm, not empty, just still.

They arrived soaked, their robes clinging to their knees, and by the time they entered the warm stone halls of Hogwarts, steam was rising from every student like they'd all just collectively emerged from a cauldron.

Harry shook out his cloak as they passed through the Entrance Hall and spotted Snape, who was standing near the staircase with his usual expression of loathing. 

Harry didn’t sneer or glare this time. He didn’t do anything except glance up, blink once, and turn his nose up, like Snape was a perfectly average mildew stain on the wall.

Very Petunia , he thought privately, with satisfaction. She would never acknowledge a nuisance if ignoring it hurt them more. 

And as his old bat of a professor swept by in a flurry of damp black fabric, Harry leaned toward Ron and murmured in the same clipped, judgmental tone his aunt reserved for the neighbors' kitchen wallpaper, “How positively dreadful. That cloak looks like it just crawled out of a bog in the swamp and lost the will to live.” 

Snape halted.

“Potter?” he asked, dangerously low.

Harry raised a brow. “Defense Against Unfriendly Criticism, sir?”

Ron made a strangled noise. Snape’s lip curled like he’d just swallowed vinegar.

Small victories, Harry thought, felt awfully satisfying.

The Gryffindor common room buzzed with the usual start-of-term frenzy a few nights later. Everyone compared schedules, debated Divination versus Arithmancy, and speculated over whether Trelawney’s tower classroom really smelled like moldy incense or if that was just a rumor passed down from upper-years. 

Harry found himself near the fire, flipping through his schedule, when Lavender Brown threw herself onto the sofa beside him and fanned herself with her own timetable. “I heard,” she said in a tone usually reserved for scandalous romances, “that you verbally obliterated Malfoy on the train.”

Harry didn’t look up. “That narrows it down to about twelve occasions.”

Parvati Patil appeared just as suddenly on Harry other's side. “She means the Over-Groomed Evil Heir #2 thing.”

Harry raised an eyebrow. “Is this...public record now?" 

Lavender sighed dreamily. “You should join us for our Divination debriefs. We know Trelawney’s inner eye is cracked, and she's as mad as a Crup on fireworks night, but the entertainment value is immaculate.”

“We do little sessions after class,” added Parvati. “We compare predictions, decode the drama. It's brilliant. And Trelawney said you've got just the eye for it, you know, with your...inner turmoil. And those cryptic glares. Very third-eye compatible." 

Harry glanced toward Hermione, who was watching them like she was witnessing a cult initiation.

“I’ll consider it,” he said, grinning.

The first month of classes passed in a blur of rain-slick staircases, reappearing doorways, and increasingly animated complaints about Divination.

“Her tower smells like the inside of a perfume bottle,” Harry groaned, rubbing his temples. “I swear I left with a migraine and three new allergies.”

Parvati, now a regular at his side for meals, looked mildly slighted. “Maybe if you listened instead of pretending to fall asleep—”

“I wasn’t pretending.”

On Thursday afternoon, just before lunch, Harry received an owl for the first time. A package with his name in tight, sharp handwriting. The paper was plain, the ribbon slightly frayed.

Inside was a box of Muggle biscuits (ginger snaps), two pairs of aggressively beige socks (unmistakably from Marks & Spencer), and a book: The Art of Looking Like You Know More Than You Do by E.H. Tilbury.

No note. Just a receipt, faintly smudged, tucked into the spine of the book. From a London shop, dated last week.

Harry felt something warm twitch in his chest. Of course, she didn’t write him an actual message that started with Dear anything. But Petunia Dursley didn’t waste time or money on people she hated, and she certainly didn’t buy books for them. 

“How touching,” drawled a voice from behind him. “Your Muggle relatives finally remembered you exist.”

Harry turned. Draco Malfoy was standing in the doorway of The Great Hall with Crabbe and Goyle flanking him like budget gargoyles.

Harry tilted his head. “They remembered you, too, actually.”

Malfoy blinked. “What?”

“My aunt says you look like the kind of boy who gets thrown out of a country club for trying to bribe the caddie,” Harry said evenly. “Or maybe the sort who sues his nanny for emotional distress after she fed him off-brand marmalade.”

Ron inhaled a bread roll. Dean burst out laughing. Malfoy turned puce. 

“She sends her regards,” Harry added mildly, tucking the book into his bag.

Snape began to notice it later that week. It wasn’t just Potter's mouth, he’d always had that, but it was the precision now. A polished sort of malice. The way he curled his lip before speaking, like he’d already filed the insult and was choosing whether it was worth sharing. Yet again, the brat had managed to irritate him just by existing! 

He was marking a particular third-year's essay with unnecessary pressure now. Potter's parchment was passably written, he supposed, for the first time, until the end: ‘…as if the potion had all the subtlety of a vulture in a hat.’

Snape froze. His jaw clenched. 

That tone. That specific prim, domesticated venom. 

Something about it crawled under his skin. 

But something else was also off.

Even the way Potter was watching him in class had changed. Less defiance, more analysis. Like someone taught him to mentally catalogue and assess first before speaking. 

It felt disturbing familiar. Snape narrowed his eyes. Somewhere, a memory tugged at him and refused to come clean.

Professor Lupin didn’t brag like Lockhart or stammer like Quirrell. He didn’t dress flamboyantly, didn’t quote his own books, and didn’t try to impress anyone. He taught like someone who’d long since stopped needing to prove anything.

The class liked him immediately.

On Friday, Lupin brought them into an old classroom, dusty with disuse. In one corner stood a battered wardrobe that thudded occasionally, as if something inside was testing the lock.

“Boggarts,” Lupin explained, resting one hip casually against his desk, “are shape-shifters. They take the form of what frightens you most. But fear, like many things, can be undone with the right kind of laughter. And that's the trick, to find the absurdity. Say Riddikulus, and imagine something ridiculous.”

The wardrobe thumped again. The class shifted uneasily.

“Let’s begin with Neville.”

Neville looked like he wanted to vanish into the floor, but he stepped forward anyway.

The wardrobe flew open, and out strode Snape in full fury, with cape billowing and eyes gleaming like twin daggers.

“Riddikulus!” Neville squeaked, and with a pop, Snape was suddenly in his grandmother’s clothes: a tweed hat, a scarlet handbag, and a pair of high-heeled boots he wobbled dramatically in.

The class howled. Even Lupin chuckled. “Five points to Gryffindor for creativity," he said warmly. "Excellent work, Neville." 

Then came Seamus (a banshee in his mum’s voice), Dean (a living math exam), and Ron (a giant spider that pirouetted in ballet slippers).

Then it was Harry’s turn. He stepped forward without thinking, wand in hand. The laughter from Ron’s spider still echoed off the walls.

The wardrobe creaked open and out came a tall figure robed in black, its face a void beneath the hood. The air thinned instantly. Frost crawled up the windows. 

No transition. No mercy. 

Harry didn’t scream or faint, but he did stagger, grabbing the edge of a desk to steady himself as the sickening cold slipped under his skin. Helplessness gripped him. 

“Riddikulus!” Lupin barked, stepping forward. And then in a much gentler tone: “Harry, why don’t you take a seat?”

Harry slid back to his seat, silent, feeling dazed. The world seemed rather muffled, like a memory playing underwater, as he stared at his trembling fingers. 

The dementor hadn't shown him Voldemort, or even death. It had shown him powerlessness. The same gasping kind of silence he’d felt in the cupboard without knowing when he'd get out. If ever. 

The same fear swirling now over Sirius Black. Whispers behind his back that Black was coming for him, everyone eyeing him like a curse waiting to happen, the mounting tension.

No answers, only rumors. 

That evening, after classes had wound down and the Great Hall had emptied of pumpkin pasties, Harry returned to the dormitory to find a plain white envelope sitting on his pillow.

His name was written in sharp, slanted cursive with no return address.

He tore it open.

Harry,

I’ve read the Prophet. Your new professor doesn’t sound like a walking hair commercial, so perhaps that’s progress.

As for this Sirius Black business—

I know what the papers say. I remember the headlines. But I also remember Sirius Black at my kitchen table, once. He was loud, insufferable, and tracked dog hair into the rugs.

He didn't do it. 

I’ve been reading everything I can. No trial. No statements from the Potters’ friends. The Ministry doesn’t care about closure or any sort of justice, they only care about headlines.

You know my instincts. I may not be magical, but I’m never wrong about people. Ask anyone who’s ever tried to sell me a dodgy casserole at a PTA dinner.

Watch your back. 

–P.

P.S. Dumbledore’s letters still smell like incense and sanctimony 

P.S.S. Don’t tell anyone I wrote. Vernon thinks I'm doing Sudoku. 

Chapter Text

If Petunia Dursley had been born magical, Harry sometimes thought, she might’ve been the Ministry’s best interrogator, or perhaps Azkaban’s most efficient escapee. But no. Instead, she lived on Privet Drive with a grudge sharp enough to cut granite and a knack for sniffing out someone’s hidden motives before they'd even finished their third sentence.

So when her latest letter arrived, tucked inside the folds of a crisp clipping of The Times, Harry knew better than to dismiss it.

"Notice how no one’s quoted Sirius Black himself. Not once. I checked the Prophet archives. Not a peep. Funny how the loudest ones go suddenly quiet when there’s no trial. But I’m sure the Ministry’s version of events is ironclad—just like their plumbing inspection scheme in '87. –P."

In the Gryffindor common room that evening, Hermione had just returned from the library lugging a stack of books titled things like Unjust Trials of the 20th Century and When Owls Lie .

“You’re not going to like this,” she said, dropping the books with a thud.

Harry took one look at the spines and blinked. “You raided the Muggle law section of the Restricted Section?”

Hermione grimaced. “They don’t have one. But I cross-referenced some old Prophet archives and... your Aunt Petunia’s right.”

That sentence had never been said in Hogwarts history. 

Ron peered over and read a snippet from the archives. “No trial. No testimony. Just a sentence handed down by Barty Crouch and... no one checked the wand. That’s wizarding due process, apparently.”

Hermione frowned. “So what now? We can’t exactly hold a retrial.”

“Then we don’t,” said Harry, standing. "We break in and find out the truth." 

The break-in happened in the Hogsmeade Owlery at two in the morning, in weather that could only be described as personally vindictive.

The plan, if you could call it that, was simple:

1. Use Hermione’s uncanny ability to forge signatures 
   
   
2. Get access to the Owl Registry logs Petunia had mentioned.
   
   
3. Find proof of Peter Pettigrew’s potentially alive-and-well status and determine where he was last seen.
   
   

Except, of course, things went sideways somewhere between “borrow Hagrid’s key ring” and “don’t alert the Hogwarts alarm owls.”

“Ron,” Hermione hissed, as three tawny barn owls dive-bombed their heads, “I told you not to bring biscuits in your pockets!”

“They’re emotional support biscuits!” Ron yelped, shielding his head.

Meanwhile, Harry was leafing through owl delivery records like a man possessed. The records never lied, just like the Marauder's Map (which Harry hadn't bothered to check. Every detective has his blind spots, after all, even the nephew of Petunia Dursley). And there it was.

Peter Pettigrew – alias Wormtail.
Recipient: Percy Weasley (?!).
Package: Handwritten note.
Timestamp: Last week.

“Bloody hell,” Harry whispered. “He’s not just alive. He’s in the castle.”

Back in the dormitory, Harry stared at Ron’s rat with a kind of grim horror. “You’re joking,” he said flatly.

Scabbers blinked up at him with innocent beady eyes that—on closer inspection—did look suspiciously like the sort of eyes that had seen some things and lied about them.

“No way,” Ron said. “He’s just a rat. A sad, bald, nervous rat, like Percy, but with fur.”

Hermione leaned in. “He’s missing a toe.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“Front paw. See? Right foot. Four toes. The report says Pettigrew lost a finger during the explosion. Would’ve transformed, left the finger behind.”

Utter silence. Then Ron spoke, voice cracking a little as one does after finding out they've been sleeping next to a grown man for thirteen years. “That is... deeply unsettling.”

Scabbers squealed and attempted to make a run for it. He was snatched up by Hermione with all the maternal tenderness of a customs officer.

Everything unraveled rather fast after that. It began, unexpectedly, with Peeves, who was dive-bombing first-years in the Gryffindor common room and shrieking from the rafters with particularly unhinged joy:

“Oooh, sneaky dog boy’s back again— Under the Whomper, tunnel into the den!
Same old shack, same old plot—Nearly sliced old Snape to snot way back when!”

“What did he just say?” Hermione said sharply, eyes narrowing.

Harry blinked. “Something about snot? No, wait. The Whomping Willow.”

Ron gasped. “The tunnel. The one that leads to the—”

They all spoke at once: “Shrieking Shack.”

They lured out Crookshanks for extra protection in case Scabbers ran away. Using the secret tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow, the three of them (plus jarred rat and hissing cat) arrived at the Shrieking Shack and met Sirius Black in the dramatic, low-lit, thunder-rumbling sort of encounter that probably gave Trelawney spiritual heartburn.

Sirius had been there, emaciated and wide-eyed, ready to kill, until Harry stopped him, and asked a single question:

“Did you bring dog hair into my aunt’s carpet?”

Sirius blinked. “I... what?”

"My aunt remembers you. Petunia, my mum's sister." 

Sirius recoiled slightly. "The flowerpot-thrower?" 

“She said you were loud, insufferable, and tracked hair into her good rug. And she thinks you’re innocent.”

Sirius stared, then started to laugh. Mad, hoarse, delighted laughter. 

Lupin, who had stormed in halfway through with Snape in tow, paused in the middle of pulling his wand out and blinked.

Petunia Dursley, giving character testimony. Of all the bloody timelines.

Snape sputtered. “We are now trusting Potter’s Muggle aunt on matters of wizarding justice ?!”

“I mean,” Harry offered mildly, “I do trust her pattern recognition more than the entire Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She once correctly guessed our headmaster's shoe size from a photograph and his anecdote on lemon drops." 

“Besides,” added Hermione, flipping her wand toward the stunned rat on the floor, “we’ve got living proof.”

Peter Pettigrew squeaked once, then very dramatically fainted.

“Well done,” said Lupin, setting down his teacup with a warm smile.

Harry, across from him in the staff quarters, curled his hands around his own mug and nodded. He wasn’t sure what blend Lupin had offered, but it tasted faintly like burnt chamomile and warm parchment. Somehow, it suited the moment. The rescue had gone smoother than expected—well, if one discounted the portraits shrieking about a murderer being in the castle, scaring the living daylights out of some bleary-eyed students out past curfew. But Sirius was safe now, lounging upstairs and insisting he was “getting his breath back, he just needed a moment." 

They sat in the quiet, until the door opened.

Petunia Dursley stood in the threshold, arms crossed, expression frostier than a Dementor’s handshake. She wore a tailored coat, a precisely knotted scarf, and the unimpressed air of someone who had once organized the PTA’s most efficient takedown of a mismanaged bake sale.

Harry blinked. “Aunt Petunia?”

“I suppose I came for morale support, ” she sniffed, stepping into the room and giving it a once-over. “And after Dumbledore’s most recent letter, I thought someone ought to check that your mentors weren’t completely hopeless.”

Lupin, ever courteous, rose. “Mrs. Dursley—”

“Petunia,” she corrected, already peering into his tea tin. “Is that what passes for Earl Grey in the magical world? Tragic.”

Harry grinned behind his cup.

Moments later, as if summoned by cosmic irony, Professor Trelawney glided in smelling like a heavily perfumed flamingo. 

“I sensed something,” she declared, eyes wide behind her glasses. “A tremor in the fabric of fate. The veil shimmered, the stars whispered. I followed.”

Petunia narrowed her eyes. “Who are you?”

Trelawney placed a manicured hand to her heart. “I am Sybill Trelawney, Keeper of the Inner Eye, Oracle of—”

“Oh, she’s one of those,” Petunia muttered. “Do you charge per vague omen or is it a subscription?”

Trelawney gasped, scandalized. “Your aura is difficult.”

Petunia’s lips curled. “So is my tolerance for nonsense." 

Harry coughed to hide a laugh. Lupin, somewhere between amused and resigned, offered Petunia another chair.

Trelawney, undeterred, turned to Harry. “But you —you are surrounded by portents, my boy. Prophecy clings to you.”

“Funny,” said Harry dryly. “So does mud. Does that mean I’m the Chosen One or just unlucky with weather?”

Trelawney’s voice dropped into a lower register. Her gaze went glassy.

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches… Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…”

Petunia blinked. "Is she having a stroke?" 

Trelawney's eyes snapped open dramatically. “Oh dear,” she said lightly. “Sometimes they just come out.”

Harry looked between Lupin and Petunia. “Okay. That… sounded specific.”

Lupin stood slowly, pale. “That was a prophecy.”

Petunia sniffed. “That wasn’t a prophecy. That was a security breach. ”

Before anyone could process what to do next, the door creaked open again. 

Snape entered, robes billowing like an affronted bat. He took one look at the room—Harry Potter, Remus Lupin, Sybill Trelawney, and Petunia Dursley—and froze.

His eye twitched. His jaw locked. Then, very calmly, he turned on his heel to leave. 

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I am not paid enough for this.”

The next morning, The Great Hall was bustling with breakfast chatter and the rustle of owl wings. Until it wasn’t.

Because at precisely 8:47 AM, a Howler unfurled itself above the staff table, sealed with a grocery receipt from Tesco. 

To: Headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore
Subject: Institutional Incompetence (re: Prophecy, Godsons, Security)

• Explain how you convicted and imprisoned an innocent man without trial. Why is my nephew uncovering government corruption before puberty? 
  
• Your staff regularly wanders into sensitive magical revelations like they’re shopping for scones. And the carpets in the guest quarter are offensively floral. 
  
  
• A professor recited a prophecy in front of a teenager, two war veterans, and me.

By the way, your screening process for Divination talent is as effective as Vernon’s cholesterol medication.

P.S. If you’re going to write again, I suggest you try a more neutral cologne. The current one smells like incense, failure, and unresolved trauma.

The hall fell into stunned silence.

Then, Sirius, now seated inconspicuously in the back disguised as “Professor Barkley”—burst into laughter so loud it knocked over his juice.

Chapter Text

Petunia Dursley had never believed in magic, not really. What she did believe in was paper trails. And incompetence. Especially the magical kind, which she had now begun annotating in red pen.

The Daily Prophet rustled under her arm, half-covered in margin notes like:

• "See footnote: arrest rate vs. conviction?"
• "Who let him out again?"
• "Ministry Head = damp crumpet in human form?"

Her latest target had been a columnist named Rita Skeeter, whose name was now circled in red ink like she was grading a failing student's essay, and underlined twice with a note: "Absolute fraud."

And now Harry, bleary-eyed over toast, squinted at the latest clipping she slid across the table. 

“If Rita Skeeter spent less time dramatizing and more time proofreading,” Petunia sniffed, “she might've noticed all her sources contradict each other. The latest man she wrote about claimed to be an eyewitness, but admits he was also under the Confundus Charm. Explain that to me." 

Harry stifled a grin. “You know, most people your age just do crossword puzzles." 

A tapping at the window all of a sudden revealed a Ministry owl, very official, very pompous, and very likely to leave something flaming if ignored. Harry opened the letter. His eyebrows climbed higher the further down he read. 

“Mr. Weasley wants to take me to the Quidditch World Cup,” he said slowly. “And… he invited you." 

Petunia paused mid-sip. “Did he now?”

Harry handed it over. Petunia read aloud:

“It would be a lovely gesture of unity, Mrs. Dursley. A chance for Muggles and wizards to share in one of our oldest traditions…”

Her mouth twitched. “I see. You’ve barely cleared one miscarriage of justice, and now I’m expected to sit through airborne rugby in a tent surrounded by half-sober wizards in nationalistic face paint.”

“Pretty much,” Harry said.

A long pause.

“Well,” said Petunia at last, setting down her cup. “If I must endure wizarding hospitality, I’m bringing my own flask. And binoculars. And, possibly, a taser.”

They arrived by Portkey ("does magical transition always resemble blunt-force trauma?" Petunia had demanded), before making their way to the campground. 

Petunia kept a notebook, furiously scribbling as they made their way to the campground. Her entries included:

• Children flying unsupervised. ("Insurance fraud waiting to happen.")
• Magical souvenir vendors selling “authentic Hungarian Horntail claws” for 16 Galleons a pop. (“These are rooster talons. I know a chicken when I see one.”
• A wizard trying to toast his bread with Lumos. ("Is he asking for a hospital visit?")
• Wizards attempting to do Muggle things and failing hilariously. (“Did I really just see that man attempt to insert a battery plug into his tent thinking it would charge?!”)

The campsite smelled like wet grass, singed polyester, and bureaucratic failure. Harry scanned the horizon. Tents sprawled across rolling hills like collapsed circus dreams, and a group of wizards were currently attempting to roast marshmallows with what appeared to be a dragon’s nostril on a stick.

Petunia Dursley arrived at the Weasley tent at last, stepping on the field gingerly as if she’d been invited to conduct a health inspection. Her trench coat was buttoned to the chin, opera glasses were wrung around her neck, and she clutched her thermos like a diplomatic weapon.

“Mrs. Dursley! I’m delighted you made it,” Arthur Weasley beamed, hurrying over. “This is a wonderful moment of solidarity between magical and Mug—”

“Thank you,” Petunia interrupted crisply, stepping over a gnome. “I take it there's no seating chart?" 

"Oh, I think we'll be able to find a few random ones," said Arthur in a voice he hoped was reassuring. 

“And I just came across multiple stalls in the Bulgarian fan section selling fake wands shaped like a p—” Petunia flushed rather snappily, “well, never mind what they’re shaped like.” 

Arthur blinked. "Ah. Well. Cultural exchange between wizards, you see!”

Lucius Malfoy, looking like he’d wandered off the set of a particularly expensive cologne advert, sauntered past their box with Narcissa in tow, a snake-headed cane tapping the wood floor in perfect time with his sneer. He paused just long enough to cast a cold glance toward Arthur Weasley, and by extension, everyone Arthur had ever spoken to, liked, or stood within five feet of.

Petunia’s face took on a special sort of expression, the one she normally reserved for undercooked chicken or real estate scammers. 

“Excuse me,” she called, voice razor-sharp and deceptively polite. “Is there a reason your walking stick has a snake on it, or are you just compensating for something?”

Lucius turned, startled.  “I beg your finest pardon?” he said coldly.

“You’re standing on my best scarf,” Petunia added, smiling icily. “Do move. It’s cashmere.”

“Do you know who I am?” demanded Lucius. 

“I know your type,” Petunia responded. “You look like the ghost of Christmas tax evasion in a blonde wig. Let me guess—monologues at dinner parties and a suspicious obsession with bloodlines are your specialty?”

Lucius turned the color of overpriced salmon. “Why, you insolent—" and then, attempting to recompose himself, gave her a pained smile. "I don't believe we've been introduced. But I'll have you know that I am a Malfoy." 

“Ah,” Petunia said. “Is that a title or a diagnosis?”

Harry choked. Hermione coughed very loudly into her sleeve. Ron audibly muttered “Bloody hell.”

Lucius practically combusted at this. “Come, Draco!" he barked finally, robes flapping as he stormed off. “We’re leaving this circus at once!!" 

Petunia watched him go, then turned to Arthur. “Does he always walk like he’s been denied basic fiber in his diet?”

Arthur wheezed. "Everyday." 

The game began with a thunderous roar, broomsticks shooting across the sky at reckless speeds that made Petunia’s nose wrinkle in disapproval.

“There are no seatbelts,” she muttered. “No helmets. And no visible emergency exits. This is HR Department's worst nightmare." 

“Oh, I'm right there with you,” Hermione said weakly, clutching the railing. "But welcome to wizarding sports." 

By the time Krum pulled off his third Wronski Feint and a thunderous Irish chant filled the air, Petunia was halfway through the "water" in the thermos, and only just beginning to look amused. 

Sirius, still in his “Professor Barkley” disguise (which mostly involved glasses and an exaggerated limp), climbed the stands and flopped into the seat beside her with a grin. “Still breathing?”

“Barely,” she murmured. “But I've decided it's useless to complain about safety regulations at this point." 

“Good to see you too,” Sirius said, nudging her. “Didn’t realize you had a flair for public confrontation. I heard what happened." 

“I assume there’s a formal complaint system in the wizarding government?” Petunia asked crisply, eyes fixed on the hem of Lucius Malfoy’s absurd cloak several rows below. 

Sirius shrugged. “We have a Misuse of Magic Office, a dozen half-staffed departments, and a box in the Atrium marked Suggestions. It’s shaped like a trash bin.”

“Good,” said Petunia. “Because I’m submitting a three-page letter tomorrow detailing twelve reasons that Malfoy man ought to be inspected. Starting with his hair products and ending with whatever bribery got that cane past security.”

Sirius howled with laughter. “Petunia, you’re really growing on me, you are.”

She gave a delicate sniff. “You tracked dog hair into my carpet.”

He grinned. “I can't believe you remembered.”

“I’m still vacuuming the memories out of the drapes to this day.”

“Not my fault,” Sirius said, faux-innocently. “I shed under emotional duress.”

Harry, sandwiched between them, stared forward with the blank patience of someone enduring a family reunion they weren’t emotionally prepared for.

"Oh, go on and take a swig," snapped Petunia, handing Sirius her thermos she had brought for emotional support.

Sirius took a cautious sip and looked at her slyly. "Sherry?" 

She turned slowly. “Do I look like a woman capable of enduring this sober?”

There was a beat. Then a slight rumble. Sirius tipped his head toward the sky. “You hear that?”

The screams came first, rising up from the far side of the tents like a wave cresting with panic. Then came the green. A flash of emerald burned across the clouds like the world itself had been cursed. The Dark Mark, stark and unmistakable, burned into the night.

People were running. Spells crackled. Somewhere, Petunia heard someone scream about their tent insurance and felt a pang of pity for them. 

Sirius had gone still beside her, face pale and drawn, wand at the ready. 

Petunia turned toward Sirius. “You recognize that, don’t you?”

“The Dark Mark?” he said grimly. “Yeah. Must've been one of Voldemort's followers who had a sick idea of a prank."

“Not just that," Petunia said, already scanning the sky, the fleeing crowd, the confusion.

Her voice grew brisk and sharp, the way it always had when she felt like she was losing control.  “You see the choreography, the timing, the overdramatic presentation? It all adds up. This wasn't a surprise attack, no, it was meant to be theatre. Badly executed, sure, but still theatre. And like you said, pure entertainment for some of these..." her voice trailed off. 

Sirius blinked. “You think this was staged?”

“I think someone wanted this seen,” Petunia said, tightening the grip on her handbag. “And not by accident." 

And then complete chaos. Masked figures in black swept into view, levitating a terrified Muggle family into the air like human marionettes. A fire had caught on one of the vendor stalls, and someone was shrieking about their limited-edition Krum bobblehead melting.

Harry came charging down the hill with Hermione and Ron, wand out.

“Stay here!” he shouted up at them. 

“Absolutely not,” Petunia said, already rolling up her sleeves. She stormed toward the Death Eaters with the energy of someone who’d once single-handedly gotten a dodgy theme park shut down for hygiene violations.

Sirius blinked, going pale. "Petunia!" And then, more urgently: "Petunia, no! You can't just go charging a mob of dark wizards with a handbag."

“They’re not wizards,” she called over her shoulder. “They’re cowards in costume!"

One of the masked men turned, sneering. “You think we’re afraid of Muggles?”

Petunia stopped, tilted her head, and smiled a truly terrifying smile Harry had seen once in his life — when the maintenance man who swung around Privet Drive every week had tried to explain why he hadn’t unclogged the gutters for six months.

“No,” she said, taking a step closer, “but you are afraid of being recognized.”

A pause. Then she added, with icy sweetness: “Drop those little sticks in your hand, or I will yank your ski masks down and make the whole world look at you. I know there's cameras around here."

The man faltered. He opened his mouth to snarl something else—

—and Petunia’s handbag connected solidly with the side of his face.

There was an audible crack. Possibly bone. Possibly ego.

Somewhere, a tooth hit the ground with a cheerful plink.

“Holy hell,” Ron muttered, skidding to a stop beside Harry.

Hermione was staring.

“Did she just—?”

“Yeah,” said Harry, wide-eyed.

"And you there!" Petunia was now shrieking at one of the masked men, who was cowering. "Is this a terrorist attack or just a failed cosplay convention?"

All of them were already retreating, but one of the braver ones managed: "Who are you?" 

"Petunia Dursley. Head of Neighborhood Watch, Former Chair of the Smeltings PTA, and currently your worst nightmare."

"And by the way," she added with a flourish, "I counted three separate zoning violations on your campsite."

The Death Eaters bolted. 

“You know, Harry," said Gred or Forge, appearing beside them and flashing Petunia a smile that rivaled Lockhart's, "I thought your aunt was just terrifying when I first met her. But now I think I might actually fanc—"

“Do not finish that sentence,” warned Harry.

Chapter Text

The wizarding world was buzzing. Not with answers, of course. Just chaos as usual. 

The Daily Prophet’s headline looked like it had been copy-edited by a stunned flobberworm:
POST-CUP PANIC: MINISTRY DENIES DARK MAGIC, CALLS INCIDENT "OVEREXUBERANT CELEBRATION."

Below it was a moving photograph of Cornelius Fudge shaking hands with Lucius Malfoy and grinning like they had closed a particular dodgy insurance deal. Both were wearing powdered wigs.

Petunia Dursley read the article over toast and marmalade, scrawled “spineless, bribed, or both?” in the margin, and promptly began ironing her most menacing blazer.

By mid-afternoon, she'd infiltrated a hush-hush Ministry debriefing by impersonating a civil compliance officer from the Department of Muggle-Bureau Relations. The badge read Tuna Dorsley. She didn’t correct it.

Through an open doorway in the waiting room, she heard voices, clipped and low and far too nervous to discuss “celebratory magic.”

“…It was the Mark. There’s no denying it.”

“Don’t say that here—Merlin’s beard! Do you want to get reassigned to Werewolf Registry?”

“There were Muggle witnesses, we can’t just Obliviate half the continent.”

She stood at the back as the meeting proceeded, perfectly still, taking notes on a clipboard labeled “MAGICAL NEGLIGENCE: VOLUME I.” 

“Nothing to see here,” intoned one official. “Dark rumors are baseless. Carry on.”

Petunia’s expression said bullshit detector activated.

As the platitudes droned on, snippets of conversation slipped through: “damage control,” “information suppression,” “political infighting,” “sources need containment.”

When a dour voice muttered, “Misinformation is a useful tool,” Petunia’s lip curled in contempt.

Petunia jotted notes in her planner. Under the heading "Evidence of Utter Governmental Lunacy," she wrote:

• Ministry suppressing truth.

• Cover-up in progress.

No one asked who she was.

Especially not after she leaned over to a junior assistant and whispered, “Is this where they store the incompetence, or just where they laminate it?”

The Leaky Cauldron had seen its fair share of odd gatherings over the years. It had hosted werewolf rights debates, centaur unions, and that one ill-fated Goblin Speed-Dating Mixer. But never had it hosted a strategy meeting quite like this one.

At the corner table sat Remus Lupin, quietly nursing a cup of something herbal and brown that claimed to be tea. Next to him lounged Sirius Black, disguised in Muggle sunglasses and a hoodie reading “I Solemnly Swear I Am Up to No Good (and Also On Parole).”

Opposite them, arms crossed and eyes narrowed, sat Petunia Dursley. Her trench coat was immaculate. Her scarf was knotted with military precision. And her binder labeled “Wizarding Disasters: Vol. I” sat on the table like a legal landmine.

“I presume,” she began icily, “that by now, we’re all aware that your precious Ministry is now gaslighting the entire wizarding public.”

Lupin coughed. Sirius snorted into his drink.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” said Sirius dryly. “They do that before breakfast.”

Petunia flipped open the binder and removed a folded Daily Prophet. The headline screamed “Post-Cup Panic: ‘Just a Prank,’ Says Ministry.”

“A prank?” Petunia repeated. “Your ‘prank’ involved masked men levitating families and setting tents on fire. Where I'm from, we call that domestic terrorism. In your world, it’s apparently another Tuesday.”

“I mean, you're not wrong,” Lupin murmured.

Sirius grinned. “God, I missed you.”

“I’m not here for your amusement,” she snapped. “Although if you’d like, I can forward the letter I sent Lucius Malfoy questioning his tax returns. He’s been claiming ‘wand polish’ as a deductible since 1982.”

Lupin tried to steer the meeting back on course. “Right, well, we were hoping, if you’re willing at least, that you could help us prepare some briefings. There’s a larger meeting coming, and—”

Petunia raised a brow. “You’d like me to present?”

“…Well, yes,” Lupin said. “You’re thorough, organized, brutally insightful—”

“And a Muggle,” she added.

“We’re not all Ministry bigots,” said Sirius. “Also, you visibly unsettle Dumbledore. That’s… honestly an asset.”

They reconvened in a disused back room of the Leaky Cauldron, arranged hastily by Dumbledore’s owl and smelling faintly of mint, mildew, and unresolved generational trauma. A battered carpet did little to mask the scuffs on the floor. The gas lamps flickered as if anxious.

Petunia stood at the head of the room like an attorney at a war crimes tribunal.  “Right,” she said, flipping her binder open. “Let’s begin.”

The room fell quiet.

“Attached, you’ll find a color-coded dossier,” she continued, passing out neat files. “Red tabs are Ministry failures. Yellow are suspected Death Eater sympathizers. Blue are unresolved disappearances that overlap with known Voldemort activity.”

“Sorry—Voldemort?” gasped Molly.

“Yes, Voldemort,” Petunia said crisply. “Or shall we use his government mandated name, Tom Riddle? Age: 70s but terminally adolescent. Complexion: bone white. Hair: emotionally unavailable.”

Petunia pulled out a new chart. “I call this the Delusion Spiral. At the center is Voldemort. Orbiting him? Bureaucratic incompetence, elitism, and toxic faith in self-fulfilling prophecies."

Hermione, newly arrived, looked like she was witnessing the Sistine Chapel of spreadsheets.

“You’re a genius,” she whispered.

Sirius flipped through his file. “Wait, how did you get this exactly?”

“I asked questions. I filed requests. I wrote letters. You’d be amazed how many magical types fold under polite but relentless badgering, especially if you sound like a solicitor.”

"So, what's our move now?" asked Sirius. 

Petunia looked over her notes. “We investigate your Department of Mysteries further.”

McGonagall’s voice cut in from the doorway: “Absolutely not.”

Everyone turned as she entered, steely-eyed. “Do you know how many laws you’ll be breaking?”

Petunia rose, waving a parchment. “Do you know how many they’ve already broken?”

McGonagall stared, mouth tight. The room held its breath.

“I know what this looks like to everyone,” continued Petunia coolly. “Some suburban Muggle with too much time and a vendetta. But you’re all about to repeat history, and this time, I don’t have nearly enough sherry or patience to watch the disaster unfold again."

There was a beat of silence. Dumbledore folded his hands like a priest preparing for a funeral. 

“And what, precisely, do you think we’re repeating?”

Petunia didn’t miss a beat. “You're underestimating the patterns. The signs are already there. Vanishing witches. Ministry censorship. The Dark Mark in the sky. The only thing missing is the death toll, which is climbing by the day, by the way."

Lupin’s expression darkened.

Dumbledore looked vaguely troubled, as if someone had just insulted his lemon drops.

Sirius frowned. “We’ve had scares before. This could be another false alarm.”

“Oh yes,” Petunia said coolly. “Because the last false alarm ended with half the Wizarding population in hiding and my sister in a grave.”

The room went still.

"Now," Petunia said, clicking to the next tab in her binder which was almost overflowing. "Let’s talk about the thing you’re all pretending not to hyperventilate over. The prophecy."

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees.

“I overheard that walking incense stick of a Divination professor last summer, while waiting to pick up Harry from that godforsaken castle. She smelled like mothballs and gin and was muttering something about a child born in July destined to vanquish Voldemort.” 

Molly Weasley gasped. “Petunia, that’s classified—”

“That information is not public,” cut in Dumbledore, tone suddenly sharp.

“Well, it bloody well should be,” Petunia snapped. 

“You misunderstand,” Dumbledore began gently. “That knowledge—”

“Is dangerous,” Petunia finished for him. “So is keeping it a secret. So is building your survival strategy on a half-heard wine-fueled hallucination. What, exactly, is the endgame here?”

Hermione hesitated. “So… you do believe it?”

“I believe,” Petunia said icily, “that if you’re going to stake your entire civilization's survival on one drunken séance from a woman who wears four shawls and no discernible undergarments, the least someone could've done was write it down."

She pulled up a laminated flowchart titled "Delusion Spiral: Institutional Failure Edition. "Because as it stands now, your entire hope of winning the war hinges on a tipsy horoscope and you've designated a fourteen-year-old boy as your magical Messiah. And at this point, I don’t know whether to scream or write a dissertation."

McGonagall, arms crossed, finally spoke, voice dry. “What would you have us do, Petunia?”

“Try looking beyond prophecy, perhaps? Past the bloodlines, birth months, and this absurd system where trauma is treated with cryptic speeches and lemon drops.”

She looked directly at Dumbledore.

“Tom Riddle isn't fate reincarnate. He's just a man. A small, insecure man with a god complex, a hoarding problem when it comes to cursed jewelry, and enough daddy issues to bankrupt a therapist. Frankly, I've met worse partners at Vernon's old law firm. You treat him like this force of destiny, but I’ve seen toddlers pitch better tantrums.”

Dumbledore looked at her for a long, unreadable moment.

Then, quietly: “You may yet be the most dangerous person in this room.”

Petunia closed her binder with a definitive snap.

“Good. Now let’s finally act like someone’s life depends on it.”

After the meeting, Hermione cornered Petunia near the fireplace.

“I’ve been tracking everything since the Cup,” she said, eyes bright. “Disappearance records. Artifact thefts. And I’ve found something strange.”

“Strange how?”

“Three reports about a woman named Bertha Jorkins. Missing for weeks. Last seen at a Ministry function. It was quietly buried. No follow-up.”

Petunia raised an eyebrow. “Which department?”

“Department of Magical Games and Sports.”

“Oh, how convenient. The department responsible for—oh, what was it—the world’s most disastrous sporting event?”

To break the somber mood after the Leaky Cauldron meeting, Sirius had, in a moment of idiotic bravado, dared Petunia to set foot in Knockturn Alley.

He hadn’t expected her to take him seriously.

“You were supposed to laugh,” he hissed, trailing behind her in a horrifically bad glamour charm that made him resemble a disgraced opera singer in witness protection. “You were not supposed to go into Borgin and Burkes like you were the bloody Magical Trading Standards Office—”

But Petunia was already inside, marching past jars of suspiciously sentient entrails. She leaned across the grim-caked counter now, eyeing the skeletal salesman who had the posture of a wilted umbrella. "I’d like to see your import permits," she said crisply. "Or is that not something you provide to the public?"

Borgin, a man who looked like he'd been grown in a vat of mildew, visibly paled. His eyes darted to the nearest exist. 

“This is a shop for rare magical curiosities,” he tried, smoothing his greasy waistcoat.

“And I’m sure the Ministry is just thrilled about your necromantic yard sale,” Petunia replied.

"This is a place of dark artifacts," Harry reminded her in a whisper. 

"So is eBay," Petunia muttered. "At least they post return policies."

She inspected a cursed opal necklace with mild disdain, then poked a shelf of preserved hands.

"Honestly," she said. "These look like rejects from a Halloween display."

A black-market wandmaker emerged from the back. Petunia turned her attention immediately.

"Are you aware the British Ministry has laws about wand duplication? I’m sure your stock’s properly licensed. Unless, of course, you’d prefer me to file a complaint."

The man bolted with such speed he nearly tripped over a crate of withered feet.

Sirius, now hiding behind a crate of dragon gallbladders, whispered reverently, “That was cruel. Do it again."

The moment Harry and Petunia stepped out of Burke's shop and back into Diagon Alley, the air shifted. Like someone had dropped a bucket of glitter into a den of angry bees.

“Harry! Darling! Thoughts on the Quidditch Cup? Rumors you were targeted? Any special girls on your radar at Hogwarts?” came the shrill pounce of Rita Skeeter, her enchanted quill already writing like an extremely caffeinated hummingbird.

Harry stiffened. Petunia, however, stepped forward so fast Harry almost tripped over her heels.

“Miss Skeeter,” Petunia said, voice cold enough to freeze a basilisk. “You are currently standing in a public space, brandishing an illegal dictation quill while harassing a minor. Do you have a broadcasting license? A press badge? Or even a remotely working moral compass?”

Rita sputtered, blinking like a fish hauled out of water. “Well, I—”

From her handbag, Petunia produced a crisply folded parchment. “This,” she announced, “is a formal complaint to the Department of Magical Communications. Section 4.3: Improper use of charmed equipment near underage wizards. Section 5.9: Excessive feather usage. Section 12.2: Harassment of a minor.”

Rita, visibly rattled, backed away. “This isn’t over—”

“Oh, I agree,” Petunia said sweetly. “I haven’t even filed the actual complaint about your quill yet, which scribbles away like some sort of possessed woodpecker."  

Hermione arrived at Harry’s elbow, clutching a stack of ink bottles.

“I adore her,” she whispered with utter sincerity.

Harry’s jaw twitched. Somehow, today just got a lot better.

As they turned the corner, a strange man in ragged Auror robes loomed into view and gave Harry an evaluating stare. 

“Who’s that?” Petunia asked, clocking his mismatched boots and twitchy demeanor immediately.

“Mad-Eye Moody,” Harry said. “He’s supposed to be teaching this year. New Defense professor." 

She glanced back at him and took it all in—the wild hair, heavily scarred face, eye swiveling in all directions like a malfunctioning CCTVs system—and frowned. "He looks like someone who enjoys biting plug sockets." 

The man took a swig from a battered flask, never taking his eye off Harry.

“And he drinks in public,” Petunia added. “Fantastic.”

“He’s… eccentric,” Harry offered weakly.

Petunia’s eyes narrowed. “Eccentric is buying pickled onions in bulk. That man looks like a cautionary tale. And this is your fourth Defense teacher in four years?”

“Yeah…”

“At this rate, you’ll graduate with a minor in unexplained injuries and a major in PTSD.”

Sirius, back in glamour and munching a suspicious meat skewer, appeared at her side. “Moody’s legit, Petunia, don't worry. Paranoid, yes. But he's supposed to be trustworthy.”

“Supposed to be,” Petunia repeated. “Doesn’t that mean someone vouched for him?”

“Dumbledore.”

Petunia narrowed her eyes. “Of course." 

Harry chuckled.

“I’m not joking,” she said. “He drinks too much, watches too hard, and doesn’t blink. I don’t trust anyone who doesn't blink.”

Petunia made a note in her planner:

Watch the one with the flask.

Weeks passed. Hogwarts reopened. Petunia settled back into Number Four Privet Drive like a woman who knew her calendar was lying to her. The leaves were changing. The mail arrived on time. The neighbors were still insufferable.

And then came Harry's letter.

“My name came out of the Goblet of Fire. I didn't do it, I swear."

Petunia read it. Reread it. Poured a very large glass of sherry, drained it one swallow, and poured another. 

By nightfall, she was at the Leaky Cauldron again, trench coat buttoned to her chin.

McGonagall was waiting, already steeling herself for what was to come. 

"Minerva," Petunia said, not bothering with pleasantries. "He didn’t put his name in."

"We know."

"Then why is he being forced to compete in a death tournament?"

McGonagall exhaled. "The Goblet is magically binding."

"So is a mortgage. Doesn’t mean you can’t default."

“No—Petunia—listen, no one expected—”

Petunia exhaled and retrieved her binder.

“I’m reopening everything.”

"Reopening what, exactly?' said McGonagall sharply. 

“My investigations,” Petunia replied. “The prophecy, the security breaches, a running tally of Defense professors who’ve either spontaneously combusted or vanished. And now this. A centuries-old magical artifact behaving like it got blacked out drunk at a wizard frat party and puked out my fourteen-year-old nephew’s name."

She snapped open a thick folder. It bore a color-coded tab system so intricate it could make the Department of Mysteries blush.

"I have a purple file labeled ‘Triwizard Liability.' It includes a detailed list of how Hogwarts teenagers tend to die: thrown into murder mazes, attacked by magical horrors, all while bureaucratic officials shriek that ‘the cup has spoken.'"

McGonagall inhaled sharply. “That was centuries ago. And its more complicated than that.”

“Everything is,” Petunia said flatly. “But you’re a Deputy Headmistress. Surely, you’ve noticed Hogwarts is statistically more dangerous than active war zones.”

Minerva’s lips twitched—not a smile, precisely, but a crack in the granite. “You sound just like Alastor.”

“Alastor Moody? He drinks from a hip flask like he’s hiding a crime,” Petunia said. “I don’t trust a man who won’t even hydrate in public. Tell me, what’s in that flask? Liquid paranoia? The tears of interns he's hexed? The blood of ex-wives?”

A beat.

McGonagall finally sighed and folded her arms. “You’re relentless.”

“I’ve debated estate agents,” Petunia said. “You don’t scare me.”

Minerva gave her a long, unreadable look. Then: “You should have been a witch.”

“I should have been a lot of things,” Petunia said. “Instead, I had a sister who got all the magic and none of the common sense that could've saved her life. Instead, I'm an aunt who watched her nephew nearly die in first year, second year, third year—and now we’re gearing up for round four. What’s next? A chamber full of acid and riddles?”

“Actually, the third task is usually a maze—”

Petunia stared her down.

“—with creatures,” McGonagall added, wincing.

“Of course. And I’m sure Dumbledore will wave it off with another vague monologue about unity and destiny while the children scream.”

She paused now. 

“Let me be very clear. If Harry's harmed—if he so much as gets a splinter—I will drag your entire school through court so fast even Dumbledore won’t have time to adjust his spectacles.”

McGonagall pinched the bridge of her nose.

“Petunia, please. I’m on your side.”

Petunia tilted her head. “Then start acting like it.”

Another silence. The Leaky Cauldron’s lamps flickered. McGonagall finally leaned forward. 

“But please, do be careful,” she said, voice softer now. “There are people who do not take kindly to Muggles meddling in magical affairs.”

Petunia’s eyes glittered.

“I'd like to see them try." 

Chapter Text

If Hogwarts had a Human Resources department, Petunia Dursley thought, it would be buried under three hundred years of unresolved complaints and seven class-action lawsuits. 

The school loomed ahead like a gothic fever dream with spires, turrets, and centuries of legally actionable negligence. Somewhere in there, her nephew was being prepped for what amounted to a magical Hunger Games, and she was about to sneak into it with nothing but a clipboard, a thermos of sherry labelled WATER, and unprecedented disdain. 

“I still think this is a terrible idea,” Sirius hissed, hunched in his Animagus form behind a hedge.

“Do you want to tell Harry I waited for an appointment while he gets turned into a magical kebab?” Petunia snapped.

Sirius gave a pitiful whine. 

“I’ll be fine,” she said, smoothing her trench coat. “I’m not going in as a parent. I’m going in as a consultant. Inspector. Whatever you want to call it." 

Technically, Petunia had filed under Clause 47b of the Wizarding Child Protection Charter, which permitted non-magical guardians to conduct "emergency educational assessments" when endangerment thresholds had been met. And if watching your nephew get flung into a flaming dragon pit on live magical television didn't meet that threshold, Petunia wasn’t sure what did.

Sirius blinked slowly, then slumped with resignation. 

She straightened her collar, adjusted her handbag, and strode through the gates like she owned the building and had come to shut it down.

The castle was colder than she had remembered, loud, and smelled like wet stone, old parchment, and permanent adolescent angst.

She arrived at the Defense classroom just before lunch and found Alastor Moody mid-rant about constant vigilance and detachable eyeballs . The students were visibly traumatized. One had already dropped a quill in terror. 

Moody’s eye spun to her immediately. “Who’re you?” 

“Petunia Dursley,” she said crisply. “Magical Curriculum Standards Review Board. I’m here for a surprise evaluation.”

“You’re not on my schedule." 

“You’re not on mine either. Yet here we are.”

A tense silence. Then Moody smiled, or rather, he bared his teeth like someone considering cannibalism.

“Well, Dursley. You want to observe?” he growled. “Observe this!"

He threw a cushion into the air, shouted “ Confringo! ”, and blew it to smithereens.

Petunia did not flinch.

She raised a clipboard. “Noted. Pyrotechnics during instruction. Educational value: questionable. Risk of singed eyebrows: high.”

Several students quietly fell in love with her.

By the end of the lesson, Moody was watching her more than the students. His magical eye twitched as she lingered. 

“You’ve got questions,” he said.

“Of course I do,” Petunia replied. “Your safety protocols are nonexistent. Your methods are erratic. And frankly, I’ve seen cult documentaries with more structure to them.”

His mouth twisted into something that might have been a smile or a tic. “But what you really want to know is how your nephew’s name got in the Goblet.”

“That,” Petunia said coolly, “and why everyone just shrugged when an ancient magical artifact spat out a fourth name like a rigged raffle. I want to know who tampered with it. I want to know who stood to benefit. And I want to know why this teaching position is handed out like a cursed fruitcake no one wants for more than one Christmas.”

She paused. “That last one may be unrelated. But I’m investigating it anyway.”

Moody chuckled, low and raspy. “You’re nosy,” he said.

“I’m efficient,” Petunia said. “And very hard to get rid of.”

His magical eye spun faster.

Petunia cornered him again near the staffroom door, eyes narrowed, arms folded like she was preparing for a tax audit.

“This is a school matter,” he growled. “You’ve no business meddling. You're not a teacher." 

"No, I'm something worse," she said. "I’m a woman with spare time and a personal grudge. And I make it my business when my nephew's been drafted for medieval bloodsport by a glorified torch.” 

He didn't answer. 

"And you," she added coolly, "are supposed to be Hogwarts' top security measure. But I’ve watched enough men with twitchy hands and flasks full of secrets to know what a liability looks like. You show up out of nowhere. No  background check or any real references. And you’re jumpier than a squirrel near a leaf blower.”  

“Paranoia makes you see shadows where there aren’t any,” he said stiffly. 

“And you’re drinking like you’re trying to drown one,” she countered, eyes on his flask. “Curious behavior for someone who insists he’s perfectly normal.”

Moody's eye twitched. “You’re out of line.” 

“And you’re out of character.” 

He bared his teeth again and this time there was no humor in it. “You’ve got a dangerous imagination, lady.” 

“No,” she said, voice low. “I think I’ve just got better instincts than whoever cleared your paperwork."

The staffroom door creaked open, and McGonagall’s voice broke through the tension. “Mrs. Dursley? The meeting’s about to begin.”

Petunia gave a smile like a paper cut. “Oh good. I was just warming up.”

“I was invited, technically,” she said brightly, settling in with a manila folder and her emotional support thermos bottle labeled WATER. “Minerva didn’t say no. She said, and I quote, ‘Oh for heaven’s sake.’ That’s practically a ‘come in.’”

Snape made a strangled noise. Possibly his soul trying to flee.

This was supposed to be a private Hogwarts strategy meeting. A closed-door “curriculum reassessment and safeguarding alignment,” according to the agenda, though nobody had seen a syllabus and the room mostly smelled like burnt tea and mild panic. McGonagall looked conflicted. Flitwick looked intrigued. And Alastor Moody — or someone very convincingly cosplaying as him— was glowering into a hip flask like it owed him child support.

“Ms. Dursley,” Dumbledore said with the exhausted reverence of a man who had once tried to ignore a forest fire by politely pretending it was a candle. “While we appreciate your, ah, enthusiasm—”

“I’m only here,” Petunia cut in, “because I’d like to see my nephew live past seventeen.”

Snape sniffed. "Your presence was not required." 

"Neither was the fryer grease you wash your hair in, but let's not quibble," said Petunia sweetly.  She then opened her folder with bureaucratic vengeance. “The Third Floor Corridor Incident,” she began, checking a box. “The Basilisk Year. The Dementor Debacle. The Unsupervised Werewolf Hire. The Firebolt Scandal. The Triwizard What-The-Hell-Is-This Tournament.”

She looked up. “Am I missing something? Because this school has a higher casualty than the Muggle military. And I didn’t even mention the stairs yet.” 

“The staircases add whimsy!” squeaked Flitwick.

“They add lawsuits, ” said Petunia.

Snape muttered something beneath his breath, and Petunia caught just enough syllables to glare at him. 

“I know what you think of me,” she said, cutting through the rising bickering. “But I didn’t come here for you. I came because if this castle swallows Harry whole, and if some prophecy-obsessed manchild with a snake fetish gets him killed — I will not be standing outside the gates wondering if I could’ve said more.”

It began, as these things often did, with a screech and a shatter.

The owl didn’t just tap on the window, it dive-bombed the Dursleys’ kitchen at 7:03 a.m., wings flared, beak first, and hit the glass with a force usually reserved for meteorites. 

A mug shattered. Vernon Dursley nearly swallowed his toothbrush in surprise. Dudley shouted, “BIRD ATTACK!” and ducked under the table holding a half-eaten Pop-Tart like a shield.

Petunia, ever the picture of calm fury, swatted the offending bird with a rolled-up Daily Prophet. And there, on the front page:

“MUGGLE MATRIARCH OR MAGICAL MENACE???"
Hogwarts in Turmoil as Harry Potter’s Aunt Storms Castle”
By Rita Skeeter, Special Correspondent for Magical Society Affairs

And she read out loud in an icy voice: 

Witnesses report a bewildering scene at Hogwarts last week.  Harry Potter’s previously unseen Muggle aunt,  Mrs. Petunia Dursley, was seen storming through hallowed halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry last week with a clipboard, a flask of sherry disguised as a water thermos, and what witnesses described as ‘a face like a thousand Howlers.’ 

Sources confirm that Mrs. Dursley bypassed enchanted barriers and had no credentials. 

Eyewitnesses claim Mrs. Dursley inspected the Great Hall chandeliers, asked if the Forbidden Forest had a fencing permit, and attempted to measure the Quidditch pitch “for insurance purposes.

“She asked if the Triwizard Tournament had a risk waiver form,” said Madam Pomfrey. “Then she tried to sanitize my entire wing with Muggle wipes.”

“One frightened Hufflepuff claims she asked them where the nearest HR office was. Another student fainted outright after hearing her utter the phrase, ‘negligent child endangerment liability.’

And the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, reportedly endured a 40-minute interrogation on his drinking habits. He responded by taking more swigs from his hip flask and growling, “Constant vigilance, my foot.”

Headmaster Albus Dumbledore released a statement calling Mrs. Dursley “a concerned guardian with a brisk gait and an even brisker wit.” However, staff have allegedly begun enchanting closets to hide in during her visits. 

Meanwhile, Cornelius Fudge is reportedly in full damage-control mode, desperately coaching staff to avoid words like “blood pact” and “illegal magical competition." 

Whether Petunia Dursley is Hogwarts' new watchdog or just a very scary Muggle remains to be seen. What's undeniable is that Hogwarts hasn't seen this much mayhem since all the staircases decided to rearrange themselves for fun. 

Petunia sat down slowly. “I didn’t storm. I…walked briskly.”

Vernon turned an alarming shade of puce and let out a sound that was somewhere between a wheeze and an airhorn. “She’s ruined us, Petunia! They’ll Oblivi-whatsit us! We’ll be erased and turned into—into toads!”

Dudley shrieked in horror, remembering his pig tail. 

“That’s not going to happen,” said Petunia crisply, buttering toast as if she weren’t being internationally defamed.

“You can’t just go gallivanting around their madhouse, Pet! It's dangerous! It’s full of—of—of utter lunatics!!”

“Well, yes, Vernon. That’s rather the point.” She stood, already storming off toward the cabinet where she kept her color-coded, cross-referenced files. “If I’d waited any longer, the boy would’ve come home in a body bag or a commemorative goblet.”

Later that morning, Harry Potter sat in the Great Hall chewing burnt toast, trying to read a letter that somehow reeked of hair tonic and megalomania. Lucius Malfoy’s handwriting curled across the parchment like it was allergic to straight lines:

My Dear Mr. Potter,

It is with deepest sympathy—and utmost concern—that I write to offer my condolences for your recent overexposure in certain...Muggle publications.
One hopes this unwanted attention does not impede your Hogwarts studies, your delicate magical development, or your already strained grasp on etiquette.
Please extend my warmest regards to your...guardian.

I would caution, however, against allowing non-magical parties to interfere in Magical Affairs of International Scope, especially those involving ancient magical contracts. There are...consequences for overreach.

Yours in civility,

Lucius Malfoy.

 

Ron looked over and let out a noise like a strangled cat. “Smug bastard.”

Harry reread the letter. “Why do I feel like he’s warning me?”

“Because he is,” Hermione said, eyes narrowed. “That’s a threat wrapped in passive-aggression and peacock feathers. Don’t reply to him just y—”

But Harry was already scribbling a response in increasingly aggressive block letters.

Dear Mr. Malfoy,

Thank you for your kind note.
Please rest assured that my Hogwarts education remains intact, despite repeated attempts by certain aristocratic fossils to derail it.
PS: I hear wand polish is still a non-deductible tax. Tragic.
Warmly,
Harry Potter

Harry paused for a moment, thinking. He could imagine Aunt Petunia leaning over his shoulder if she were here, saying "Add a post-postscript. Something about the Ministry's fashion budget. Or those hair extensions." 

Harry then added with a flourish:

PPS: How’s the platinum ponytail, by the way? Must be exhausting carrying that much ego on your head.

Petunia was halfway through Chapter Six of “Consent, Contracts, and Culpability: The Legal Mechanisms Behind Magical Tournaments," when her fireplace coughed up emerald flames.

Harry’s face appeared, grim and sooty. “I need to talk.”

Petunia didn’t look up. “If this is about the owl droppings on the porch, you’re on mop duty as soon as you come back from that madhouse of a school.” 

“No,” Harry said. “I’m serious, I’m here to talk about the Tournament.”

She blinked. “Oh, you mean the Child Endangerment Olympics?" 

Harry ran a hand through his hair. “They’re treating me like I’m some arrogant attention-seeker. Like I wanted this. Like I put my name into the goblet." 

Petunia raised a brow slyly. “You didn’t?”

“Of course not! I didn’t even go near it! You know that!" 

“Then congratulations!" She said, standing up. "Because if you had, your name never would've come out. The Goblet binds only when it perceives genuine intent and magical consent, not just verbal.”

“And I didn’t intend anything!”

“No,” she said, flipping open a red-tabbed folder labeled "Magical Contracts & Other Legalized Suicides." “You didn’t. Which means someone else entered you while mimicking your magical intent.”

“Wait,” said Harry. “Is that possible?”

“Only if they know you frighteningly well and are terrifyingly powerful,” said Petunia. “So, either Dumbledore’s gone completely senile and theatrical — not impossible — or someone else forged your signature on the universe’s most legally binding death waiver.”

Harry dropped into the armchair across from her. “But the Goblet’s supposed to detect fraud.”

Petunia snorted. “Please, the Goblet is centuries old. It was designed to detect the intent of people who still thought bathing once a fortnight was edgy. Its security measures are practically Paleo-wizardic.”

Harry swallowed. “So… this wasn’t a prank. It was literally identity theft on a magical soul level." 

"Precisely," said Petunia. "They knew enough about you, your power, your psychology, to fake your magical will, or at least bypass the system. Magically catfished a medieval death-cup. And the minute your name came out, it triggered a strategic and automatic magical contract. No appeals. No reversals. Just a ticking countdown to your likely dismemberment.”

A beat passed.

Then Harry said, “Great. What do I even do now?" 

“You survive,” she said. “You pay attention. You don’t trust anyone just because they’re in a staff robe or carrying a clipboard. And for Merlin’s sake—”

She leaned close to the fire.

“Keep an eye on Moody. That flask isn’t just a prop, and his twitchy eye isn’t from a lack of sleep. I'm telling you something’s off, and it’s not just his godawful manners." 

Harry frowned. “But he’s… he's meant to be one of the good ones.”

“So was Crouch,” she said coldly. “And his son was rotting in prison for horrific crimes, until one day he vanished entirely."

She handed him a file, this one blue-tabbed, with the heading Historical Precedents: Disguises, Deceit, and Duplicity at Hogwarts. One of the names was triple circled in glaring red ink. 

Subject: Barty Crouch Jr.
Status: Deceased (officially)
Imprisoned: Azkaban, 1981
Cause of Death: Dementor-administered (disputed)
Recent Reports: Unconfirmed sightings near Albania

He blinked. “Wait, Crouch has a son?”

“Had,” said Petunia. “It’s in the Prophet’s archives. Sent it to your friend Hermione, she's sharp as a tack. They covered it up, of course. Family shame. And then the boy conveniently ‘died' in Azkaban,' of course." 

“…You don't think—”

The fire suddenly flared green again, and another letter appeared.

But this one wasn’t from Lucius. It was with official Ministry wax and smelled faintly of burnt ozone.

Harry caught it before it hit the hearth and Petunia's lips pursed. 

He unrolled it.

To: Miss Petunia Dursley
From: The Department of Magical Compliance
Classification: Eyes Only

Meddling Muggles tend to vanish, Miss Dursley. We suggest you return to your gardening. 

Chapter Text

It started, as most things in Harry’s life did lately, with insomnia and existential dread.

He lay flat on his back in bed at Gryffindor Tower, staring at the hangings like they owed him rent. In his hand was a copy of the Ministry’s owl-posted letter to Petunia Dursley, complete with red wax and the kind of embossed threat only bureaucrats and Death Eaters would find entertaining.  “Meddling Muggles tend to vanish, Miss Dursley. We suggest you return to your gardening.”

That was it. No signature or seal, just the lingering stench of implication. He reread it until the ink swam.

In his head, her last words from their talk replayed: “Once you know you’re a pawn, Harry, you stop playing like one. You flip the board.”

For once, maybe he was listening.

"And for Merlin's Sake, keep an eye on Moody. That flask isn’t just a prop, and his twitchy eye isn’t from a lack of sleep. I'm telling you something’s off."

By Wednesday, Harry had catalogued the routine:

• Sip before breakfast.
  
  
• Sip at the start of every class.
  
  
• Sip before duels.
  
  
• Sip after saying the word “Unforgivable.”
  
  

Once, during lunch, Harry could’ve sworn he saw Moody refilling it, a blink-and-you’d-miss-it pour behind a stack of toast racks. And whatever he was topping it off with definitely wasn’t pumpkin juice. Hermione called it “confirmation bias" and Ron called it "a weird bloody hobby, mate."

Harry just kept watching. By Thursday morning, he wasn’t even pretending not to stare anymore.

He was halfway through a tragically dry piece of toast that might as well been cardboard when it happened. 

Across the Great Hall, Moody — or “Moody” — tilted back his flask with the same practiced ease. Same angle, same grip, like a man who’d trained muscle memory into a ritual. 

But this time, Harry caught it. A trickle, barely visible, slid down the seam of the flask and gleamed in the morning light. Not golden like Firewhisky or pumpkin juice, or watery like tea, or the ink-black like the coffee Hagrid had once made that was so hot it melted a cup. 

It was beige. Suspiciously beige. And that was the last straw.

Harry stood up so suddenly Ron nearly inhaled his kipper.

“Another theory?” muttered Ron. 

“Be back in three sips,” Harry replied.

He timed it perfectly. Slipped through the milling post-breakfast traffic and bent to “tie his shoe” beside Moody’s chair. Then, in one fluid motion, he snapped a napkin out from the breakfast pile, swiped it across the drop with the instincts of a honed Seeker, and vanished back to the Gryffindor table.

He held it up. The beige liquid looked faintly frothy and glistened in a way that suggested it was never meant for human consumption. Then, he leaned forward to catch the scent, only to be completely thrown back. Because it was the edge of something acrid, vaguely metallic, and a long-forgotten memory. 

In fact, it smelled suspiciously close to something he’d once sniffed years ago in a second-floor bathroom, when Hermione had brewed that potion, thick and steaming and vile. But he couldn’t say for certain. 

Harry needed confirmation. He needed someone who hated him just enough to tell the truth.

Unfortunately, that meant Snape.

The dungeon office smelled like dead things marinated in despair.

Snape sat behind his desk, reading a stained tome titled Advanced Alchemical Catastrophes Vol. III. He looked up with the kind of expression that could curdle milk from across the castle.

“Potter,” he said slowly, “to what do I owe this unforgivable intrusion into my afternoon malaise?”

Harry stepped forward, holding the napkin like it was radioactive. “I need your help.”

There was a silence so thick it felt like it required a knife to cut. Preferably a cursed one.

Snape blinked, once. Slowly.

“Is this a hallucination?” he said. “Has Longbottom finally exploded something potent enough to unmoor me from reality?”

“No,” Harry said through gritted teeth. “I need your help… sir.”

Snape leaned back, arching a brow.

“Look,” said Harry desperately, “I’ll give you-”

Snape cut him off, sneering. “Like father, like son. Bargaining your way through mediocrity—”

He stopped. Because Potter wasn’t smirking or posturing as his dear father would’ve. No, he was standing very still, eyes narrowed, lips pursed into a pinched line of thought, and for the briefest, most disorienting second, he looked nothing like James Potter. 

And everything like Petunia Evans Dursley.

It hit Snape like a cauldron to the head, because how could he have not realized sooner? Suddenly, he was back in Spinner’s End. And if Lily was there, her nosy sister was always close by, circling like a judgmental vulture. That pinched face. That tight, clipped voice. And her unrelenting suspicion of everything from sugar content to sock fibers.

And here it was, in Potter! In his very expression, the relentless pestering, the way he dissected people now with disapproving eyes like he was auditing their choices.

He wasn’t just his father’s son. No, he was something far worse. He was his aunt’s nephew.

Snape stared at him for a long, pained second. Then, with a resigned sneer, he plucked the napkin from Harry’s hand using the tongs reserved for venomous slug remains. 

“Well, Potter,” he muttered, examining the stains. “Let’s say hypothetically it is Polyjuice. That means someone is impersonating someone else. Which is illegal, in case your Muggle education was as underwhelming as your usual essays suggest.” 

“So it is Polyjuice?” Harry said eagerly.

Snape sneered again. “It’s Polyjuice. Of course it’s Polyjuice. That flask practically reeks of burnt treacle and ground beetle shells. Hardly subtle. Did your aunt teach you nothing about discretion?”

“She taught me to ask the right questions,” Harry said coolly. “Eventually.”

He turned on his heel and left the dungeon before his expression could slip, the one Aunt Petunia used to call “suspiciously pleased.” Harry had meant to tell Ron and Hermione after dinner, in the common room, where Snape wasn’t likely to slither out from behind a tapestry.

He didn’t make it that far. Hermione came barreling down the corridor, a thick file clutched to her chest. Ron jogged behind, panting like he’d just escaped a Howler.

“Harry—wait—” Hermione halted and thrust the folder at him. “You were right to suspect something. Petunia sent this.”

Inside: two clipped Prophet articles, both bristling with sticky notes and handwriting in purple ink.

The first article was old, dated 1981.
“SON OF MINISTRY OFFICIAL SENTENCED FOR TORTURE”

Hermione tapped it. “Barty Crouch Jr. Sentenced to Azkaban and public trial held with no appeal. But look." She flipped to the note attached:
“Officially listed as ‘deceased’ six months later. No body or obituary. Then his name vanishes completely from the Ministry records in July, nearly fourteen years later.”

The second was shorter, a leaked Ministry memo. “Auror Alastor Moody has not submitted a single field report or wand log since late July." 
Petunia had circled the date and scrawled: “Only the real Moody could’ve filed these. So where’s he?”

 They met behind the tapestry near the third floor.

“We need to trap him,” Hermione said. “But it has to be airtight.”

“We'll act a couple minutes before the Polyjuice starts wearing off,” Harry said. “Hermione, you and I will hit ‘Colloportus’ if he tries to leave. Ron, you do the third.”

“I’m not great at timing—”

“You’re good at shouting under pressure,” said Hermione. “That’s all we need.”

They all nodded like soldiers about to breach a bunker. Ron cracked his knuckles with a little too much gusto. Hermione rehearsed the counter-Potions incantation like it was a prayer. And Harry adjusted the decoy spell Dobby helped enchant onto his sleeve, a soft-focus yet direct burst that would crack the flask open. 

“It’s showtime,” whispered Harry. 

“Today,” Moody growled, limping to the front of the classroom, “we discuss the Cruciatus Curse again.” 

He slammed a jar on the desk. Inside: a beetle the size of a knut, legs twitching like it knew what was coming.

Neville went visibly pale.

“Torture,” Moody announced with great enthusiasm. “Illegal. Unforgivable. Educational!”

“Professor?”

Moody’s magical eye swiveled. “Yes, Potter?”

Harry stood. His voice was light and curious. “Do you always drink from that flask during lessons, or just when you’re bored?”

The silence was immediate and Moody froze, flask halfway to his lips. “Bit paranoid, aren’t we?” he said, gravel in his voice. 

Harry stepped forward, eyes on the flask. “But paranoia’s what you preach, isn’t it?” he said mildly. “Constant vigilance? Hard to argue with your own motto, after all."

Moody’s face darkened. “Watch it, Potter.” 

“I did watch. Yesterday you walked past the Vanishing Cabinet and didn’t even flinch. Real Moody would’ve hexed it shut. You’re not him.”

The class had gone dead quiet, and Hermione stood too. “You’re drinking Polyjuice.”

Moody’s nostrils flared and his hand twitched towards his cloak. 

“You’ve got maybe two minutes before it runs out,” she said coolly. “The signs all match. Tremors. Magical eye drifting. Voice straining. That’s why you keep that flask near, not because you’re paranoid or dehydrated. You’re dosing.” 

“You're bluffing.”

“We’re really not, though,” said Ron. "Gig's up, Professor." 

Harry whispered, wand raised: “Dissendus Potio.” A micro-beam of counter-spell ricocheted off the flask and it cracked, spilling a drop onto Neville’s paper. Moody was already lunging towards the door.

“Colloportus,” said Harry.

“Alohomora!” barked Moody.

“Colloportus,” echoed Hermione.

“ALAOHOMORA!"

“COLLOPORTUS! ” Ron shouted, both delighted and terrified.

And back and forth they went in a game of magical tug-of-war, sealing the door every time he tried to open it, wands flashing in staccato rhythm.

One minute left. 

Harry gripped his wand tighter. The room shivered, and for a second, the air went strange, like heat rising off stone.

Moody staggered back, choking. And then… like a wax dummy melting, the transformation began. 

 His scars twisted, liquefied and his nose retracted. The magical eye popped loose and skittered across the floor like a beetle escaping the jar. The real eye beneath it was dull and wild. Moody collapsed on the ground as his shoulders shrank, and his hair turned mousy.

“Bloody hell,” said Ron, jaw slack. 

“Well,” said Harry dryly, stepping forward with his wand still raised. “Class dismissed, I guess."

The next ten minutes were pure chaos. Several students were sobbing, while others had scrambled up onto their chairs like the floor might attack. One child threw up into Trevor the Toad’s tank.

And Barty Crouch Jr. writhed on the stone floor like a bug under a magnifying glass, limbs jerking, eyes wild, Polyjuice sludge dripping down his collar like spoiled soup. His real voice emerged at last, rasping, high, and unmistakably deranged.

“Thought you were clever, didn’t you?” he spat, foaming slightly. “Thought you could sniff me out like a bloodhound in a school tie—”

Harry didn’t lower his wand. “You impersonated a professor for nearly a year.”

“But I improved the syllabus at least, didn’t I?”

Ron made a strangled noise. “You tortured animals.”

“Oh, please. You children learned something from it.”

Professor McGonagall burst through the door with the force of an oncoming locomotive. One look at the twitching form on the ground, and her nostrils flared like a bull. “Merlin’s bloody bloomers,” she muttered.

“Language, Minerva,” came Dumbledore’s voice from behind her, sounding mildly amused, until he stepped in and saw. Then he froze.

Albus Dumbledore, Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards, and usually unshakable in the face of interdimensional peril… swayed on his feet.

“Barty Crouch… Junior.”

Crouch let out a bubbling giggle. “Still easier to impersonate than Dad, I’ll say that.”

McGonagall turned to Dumbledore. “Alastor?”

“Locked in a trunk,” said Harry grimly. “We think. Bottom compartment, probably sedated.”

Dumbledore nodded, already moving. “Minerva, the Aurors. Now. Filius, seal the room. Poppy will be on standby.”

He turned back. “And someone get me that flask. ”

The students were herded out of the classroom like it was a fire drill at a troll shelter, as whispers raced faster than the owls currently shrieking overheard.

“They say Moody exploded into a different man—”

“No, no, he molted . Like a Death Eater lizard—”

“I heard he’s Crouch’s son , thought he was dead—”

“That Muggle woman warned them! The scary one with the clipboard and the flask!”

“Is she here?! Can she replace Trelawney?”

Down at the Ministry, a memo flew like a cursed paper airplane through the Department of Magical Catastrophes and landed squarely on Amelia Bones’ desk. It read: "Priority Red Alert: Unauthorized Barty Crouch activity, Hogwarts compromised. Also, a Muggle may have solved it first. Please advise."

Amelia read it once. Read it twice. Then she leaned back in her chair, and muttered, “Well, bugger.”

Cornelius Fudge was not having a good day. Three Squibs had resigned mid-cleaning shift. The press was sniffing around Hogwarts like a Kneazle in heat. And worst of all, someone had leaked a photograph of Petunia Dursley standing over Barty Crouch Jr. with a clipboard, looking victorious.

Fudge slammed his teacup down. “We need to get ahead of this.”

Amelia Bones nodded slowly. “Then I suggest we start telling the truth."

Fudge blinked, thinking he'd misheard. “The what?” 

“You know, the thing where we say what actually happened,” said Amelia. “We have a compromised Triwizard Tournament, You-Know-Who’s favorite errand boy posing as a professor, and a Muggle woman with the receipts.” 

“Or,” Fudge said, eyes glinting, “we make her disappear.”

The Triwizard Tournament had been canceled.

Officially, the Ministry cited “unspecified international protocol violations” and “security oversights,” which was code for, Petunia Dursley walked into a castle and dismantled an entire magical bureaucratic ecosystem with nothing but a clipboard and common sense.

Unofficially, the truth was harder to deny. A forged Goblet, tampered spells, and a cursed artifact posing as tradition. An impersonation of a Defense professor with a drinking problem and only one real eye. The Prophet printed a half-hearted retraction. The French were livid. The Durmstrangs left without shaking hands.

Harry walked along the Great Lake now, his cloak open to the breeze and his shoulders loose. He was smiling—actually smiling—as if something heavy had finally been lifted from his chest, because, miraculously, he’d managed to dodge his canon end-of-term trauma event. 

Crouch had been caught. Sirius? Clear and vindicated, sitting smugly in Hogsmeade now with an Order badge and a ridiculous hat. Voldemort was still weak—probably sulking in Albania or a bog or wherever he brooded nowadays. Petunia had apparently torn through the Ministry like a sarcastic hurricane with a clipboard, and for once, no one was dead. Not Cedric. Not him. Not even Snape, though Harry wasn’t particularly upset about that close call.

So naturally, that’s when it all went to hell.

“P–P–Potter?”

He turned. She was half-hidden behind a tree. One of the quiet ones from Ravenclaw, if he remembered right. Mousy brown hair in a too-tight braid and thick lenses. Always seemed to be five seconds behind the conversation and shrinking from sunlight.

"Astoria Wren, right?" Harry offered politely.

She stepped forward, wringing her hands. “Y–Yes. Um. I—I just wanted to say…  I–I thought it was–was very brave what you did this year. With th-the exposing Moody and everything.” 

Harry gave a modest shrug. “Thanks. Honestly, I just followed my instincts. Or maybe my aunt’s voice in my head.”

She nodded too fast. Then reached into her pocket and held something out, hands trembling. “I made this. It’s silly. Just a charm. For p-protection. Not for the tournament, obviously, since it didn’t happen. But for… wh-whatever comes next.”

It was a small carved stone, smooth and gray like a river pebble. Her expression flickered for a fraction of a second, something Harry should've clocked instantly after Pettrigrew, after Moody-not-Moody, after Petunia’s warnings. But right now, his guard was down, and Merlin, he was exhausted.  

So he reached out to take it. 

The world didn’t explode so much as swap out. One moment, Harry was gripping the stone in a burst of light, then the next he was on his back, airless, the ground clawing up to meet him.

Gravel. Dead grass. The sour-slick chill of dark magic old as bones. He coughed up fumes and sprung up, wand already in hand. Too slow this time. 

Astoria Wren stood with her back to him, no longer hunched or blinking behind thick glasses. Her braid had come loose in the win, and the stutter was gone like a bad joke. She didn’t even look at him as she spoke.

“You shouldn’t have touched it,” she said, clipped and clear. “I thought a year of Moody shouting about ‘constant vigilance’ might’ve left a dent.”

Harry leveled his wand, panic coiling. “He used you too, I should have known.”

She smiled faintly. “No, he trained me. And Moody always did say to curse first and talk later.”

Then she bowed as the air curdled.

And Voldemort himself rose like rot, slow and inevitable, staining and spreading upwards from the cauldron. The very idea of a man, shredded and badly reassembled. His corpse-like skin looked waxy as if wrung out, sun-dried for a millennium, and reluctantly stapled back together. 

"Miss Wren has done admirably," he said, voice high and brittle. “She played her part, and you played yours, Potter.”

Harry stood, wand raised, mouth dry. “What is this? Another performance? Bit dramatic, even for you.”

“I do enjoy drama,” Voldemort said. “And death. They pair quite nicely.”

He turned to Astoria with something almost like fondness. “She’s going to be very useful in the Ministry someday. They always underestimate the stutterers.” 

Harry swallowed and looked around. “Well, nice spot you’ve got here for a chat. Bit dead for my taste though.”

Voldemort's smile didn’t reach his eyes. “How charming. Your mother’s shield, your father’s legacy, and your aunt’s…venom, perhaps.”

Harry froze. “You know about—?”

“Oh, Petunia,” Voldemort drawled, circling him like a snake poised to strike. “What a phenomenon. A mere Muggle managed to disrupt centuries of magical complacency with nothing more than municipal paperwork and an emotional support water flask.”

He leaned in, lips curling. “She’s made quite the mess, hasn’t she? Months of my hard work and careful planning all dismantled by a thermos and clipboard. Almost admirable if it wasn’t so annoying.” 

“So is this your idea of revenge?” asked Harry tightly. “Because she exposed you as the fragile little fraud you are?”

“Oh, Potter,” Voldemort said silkily, “this is just fallback. You think I only had one plan? That I would stake everything on a diary, or a snake, or some trembling, half-possessed professor?”

He gestured lazily around him. “A proper villain always has his backups. And after Moody, I learned not to entrust plans to half-mad men with false legs and drinking problems. Or rely on Death Eaters rats who scurry away at the first sign of trouble. I certainly learned not to underestimate clever little girls with forgettable names either.” 

Harry’s fingers twitched on his wand. “And you lured me here for another monologue? Or am I supposed to duel you without back up again?”

“Neither,” Voldemort purred. “I brought you here to watch the light leave your eyes. You see, Potter, you thought you were safe and that’s always when it hurts the most.”

Harry tilted his head. “You rehearsed that line, or did it just slither out? You talk like a Bond villain. All speech and no follow-through.” 

Voldemort’s eyes gleamed with anger at this quip, unblinking. 

A beat of silence. Then—

“I’m going to kill you now,” said Voldemort simply. 

“Yeah, that's what you always say. Bit like a broken record at this point."

“You really believed your Muggle aunt would be here to save your skin again?” Voldemort said softly. “She’s gone. Silenced.” 

Harry’s breath hitched. “What?”

Voldemort cackled. “Now there it is, the moment the light begins to leave your eyes. Finally. Let’s just say…Fudge got tired of playing second fiddle to a Muggle housewife with a terrifying grasp of public records. You think I’m clever, Potter? Oh, I am, but this was never just a one-man job.”

He stepped closer.

“The corruption runs deep. All those letters and warnings. Do you know how easy it is to bribe a bureaucrat, Potter? I was welcomed back with open arms by men who feared Petunia’s clipboard more than my wand. They let me do this.”

Harry’s world tilted.

“Oh, don’t pout,” Voldemort whispered. “Might as well tell you, you’ll be dead in an hour. Fudge knew. Dawlish signed the parchment.  Bones—ah, dear Bones—she hesitated, but not enough. And once she kept quiet, the rest fell like dominoes. And Astoria?” 

He turned, admiring her. “She’s a Ministry darling. A little puppet with razor wire for strings.”

“You’re insane,” Harry croaked out. 

Voldemort chuckled. “I’m patient.”

Chapter Text

Voldemort tilted his head with something like curiosity, or hunger. His eyes glowed faintly, like embers that had forgotten they were supposed to burn out. Around them, gravestones loomed crooked, and the cold pressed against Harry’s ribs like invisible fingers. The only sound was wind and the occasional rustle of something dead reconsidering.

“You’re curious,” Voldemort said softly, voice slick with mockery, “about your aunt. How she’s holding up.”

Harry didn’t answer. His legs were tense, ready.

“I said she's been silenced,” Voldemort continued, amused. “Not killed. I’m not barbaric. The Ministry has procedures for troublesome Muggles. Legal and tidy. She’s quite safe. In her... fortress.”

A spike of fear slid through Harry’s ribs. Fortress?

His wand hand was twitching. His mouth, as usual, had no interest in self-preservation.

Harry gritted his teeth. “You always monologue this much, or are you stalling because you don’t know what the prophecy actually says?”

“So you do know the prophecy,” Voldemort murmured. “Interesting.”

He stepped closer, voice dropping to a whisper that cut like a knife.

“Tell me, boy, what’s your interpretation? What’s your role in all this?”

Harry snorted. “Oh, you mean the one Trelawney delivered like she was auditioning for the world’s most tragic soap opera? Yeah, sounds like the perfect excuse for your paranoia.”

Voldemort’s sneer deepened. “Enough talk.”

He flicked his wand sharply. “Avada Kedavra!”

At the same instant, Harry roared, “Expelliarmus!”

Their spells collided with a burst of golden light. A shimmering thread of magic sparked between their wands, crackling with raw power.

Faint voices echoed in Harry’s mind—

“Take the portkey. Run.”

He didn’t hesitate. With a sharp flick of his wand, Astoria was Stunned, her eyes glazed and hands loosening. 

Pain bloomed white behind Harry’s eyes as he dove for the twisted piece of broken locket that slipped from her fingers and clattered onto the cold stone. His fist closed around it just as the spell hit his shoulder, and then—
WHOOSH.
Color and sound tore apart.

Madam Pomfrey was shouting something, but it rang underwater. Harry’s whole body buzzed with leftover magic and adrenaline. Ron hovered like an agitated house elf, and Dumbledore was there too, silent and too still.

But none of it mattered.

He grabbed Dumbledore’s sleeve.

“She’s been silenced,” Harry rasped. “Aunt Petunia. He said—fortress—Ministry—fortress—”

And then, for the first time in twelve hours, everything went black.

The train clattered pleasantly. Ron was asleep with his mouth open. Hermione was rereading Hogwarts, A History, possibly for emotional support. And Harry stared out the window, frowning faintly.

Petunia.

The name tugged at him like an unpicked thread.

His brow furrowed. There was a woman. A voice. Sarcastic, tight, always asking questions. Always interrupting when Dumbledore was being cryptic.

Uncle Vernon. Dudley. That was his family, right?

...Wasn’t it?

He closed his eyes, a headache forming. The memory of a letter written in cruel, looping cursive haunted him. Her voice in his head—“Use your head, Harry”—was getting quieter. Almost like it had never been there.

A silence had slipped in. Not forgetting, not quite. Just... un-remembering.

He rubbed his temples.

Petunia who?

Somewhere beneath the Ministry of Magic, in a place too deep for maps and too forgotten for regulations, Petunia Dursley sat in a chair designed for confession.

There were no chains. That would be too honest.

Instead: a minimalist room with polite, interrogative charm. Pale lighting, soft walls, chairs ergonomically cursed to keep you from getting comfortable. Overhead was a faint hum—not quite audible, just persistent enough to sandpaper your sanity without triggering magical ethics boards.

Petunia had been here for six hours. She hadn’t spoken in six.

Not out of fear, out of strategy.

They wanted her to break character, to flinch or babble or say something that could be filed away under “See? Mad as a Mandrake.”  But Petunia Dursley, née Evans, had once sat through a six-hour turkey dinner with Vernon’s boss’s wife and her conspiracy-theorist cousin who sold prepper bunkers. She had endured a discussion about Churchill faking his own death without blinking.

She could outlast a few wand-wielding interns.

She perched on the sterile cot—stiff, state-issued, probably spelled to log her blood pressure—and sipped the Ministry-provided tea with all the poise of a woman who once rejected a luncheon invitation from the Prime Minister’s wife.

It was, to her great resentment, excellent tea.

“Well,” she said aloud to no one. “At least the décor’s less medieval than Hogwarts.”

The enchanted walls remained silent. A rare show of intelligence.

The door hissed open, and a man stepped in. Robes like wilted curtains, balding scalp shaped like an abandoned crossword puzzle. He held a wand like it was a laser pointer he wasn’t quite qualified to use.

“Mrs. Petunia Dursley,” he intoned, clearly under the impression he was Very Important. “We are authorized to conduct a gentle… recalibration.”

She stared straight ahead, expression blank. Inside, her mind was clicking like clockwork.
Step 1: Don’t flinch.
Step 2: Count the exits.
Step 3: Exploit magical overconfidence.

They didn’t call it a prison.

Of course they didn’t. Wizards never called things what they were, except perhaps the Killing Curse, and that was mostly for branding purposes.

This was a “protective administrative holding site for citizens of interest.”  In practice, a fortress.
A stone behemoth squatting on the coast, half-swallowed by fog, cloaked in Disillusionment Charms, and branded with the Ministry’s latest acronym: S.I.L.E.N.C.E.
( Specialized Isolation of Liabilities and Emergent Nonconformist Civilian Entities. Petunia had read it upside-down while her assigned therapist blinked too slowly.)

The walls hummed like they had indigestion. Magic inlaid in the stone, layers of it with security wards, surveillance, and memory-dampeners.

The room they’d put her in had no sharp edges. Even the table was disturbingly rounded, as if someone had filed it down for a toddler prone to headbutting. The chairs were bolted to the floor. Not a book in sight, no quill, not even toothpaste with grit. Like a padded cell, furnished by IKEA.

She called it the Nursery.

There were no bars. That would be too barbaric. 

Just faintly buzzing containment fields and a ceilingless dome of enchanted gray sky that never stormed or darkened. It just hovered above her in passive-aggressive serenity. 

And it was clean, meticulously so. A spa for state-sanctioned inconvenience. But Petunia had stayed at spas before. They usually offered tea. This one gave her a pillow filled with repurposed owl feathers and the lingering sense that her thoughts were being monitored. 

A figure entered. Ministry robe and greying hair. Smiled like he’d studied human interaction from a pamphlet. “Mrs. Dursley. I’m here for your Weekly Cognitive Adjustment.”

Petunia stared. “Is that a euphemism for lobotomy, or just your bedside manner?”

He faltered. “You’re being monitored for residual magical contamination. We simply want to ensure you’re… compliant.”

“Oh, marvelous,” said Petunia. “You’ve locked me in a minimalist hellbox, denied me tea, and I’m assigned to a therapist who uses ‘compliant’ like it’s a compliment. When does the propaganda puff piece run in the Daily Prophet ?”

He gave her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You’ve been flagged as dangerous.”

Petunia gave a dry laugh. “For owning a typewriter and a brain?”

“For interfering in magical affairs. For aiding and abetting a known fugitive. For releasing classified documents. And for referring to Professor Dumbledore as—and I quote—‘a druidic hack with delusions of Gandalf.’”

“And I stand by that.”

The door clicked.

Enter Bellatrix Lestrange, part deranged opera singer, part Victorian taxidermy project.  Robes flowing, hair wild, black eyeliner streaking, lips twisted in something between a grin and a snarl.

“Auntie Muggle,” she purred.

“Ah,” said Petunia. “A discount dominatrix.”

“You think this is funny?”

Petunia raised an eyebrow. “Oh no. I think you are. Let me guess, you’re the emotional support sadist the Ministry brings in when their therapist doesn’t frighten people enough?”

Bellatrix stalked forward. “You’ve been very naughty. Helping Sirius. Interfering with our dear Crouch. Whispering into Potter’s little ear. Tsk, tsk.”

Petunia sipped her tea. “If you’re here to torture me, do be aware—I’ve already sat through eleven parent-teacher conferences at Smeltings. I’m immune.”

Bellatrix’s eye twitched.

“Does Sirius talk about me?” she asked, almost offhand.

Petunia raised an eyebrow. “Only when the restraining order gets updated.”

That earned her a backhand, quick and cruel, but Petunia didn’t cry out. She just steadied herself, blinked away the stars, and said, “Touchy. Was that supposed to be intimidation or some sort of bizarre foreplay? I can never tell with your lot.” 

Bellatrix leaned in close. “No one’s coming for you, Muggle. Not Potter. Not the Order. And certainly not Dumbledore .”

“Well, good,” said Petunia, smiling thinly. “The competent ones tend to keep their names off the guest list.”

Petunia dreamt that night.

She was in their old childhood garden in Cokeworth, under the birch tree. The swing creaked, half-hung on a rusted chain. Around them, wild marigolds swayed in the gentle breeze, and the sky was an odd shade of purple—heavy and warm, like a late summer afternoon that wouldn’t quite end.

Lily stood nearby, her hair loose and falling around her shoulders, her smile hesitant.

“You always hated that swing,” she said gently.

Petunia crossed her arms. “I hated that it made that awful squeaking noise.”

Lily smiled, sitting on the half-rotten wood. “You hated that I got to swing on it before you did.”

Petunia rolled her eyes. “Typical. You come back from the dead just to remind me of that.”

“I missed you,” said Lily. “Even when we didn’t get along.”

Petunia swallowed hard. “Well. You did get yourself blown up by a fascist snake cult.”

Lily laughed. “True.”

There was silence. Not uncomfortable, just old, like a well-worn book gathering dust.

Then Petunia asked, softly, “Is this real?”

“I don’t know,” Lily said. “Maybe it’s a dream. Maybe it’s not. But this matters, because you’re being forgotten.”

“Forgotten?”

Lily nodded. “They’re erasing you bit by bit. You’ve scared them. The Ministry doesn’t want you around, so they’re wiping you out, like you never existed.”

Petunia’s throat tightened. “So they’re trying to make sure I disappear, for good.”

“That’s why you need to get out, before it's too late. Before the paperwork is finalized.”

She cleared her throat. “Well, I suppose you’ll want me to fix it.”

“You’re already trying, Tune.”

Petunia’s throat tightened. She blinked rapidly. “I missed you too, Lily.”

Lily gave a tiny smile. It was devastating. “There’s a potion that can stop the memory-loss, even reverse it, maybe. But only one person can brew it properly. The old version, before the Ministry regulated it into useless sludge.”

Petunia scowled. “Don’t say it.”

“I have to.”

“Don’t you dare say it.”

“Severus.”

“Oh, bloody marvelous .” Petunia stood up, arms crossed. “You want me to go crawling to the same sallow-faced dungeon goblin who once called me a—”

“He’s the only one left who knows how.”

Petunia shot up in bed. The air in the old safehouse felt thinner than before. The wards were holding, but her grip on things wasn't, and she needed a plan.

Hours later in the Ministry fortress, Petunia counted precisely how long it took the guard to turn his back.

Two seconds.

She dropped the spoon she’d hidden in her sleeve. It clattered dramatically against the enchanted tile. The guard instinctively bent to pick it up—

And she struck. Right in the soft of the neck, sharp and fast. He crumpled like a failed soufflé.

“Recalibrate that , you bureaucratic meatball,” she muttered.

She moved like a woman possessed. Rummaged through drawers with the guard’s brass keys stacked with her confiscated belongings, all relabeled as contraband. A scorched kettle tagged HAZARDOUS ARTIFACT — MUGGLE ORIGIN. A locked jewelry box stamped INSPECTED FOR CURSES. Torn letters from Sirius filed under UNAUTHORIZED OWL POST. 

And then a Ministry folder thick with documents, stamped in shrieking red:
OBLIVIATE AUTHORIZED – MUGGLE CONTACT, CLASSIFIED LEVEL 7.

“Charming,” muttered Petunia. 

Finally, under the velvet bottom in her jewelry box, she found it: a small, cracked square of mirror. The two-way shard Sirius had given her months ago.

“For contingency plans,” he’d said, after she’d shown him the Ministry warning letter. “In case you stop being amusing and start being dangerous to them.”

She tapped it once. Nothing.

Then again, harder. “Sirius Black, if you’re not dead again, pick up.”

The mirror shimmered. For a moment, a pale, gaunt face blinked into view, with disheveled hair, and tie askew like he’d been asleep or drunk or both. His eyes were blank.

“Who are you?”

Petunia flinched. “Oh for— Don’t you dare start forgetting now.”

“Do I know you?”

She took a breath. “I’m the woman who threw a brick at a Dementor for your godson. I’m the Muggle who told you the Ministry was playing chess with children. I’m the reason you’re not rotting in Azkaban. That ring a bell?”

Sirius blinked. His hand touched his temple. “Petunia…”

“Yes. Brilliant. Five points to Gryffindor. You owe me a drink once I get out and a favor right now. Listen, I need you to find Severus Snape.”

“Absolutely not.”

Petunia’s tone dropped. “Harry’s in danger, and his memory is being tampered with. The Ministry erased something and everyone’s forgetting me. Lily came to me in a dream. Don’t argue. I’ve dealt with worse than ghost-sisters.”

Sirius looked unsure. “Snape won’t— He doesn’t listen to anyone. He barely—”

“Tell him it’s about the old version of the Forgetfulness Draft. Tell him it’s about Lily. And tell him,” she added, voice tightening, “that Petunia Evans said he owes her. Because she’s still here, remembering — and she shouldn’t be the only one.”

Sirius’s hand went to his temple. “You’re… serious.”

“No, you’re Sirius,” she shot back, “and you have ten minutes before your brain turns into Ministry-approved applesauce.”

The mirror flickered. “I’ll find him.”

Chapter Text

Petunia didn’t look up from her cot as the door creaked open. “Finally decided to put me out of my misery?”

The Ministry escort stepped aside, revealing black robes, sallow skin, a face like vinegar left out too long. 

He was standing still, staring at her, and not sneering . A sure sign of psychic damage.

Petunia stood across from him, papers fanned out like Tarot cards of doom. 

“This one,” she said, tapping a memo. “Proof the Ministry tampered with memories after Voldemort’s return. Including Harry’s. And yours.”

Snape didn’t blink.

“You weren’t the target,” she added smoothly. “Just collateral damage. They flagged your memories of me as unreliable and scrubbed the overlap. Standard paranoia protocol, it’s all in this charmingly dystopian subsection.”

His voice cut through, sharp as frost. “I know what I remember.”

Petunia raised a brow. “Do you remember me?”

He sneered, the motion slow, deliberate. “The horsey Muggle who thought sarcasm could substitute for a soul. Lily’s sister. Evans.”

Petunia leaned forward, eyes narrowing.  “I need a counteracting potion. Something that’ll hit the Ministry’s memory charms where it hurts. You know the recipe.”

“You’re asking for a Class-3 mnemonic reversal agent,” he said flatly. “Illegal to possess, let alone use. And catastrophic in untrained hands.”

“Good thing you’re trained, then.” 

“I don’t brew for Muggles.” 

 You brewed for Voldemort,” she said flatly. “Let’s not pretend you ever had standards."

He exhaled slowly through his nose.  “Let me clarify. I’m not in the habit of taking commissions from women like you.” 

“You’re in the habit of sulking outside Order meetings and cosplaying double agent until your spine gives out,” she said coolly. “You owe Lily for that whole snake cult phase. You’ll never repay it. But this is a start.”

Snape's mouth opened, then shut. He glanced at the guard behind the door, flicked his wand without looking. A muffling spell.

Then: “I’ll need a list of what they tampered with. The base ingredients are restricted.”

Petunia handed him another memo. “I marked everything. And I have clearance — both legal and otherwise. Just say my name, and half of Knockturn Alley will clear the way.” 

The new Ministry banner flapped from the rafters like a bureaucratic bat:
“MAGICAL DECENCY AND CIVIL ORDER INITIATIVE – HOGWARTS IS WATCHING.”

At the staff table, Dolores Jane Umbridge sat primly in the center, a pastel toad in full bloom. She was flanked by Professors with the resigned air of people who had lost a vote and possibly their will to live.  Her smile could curdle bone marrow.

Floating in the air above each House table were embroidered rules, drifting like poisonous doilies:

• “WAND POINTING IS A PRIVILEGE”
  
  
• “SPEAK ONLY WHEN SPOKEN TO”
  
  
• “LAUGHTER MUST BE PERMITTED IN ADVANCE”
  
  

A chart titled “MORAL FORTITUDE INDEX” had been mounted beside the Great Hall’s entrance. It listed student names by column, with glowing amber beads climbing and falling like a slow-moving, ever-judging elevator.

“After recent tragic events,” Umbridge chirped as she clinked her spoon against her teacup— which disturbingly featured kittens in judge’s wigs — “we must return to decency . Hogwarts has allowed far too much… independent thinking. ”

A stunned hush. 

“Infractions will now be met with extra hours in the Reflection Dungeon . I have reinstated frog dissections for character building. Inter-house mingling has been officially banned, and unauthorized friendships will be reviewed in the future, of course, for influence contamination.” 

She stood, smoothing her cardigan with the loving care of someone polishing an executioner’s axe, and made her way toward the Gryffindor table.

“Today, Mr. Potter,” she simpered, her voice thick with saccharine threat, “you will receive an extra wellness tonic with your pumpkin juice. Courtesy of the Ministry.”

Harry accepted the goblet but said nothing. His mind was blank—a foggy haze since last summer, like something had moved out and left the lights on.

Next to Harry, Fred Weasley squinted at the Moral Fortitude Index chart.

“Well, I’m officially a disgrace,” he said, as his amber bead dropped three slots for “ongoing sarcasm.” 

“Still nowhere as bad as Zacharias Smith,” George pointed out, gesturing to the very top of the chart. “That swot’s been voluntarily attending every single one of Umbridge’s lectures on ‘Proper Decorum in Magical Correspondence.’”

“Psychopath,” muttered Fred. 

A first-year behind them whispered too loudly, “What’s ‘seditious conduct’ mean?”

Umbridge turned at once, lips pressed together like a trap about to snap. “It means,” she cooed, “someone was asking questions they shouldn’t.”

Across the room, Snape leaned against a stone pillar behind the staff table, arms crossed, watching Harry drink the juice the way one might watch a carriage veer towards a cliff.

It was too sweet. Almost syrupy. Wrong.

Harry blinked. The candlelight flickered overhead, flames pulsing in time with the pounding behind his eyes. He lowered the goblet and stared at it like it had personally insulted his ancestors.

“Harry?” Hermione leaned in.

He didn’t look at her. “Something’s wrong.”

Ron paused mid-chew. “More than usual?”

Harry didn’t answer. The world tilted—then clicked back into place with terrifying clarity.
Like a puzzle box unlocking all at once.

His voice came out hollow. “I remember.”

Hermione sat bolt upright. “What?”

Harry stood so fast his bench screeched against the floor.
“I REMEMBER EVERYTHING.”

The Hall froze and dozens of heads turned. Even the staff stared.

Ron gawked. “Mate—?”

“Mr. Potter, sit,” Umbridge ordered crisply. “We have not yet sung the Ministry Loyalty Anthem.”

But Harry was already storming out of the Great Hall, fists clenched, fury radiating off him in waves.

And behind him, the Moral Fortitude Index stuttered. His name blinked amber, then red. 

Then plummeted clean off the chart.

Her classroom still smelled of sickly-sweet perfume and framed kittens watching in eternal judgment.

“Mr. Potter,” she trilled,  folding her stubby hands like a tax collector. “We were just reviewing the Ministry-approved definitions of subversive terminology. Can you remind the class what we call those who spread dangerous lies that undermine wizarding unity?”

Harry sat, stiffly. 

“Yes,” he said evenly. “The Ministry.”

The room stopped breathing.

Umbridge’s left eye twitched. “I beg your pardon?”

He met her gaze, calm as still water. “I said, the Ministry. The same people who erased my memories of a murderer coming back. And of my aunt.”

“Ten points from Gryffindor, for conspiracy theories,” she snapped. “And detention—”

Harry raised a hand. “Hypothetically speaking, Professor—”

She blinked, caught off guard.

“If a woman with a face only a boggart could love manipulates student memories, consorts with known Death Eaters, and insists on tea and lace during interrogations—”

He shrugged like it was obvious. “Would she technically qualify as a Dark Creature? Asking for a friend.”

Dean let out a strangled cough. Neville was white as chalk.

Umbridge stood. Her face had turned a brilliant shade of bureaucratic beetroot.  “Inquisitorial Squad—”

But the door creaked open, and a gust of icy wind cut through. Snape swept in, robes flaring like a threat.

He scanned the room once, then zeroed in on Harry. “I’ll take it from here.”

Umbridge’s mouth flapped in protest. “You will do no such—!”

“This,” Snape said, voice razor-soft, “is now a matter of potions contamination. Which, as you know, falls under my jurisdiction. Side effects, sudden recollections—Potter is clearly hallucinating.”

She sputtered again but Snape turned to Harry, voice low. “Come.”

Snape descended the winding stair with all the enthusiasm of a dementor at a PTA bake sale. His robes flared with practiced disdain, and his expression soured further when he caught sight of Sirius lounging, boots brazenly on the table.

“I see subtlety is still dead,” Snape muttered.

“Nice to see you too, sunshine,” Sirius drawled. 

Snape ignored him and slid a slender vial across the table. The liquid inside shimmered a silvery blue, like bottled lightning.

Sirius eyed the vial long and hard. “You’re telling me this isn’t just Ministry-approved snake oil?”

“Recollection Draught,” Snape said shortly. “A classified counteragent. Originally designed by the Department of Mysteries to break through high-level memory modification spells. Rare, restricted, and deeply unpleasant. Petunia insisted.”

Sirius turned the vial in his hand, examining it further. “And you just happened to have this lying around?” 

Snape sniffed, long-suffering. “I was taught to brew it by the Dark Lord,” he said, in the same weary tone someone might use to admit they once worked a dodgy stint in a Knockturn Alley apothecary.

Sirius raised a brow. “Naturally.”

Snape continued, voice clipped. “Back in my... earlier allegiances, he used the spell frequently. On Muggles who asked too many questions. Or on Ministry officials with inconvenient morals. Even the families of certain students. This was his method of choice to correct interference, an absurdly powerful memory binder. Not just forgetfulness —it binds up memories of that person so completely they become repulsive to even think about.”

Sirius growled, eyes flashing. “You knew this could happen to Petunia. You knew, Snape. Why didn’t you warn us?”

“Forgive me, Black,” Snape snapped.  “I didn’t expect the Ministry to waste a top-tier memory binder on a woman who alphabetizes her spices and irons her pillowcases.”

Sirius opened his mouth as if to argue, but paused at this. “...Okay, fair. And you’re saying this potion will work?”

Snape’s lip twitched in what might’ve been a ghost of a smirk. “Black, it's about as stable as a Blast-Ended Skrewt with seasonal depression. One sip, and you get everything back — memories, thoughts, trauma. Side effects may include existential dread and a complete loss of trust in authorities.”

Sirius uncapped the vial without hesitation and threw it back like a shot of Firewhisky.

A beat. Then he exhaled like he'd been gut-punched.

His pupils contracted, jaw tensed, then slowly he sat down, very deliberately, like someone realizing he’s been standing on a trapdoor for years. 

“So that’s how deep the Ministry’s been mucking around,” Sirius muttered.  “The cover-ups. Obliviating entire weeks. And Petunia! Bloody hell, she remembered me, that’s why she—”

Snape folded his arms, looking deeply unimpressed. “Welcome back.”

Sirius was silent for a long moment, then clapped his hands once. “Alright. Stage Two.”

Snape arched an eyebrow. “Which is?”

“I borrow Buckbeak,” said Sirius, standing. “Petunia’s locked in that fortress like a cursed fairytale heroine —if Cinderella woke up hungover and ready to sue. I’m getting her out.”

Snape sighed. “You people are going to give me an aneurysm.”

“Good. Now, about our delivery service.”

Sirius’s grin sharpened and he pulled a whistle from his pocket and gave it a sharp blow.

Above them, something roared that was part wings, part wind, part general architectural objection. The ceiling shuddered ominously.

Buckbeak’s cry echoed through the rafters like a war horn.

Sirius turned, already moving toward the door. “Stage two begins.”

Snape’s voice followed him, silky and acidic. “And when this blows up spectacularly in your face, do remember to leave my name out of the headlines.”

The plan, as usual, was about 10% foresight and 90% raw spite.

Step one: Get the guards moving.  Done. She’d accidentally triggered the internal security override by reprogramming the tea charm to scream “FOR THE LOVE OF MERLIN, THIS WOMAN IS A MUGGLE” in seventeen languages. Including one that sounded suspiciously like a goblin having a seizure.

Step two: Distraction. Also done. She’d activated every confiscated Weasley airhorn from the student contraband drawer and lobbed them like Howler grenades down the corridor. The sound was indescribable, somewhere between a stampede and a swarm of bees with performance anxiety.

Screaming echoed down the hallways and wands fired blindly. 

“TARGET IS MOVING—SHE’S GOT SOME OF THE FILES!”

Correction: She had all the files. Several folders jammed into her coat, each stamped in thick red ink: TOP SECRET – EYES ONLY . The rest were clutched to her chest like an overachieving kleptomaniac librarian, including one with the cheery title Obliviation and Public Cooperation Protocols: Phase 3 – Individual Vanishings. 

She flipped it open mid-run.

A letter fluttered out, dated six months prior:

From the Desk of Dolores Jane Umbridge
To: Department of Magical Surveillance, Undersecretary Branch

In accordance with the Minister's wishes, Muggle witnesses deemed “excessively observant” should be processed for long-term obliviation or, where necessary, humane Vanishment.

Particular vigilance is required regarding the subject:
Dursley, Petunia
—Related to previous anomaly cases. Potential risk to Ministry narrative.

“If in doubt, pink it out.”

—DJU 🩷

“Oh, go gargle a cauldron,” Petunia muttered, shoving it back into her coat. 

Another blast. A guard went sailing past her, briefcase still attached to his hand like he’d refused to let go of the paperwork even in death. Or probable concussion.

Behind her, footsteps thundered.   “GET HER—NOW—”

She spun, yanked an airhorn from her pocket, and let it loose point-blank: BWAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!
“MERLIN’S SWEATY LEFT—”

A window shattered.

She braced, thinking Thestrals, Dementors, Merlin-knows-what, but instead: feathers. Screeches. A furious hippogriff tore into view, claws curled with vengeance. 

“Buckbeak?” she croaked out. 

He didn’t dignify her with a reply. Just the withering, get on or get trampled look of an underpaid rescue Uber.

“Well, nice of you to drop in!” she yelled, grabbing Buckbeak’s neck with exactly zero grace.

She didn’t know if Sirius had sent him or if Hagrid owed someone a very strange favor, but she was airborne before she had time to scream.

The Ministry fortress recoiled, spells ricocheting wildly, pink-coated enforcers flailing. The guards dived to avoid the slicing beak as a spell ricocheted off the wall. 

Above, the sky opened up  and her trench coat flapped like Buckbeak’s wings, wind clawing at her ears. 

And below, the world stretched out— cold, terrifying, and finally hers again. 

She clutched the files, her hair whipping in her face as they soared to freedom, and muttered: 

“Let’s see the Ministry try to pink this out.”

Thunderclouds clung stubbornly to the spires of Hogwarts, as if the castle itself was bracing for impact. The air smelled faintly of powdered sugar and tyranny.

At the Great Hall podium, Umbridge reigned supreme, flanked by two clipboard-wielding Inquisitors and a tapestry of cats glaring down like small, furry dictators.

“Discipline,” she chirped sweetly, “is most delightful when properly enforced. Effective immediately, all Quidditch practices, owl correspondence, and hallway conversations exceeding thirty-seven syllables are banned. And now, it is with the Ministry’s utmost pleasure that I restore… structure… to this institution.”

Structure, in this case, included a thirty-two-page rulebook stapled to every student’s chair. Fred Weasley’s copy immediately caught fire in protest. 

“I will no longer tolerate chaos, rebellion, or—” she gave Harry a withering look “—delusions of grandeur.”

Harry stood, voice cold as ice. “If you’re seeking further inspiration, Professor, might I recommend How to Turn a School Into a Prison: A Practical Guide ? I hear it's all the rage with the Ministry these days.” 

A chorus of gasps rippled through the hall.

Umbridge’s mouth twitched, like a toad trying to speak, but before she could retort—

The windows behind her exploded.  

Wings unfurled with a furious screech as Buckbeak burst through the shattered window, feathers ruffling like a storm unleashed. His claws scraped the stone floor, sharp enough to shred Ministry regulations.

“Sorry to crash your fascist little school play,” said Petunia Dursley coolly, dismounting with effortless grace and landing beside him.

Harry’s jaw hit the floor.

The Weasley twins exchanged looks that said, Where have you been all our lives?

And Dumbledore, strolling in like he hadn’t spent the entire year ghosting Hogwarts, watched with amused curiosity just as the edible kicked in.

Chapter Text

A teacup shattered against the flagstones. 

McGonagall had gone sheet-white, looking halfway to having a stroke. She clutched the hem of her tartan robes like she couldn’t decide whether to faint or hex someone. Possibly both.

Umbridge made a sound like a dying duck inhaling helium and stumbled behind the High Table, pink cardigan now spattered with soot and feathers. Her clipboard lay obliterated beneath a hoofprint, as though even Buckbeak had editorial feedback.

Snape, cloak billowing like the climax of a gothic opera, stormed in like he’d been summoned to a duel and found a circus instead. 

He took in the wreckage: the hippogriff gnawing on a tapestry, the ruins of the High Table, Umbridge hyperventilating into her hairnet, and exhaled slowly through his nose, as if personally offended by the existence of oxygen. “Of course,” he said coldly. “It’s just another Wednesday here.”

And Dumbledore was blinking behind his half-moon glasses, weighing whether this was actually reality or just a particularly vivid hallucination brought on by Sprout's experimental Lemon Drop Concentrate he’d sampled twenty minutes ago. 

“Ah,” he murmured at last. “So it was the extra strength version this time. Hm?"

Buckbeak snorted and gave a solemn bow, as if confirming both the reality of the situation and his continued intent to eat the upholstery. 

“Right,” Petunia said crisply, brushing ash and hippogriff dander from her Muggle trousers. “Let’s try this again.”

She wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular, but everyone froze as though addressed by a prosecutor, a war crimes tribunal, and their mother-in-law all at once. Dumbledore, eyes slightly red and glazed over, watched her talk with the serene, entranced curiosity of someone observing a natural disaster from the comfort of an armchair.

“My nephew,” Petunia said, voice ringing out across the Great Hall, “was kidnapped, tortured, and forced to witness the resurrection of a genocidal maniac last summer. And as a reward, his memory was wiped, along with every single other witness to magical incompetence."

McGonagall choked.

“I,” she continued, “was held in a Ministry black site with no windows, no exits, and even fewer ethics. They wiped every record of me, every memory of me. My legal guardianship of Harry? Gone. Even the boy himself didn’t remember.”

Her voice cut like a scalpel. “I escaped yesterday. And do you know what happened the moment I crossed the Ministry's outer wards?”

Buckbeak sneezed. Somewhere on the Hufflepuff bench, a first-year toppled off their seat in fright. 

“The memory charm snapped like a frayed shoelace." She raised the battered briefcase. "So, I took the evidence. I've got all the buried files, falsified records, and crime cover-ups for good measure." 

Her gaze landed, at last, on Umbridge. “I assume,” she said icily, “you have paperwork for any of that?”

Umbridge opened her mouth, but only a wheeze emerged, the sound of pink polyester and panic.

“Lovely,” Petunia said. “Then I’d like to file a complaint.”

The High Inquisitor’s office looked like the aftermath of a bureaucratic apocalypse. 

Shards of teacups glinted like landmines on the floor. A kitten tapestry sagged on the wall, one paw dangling from a scorched thread. The Ministry’s golden plaque — EDUCATION IS COMPLIANCE — lay dented and smoking from where it had ricocheted off Buckbeak’s wing.

Umbridge herself was perched on a splintered chair, pink robes scorched and tea-stained, hands twitching like a cornered Cornish pixie. She scribbled furiously on a scroll labeled in crooked capitals:

EMERGENCY EDUCATIONAL EDICT NO. 246: UNAUTHORIZED BEAST TRAFFIC IS TREASON. THIS INCLUDES HIPOGRIFFS.

And Petunia Dursley, hair singed and eyes sharp as glass, leaned one hand against the desk like she owned not just the room, but the building, the budget, and the Minister’s pension account.

“You can write all the imaginary legislation you like, dear,” she said, inspecting the fake Ministry seal with the calm disinterest of someone who'd already reported them to six real departments. “But your little authoritarian sock puppet theatre just got upstaged by a rescue operation. With an actual flight permit.”

“YOU—” croaked Umbridge, voice shredded from an hour of shrieking, “YOU’RE A MUGGLE —!”

“And yet,” Petunia said brightly, “I’m the only one here who understands basic chain-of-evidence protocol, controlled wildlife clearance, and a minor detail called espionage documentation .”

She opened up a folder and tossed it.

It burst in midair like a detonated secret.

PROJECT JANUS: MEMORY TAMPERING IN EDUCATIONAL SETTINGS

Papers fluttered across the desk like condemned leaves. Dozens of names — not just Harry’s — spun out across the air, some pureblooded, some Muggleborn, all listed under Subjects: Memory Redacted . More than one bore the signature of a Department of Mysteries handler.

Notes shimmered in faint red ink, charmed for classified visibility:

“Subjects under 17 are unlikely to detect memory inconsistencies.
Priority: suppress traumatic links to truth.
Repeating exposure destabilizes perceived narrative!”

Harry stood behind her, rigid as a statue, eyes locked on the damning documents. All the facts and fragments of the life they'd tried to delete.

Umbridge let out a strangled shriek and lunged.

Petunia sidestepped, and the ex-High Inquisitor slammed headfirst into her own desk, taking a gilded inkstand and a commemorative plaque down with her. The ink made an impressive arc before splattering across several official Ministry forms, rendering them completely illegible.

A beat of silence. Then—BANG! The office door flew open.

“Madam Dursley!” came Fudge’s shrill bluster. “What's the meaning of this chaos, where is Madam Umbridge’s authority—?”

“Somewhere under that broken plaque,” Petunia replied, not looking up. “Possibly next to her dignity.”

Fudge blustered forward, red-faced and leaking power like a punctured hose. “Madam, you are not authorized to conduct—”

"Oh, I wasn’t authorized?" Petunia turned on him. Her voice cracked like a whip.

"Was I authorized when your agents tossed me in a basement so far off-registry it didn’t have basic plumbing, ventilation, or oversight?"

Fudge paled.

"Was I authorized when a Dementor tried to suck my nephew’s soul out on a suburban pavement, under your jurisdiction, without warning or cause?"

She took another step.

"Was I authorized when your High Inquisitor forged a medical report to erase evidence of spell damage and trauma in a fourteen-year-old boy?" 

She lifted the Janus folder, and slipped it back into her handbag, which now bristled with damning evidence like an overstuffed wand holster.

“Now, Minister,” she said, her voice dipped in venom. “Let’s discuss what you are authorized to do. I’d start with packing your desk.”

Courtroom Ten reeked of damp stone and damage control.

The chain-bound chair Petunia had once been interrogated in months ago had been discreetly de-charmed for “optics.” The Wizengamot chamber was bursting at the seams. 

Reporters flitted about like anxious bowtruckles, their quills recording every murmur and cough. High above them on the stone benches, Ministry officials sat like vultures in powdered wigs.

Rita Skeeter sat near the front, venomous glee glowing in her beetle-bright eyes. Her notes glittered in acid-green ink:

“LIVE TRIAL: HOGWARTS STUDENT EXPOSES ILLEGAL MINISTRY MEMORY CRIMES.”
“MUGGLE AUNT STRIKES AGAIN.”
“POSSIBLE HIPPOGRIFF CONSPIRACY: DUMBLEDORE REFUSES COMMENT.”

Amelia Bones presided, temples twitching from lack of sleep. Behind her, three Wizengamot members whispered furiously about improper warrants, public perception, and the PR disaster of sedating a Divination professor on live record. 

Sybill Trelawney sat off to the side, gently drooling and murmuring incoherent prophecies. 

Harry took the stand.

“State your name,” demanded the chief inquisitor.

“Harry James Potter.”

“Your occupation?”

“Student. Frequent scapegoat. Occasional public menace.”

Petunia raised her voice, “Objection: leading the witness.”

The inquisitor blinked, flustered. “This isn’t a Muggle courtroom—”

“You’re right, it's worse,” she said, flipping to Tab 8 in a monstrous binder. “Your interrogation ‘format’ violates Articles Two through Seven of the Wizarding Juvenile Witness Protection Act.  Last amended, by the way, when Merlin still had a mortgage." 

“She’s not Ministry staff,” Umbridge hissed.

“Legal advocate,” Amelia Bones said dryly. “And, at this point, the only one here who’s read the bloody law.”

From the gallery, Rita Skeeter’s quill scribbled with renewed bloodlust: Muggle Woman Dismantles Ministry With Binder and Vengeance. More at eleven.

“Harry,” the inquisitor pressed, “when you witnessed Voldemort’s resurrection—”

Harry tilted his head, expression unreadable. “Which one?”

Several quills clattered.

Then, slowly and methodically, Harry began to speak. About the graveyard, the green light, the foggy months of Obliviated memories, the moment the world had shifted and no one had believed him. His voice only cracked once.

When he finished, no one spoke. Not even Umbridge.

Snape, face like stone, submitted the memory potion as verified. Petunia submitted fifteen cross-referenced statutes, a witness list, and a Muggle binder so organized it had laminated tabs.

The chamber was buzzing with latent panic now, the kind that seeped in when a room full of politicians smelled a scandal and realized they might be the meat.

And Petunia Dursley stepped forward like a controlled detonation in heels. Not a wand on her, only a small leather handbag and the righteous fury of a woman who’d finally found the damn receipts.

"I call this," she said, raising a sheaf of documents, "Due Process: A Muggle Perspective. Subtitle: Your Government Is on Fire and Everyone Can Smell It but You."

Gasps rippled throughout the courtroom and Fudge winced like he'd just been slapped with a subpoena. “This is absurd,” he began weakly, “clearly fabricated—”

Petunia didn’t blink. She pulled a second bundle from her bag and dropped it onto the desk like a death sentence. It exploded mid-air. Not literally, unfortunately, though one clerk did duck. The file unfurled like cursed origami, with parchments spinning out like petals of war crimes. Names, departments, timestamps.

The top page read:

Project Janus: Memory Reformation in Educational Settings.

“You’ve been altering children’s memories,” she said coldly. “It's right here that a memory-tampering was administered to a Harry J. Potter within forty-eight hours of a reported Dark ritual.”

Harry stepped forward, cutting in. "They changed what I remembered, after the graveyard. I told them Voldemort was back. And when I woke up..."

His hand trembled slightly. "I thought it was just a dream. A nightmare. I thought maybe I was the one going mad."

More murmurs now, louder. Not all scandalized, some frightened now. 

Petunia flipped another page. "And not just my nephew. Not just Muggle-borns either. There’s a Malfoy on page four. A Shacklebolt cousin on page seven.”

Fudge stammered. “I—I don’t believe—this isn’t—”

“Shall I read the Project’s budget aloud then, Minister? I have the full ledger." She leaned forward. “Spoiler alert: your department’s ‘Amnesia Clean-Up’ fund wasn’t used for children's counseling." 

The silence was suffocating. Fudge visibly wilted. One elderly wizard topped sideways in his chair. 

In the upper stands, Slughorn, who had not been summoned, stood, raised a pewter flask, and loudly toasted: “To transparency!”

Fudge turned a shade somewhere between old wallpaper and nausea.

“Oh, but wait,” said Petunia, smile barbed. “There’s more.” She pulled the final file like a magician dealing her ace, which read The Flight of the Pegasi – Internal Use Only.

"Ministry code for vanishing witnesses," she said. "Reframed as magical terrorist hoaxes and used to silence survivors of classified events. Convenient, isn't it? Especially when it involved a certain Hippogriff."

She turned. "You remember Buckbeak, don’t you? You tried to kill him too."

Fudge opened his mouth and found nothing. Closed it again like a dying fish.

Dumbledore delicately cleared his throat. "I believe what Miss Dursley is suggesting —"

"I'm not suggesting," snapped Petunia. "I'm alleging."

She turned to face the Wizengamot now, who looked collectively like they’d just been slapped with a howler wrapped in tax audits.

“I am stating under no oath, since your justice system finds those optional, that this Ministry has systematically suppressed truth. That you’ve wiped minds, rewritten grief, gaslit children and families and called it mercy.”

She pointed at Harry. “And his.”

Then she turned to the stunned public gallery. "And yours,” she said softly. “And when truth clawed its way back to the surface, instead of justice, you handed out silence and lies wrapped in policy.”

The outrage was no longer quiet. It surged, a tide breaking.

The gavel came down now, loud, desperate, and hollow. "Enough!" shrieked Fudge, but it echoed more like a death knell than an order. 

Harry stepped forward again. “When the Prophet told me last summer was an accident,” he said, voice carrying, “I tried to convince myself too. When they said I imagined it, I almost believed them. But when I finally remembered, really remembered, they locked up the only witness who could confirm it.”

He looked at the stunned gallery. “They said she never existed, that I made her up. My aunt.”

Silence.

Then, from the back, someone said, “You don’t forget a woman like that .”

“I remember her.” Another voice.

Then another. “She was the one who gave Dumbledore the Howler!” 

Whispers turned to wildfire and above it all, Petunia stood still, watching it burn to the damn ground. Calmly, as if she’d lit the match a long time ago and had simply been waiting.

The room smelled like old books, burnt magic, and lemon, the particular blend of guilt and hospitality that passed for Dumbledore’s insufferable cologne.

Petunia sat in the same upright chair she’d once bristled in weeks ago. This time, though, her posture was effortless, with legs crossed and handbag balanced on one knee. As if she were chairing the board meeting instead of attending it.

Harry slouched beside her like someone who’d survived three near deaths, a Ministry cover-up, and the world’s worst summer holiday. His eyelids were heavy, the day’s ordeal still dragging at his spine.

Across from them, Dumbledore poured tea with the same reverence some priests reserve for communion. The only sounds were the quiet clink of porcelain and the snoozing wheeze of Armando Dippet’s portrait, muttering something about goblin banking reform.

“I underestimated you,” Dumbledore said at last, vaguely repentant. “Most Muggles don’t make it through a Ministry inquiry unscathed. Fewer still make three Unspeakables resign from sheer embarrassment.

Petunia didn’t blink. “You’ve underestimated a great many things, Albus. Including the strength of my filing system. And my patience.”

He leaned forward, voice softening. “You’re far more competent than I gave you credit for, Petunia. That’s a rare quality.”

She gave him a dry look. “I’m not rare, Albus. Just extremely pissed off.”

He smiled faintly, then reached into a ceramic tin shaped like a badger and offered it forward. “Lemon sherbet drop?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You know they stand for L.S.D., right?” Dumbledore murmured mildly, as if confessing a minor sin. “Little Sugary Delusions. Coined it myself in ’67, it was a very….experimental summer.” 

A slight pause. 

“That explains everything, actually,” said Petunia, deadpan.

Just then, there was a faint click behind them, like a cabinet unlocking. From between the spines of Modern Magical Theory and A Skeptic’s Guide to Pureblood Claims, a small envelope fluttered loose.
Charmed to drop at exactly that line.

Petunia caught it midair without flinching. 

It wasn’t addressed. Only labeled, in neat script: RE: FRAGMENT IDENTIFICATION

She opened it.

Inside was a one short memo from a Department of Mysteries Unspeakable. No signature. Just a single word, glowing faintly: 
Horcrux.

Her fingers paused on the parchment. 

Harry inhaled. “What's that?”

Dumbledore sighed. He looked tired, suddenly, and old in the way of crumbling towers and broken promises. “There are truths that… come at a great cost.”

“I see,” said Petunia coolly, “and now we’ve reached the part of the story where you speak cryptic Latin and offer no explanation.”

She folded the memo neatly and slipped it into her handbag like it was Exhibit A in a lawsuit. “You’ve got a lot to explain, Albus. And for once, I’d suggest starting with sense. .”

The drawing room at Malfoy Manor smelled of scorched velvet and thwarted ambition.

Voldemort stood at its center, pale fingers twitching with barely suppressed fury. Magic crackled at the hem of his robes like a thunderstorm itching to strike.

Something inside him cracked.

A velvet chair exploded against the hearth. Cursed flames burst upward, swallowing centuries of bloodline embroidery.

“My resurrection!!” he hissed, voice scaling toward shriek, “A masterpiece of dark magic, years in the making, overshadowed by a mere Muggle in a trench coat and sensible heels!”

And with that, he flung Lucius’s silver-tipped cane into the fire.

Lucius let out a strangled wheeze. His hand hovered mid-air, helpless, as if the cane might, out of pity or pedigree, return to him.

“And what,” Voldemort hissed, whirling on him, “were you doing while she dismantled decades of shadow work at The Ministry in twenty-four hours? Rearranging your cufflinks? Polishing your—stick?”

Lucius opened his mouth, then wisely closed it. He began examining a scorch mark on the rug with deep scholarly interest.

Bellatrix giggled once. Wrong move.

Voldemort turned and his expression could have flash-frozen a phoenix mid-flight.

“The Ministry is in collapse,” he said flatly. “Dumbledore's high as a Hippogriff, halfway to the astral plane on a lemon drop bender. And still. Still…”

He didn’t speak her name, he extracted it, like poison.

“Petunia. Dursley.”

It landed like a slur. Even the portraits flinched.

A long, painful silence followed. One Death Eater attempted to camouflage himself as a portrait against a tapestry of ancestral Slytherins. Another began inching toward the nearest ornamental suit of armor like it might offer amnesty.

From the corner, one follower cleared his throat with the meekness of someone trying not to die. “…My Lord?” he began tentatively, “perhaps we should consider… negotiating. With her. Strategically, of course.  She’s disrupted the entire apparatus with a bird and a binder, a weapon like that might be—”

Every head turned. A sleeping portrait cracked one eye open. 

Voldemort stared at him, eyes molten. “Oh?” he said softly. “You think I should recruit her, Nott?”

The man’s courage dissolved audibly. “Or—or kill her!” he amended quickly. “Definitely one of the two.”

Voldemort gave him the smile of a man trying out new methods of annihilation. “We’ll see,” he said, voice curled like smoke. 

No one spoke for a while. 

Then, very quietly, from the hearth:

“…My Lord,” Lucius murmured, still staring at the fire, “may I… please get my cane back?”

Chapter Text

The High Court had been transformed into a stage, except nobody wanted tickets to this performance. Packed like a grim little theater, it hosted the worst casting call in wizarding history: the Ministry’s audition for a new Minister.

Candidates, some of the Wizarding World’s most seasoned bureaucratic mediocrities, shuffled in like bad actors desperate for their one big break. The queue snaked from the Atrium and halfway through Knockturn Alley, full of hopefuls clutching lofty titles and not a scrap of competence to show for them. 

The Wizengamot sat in exhausted judgment, their robes as creased as their foreheads, eyes glassy with equal parts caffeine and despair. Even the Ministry crest above them dangled sideways, like it was ready to throw in the towel and start a new career as a doorstop. 

“Next!” banged a judge, his gavel sounding more like a plea for help than authority.

First up was a stooped wizard who tripped over his own beard. “I propose—hic!—increased wand monitoring and a morale tax on Muggle-borns—”

“Next!” 

Another stumbled forward, scrolls exploding from his sleeves like festive toilet paper, along with a blood quill. “I would reinstate Umbridge’s—”

“NEXT!”

A third cleared her throat and began reciting Hogwarts: A History...in reverse.

“Dear Merlin,” muttered someone near the back. “She’s starting from the appendix.”

“Next!”

The hall had become a symphony of disgrace, echoing with policy proposals that sounded like satire and defense pleas that might as well have been punchlines.

A trembling man with the spine of a flobberworm and the fashion sense of a melting eggplant scurried up. “Archibald Twickley,” he squeaked. “Former Head of Magical Water Regulation. My qualifications include—”

“Next!” The judge’s voice was beginning to crack at this point. 

Then a smug ex-minister stepped up and claimed ignorance of the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher last year. 

Petunia Dursley, seated beside the judge with an expression resembling a granite carving of mild disappointment, looked up slowly. 

“Ignorance?” she said, voice level. “You couldn’t find your wand if it were stapled to your pinkie, yet you managed to sign off on decrees that left children defenseless. Was that magical incompetence, or just malicious intent?”

The crowd gasped. Cameras clicked as reporters scribbled madly as if every word she spoke were Galleons. Outside, Howlers screeched through the air like banshees, none of them not for Petunia, but for the Ministry itself. Fudge’s name rang through the building like a curse. Umbridge’s was now practically an Unforgivable.

Up came Rufus Scrimgeour, lion-maned and bristling with righteous posture, flanked by three junior advisors. He made it halfway up the dais, caught Petunia’s expression, and turned on his heel without a word. 

“Smart,” she murmured.

At long last, as if summoned by the room's collective exhaustion, came Horace Slughorn, waddling into view like the final act in a cursed talent show. 

“Well,” he announced, slightly winded but beaming. “It seems I’ve been unanimously elected.”

Petunia folded her arms. “You were just the last man standing."

“Semantics!” he chirped. “Still counts.”

He turned to her with a syrupy smile. "Now, dear Mrs. Dursley, might I retain your assistance in drafting policy? I taught one Evans sister, you know. And the other… well, even for a Muggle, you’ve proven yourself rather formidable.”

Petunia’s smile was glacial. “ For a Muggle?” she repeated. “Glad to see your prejudices are wrapped in velvet.”

Slughorn gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I’ve always preferred the background. Pulling strings, you know, shaping things quietly. I’m not cut out for Minister, not truly.”

“Good,” said Petunia, rising to her feet and addressing the bench. “Then give him the title. And give me the Ministry.”

The chamber went utterly still. Then came the applause, tentative at first but growing into a standing ovation.

The vote passed in twenty-seven seconds flat.

As the gavel slammed down, a new sigil shimmered onto Auror uniforms: The Dursley Commission. Dozens of cuffed officials were hauled away, their protests drowned by the flash of cameras and the roar of fresh headlines.

Petunia adjusted her blazer and surveyed the wreckage like a general reviewing the battlefield after a particularly satisfying victory.

“Now,” she said crisply, “let’s talk about how we disinfect a government.”

The Ministry wasn’t just crumbling anymore. It was a flaming compost heap of nepotism and half-spelled memos, held together by denial, deflection, and the ghost of Cornelius Fudge’s PR team. 

And Petunia Dursley had arrived with a clipboard and vengeance. 

She took the stage beneath the Ministry Atrium’s enchanted ceiling,  which had stopped updating days ago and now replayed the same grey drizzle like a cursed loop of bureaucratic depression. Behind her, Slughorn dabbed sweat from his brow and looked like he’d sell a limb to go back to teaching twelve-year-olds about bezoars.

Dozens of Ministry officials sat behind conjured podiums, all in varying stages of panic. Several clutched handkerchiefs. One had an emotional support kneazle.

“Item one,” said Petunia, clear and cold. “The ‘No More Mister Nice Ministry’ Act, effective immediately.” 

A scroll unfurled to her feet with an ominous thud as gasps rippled through the room.

“Clause One: All Ministry officials previously aligned with Umbridge’s decrees are hereby suspended pending investigation.”

She turned, eyes locked onto a squat woman near the back who blanched. “Yes, I do mean you, Wilhelmina Warthog. Don’t look at your shoes.”

Wilhelmina burst into tears. The kneazle hissed in solidarity.

“Clause Two,” Petunia continued, flipping a tab on her clipboard. “All previously classified meetings formerly must now be recorded and published. Any violations will result in a televised public apology… delivered in robes sewn entirely from Muggle underwear.”

As Slughorn choked on a lemon drop, one wizard tried to flee through a second-story window using his wand as a grappling hook. It failed. The window was enchanted and he ricocheted into a potted plant. Nobody helped. 

“Clause Three: Auror Oversight.”

A projection burst behind her of reality unfiltered. Charred houses, empty beds, broken wands,  the photos of what had not been prevented.

An Auror in the front row stood to object and Petunia silenced him with a look honed over years of PTA meetings. 

“You were assigned to the Potter case. Explain to this room why a Dementor was permitted within five miles of a child’s bedroom.”

The man opened his mouth, then closed it. Sat down.

“Thought so. And I’m not done,” snapped Petunia. “Clause Four: If you were involved in ‘memory tampering’ under Project Janus or its derivatives, report to Courtroom Ten immediately for testimony. Refusal will be taken as guilt.”

There was a bang as Pius Thicknesse was dragged forward by two younger Aurors.

“Recently de-cursed and still guilty of gross negligence.” She gestured. “His new post will be Chief Broomstick Scrubber.”

Pius tried to object as one of the Aurors handed him a scrub brush and a pair of gloves with his name spelled Thiknez.

"Minister Slughorn," someone said hesitantly.

Slughorn waved a hand as if batting away a bad odor. "Oh no, no, I'm just the... interim figurehead. Mrs. Dursley has everything well in hand, she’s in charge.” 

She already was. She personally ordered the arrest of Dirk Cresswell later that day, former Muggle Liaison, who’d been feeding Ministry secrets in exchange for Quidditch tickets and backroom pensions. He now resided in a cell with a silencing charm, greeted every morning with a Howler shrieking: 

“Still waiting, Dirk. Confess or combust.”

Petunia had also drafted what she called the “Bureaucratic Hygiene Protocol," a legally binding requirement for every Ministry official to submit quarterly reports detailing every penny spent, every favor granted, and every nepotistic hire made. Failure to comply meant public shaming via the Prophet’s “Hall of Shame” column, a fate now more feared than a Dementor’s kiss.

The drafting process was exhausting. She had to repeatedly bite back the urge to include a clause banning "Ministry employees from wearing those ghastly purple robes. We’re not running a wizard prom," but discretion won out eventually. 

Occasionally, Slughorn would pop into her office, smelling vaguely of brandy and cough syrup. 

“My dear Mrs. Dursley,” he’d say with a pompous bow, “your legal prowess rivals that of a particularly tenacious Basilisk.”

Petunia would arch an eyebrow. “Great. Then you can bask in the limelight while I do the heavy lifting. Keep that web spinning, Horace.”

The next morning, she had sent a memo. Not a Howler, not a decree, not even a cursed parchment screaming in Latin. Just a memo.

To Whom It May Concern,
Attached: documentation regarding falsified arrest warrants, unauthorized use of Dementors on minors, bribery ledgers connected to Malfoy accounts, and approximately forty-seven violations of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy.
Sincerely,
Petunia Dursley (Muggle. Mother. Problem).

The memo hit every desk by 9:01 a.m.

By 9:07, half the Ministry was on fire.

Not literally, that came later, when the Department of Magical Transportation spontaneously combusted thanks to what one poor soul described as “an inter-departmental Floo jam and one particularly irate Bulgarian ambassador.”

But metaphorically? Absolute hell.

Floor by floor, the chaos spread. Clerks choked on pumpkin pasties as departmental owls dive-bombed desks with unsigned warrants. Wizengamot officials were seen sprinting down corridors like their robes had finally caught wind of justice. Fudge barricaded himself inside his office with a dish of Fizzing Whizbees and an outdated copy of Magical Politics for Dummies . Somewhere in the Atrium, someone sobbed, “We were just following orders!”—to which a junior Auror muttered, “That one always holds up in court.”

At 9:11, Petunia Dursley walked in, not running or flustered, just calmly sipping tea from a thermos labelled #1 Auntie of Vengeance. Behind her, Sirius Black trailed like a very amused bloodhound finally let off the leash. Hermione Granger brought up the rear with six folders, three color-coded tabs, and the look of someone who might finally get to prosecute something.

“You know,” Petunia remarked, pausing before the absurdly gilded fountain, “in the Muggle world, we just call this racketeering .”

The crowd didn’t know whether to hex or applaud.

Then came not a spell, but a screeched accusation.  “You’re not even a witch!”

Petunia smiled like a loaded trap.  “Correct. Which means I haven’t had any magical protection from your corruption, and I’m still standing. Now imagine what comes next.”

Behind her, Rita Skeeter squealed with delight as headlines practically wrote themselves.  McGonagall arrived in a flash of tartan and fury. Kingsley Shacklebolt surveyed the scene, muttered, “Oh, thank Merlin,” and nonchalantly stunned three retreating officials before lighting a cigar.

The Ministry, once airtight with security, suddenly found them all vomiting out their secrets into the Atrium like a stomach bug of bureaucracy.

By 10:00 AM, a crowd of goblins were picketing the Department of International Magical Cooperation. By 10:15, Lucius Malfoy received a subpoena folded into an origami swan that bit him. He bled. 

And by 10:32, the golden statue of wizardly supremacy in the lobby had been transfigured into a very large, very accurate sculpture of Petunia Dursley drop-kicking a filing cabinet.

Sirius wheezed from laughter. “It’s not reform anymore,” he gasped. “This is a revolution.” 

Petunia surveyed the chaos calmly. “Well,” she said, “I always did like a bit of housecleaning.”

Petunia Dursley, by some sort of cosmic joke and against all Wizarding logic, had become a household name.

The Daily Prophet crowned her The Muggle Who Toppled Silence.

Witch Weekly celebrated her as The Woman Who Made Dumbledore Blink.

One tabloid just printed, in 72-point font: P.M. PETUNIA?

She received daily Howlers loud enough to rattle the kitchen windows, startling the neighbors. Not addressed to her but shouting accusations at the Ministry’s spectacular unraveling. 

“HOW COULD YOU HAVE LET THIS HAPPEN, CORNELIUS?!”

“SHE’S RIGHT, FUDGE! I HAD A COUSIN IN SILENCE, YOU TOAD!”

“PETUNIA FOR MINISTER!”

Even Rita Skeeter offered to ghostwrite her memoir. Petunia sent back a note that read simply: “No.”

A rotating guard of five Aurors now stood at Privet Drive. The Prophet had dubbed her “The Other Chosen One.” She was, apparently, now both dangerous and electable . And then, the letters began.

The morning post had never looked so threatening.

The first letter, delivered by an unusually nervous owl who seemed to regret its life choices halfway through the journey, bore the chilling scent of brimstone and bad intentions. Harry paused mid-sip of tea as Petunia lifted a black-edged envelope. The seal hissed slightly as a puff of dark smoke curled from the parchment.

Harry sighed, reached for it, then thought better. “Tongs?”

She passed him the fireplace poker instead, but the letter opened itself. 

Dear Mrs. Dursley,

It has come to my attention that your bureaucratic sabotage and poetic justice have exceeded even my expectations. 

As a woman of considerable cunning and recent national relevance, you surely understand the value of powerful allies. I would like to extend to you a most exclusive invitation: join me. Together, we could bring order to a chaotic world, reform, and perhaps, at last, a Ministry that functions.

 Enclosed is a list of the current Death Eater vacancies, and I believe you would thrive in Logistics. Perhaps Intelligence. I am willing to negotiate dental coverage.

Cordially (for now),
Lord Voldemort

Harry read over her shoulder and promptly choked on his tea. “Did Voldemort just offer you a job?”

“Apparently.” She folded the letter crisply. “Though I’ve seen better recruitment pitches from pyramid schemes.”

The next letter arrived two days later, crumpled and scorched.

Dursley—
You mock me.
I offer peace, and you return ridicule. This is beneath you.
(Also, your Aurors are sloppy. The one with freckles is left-handed and limps.)

Sincerely, (although my patience wears thin),
Lord Voldemort 

Harry wheezed. “He’s passive-aggressive now. I love it.”

Letter five came torn, scrawled in fury, and sealed with what smelled like dragon bile.

You will regret this. That is not a threat, it is a prophecy.  I WILL HAVE YOUR COMPLIANCE, PETUNIA. 

The ink scratched into unintelligible rage. Beneath the wax was a barely legible "Yours in loathing, Voldemort." 

Petunia held it at arm's length. “Well, someone’s having a tantrum.”

By letter ten, the parchment burst into green sparks when opened. The message inside simply read:

JOIN ME OR PERISH, YOU INFURIATING MUGGLE.

Yours, etc., L.V.

Petunia popped it into the toaster, smirking. 

“Fan mail from Hell,” said Harry, doubled over with laughter.

Petunia sniffed. “At least he’s finally dropped the ‘cordially.'"

The hideout stank of mildew and crushed dreams. They had holed up in a forgotten cellar outside Little Hangleton, surrounded by abandoned cauldrons, damp curtains, and the smell of mutiny.

Bellatrix Lestrange sat on an overturned crate, plucking at her wand like a murderous harpist. In the far corner, Lucius Malfoy slumped like a rug left out in the rain, cradling what remained of his cane and pride. 

Voldemort had stripped him of both. 

“You know what I miss?” Bellatrix murmured to no one in particular. “Real fear. The kind that made Aurors wet themselves and children scream for mummy.”

Astoria Wren didn’t answer. She sat at a rickety desk, fingers stained with ink and potion residue, flipping through her notebook with surgical preciscion. Her face was calm, but her mind was a whirlwind of buried memories and calculations. 

The blood.

She’d stolen a small vial from Potter during that scuffle in the corridor. Just enough to offer to the Dark Lord — a resurrection catalyst, a gesture of loyalty. But she’d taken something else, hadn’t she?

Astoria opened her satchel, and tucked between old parchments and cracked fingernails from Bellatrix’s last tantrum: a few dark strands of hair. Caught on her sleeve, barely noticed at the time.

But now? Now they gleamed like fate, and it suddenly clicked all at once. 

“I can be him.”

Bellatrix stopped humming a murder lullaby. “Be who?”

“Potter,” Astoria said simply.

The room went dead silent, even Lucius’s wheezing paused in alarm.

Bellatrix squinted. “That’s… actually not stupid.”

Astoria smirked. “I’ll walk into Hogwarts. Go straight to Dumbledore and maybe meet her along the way.  Play the earnest boy, the confused hero and get information. Maybe sabotage a few wards while I’m at it.”

Rodolphus let out a long, low whistle. “And if they catch you?”

Astoria didn’t blink. “Then I make sure they learn nothing. And maybe take down a few smug Gryffindors with me.”

Bellatrix leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “You’re really going to do it?”

Astoria stood, vial in hand. “We’re out of plans and I’m out of patience. And they’re not expecting this.”

She glanced down at the strands of hair in her palm, her ticket in. 

“If we’re going down anyways,” she said, voice as sharp as curse, “We’ll be taking their world down with us.” 

The beige wallpaper of Number Four Privet Drive had faded so thoroughly it looked like a relic of a long-forgotten age. Petunia Dursley stood rigid in the sitting room, arms folded like a judge with a lifetime of disappointment to dole out.

“Dumbledore told us himself,” Petunia said, voice low but sharp enough to cut glass. “He laid it out in his study last week. And between the two of us, I’m the only one who actually listened.”

Harry blinked, brushing at his wild hair with a hand that trembled just a little. “He said it was complicated." 

“Complicated?” she snapped. “No. What’s complicated is the mess you’ve been handed. This—” she made a vague gesture toward everything, “—this Horcrux nonsense. Splitting souls like a cheap sleight-of-hand trick and tucking them into trinkets like dark magic Easter eggs.”

Harry rubbed his temples. “Yeah, I got that part.”

Petunia leaned in, eyes narrowing, voice dropping to a clipped whisper: “Then listen closely. You can talk to snakes. You shrug off curses that’d turn anyone else into a pile of ash. Voldemort shares your very blood now. What does that make you?”

Harry’s mouth opened and closed once, like a stunned fish. “You mean—”

“Exactly.” She stepped back, fists clenched. “You’re not just the target. You’re part of the damn equation.”

Dumbledore’s office smelled like lemon drops, centuries of dust, and very recent regret. Petunia was pacing, her heels tapped out a war rhythm against the ancient floorboards.

“Let me get this straight,” she spat. “My nephew—who can’t fold a jumper properly—is now carrying a piece of a mass-murdering snake cultist?”

“It is regrettably so,” Dumbledore murmured, hands steepled as if prayer might save him now.

“A Horcrux,” she echoed. “That’s what you’re calling him. A human vault for Voldemort’s emotional leftovers. Marvellous.”

“I had hoped,” he began delicately, “that the blood tether—”

“Oh, you hoped,” Petunia cut in. “Hope is what you do when you’ve run out of plans. What I need is a solution, not more Latin and lemon drops.”

The great oak doors to Dumbledore’s office crashed open as a figure stumbled in, slender and slightly off in gait.  Harry Potter’s face, clothes, and voice, even the messy hair had been replicated with a crookedness that should have fooled anyone else. 

Anyone but her. 

Astoria’s eyes darted nervously between the kindly old wizard seated behind the desk and the stern figure standing near the window, her expression colder than a Dementor’s Kiss.

“Dumbledore,” the imposter began, voice trembling but desperate, “Petunia — I’ve come to help. We have to stop Voldemort. I can protect Harry. I am Harry.”

Petunia regarded Astoria with a look that could curdle fresh milk.

“No, you’re not,” she said flatly. “Harry slouches. He argues. He doesn’t announce himself like he’s auditioning for a play. And he doesn’t wear matching socks.” 

She walked forward and slapped the Polyjuice-fueled mask from Astoria’s face.

“Well,” Petunia said, “that’s a new low even for your lot.”

Astoria gasped, eyes wide. “Please—”

“Veritaserum,” Petunia said, producing a vial. “Drink, or I find something sharper to shove down your throat.”

She drank. The truth came pouring out like a leak in the dam: blood theft, potion misuse, the planned breach of the Privet Drive wards. Petunia listened with the cold patience of someone compiling a list for the gallows.

“Congratulations,” she said at last. “You’ve just confessed to treason, conspiracy, and poor impersonation skills. Enjoy Azkaban, Miss Wren.” 

Apparition felt like her spine had been yanked through a pasta machine. Petunia reeled as they landed outside Number Four, her heels scraping the pavement, stomach somewhere near East Grinstead.

She straightened with brittle dignity, flicking invisible dust from her sleeve. “Delightful, as always,” she muttered.

Dumbledore’s half-moon spectacles caught the amber glow of the streetlamp. “Side-Along Apparition can be… disorienting.”

“So can being murdered by a fascist lizard,” she said crisply. “And yet.”

Privet Drive was unnaturally still. The curtains were drawn, porch lights off, the kind of silence that wasn’t empty so much as watching. 

The wards shimmered faintly around Number Four. After all this time, after years pretending magic was just a childish rash, Petunia could finally feel them. The ones that protected Harry were woven deep into the house’s foundation, anchored by blood and choice.

Specifically, her blood. Her choice.

Crack.

The sound split the air like a snapped neck.

He didn’t arrive so much as materialize, like a bad thought made flesh. Voldemort stood at the curb, pale and skeletal, robes slithering around him without wind. His eyes gleamed red in the dark, like coals left too long in the grate. 

Petunia’s spine locked. Her pulse jumped, but she didn’t move. “Well,” she said aloud. “If it isn’t Surrey’s most unwanted houseguest.”

Dumbledore stepped forward, wand in his hand. “You are not invited here, Tom.”

“And yet,” Voldemort murmured, turning toward the house, “here I stand. Just outside your precious little perimeter. Fascinating, isn’t it? Blood magic and the wards I still can’t cross.” 

His eyes flicked to Petunia. “Yours, I believe.”

She lifted her chin. “I’ve always been terribly territorial. Comes from having a little sister who borrowed things without asking.”

Voldemort’s voice dropped to something colder. “You had your chance to join me, Petunia. You could have had power. Purpose. Instead, you chose houseplants and mediocrity.”

“I happen to like houseplants,” she replied. “They don’t monologue.”

He smiled. “Still defiant. How quaint.”.

Voldemort didn’t fire immediately. He took one measured step forward, wand lifting lazily.  “Let’s see,” he mused, almost to himself. “What happens if I test the threshold?” 

A flick of his wrist and a flash of green. Avada Kedavra.

“AUNT PETUNIA!”

Harry’s voice cut through the night. 

She barely registered it before she saw the blur, the black jacket, bare feet, scar catching the porchlight, and then he was moving.

One step beyond the threshold. Just one.

And the spell hit him square in the chest.

Chapter Text

There was a flash of green light. A thud.

Harry and Voldemort lay crumpled in the overgrown weed gardens of Number Four, a twin tableau of collapsed destiny. One with a lightning scar, one with a noseless sneer. Neither looking particularly chosen at the moment.

Then silence. Well, for two seconds.

Then Petunia Dursley screamed.

And not just any scream. This was a banshee’s aria aged in a cellar for sixteen years, carbonated with repression, bottled tight with Tupperware lids and beige walls and unopened letters and her son's wet chewing and Vernon's ham breath, and the unbearable, unrelenting indignity of it all.

It was the raw, operatic, soul-cracking shriek of a woman who had once bleached blood out of a schoolboy’s undershirt and scrubbed ash from grout no one thanked her for cleaning. A cry of a housewife sharpened by unpaid domestic servitude, suppressed rage, expired sherry, and years of quietly perfecting the art of silent fury. Who had just seen her only nephew fold over like one of Marge's bad lawn chairs. 

The sound didn't echo so much as detonate, a sonic exorcism of suburban vengeance. 

Birds dropped dead three counties away. The paint peeled off the Muggle neighbor’s Honda. The hedges cowered with fear. 

Voldemort reeled. He hadn’t been this audibly assaulted since Bellatrix attempted karaoke.

His snakelike fingers clawed desperately at his ears. “Make it stop! Dear Merlin, she’s louder than the Banshee Chorale of Nurmengard! MAKE IT STOP!”

Even Dumbledore’s normally unshakeable composure cracked. His eyes fluttered shut, his knees buckled, and he collapsed backward onto the grass, landing with a faint thud.

And Voldemort flinched. He actually recoiled, like a cat caught in the path of a vacuum. His red eyes squeezed shut, his lipless mouth twisted into something between a hiss and a whimper. The Dark Lord, heir of Salazar Slytherin, harbinger of terror, staggered back from the sheer decibel of Petunia’s fury.

“MAKE IT STOP!” he rasped. “By Salazar’s girdle—what is that infernal wail?!”

Petunia reloaded.

The second scream was louder.

It hit Voldemort like a flip-flop to the face.
He staggered as his wand slipped from his fingers. The air seemed to warp under the sound.

“I’ve killed children!” he snarled, unravelling. “I’ve eaten unicorns! I’ve shared tea with Dolores bloody Umbridge! But this—”

He gave a strangled noise — part hiss, part please no — and with a humiliated pop, he Disapparated.

Like a balloon at the wrong birthday party.

And in the stillness that followed, two bodies lay collapsed at the garden’s edge: Harry Potter, limp as a rag doll, and Albus Dumbledore, looking as if someone had finally unplugged him.

“Oh no you don’t,” Petunia snapped, storming toward the pair like death in orthopedic sandals.

Harry blinked.

He was certainly… somewhere.

It looked like King’s Cross Station, if King’s Cross had been abandoned during an apocalypse.  The floor was gleaming white, the ceiling high and echoing, and everything spelled of old paper and lost time. 

“Hello, darling.”

He turned.

Lily Potter stood a little apart from the platform edge, arms crossed like a schoolteacher, her red hair tucked into a stern bun, eyes sharp.

Next to her, James leaned against the station sign that now read Platform ...Eventually, fiddling with a Snitch. He gave Harry a little two-finger wave and said, “Took you long enough.”

His parents. Not smoky echoes or Priori Incantatem phantoms.  Just alive-looking and whole, standing as if they'd just stepped out of a family photo no one had taken. 

“Where are we?” asked Harry, dazed. 

James gestured around vaguely. “Think of this as the budget version of the afterlife. Couldn't afford actual trains.” 

Lily snorted beside him, legs crossed primly, ghostly cardigan over ghostly blouse. “We told them platform nine-and-three-quarters, and they gave us something out of a Victorian fever dream."

Harry blinked. “So… I’m dead?”

“Yes and no,” Lily said. “Temporary pause in the game. You’re stuck in the in-between, waiting for a cue.”

James smirked. “You get tea if you’re really dead,” he said. “You're not getting tea.”

“We’ve only got a minute,” Lily added, suddenly businesslike. “We’re here to fill you in on the stuff you need to know, the essentials."

A notebook suddenly materialized in his lap. Green and floral, with a faint Muggle shopping list etched in biro on the back. It looked like the one Petunia used to keep in the kitchen drawer under the expired coupons and complaint letters.

Harry glanced up.

“I think your aunt’s rubbed off on you,” Lily said, smiling gently. 

“Right. Horcruxes,” James said quickly. “Write this down: Riddle was a narcissistic git who thought splitting his soul made him clever.”

“He thought he could cheat death,” Lily added. “Kept churning out new Horcruxes like a man trying to dodge his taxes with increasingly illegal write-offs.”

“You’ve already done the diary. Excellent stabbing form, really,” said James. 

“The ring’s gone, too,” Lily said crisply. ““Dumbledore destroyed it, but don’t mistake his shaky hand for arthritis next time you see him.”

James nodded. “Yeah, it turned out to be cursed after all. Dumbledore’s fingers? Just collateral damage.”

Harry glanced at his notes. “Dumbledore’s cursed finger” — check.

“The locket’s… tricky. You’ll find it eventually. But if Dumbledore offers to take you into some godforsaken cave, say no. That’s where the fake lives,” James said dryly. “The real locket eventually ends up with Dolores Umbridge, of all people. Try not to think about that for too long.” 

“And Regulus Black stole it first,” Lily added. “Your godfather’s brother. The family disappointments are always the useful ones.”

James nodded. “The cup’s Hufflepuff’s. Currently residing in Bellatrix Lestrange’s vault, don’t ask how we know. Afterlife gossip.”

Harry sighed. “Guess I’ll have to gaslight an entire bank and rob it to boot."

James clapped him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit, son! And the diadem is Ravenclaw’s. You’ll recognize where it’s hidden by the overpowering stench of forgotten dreams and centuries of magical hoarding.”

Harry nodded, scribbling faster. “And the snake?”

Nagini, Lily confirmed. “Yes, she counts, and we don’t know why he made her one. Possibly loneliness, possibly theatrical symbolism.”

“Probably both,” James added. “The man was one dramatic existential crisis in a cloak.”

James glanced at Lily, then back at Harry. “You’re the seventh Horcrux that he never intended to make. Stuck to you since birth like a little magical hitchhiker." 

“Don’t dwell on it,” Lily said. “Voldemort destroyed that piece when he tried to kill you again just now. It's gone now.”

Harry looked up sharply. “Gone?”

“Yeah,” James said with a grin. “Consider your forehead's cursed roommate officially evicted.”

Harry touched his scar reflexively. “I don’t feel different.” 

“You wouldn’t,” said James. “Soul fragments don’t make exit noises.”

Harry tried to sit. No chairs (budget afterlife problems) so he metaphorically sat in the overwhelming weight of generational trauma instead. 

Lily glanced at the notes and then back at Harry. “There’s someone you should know about. Severus Snape.”

 “Oh God,” Harry muttered.

 Lily gave him a look. “No, not like that. Just... look, he’s complicated. He cared for me, enough to change, enough to protect you, Harry.”

James made a sound like he’d swallowed a lemon whole. “Cared, yeah, let’s not pretend it wasn’t some obsessive sort of love. That greasy git fancied you, Lils. And loved as in past tense, let’s be clear.”

Harry jotted this down in the margins: Snape = morally grey + grudgingly useful??

“Your aunt,” Lily said, quieter now, “is something else. She has no magic, but… she screeched for you like a banshee armed with a thousand years of repressed rage. Voldemort may not understand love, but he definitely understands volume.”

“Scared him more than Dumbledore ever did,” James said wryly.

“And there’s just something so poetic about my sister shrieking Voldemort himself halfway back to Albania.” 

“Did she really?” Harry asked, incredulous. 

Lily nodded. “High-pitched fury is a long-standing Evans trait.” 

“Your aunt loves you in her own furious, bottled-up way,” James offered. “Tell her we say thank you for looking after you.” 

“More importantly, she’s not done with you,” Lily said. “You’ve still got things to do, Horcruxes to destroy, a destiny to fulfill. A sentient snake to behead.”

There was a long silence. 

“Do I die?” Harry asked quietly.

 “Eventually,” Lily said. 

“Hopefully in bed,” added James. “Surrounded by grandchildren, not serpents.”

 “Or paperwork,” Lily muttered. “Honestly, the Ministry’s worse.” 

Harry stood. 

Steam curled at the platform’s edge. Somewhere in the fog, a shrill voice was screaming his name. 

He looked back once more.

“Can I kill him this time?” he asked. “For real?”

Lily smiled. “Yes, but do it with style. Make us proud.”

“And if you see Sirius,” James added, voice rough, “tell him I wasn’t actually mad about the motorbike.”

Harry gasped awake on the garden stones. His ribs ached and his eyes burned. Dumbledore groaned beside him like an elderly opera singer coming out of anesthesia.

“Harry!” Petunia was at his side in a flash. “You—honestly!—what were you thinking, running into that curse like some caffeine-crazed Gryffindor with a hero complex?”

“I am a Gryffindor with a—” he croaked.

“Oh, don’t brag about it.”

She wiped his face with a tissue that looked suspiciously like a crumpled Tesco receipt, then gave his cheek a slight smack. “And stop looking so pale. You’ve got the same expression Lily had when our dad nearly blew up the house trying to fix the boiler with a fork."

Harry blinked. “They’re proud of you, you know.”

Petunia stiffened. “Who?”

“My parents.”

Her face went taut, like she’d been struck. 

“Dead people talk to you now, do they?” she said, voice trembling. 

“Sometimes.”

She shook her head and turned sharply, muttering something about not having the time for spiritual hallucinations. But her eyes were wet.

That night, Petunia cleaned. Not because the house was dirty — it had already been nuked to a gleaming sheen. But because when the world is collapsing and your nephew’s been murdered and resurrected in your begonias, what else are you going to do?

She cleaned because something had shifted, and her hands needed something to do besides throttle the universe for its general mismanagement.

So, she mopped the floor. Descaled the kettle. Shouted at a sponge. Rearranged the kitchen knives in order of threat level.

Fold. Press. Stack. Breathe.

It was easier than thinking about the sound that had come out of her that wasn't a scream, not really, more a centuries-fermented howl stepped in domestic frustration and watered-down rosé.

It hadn’t been planned. Petunia Dursley didn’t do improv. She did calendars, and withering remarks scheduled weeks in advance.
But the moment she’d seen that waxy thing in her garden, with eyes like slits carved from a scalpel, and a shit-eating smirk, something older than fury tore loose from her chest.  

Voldemort had vanished. 
Dumbledore outright collapsed like a man finally allowed to retire. 

She moved to the bookshelf to dust and sort. You'd think a culture obsessed with wands would respect spines, but half the volumes were hexed, howling, or stuffed with teeth. She hated how magical people treated books like weapons, or heirlooms, not like things that were supposed to live with you, like wallpaper and teabags and expired aspirin.

That’s when she saw it.

Tucked between a dictionary and a half-singed copy of Magical Law and You (utterly unreadable and no index, which said everything), was an old, yellowing envelope. The paper was brittle, the ink faded. And the writing was her own.

Petunia Evans. July. 1, 1971.
Painstakingly neat cursive, the kind a child uses when trying to look older than they are.

Dear Professor Dumbledore,
I know my sister got into your school, but I’m very clever too.
I read lots and I can tell when things are about to happen.
I’d be very good, I promise. Please write back.
I think I belong.

Petunia began to laugh. It was an unhinged, wet, gasping laugh, the kind that ends in a hiccup or a scream. But she didn’t scream this time. 

Once, she had begged to go to Hogwarts. Written a letter, even, with perfect penmanship and an immaculate signature. Clearly, she'd misunderstood the admissions policy: no ambition or sense required, just spontaneous combustion. Lily had blown up a teacup and got accepted on the spot.

Only this time, she wasn’t jealous anymore. 

Petunia had power of her own. Or rage. Or some unholy fusion of both, bottled up from decades of vacuum-sealed grief and shrieking at magical nonsense.

 And she was going to use it. 

She folded the letter with careful precision, and tucked it into her blouse pocket like a relic. And then, still trembling, she picked up her duster. Because some monsters you fought with hexes. And some — with lemon-scented fury.

Chapter Text

Harry had warned her.

“Are you sure about this?” he asked, voice low, eyes scanning the Ministry documents spread before them like the aftermath of a bureaucratic exorcism. “I mean… Voldemort doesn’t even tell his own Death Eaters about Horcruxes. Making it public—kind of—is…”

“Reckless?” Petunia sniffed. “You think I don’t know that?”

She tugged a sensible cardigan over her shoulders like battle armor. “Secrecy bred prophecy. And what did that give us? A dead sister. A burned nursery. You, nearly dying, again .”

Harry blinked. No rebuttal came.

“Truths lose their power once aired,” she muttered, signing off on one of the new pamphlets. “Fear combusts as it comes out.”

He watched as she stamped it with the official Ministry seal: “The Sentimental Object Retrieval Initiative” (“Sounds like magical Goodwill,” Ron had muttered when he first saw the pamphlet. “But somehow cursed.”). 

 And beneath it, the unofficial motto in finer print:

Operation Slinky Redemption. 

It all began with that Ministry memo, printed in recycled parchment that smelled faintly of antiseptic and desperation.

The wizarding public barely flinched. They had weathered banshee riots, a disastrous Gobstones tax, and several years of questionable Ministry leadership. But the language gnawed at their collective subconscious:

Magical relics of excessive sentimental value are to be identified, documented, and turned into the Ministry for neutralization, appraisal, or therapeutic conversation.
Particularly targeted: jewelry, heirlooms, and animate vessels associated with unnatural longevity or aggressive emotional auras.

Bewilderment quickly gave way to curiosity, then something dangerously close to enthusiastic participation. Attics and dusty trunks everywhere were rifled through with renewed purpose.

The campaign had turned bizarre relic-hunting into a national pastime. 

An elderly witch insisted her husband’s cursed shaving mirror was an artifact of great import and demanded a substantial emotional compensation package. A nervous Ravenclaw offered up her cursed mood ring, awkwardly hoping it might count as extra credit. Even Filch was seen rummaging through confiscated objects, dumping them in a new Ministry bin labeled:
“Mildly Haunted, Definitely Hideous, Possibly Significant.”

Posters soon flourished:

“Heirlooms with Unspeakable Attachments? Report them today!”
“Do you feel a deep-soul chilling dread around your jewelry? You may be entitled to Ministry compensation.”

The goblins were beyond themselves.

“How dare they suggest cursed treasure could be ‘donated’?” one sputtered, his face turning a peculiar shade of emerald rage.

“We don’t even have a tax-exempt form for that nonsense!” another wailed.

Hermione nearly collapsed in delight watching the chaos.

“It’s genius !” she whispered to Harry, “Nobody suspects we’re hunting Horcruxes because The Ministry made it sound like a magical spring cleaning. It’s too absurd to be taken seriously.”

“But Voldemort will notice,” pointed out Harry grimly. 

“That’s the point,” Hermione said with a small smile. “He has to. This will make him paranoid. He’ll crack, you’ll see.”

Azkaban was quiet now.

No Dementors, they’d been rendered obsolete since it was discovered Petunia’s voice inflicted more psychological damage than a thousand soul-sucking wraiths combined.

The Daily Howler had replaced the Daily Prophet. 

In Cell 43-B, Astoria Wren sat cross-legged on her cot with impeccable posture and vacant eyes. Over the weeks, she had taken to naming the cracks in the wall after dead aristocrats—Crack Number Twelve was reserved for her mother.

A sudden flap of wings broke the silence.

Owls no longer came to Azkaban — not since Petunia Dursley had banned the “unregulated delivery of subpar paper stock.” But this was no owl.

This was a Howler. Bright red and steaming like a dropped grenade, it landed on Astoria’s cot with a faint hiss.

“ASTORIA BLOODY WREN!”

In the next cell, a hardened Snatcher openly wept at the sheer volume.

“ YOU COULDN’T EVEN PRETEND TO BE HARRY, YOU WET LETTUCE IN A WIG! I’ve seen more convincing performances in primary school plays. ‘I AM HARRY,’ you said? Harry wouldn’t be caught dead in matching socks, you Tory-stained charade!”

Astoria whimpered, desperation creeping in as she tried to cast a wandless Muffliato, but the spell fizzled in her useless fingers.

“ AND DON’T THINK I DIDN’T NOTICE THE HAIR PART. HARRY’S HAIR PARTS LEFT, YOU BACKSTABBING BOVINE DISAPPOINTMENT! ”

With a final hiss, the Howler exploded. Ash drifted softly to the floor like funeral petals.

Astoria lay still for six hours.

In the adjacent cell 44-B, Dirk Cresswell flinched as his bars rattled from The Daily Howlers, customized for each prisoner by a wrathful Petunia. 

He whispered his morning prayer: “Please no envelope. Please no envelope. Please no envelope today.”

It arrived anyways, right on the dot at 9:03 AM. “Still waiting, Dirk. Confess or Combust.” 

He’d tried combusting. It didn’t take. 

The guards on the upper tiers had started taking bets who would crack the next.

Blood purists were usually the first to go— those bred on a belief in their own magical superiority succumbed fast to this new, relentless torture. It was most humiliating to them that they were being gaslit into madness by a Muggle.

But Dirk, the Muggle-born Liason, was certainly climbing the odds.  

Dirk’s eyes now caught the flickering projection of a Bulletin Board magically pinned to his cell wall.

“Calling All Snake‑Slayers! Final Auditions Today — Operation Medusa’s Bane.”

A mad light sparked in his eyes.

“I can do it,” he muttered. “I fended off a massive garden snake in ’73 with nothing but a fence post and sheer British grit. I can do it.”

“Pay up,” grunted a guard, holding out his hand. “He’s gone.”

The other guard sighed, dropping 3 Galleons in his waiting palm. "I was hoping he'd hold out for a bit longer." 

A voice so shrill it felt like it scraped the stone walls raw echoed again.  “Still waiting, Dirk. Confess or combust.”

And Dirk Cresswell clenched his fists and shouted back, desperate and ragged: “CONFESS!!”

At that exact moment, the barred window rattled, and there she was in simmering authority.

“Dirk,” said Petunia crisply. “You want out?”

He nodded frantically. “I—I can fight. I still know the stance. My wrists are good. I even practiced with a fork this morning.”

She squinted. “Fine. But you play by my rules.”

That same afternoon, disguised as a scruffy Ministry temp in ill-fitting robes, Dirk strode into the Ministry’s most absurd audition display to date. A crooked banner announced: Operation Medusa’s Bane.

Rubber basilisks lay deflated in corners. Cardboard Voldemorts wobbled ominously beside a folding table where three goblins sat, each wearing the expression of someone trapped in an HR orientation.

Dirk stepped forward with the ferocity of a man who’d been insulted by a Howler for six months straight. His eyes gleamed with spite. His spine straightened with muscle memory. And when the faux snake was rolled out, he raised his blade and struck.

A clean slice.

The rubber snake split in two. One of the goblins blinked, trying not to look impressed.

“…Well,” it said, “that’s a win.”

The chamber was cloaked in shadows, thick with the stench of mildew and megalomania. At the far end, the Dark Lord sat beneath a banner of heavy silence, barely visible through the flicker of torchlight.

Then—Bang!

The door flew open with theatrical violence.

Dirk Cresswell strode in, wild-eyed and winded, robes tattered just enough to sell the story.

He dropped to one knee. “My Lord,” he breathed.  “I’ve escaped Azkaban. Ready to serve. And I’ve got intel, good intel.”

From the throne, Voldemort did not rise. He merely tilted his head, lips curling in a smile colder than steel.

“Cresswell,” he drawled, savoring the name. “The Ministry’s little errand boy, so good at disappearing into committees and pension scandals. How charming to see you…unincarcenated.”

Dirk grinned thinly. “What can I say? I had to escape Petunia’s screams before I went mad.”

That part wasn’t a lie.

A low hiss rippled across the stones. Voldemort circled like a shadow uncoiling, voice soft as silk dipped in venom.

“And what makes you think I’d accept the word of a man who once bartered state secrets for a novelty coin set and seasonal eggnog privileges?”

Dirk didn’t flinch. There was a reason he’d been voted Best Dramatic Performance in Year 6 Muggle Primary.

He leaned in, voice low and steady. "Because I’ve seen your enemies, and I know what they’re after.”

Voldemort stopped.

His eyes narrowed. “Go on.”

Dirk rose slowly, hand sliding into his robe not for a wand, but for a blade. 

“My Lord,” he said, eyes wild with something burning and unplaceable, “Let me prove myself. With an offering.”

From the shadows, Nagini slithered forward, her long body undulating. She paused, yellow eyes locked on Dirk. Her tongue flicked in the stale air like a curse about to be spoken aloud.

He struck then. 

One clean, arcing stroke. No hesitation or mercy.

The blade sliced through her midsection and a hiss of escaping magic filled the room like gas from a broken pipe. Nagini’s body thrashed once, twice, then stilled. Her eyes, moments ago gleaming with serpentine hunger, dulled into glass.

A silence fell so sudden it felt cosmic. 

And then—

Voldemort shrieked with unprecedented rage.

“TRAITOR!” he howled. “THIEF! MADMAN!”

Dirk gulped. He fumbled into his robes, fingers shaking, and yanked out the dented silver flask Petunia had given him.

“Sherry!” he yelled, vanishing in a twist of wind and sherry-scented Portkey magic.

Nagini was gone.

Not wounded. Not missing.

Gone.

By a contest, a joke, a Ministry flyer calling for snake-slayers as if she were some common pest in a Muggle garden.

“They knew!” he hissed aloud, voice shaking like a struck bell. “Not just who she was… but what she was.”

The wind didn't answer. It rarely did anymore.

“Petunia Dursley,” he spat. “A Muggle. A—”
He couldn’t even finish the thought.

He placed a pale hand on his chest, as if he could claw the emptiness shut. “You wanted them afraid,” he whispered to himself, eyes wild. “So you hid them. Splintered your soul and buried it in secrets, but they’re not afraid anymore.”

He remembered the pamphlets fluttering from owl posts like confetti.
“Operation Slinky Redemption.”
“The Cursed Teacup Retrieval Initiative.”
Idiocy.

Weaponized idiocy.

The entire world laughing as they marched toward his undoing,  with public service campaigns and rubber snakes and Daily Howlers.

Voldemort’s breath hitched as he staggered against a table, clutching the surface of it like a drunk.

“They dare. They dare!!”

A man had gutted Nagini like she was a common beast. 

A bureaucrat, for crying out loud. A paper-pusher. A seedy ex-Ministry rat who once filed pension forms in triplicate. 

They would come for the rest. He saw it now, the pamphlets disguised as prophecy, riddles disguised as treasure maps, schoolchildren whispering about cursed cups and haunted crowns.

After Petunia’s surprise intervention, and with so many hunters scouring cursed jewelry like it was the latest fashion craze, he knew his old tactics were too obvious.

He chuckled darkly. Fine. If everyone was hunting cursed relics like trinkets at a market, then his Horcruxes would learn to lie like that too.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Let them come.”

Let them find his Horcruxes. Let them touch them, claim them, think themselves clever. But these objects would remember every grief, every lie, every self-loathing syllable buried deep in the seeker’s soul.

He would lace them with despair, memory, and torment. His Horcruxes would no longer shout with curses or alarms—they would lie silent, waiting to strike only when provoked.

Voldemort laughed, high and awful and unhinged. “Yes, let them come,” he shrieked manically. “Let them try!”

He stood straight, eyes gleaming now with resolve. 

“After the meeting,” he whispered. “Then I begin.”

Malfoy Manor’s drawing room reeked of burnt parchment and bruised egos.

Voldemort stood at the head of the room, pale knuckles white against the table’s edge. The Death Eaters sat like schoolchildren summoned to detention — except detention didn’t typically come with a side of Crucio.

He opened his mouth. Closed it.

Opened it again.

“SILENCE!” he shrieked.

They hadn’t said a word.

He panted, eyes blazing. “My precious Nagini, ripped apart!  Murdered by the very rot I almost let into this circle.”

Bellatrix opened her mouth.

“DON’T!” he snapped.

She closed it.

Voldemort turned with a dramatic swish of his cloak and summoned someone from the shadows.

 A man, eyes burning with a cold fire, stepped forward. His hair was dark and his posture predatory.

“This is Timmy Creevey.”

There was an audible squelch of disbelief. The Death Eaters shifted uncomfortably in their seats, giving each other looks.

“My Lord... Creevey?” someone dared whisper.

Voldemort’s crimson eyes flicked with cruel amusement. “Ah, but you mistake him for his…lesser relatives. I assure you that Creevey is nothing like his half-brothers.”

He turned slightly toward the young man. “Tim has been trained in secret. He’s been my third backup plan now after Wren. My blade in the dark.”

Voldemort’s voice softened, almost reverent. “Tim. We share a fate writ in shame and ambition. Two boys with atrocious names. Yours, Tim. Mine, Tom. Both born to muggle fathers who failed us. Both sorted into Slytherin, both with something to prove.”

He let the words hang, heavy as venom.

“Timmy was born to a Muggle mailman—yes, that Creevey—but his mother was a pureblood witch. One of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. The bloodline you so worship has secrets, after all.”

Timmy’s smile twisted. “By sixteen, I had murdered my father with my own hands. My brothers don’t even speak my name anymore.”

Bellatrix didn’t bother hiding the skepticism in her voice. Or perhaps it was envy. “And where has this little prodigy been , all this time?”

Voldemort’s eyes narrowed. “Where you couldn’t reach him. Tim was my private ward. Hidden from the Ministry, trained in secret. He is untainted by your failures.”

Outside, the courtyard was brittle with frost and tension. 

Yaxley looked pale. “I didn’t even know the Dark Lord had a Muggle father.”

Mulciber’s eyes narrowed. “I thought that was Ministry slander. Or maybe a joke.”

“Not anymore,” said Nott. “He said it himself. To all of us.”

“He’s losing it,” muttered Rosier. “Next, he’ll recruit a Weasley. Or worse, a Hufflepuff.”

Bellatrix’s fingers twitched. “He’s trying to replace Nagini. Creevey’s just a stand-in. He won’t last, mark my words.”

Malfoy didn’t bother hiding his sneer. “And now he’s playing favorites in front of us. That never ends well.”

The air between them rippled, taut and sour with suspicion. Eyes darted sideways. 

The Dark Lord had enemies now.

Not just from without, but within.

Hogwarts remembered him well. Too clever by half, smelled like ambition and secrets. Called himself “Lord” like a child wearing his dad’s shoes.

The castle groaned now. Like an ancient being rubbing its metaphorical temples as Tom Riddle—formerly of Slytherin, currently of Too Many Opinions—stalked back onto the grounds.

Again. 

When he had tried to enchant the Ravenclaw Diadem decades ago, Hogwarts had winced . Like swallowing a bad idea. It knew what he was doing, lacing a thing meant for wisdom with madness, bottling envy in silver filigree.

And now, he stalked through the halls like a bad draft, muttering incantations that leaked emotional debris in his wake. When he reached the Room of Requirement, Tom cackled (always so dramatic), Parseltongue echoing in curls of gloom:

“Let those who seek my treasures drown in their own fears, haunted by failure and every lie they tell themselves!”

The diadem trembled. The air warped.

And Hogwarts pursed its metaphorical lips together. 

He was enchanting the furniture again.

The stones tried not to wince. It was all very tragic, of course. But they had centuries of wear and tea spills and poltergeists to deal with. They didn’t have time for yet another of Tom’s overlong monologues and emotional vandalism.

“If I had a nose,” the wall above the entrance thought bitterly, “I’d be pinching the bridge of it.” 

Tom finally vanished, trailing decayed grandeur and a mid-life crisis, as well as a diadem that now hummed with extra weaponized despair.

The hallway walls shifted slightly, dislodging a portrait who had been trying to eavesdrop.

The castle was quiet for a moment.

And then it remembered something, or someone. 

Petunia.

She’d stormed in not long ago wandless, furious, and radiating barely contained suburban wrath like a pressure cooker in pearls.

And Hogwarts had… behaved.

Not because it liked her, that would be a stretch. But she had a clarity to her, a sort of anti-magic that stripped away the pretensions.

She didn’t get distracted by whispering portraits or enchanted staircases or bewitched ceiling skies. She noticed grime on the banisters. She told the Fat Lady to sit up straight. She scolded Peeves into silence for eight consecutive hours — an unbroken record.

The staircases still hadn’t fully recovered.

Somewhere in the bowels of the castle, a dusty common room fireplace flickered at the memory of her voice, and the bricks huddled a little closer together.

“She didn’t flinch,” a suit of armor whispered once.
“She vacuumed the Transfiguration corridor,” replied a painting.
“She’s the only one who’s ever made the Peeves say sorry,” added a gargoyle, glumly.

And now Tom was back, dripping soul fragments and schoolboy trauma like loose change. 

And the castle was officially fed up. 

So when he tried reinforcing his Horcruxes with twisted enchantments, with emotional traps and soul-chipping illusions, Hogwarts simply shifted, rerouted, and occasionally dropped helpful books into the laps of certain Gryffindors with too much hair and too little sleep. 

The staircases had been twitchy for weeks — spiraling without cause, doubling back like anxious thoughts, locking first-years in broom closets for what the portraits insisted was “character-building.”

Doorways led to different centuries depending on the hour.

Students whispered that Hogwarts was going mad.

It wasn’t.

It was just brooding from a millennium of repressed wrath, silently watching generations blunder through prophecy and pride. Riddle had been the last straw.

Now, in the quiet hush of the Restricted Section, the trio stood in front of a wall that hadn’t existed until precisely five minutes ago. It shimmered faintly, wedged behind a crooked shelf of dusty, hexed herbology journals. The air smelled of wax and old defiance.

“Maybe it's adapting,” said Hermione quietly. “The Founders designed Hogwarts with protections that react to danger. Perhaps this is its way of protecting something, or someone.”

“Great,” Harry muttered, wand out. “Our school’s gone full bunker-mode.”

The silver veins pulsed. Then, etched by invisible magic, a riddle formed on the wall:

I wasn’t made — I woke.
Born of need, and grief, and smoke.
Not treasure, not trap, nor tomb —
Just questions carved into a room.
So if you’d pass, be plain (for once!) —
What thing you seek, and why it’s you.
And for Merlin’s sake… be true.

Hermione inhaled sharply. “It’s not a riddle,” she whispered. “This is sentient relic magic, old and reactive! Its guarding intent, I read about it in Hogwarts: A History." 

Harry stepped forward without hesitation. “We’re looking for an artifact that thinks it’s sacred, a vessel with delusions of divinity.”
“We’re here to remind it that it’s just a cup.”

The wall paused.

Then, with the reluctant groan of ancient stone remembering its purpose, it cracked open to revealing a steep, spiraling slide. The distant sound of coins rattling and an unmistakable snore of something scaled and massive trailed upward.

Harry blinked. “That slide goes to Gringotts, doesn’t it?”

Hermione squinted at the chasm below. “It... shouldn’t. But yes. Yes, it does. That was not in the archives.”

There was a beat of stunned silence.

Ron groaned with audible relief. “And here I thought we were going with the old plan. You know, Bellatrix cosplay.”

Hermione reached into her enchanted bag and pulled out three small, familiar vials. “I brewed the Polyjuice two nights ago, we might still need it. There’s no telling what’s waiting on the other side of this.”

Ron eyed the vials. “So… who’s drawing the short wand and playing murder Barbie?"

“I’m just saying,” Harry smirked, eyeing the shifting shadows below, “ I would make a more convincing Bellatrix.”

Hermione blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Well—look.” Harry gestured vaguely at himself. “We’re about the same height now. She’s got the hair, and I’ve got the trauma.”

Ron made a noise like a dying kettle. 

Hermione crossed her arms. “Harry, you cannot possibly be thinking of cosplaying a deranged, mass-murdering goth witch!"

“Discount goth,” Harry corrected her smoothly. “And for Merlin’s sake, Hermione, I was raised by Petunia Dursley. I can fake elitist disgust in my sleep.”

And then he dropped his voice into a cold, sneering drawl:

“Filthy blood traitors! I’ve seen better lineage in a Muggle dog show. Crucio, but make it couture.”

Hermione stared.

“…Okay, that was terrifying.”

One second, they were careening through ancient Hogwarts stone, and the next, they landed hard on the gleaming floor of Bellatrix Lestrange’s high-security Gringotts vault.

Hermione groaned, lifting herself up with a wince. “This isn’t possible. There are supposed to be a hundred enchantments, goblin wards, biometric curses—”

“Turns out Hogwarts disagrees,” said Harry, brushing dust off the very convincing set of Bellatrix robes he was still wearing. 

Ron looked around in disbelief. “Hogwarts dumped us straight into a goblin vault? No alarms? No security spells? No dragon?”

“Maybe it’s saving those for later," muttered Hermione. 

From the center of the room, the Cup waited smug, golden, perfectly lit like a cursed centerpiece at the worst dinner party ever.

Suddenly, the air shimmered. A seductive voice slithered through the chamber.

“Want more? More power, more glory, more everything you deserve…”

A shimmering illusion sprang up before them, visions of triumphant victories, lost loved ones restored, the promise of a future without struggle.

Harry’s jaw tightened. “Great. Now it’s a magic infomercial.”

Hermione waved her wand to dispel one illusion, only for another to shimmer up, just as tempting. She stumbled back, eyes wide. 

Ron faltered, his eyes flicking to a vision of himself as a world-star Quidditch star, crowds chanting his name. “Blimey… that looks nice.”

“Oi!” Harry snapped. “Don’t fall for it. That is magical catfishing.”

He squared his shoulders and marched toward the Cup.

“Alright, let’s get this over with. I’m immune to snake-oil sales pitches.”

Magic slammed into his skull, slithering and surgical, making Harry reel back.

The Cup hissed now. Soft and serpentine, it laced shame into a lullaby. It knew him. Knew the taste of doubt, the texture of guilt. Knew each of his insecurities by name. Knew exactly where to press, and how hard. It dug.

But Harry took a step forward, fingers trembling only slightly. “Please. I’ve had worse gaslighting over burnt toast. You think this hurts?”

The Cup pulsed, confused.

He grinned grimly. “Try Aunt Petunia’s ‘You Ruined Vernon’s Birthday Again’ speech. That was Oscar-worthy.”

Hermione wiped at her eyes, seeing sense. “It’s a projection charm. Tied to insecurity, maybe inferiority—”

“A guilt-trip Horcrux,” Ron muttered. “Brilliant. Voldemort weaponized Catholic shame for soul-guarding security.”

Harry didn’t wait. He drew the Sword of Gryffindor, still unclear how Hogwarts had slipped it to him mid-slide, but at this point, they were done asking questions.

He raised it high.

“No more pity parties,” he growled. “Not from a cup.”

And he drove the sword clean through the vessel.

The Cup screamed.

Liquid gold spilled from the rupture, hissing as it hit the marble. The air rippled with a final pulse as the illusions crumbled like bad joke.

Silence returned.

Far above, in the hidden places of Hogwarts, the stone stirred. A quiet thought slipped through the walls like a breeze:

One down. Try not to track soul gunk on the carpet.

Harry let the sword drop with a heavy clatter.

He turned, still very much Bellatrix, and offered Ron a shaky, triumphant smile.

Ron recoiled. "Oh, hell no mate, don't you smile at me like that wearing her face.”

Petunia was halfway through scolding a Department of Magical Infrastructure intern for filing a chandelier as a Class IV emotional hazard when the knock came at her office door.

A head popped in, flustered and sweating. Possibly named Nigel.

“Minister Dursley? Erm, I mean, Minister Slughorn? There's a… slight situation at Hogwarts.”

Petunia narrowed her eyes. “What kind of situation?”

The boy gulped. “It’s been… misbehaving.”

Her chair scraped back before the sentence finished. “Finally,” she muttered, grabbing her coat. “I was wondering when the bloody castle would start acting like a teenager again.”

The sixth floor corridor flickered again.

A tapestry tried to pretend it was a broom cupboard. A broom cupboard sulked into becoming a staircase. The portraits were screaming at the chandelier (again), and the floor tiles were arguing over whose turn it was to creak.

Then came Petunia Dursley, storming through the front entrance like righteous arthritis in sandals. Again.

“Oh no,” the castle thought.

The staircases promptly realigned, the doors parted without protest, and the portraits shut up.

Even Peeves backed away like she carried garlic.

Hogwarts had misbehaved around her before, once. She’d slapped a trick step in retaliation.

The Marauder’s Map sat between them on a cluttered table, twitching like a nervous ferret. Every time they tried to track the Room of Requirement, it blurred, redrew itself, and promptly disappeared again.

“It’s useless!” Ron snapped. “The bloody Room won’t even stay still long enough to find its own name.”

Hermione squinted. “No, it’s moving because something’s reacting. R esisting. Like there’s something it wants us to see but doesn’t want us to know it wants us to see.”

Harry blinked. “I think that's the most Hogwarts thing I’ve ever heard.”

Then the air shifted. A book didn’t fall. It didn’t slam. It just glided off the shelf like a tired parent delivering the last straw.

It opened midair to a sketch of a tiara. Next to it, a poem:

“Clever lies and clever minds,
Are hiding what a castle finds.
A traitor's soul, a crown gone wrong,
Go ask the girl who haunts the song.”

Hermione read it aloud. “That’s Helena. The Grey Lady.”

Harry glanced up. “Do you think Hogwarts is… snitching on Voldemort?”

“I think Hogwarts is done playing subtle.”

They found her in a corridor near Ravenclaw Tower, drifting like regret in blue silk.

“Hello,” Harry started, polite but firm.

She didn’t even turn. “No. I’ve already told a dozen of you that I don’t know anything about the lost diadem.”

“We’re not just anyone,” said Ron. 

 Helena sighed theatrically, folding ghostly arms. “No. You’re children with messiah complexes.”

And then Hogwarts, bless its ancient, increasingly unhinged soul, intervened.

A sudden wind blew through the corridor, tugging their cloaks and Helena’s veil. Dust swirled into the air and then twisted into silver letters that hung in front of her like scolding words on a chalkboard:

TELL THE BOY.

The castle bumped her ghostly form with the gentleness of a knee to the ribs.

She froze.

“…That brute of a building,” she muttered. “Fine.”

She turned to Harry. “It’s in the Room of Requirement. He put it there. Tom Riddle. Said he was hiding ‘greatness.’”

Harry’s stomach clenched.

“But The Room’s been resisting us for days,” Hermione said.

“Well, of course it has,” Helena snapped. “That room helped him re-enchant the blasted thing again, and now it's ashamed. You know how Hogwarts is, equal parts guilt and vanity. Like a disgraced aristocrat trying to clean their own scandal off the floor.”

Harry stepped forward, exasperated. “Room of Requirement, we forgive you!”

The door didn’t swing open so much as sulk ajar, like a teenager caught hiding contraband under the floorboards.

As they stepped inside, the space felt... resentful. It was vast and shadowed, shelves of forgotten objects stretching into the dark. The air shimmered with a kind of emotional static, like walking into a room where a fight had just happened.

The diadem sat atop a crooked tower of dusty books, gleaming. 

Its silver band flickered in the low light, encrusted with cold, intelligent sapphires. It didn’t whisper like the cup. It just watched, waiting as they approached. 

Hermione slowed. “That’s it.”

“I don’t like how it's looking at me,” Ron muttered.

This time, it hit with overwhelming doubt. Memories of failure, near defeats, Cedric, Sirius, the war not yet won.

Harry nearly staggered.

Then—

SLAP!

A trapdoor in the ceiling flung open with a flourish (the one that Hogwarts had created just for her) and Petunia Dursley dropped into the Room of Requirement like divine retribution in flats.

“OH NO YOU DON’T,” she barked, striding toward the Horcrux as if it owed her money.

“Absolutely not. I’ve raised this boy. I’ve fought off screaming toddlers, two school inspectors, and Vernon’s cholesterol for twenty years. You think some emotionally constipated tiara is going to break him?”

The diadem quivered .

“Harry,” she said briskly, brushing ash off her blazer. “Hit it with something sharp.”

And Harry, with the calm of someone long used to Dursley domestic theatrics, raised the Sword of Gryffindor (still slightly charred from the cup) and brought it down.

The diadem gave a high-pitched wail, not unlike an antique kettle having a nervous breakdown. Then unraveled into dust, as if shame itself had finally crumbled under generational trauma and a stainless-steel handbag.

Silence fell.

Then a slow, building creak emerged. 

The stones of the castle groaned like an old woman getting out of bed — arthritic, ancient, and absolutely over it. Rafters flexed. Arches pulsed. The ceiling of the Great Hall twitched.

And then… Hogwarts gave a great sniff.

Not a little sniff.
Not a polite sniff.
No, this was a cataclysmic, full-bodied sniff of magical judgment, ancient and offended.

It started in the foundations and traveled upward, building momentum like a freight train of passive aggression. A sniff to end all sniffs.

Somewhere deep in a forgotten hallway, Argus Filch paused mid-mop.

His eyes narrowed. “The castle’s judging something.”

And then — WHAM.

With a magical snort of such intensity, the castle launched Filch bodily into the air. One second he was standing by a dusty corridor — the next, he was airborne, flailing like a disgruntled bat.

He flew up three flights, bounced off a tapestry of Wendelin the Weird, and splattered onto the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall.

Chapter Text

The portrait was already shrieking before Petunia’s heels had fully crossed the threshold.

“FILTH! BLOOD TRAITOR! BRINGING YOUR MUDB—”

Petunia didn’t even pause. She lifted one perfectly manicured hand and snapped,
“Oh, put a sock in it, you overpainted tea cozy.”

The effect was instant and glorious. Walburga Black froze mid-screech, eyes bulging as if someone had yanked her right out of 1973 and told her polyester was back.

“You—” Walburga stammered. “You dare—?”

“—to finish a sentence without spitting on the rug? Absolutely.” Petunia stepped closer, voice cool as a draughty window. “Do try it sometime, the mildew would thank you.”

Walburga swelled like a storm cloud and let out a wail like a banshee with a hangover.

Petunia leaned forward, narrowing her eyes with all the icy precision of a woman who’d chaired a dozen HOA meetings and won. “Listen here, you moth-eaten bedsheet. I have survived Vernon, Dudley, and extended family gatherings. Do not think for one second you can outlast me.”

Her eyes locked with the portrait’s. “You scream so loud to drown out the fact that the only thing pure about the Black family these days is their ability to fall apart.” 

That did it. The hallway went completely still. Even the doxies above the umbrella stand hesitated mid-snarl.

It was Kreacher, peering round the corner, who broke the silence. “Mistress has… stopped. She's never stopped."

He looked like someone had just handed him the last known recipe for elf wine. His bulbous eyes fixed on Petunia with something approaching religious devotion. “Finally, a new mistress worth listening to.”

In his gnarled hands he held a velvet-wrapped bundle.

“Mistress Petunia,” he said with reverence, holding out a trembling hand clutching a tarnished, malevolent-looking locket.

Sirius frowned. “Kreacher—what is that?”

The elf croaked, “Master Regulus’s orders… Kreacher wanted to destroy it… but Kreacher could not. Mistress Petunia is clever. Mistress will know.”

“You said… Regulus,” Sirius repeated slowly, still staring at the elf. “You don’t mean my brother Regulus? ”

Kreacher looked at the carpet. “Master Regulus was a good boy. He… defied… the Dark Lord.” The word “defied” sounded like it was physically painful for him to pronounce. “He told Kreacher to destroy it.  Kreacher failed. But Master Regulus—he died trying.”

Silence swelled. Walburga’s mouth opened and closed soundlessly, like a fish gasping on a riverbank. 

Sirius’s laugh came out cracked and unhinged. He tilted his head toward the frame, eyes glittering. “Well, well, Mother. What’s it like having two sons who told Voldemort to sod off?”

The portrait trembled. Walburga’s painted hand twitched, but nothing came out. 

Sirius smirked, though the expression was brittle at the edges. He turned back to the portrait. “You always said I was the disgrace. But it turns out your precious heir beat me to it.”

Kreacher bowed and pressed the locket into Petunia’s hands as though delivering a holy relic.

She accepted it with the sort of detached caution one reserves for packages that might be ticking curses. She peeled back the velvet, and there it was. A locket that was gold, heavy, ominous.

The moment she touched it, a strange, queasy pull snaked up her arm, like a whisper trying to find her ear. 

Her first instinct was to dismantle it immediately.
Her second was… not to.

A slow smile curved her lips — the kind of smile that made even Kreacher take a prudent step back.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” she murmured, tucking the locket back into its wrappings. “It will be destroyed, just not yet. Playtime first.”

The last time Petunia had walked into Borgin & Burke’s, it had ended with Burke needing a stiff drink and a lawyer. The sound of her heels on the floorboards now made him visibly blanch.
“Mrs. Dursley,” he said faintly, as though her name were a terminal diagnosis.

“I have a proposition,” she said, unfastening her handbag.

“And if I don’t…?” he asked weakly after she outlined her terms. 

Petunia’s smile was the kind that promised a root canal without anesthetic.
“Quite the assortment of cursed heirlooms you've been hoarding. Illegally reanimated pets, that ghastly singing mirror. I hear the Department of Magical Law Enforcement has been positively itching for a reason to visit.”

Burke’s Adam’s apple bobbed like a drowning man. “You have my attention.”

She let the words hang, crisp and lethal, before adding: “I’m practically Ministry these days, Borgin. You know how it is — memos, clearances, a little hand in this and that…”

He swallowed so hard it looked painful. “You… you want me to sell it?”

“Not to just anyone,” she said smoothly. “Dolores Umbridge.”

His brows shot up. “The one with the—?”

“Yes, the one with the voice like pink sandpaper. You’ll tempt her into buying the locket, Borgin, convince her it's a relic of the purest lineage. The rest,” Petunia’s smile thinned, “will take care of itself.”

Dolores Jane Umbridge had always fancied herself a connoisseur of “taste.” Her version of taste, naturally, involved excessive frills, a troubling obsession with the color pink, and a sharp set of nails that could pass as claws. 

So when Burke presented her with a golden locket of “historical significance” linked to the purest pureblood lineage, Dolores didn’t so much examine it as clutch it like a newborn kitten, cooing softly.

She was practically gloating before she’d even left the shop, daydreaming about parading through the Ministry with the locket gleaming on her chest, colleagues burning with envy, and the magical world bowing before her exquisite superiority.

She wore it constantly. Slept with it. Whispered secrets to it.

The storm broke on a Thursday.

Dolores Jane Umbridge had been holding the locket too long again.

The Horcrux hummed against her blouse like a taunt, like a whisper. A little voice, very like her own, but crueler and far more competent, said things like You were always a fraud. The worst kind. Even the cats hate you.

She batted at it with a trembling hand. “Nonsense,” she croaked. “I am the Ministry. I am Order. I am—”

“Hideous,” wheezed the locket. 

By the fourth day, her reflection in the mirror seemed… off. The eyes bulged just a touch. The skin had taken on a faint greenish cast.

By the sixth, she croaked rather than spoke.

By Sunday, she woke to find her tongue flicking out to catch a fly, and in the space between one blink and the next, Dolores Umbridge was gone. The Ministry had gained a large, warty toad in a pink cardigan.

McGonagall, passing through the atrium, merely remarked, “We do not usually permit amphibians in the Atrium.” 

“Especially not ones with no security clearance,” added Petunia. “Though I have to say Dolores, this is the most attractive I’ve ever seen you.” 

Umbridge croaked in protest. It came out as a literal croak.

The separation had started months ago, but no one wanted to say it out loud, in the same way no one wanted to say, “I think the Dark Lord might have male pattern baldness.” For his hairline hadn’t just receded, it had staged a complete evacuation and left no forwarding address. 

The real break came with Petunia’s infamous “Memo to All Interested Parties: Why You’re Losing.” It wasn’t even in the Prophet , mind you, the thing had been distributed via enchanted paper airplanes and still somehow wound up under Death Eater breakfast plates.

 Written in the crisp, merciless tone of someone who had spent decades managing Vernon Dursley’s golf club memberships, it assessed the Dark Lord as if he were the CEO of a deeply unprofitable start-up. There were several bullet points:

• Lack of strategic vision
  
  
• Over-reliance on legacy intimidation
  
  
• Poor supply chain for wands and cursed artifacts
  
  
• Failure to adapt to new technologies (she meant cameras, but the sting lingered)
  
  

And then, the fatal conclusion:

“Frankly,  even the previous Azkaban guards were more competent than you lot. At least the Dementors showed up to work on time.”

Somewhere in that sarcastic aftershock, a measurable percentage of Death Eaters began meeting in quiet corners without him. They stopped calling themselves “The Inner Circle” and started calling themselves “The Alternative Leadership Committee.

The final straw was the parchment memo that went out under her Department of Muggle–Wizarding Liaison letterhead, crisp and official:

TO ALL WITH THE DARK MARK:
Surrender immediately for processing. Failure to comply before the 15th will result in full prosecution under the Azkaban Statute of Detention Without Parole.
Please note: The Ministry now employs the Daily Howler for prisoner correspondence. Yes, that Daily Howler.

The last line was underlined twice.

Attached was a clipping from the Prophet:

DAILY HOWLER STRIKES AGAIN
Suspects Faint Mid-Arrest as Unnamed Source Deploys “Verbal Barrage of Doom”

Azkaban had always been feared. But the Daily Howler was the single most effective morale-breaker in Britain. It could strip paint from walls, willpower from spines, and resolve from serial killers. The sound alone had gone down in Death Eater lore for liquefying the eardrums and the will to live.

Petunia’s most famous run, “13 Signs You’re a Disappointment to the Dark Lord,” on loop everyday at 5 a.m. had done more to rehabilitate hardened criminals than years of official programs. 

And so, in a remarkable spasm of self-preservation, cloaked figures began Apparating to Ministry drop-off points and muttering, “I’ll take the holding cell, thank you.” It was almost anticlimactic how many peeled away from Voldemort’s forces overnight. Loyalty to the Dark Lord was one thing. Loyalty to your ability to hear was quite another.

Aurors processed them briskly.  And in the babble of confessions came useful fragments: “…before the breach…”, “…infiltration’s the fifteenth…”, “…Bellatrix says she’ll—”

Petunia kept those notes in the same colour-coded binder system she used for Vernon’s tax returns. Within forty-eight hours, she had the date, the method, and the names of the two Death Eaters assigned to slip inside Hogwarts ahead of the battle.

When the twins caught wind of the infiltration plan, they had marched straight to Petunia’s office carrying what looked like a collapsed tent, a wicker hamper, and an almost suspicious amount of duct tape. They wore identical, terrifyingly polite smiles — the sort of smiles that suggested either a prank was about to happen or a small government was about to fall. 

“Mrs. Dursley,” Fred said, bowing as though she were royalty.

“Or may we call you Aunt Petunia?” George added, just as gravely.

“Mrs. Dursley will do.” Her eyes narrowed.

George slid a rucksack onto the table between them. The canvas sagged ominously. “All of our finest work. Skiving Snackboxes, Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder, Portable Swamps, decoy detonators…” He paused dramatically. “Think of it as a welcome basket for our dear trespassers.”

They unpacked the bag like magicians at a macabre birthday party. A Canary Cream. A trick wand that turned into a rubber chicken. A box marked “Do Not Open Unless You Enjoy Unexpected Tentacles.”

Petunia raised a perfectly plucked brow.

Fred coughed delicately. “Non-lethal, of course.”

“Mostly,” George corrected, straight-faced.

Petunia didn’t flinch. “Reserve everything for them and them only.”

The twins exchanged a look. It was the look of boys who had once blown up a toilet and been congratulated for ingenuity.

“Miss Aunt Petunia,” Fred said solemnly, “it would be an honor to.”

The morning before the battle, Petunia had Harry in the kitchen. There were no speeches or misty eyes or sentiment, she simply held up a reinforced canvas body bag. 

It was sleek black dragonhide with a tasteful “Property of Hogwarts – Maintenance Department” tag stitched neatly at the top. Petunia had insisted, partly because she’d seen what real battlefields did to people’s faces, and partly because it was strategically disarming for the enemy to see him rolled in like fresh laundry.

“Over your robes,” she instructed, tone brisk, as though she were telling him to put on a raincoat. “If you’re dragged anywhere, I’m dragging you back.”

Harry stared at her, appalled. “You’re expecting me to need this?”

“You’re going to thank me later,” she muttered, tightening the clasps with ruthless efficiency.

Harry struggled against the straps. “Not if I suffocate first.”

“You won’t,” she said briskly. “I punched extra air holes. Now stop wriggling.”

It was less a pep talk and more a crash course in disaster management. But Harry, oddly, felt steadier for it.

The wards flickered like an old streetlamp as two figures appeared on the path. A wild-eyed witch with robes singed at the hem, and a pale, sweating wizard clutching a crate of something that rattled ominously. 

Bellatrix Lestrange and Timmy Creevey stood at the outer gates of Hogwarts, glaring up at the enchanted ironwork as if sheer fury might force it open.

The gates remained obstinately shut.

Behind them stood Argus Filch, in a cardigan two decades past retirement, clutching a clipboard like it was divine authority. His time had come.

“Names,” he barked, clipboard in hand. 

Bellatrix halted, eyes narrowing. “Do you know who I am?”

“Doesn’t matter. It's a new Ministry requirement, ” Filch said with bureaucratic relish. “Per that Dursley woman. Nobody gets in without identification. Photo ID, magical license, proof of address. Blood-type certificate recommended.”

Bellatrix’s jaw dropped. Timmy patted down his robes hopefully, as though a spare passport might fall out.

From the battlements above, Petunia’s voice floated down, cool as a frostbite wind. “Muggles have managed this for decades, dear. Stadiums, airports, even theme parks. Hogwarts can manage, too.”

Bellatrix’s lip curled. “I don’t do identification.”

Filch raised an eyebrow. “Then you don’t do getting inside, either. Rules are rules.” He glanced at Timmy. “And you? Name?”

Timmy swallowed. “Uh… Timmy.”

Filch scribbled, unimpressed. “Surname?”

Timmy shifted his crate. “Just Timmy.”

Bellatrix lost her patience. She gave a growl that rattled the hinges of the gate, grabbed Timmy by the arm, and bellowed, “Let’s go!”

They charged forward… and within two steps, tripped on the twins’ first line of traps: an enchantment that turned the cobblestones into a skating rink. Bellatrix windmilled her arms like a drunk marionette. Timmy spun three full circles before sliding face-first into a conjured custard pie.

Fred and George leaned out over the battlements, grins wide.

“Welcome to Hogwarts!” Fred called.
“Complimentary refreshments provided!” George added, as another pie cannoned into Bellatrix’s cheek.

She shrieked, wiping pie filling from her face.  “This is war , you insolent pests!”

“All the best wars have catering,” Fred quipped.

From there, an enormous net woven from purple-and-gold rope whipped down from the arch above, yanking Bellatrix off the ground with a wet snap . She dangled like a particularly ungraceful piñata. Timmy barely ducked in time, only to step directly onto a square of stone that hissed before a geyser of pink foam erupted, coating him from boots to chin.

“Run!” Bellatrix screeched, flailing like an enraged bat. “Run!”

They ran, but each step was worse than the last — every flagstone triggered a prank. Screaming custard pies. Vanishing trousers. At one point, Bellatrix emerged from a smoke cloud wearing a frilly bonnet she could not remove.

Colin Creevey had been crouched above the rafters for hours, camera at the ready, muttering something about “getting the perfect angle for the history books.” Dennis, meanwhile, was mostly concerned with not becoming part of said history.

“Are we sure we should be standing right here?” Dennis asked, peering over the stone wall. 

“Dennis,” Colin said, eyes glinting behind his glasses, “do you know how rare it is to capture a Hogwarts battle in this kind of lighting?”

Dennis, watching Bellatrix flail helplessly into yet another net, muttered, “Do you know how rare it is to survive one?”

Then Colin’s lens caught something else — a stumbling figure in the foam, stink bombs trailing like the world’s saddest parade floats.

“Timmy,” Colin breathed. His voice wasn’t angry, just hollow.

Timmy didn’t notice them. He was too busy trying to dodge Fred and George’s latest trap, a patch of floor that hissed before erupting in a geyser of glittering slime.

“Oi!” Dennis hissed, voice low and sharp. 

Timmy glanced up, eyes narrowing. Recognition dawned slowly, like a bad hangover. “Colin. Dennis.” His voice was flat.

“Some family reunion this is,” muttered Colin. 

 The vat of slime exploded over Timmy’s head, slicking hair and robes in shimmering muck.

“Really?” Dennis asked dryly.. “This is your grand entrance?”

Colin’s camera clicked rapidly, catching Timmy’s grimace as he wiped goo from his eyes, Bellatrix dragging her bonnet askew, and behind them, at the far edge of the path, the Dark Lord himself, striding toward the gates with fury in his eyes.

Filch stepped forward, clipboard in hand. “Name?”

“Lord Voldemort!” hissed the pale figure, voice sharp with self-importance.

Filch’s quill scratched. “Spellcaster’s license number?”

“I do not—”

“No license, no admissions,” Filch said firmly, snapping the clipboard shut. 

The onlookers chuckled.  One reporter yelled, “Dark Lord denied entry!”

“More accurate,” Petunia’s voice cut through, “is ‘Local man trespassed and soon to be escorted off school property.”

 Petunia had descended the stone steps by now, high heels clicking like a metronome of disapproval. “You’ll forgive me,” she said crisply, “if I don’t buy into the whole ‘dark mystique’ act.  All I see is a man in borrowed robes with the complexion of expired yogurt.”

Suddenly, the sky cracked. A sound tore through the air, like a malfunctioning foghorn being force-fed a trombone.

Hogwarts itself had decided to join in on the fun. 

“ERNNT!”

The castle wards blared, rattling windows and making a flock of owls burst into the night sky. Voldemort lay facedown in the mossy grass outside the gates of Hogwarts, his robes in disarray, his dignity somewhere in Albania.

His dramatic entrance had backfired spectacularly. He’d attempted to override Filch with conjured thunder, skulls, lightning, and a grand monologue, only for the wards to spit him out like a chewed dog toy. Chunks of turf clung to his robes, and moss decorated his bald head like a pitiful crown.

The stones groaned and the walls hummed. Sir Cadogan’s portrait coughed up pink steam and bellowed, “ACCESS DENIED, TOM.” Peeves hovered above with a sign that read: “No Dark Lord Allowed–New Campus Rule!” 

“ERNNT!” blared the wards again, like a Muggle game show buzzer announcing failure.

Hogwarts seemed delighted, each rejection louder and more gleeful. A gargoyle sneezed out confetti and suits of armor clanked in applause. One stained-glass saint in the Great Hall window folded its hands serenely, then raised a jeweled middle finger up so slowly it could have been ceremonial.

Voldemort scrambled upright, teeth bared like a feral fox. His wand sparked impotently.
“I AM LORD VOLDEMORT—”

“—And I’m the Tooth Fairy,” muttered a seventh year, reaching for another crisp.

The crowd was snorting. The spell of fear had evaporated, the Dark Lord was no longer mythic. He was now a sitcom, farce, slapstick theatre on the lawn. 

Nobody was quiet about saying “Voldemort” anymore. In fact, new nicknames proliferated instantly from the crowd: Moldyshorts , You-Who-Can’t-Win , The Bald Menace .

Hogwarts had made its judgement. It remembered every child he’d tried to murder, every chamber he’d opened, every curse he’d hissed in the dark. It had changed the locks, and tonight, the castle had banned him for good.

Colin Creevey’s lens swung eagerly to catch Voldemort hurtled backwards again, limbs akimbo, spewing out clunks of flower petals and dirt. 

“This is who you’re following?” called out Dennis, incredulous. 

Timmy,  soaked in glittering slime and panting, glanced up. “Uh… yes?”

Petunia Dursley stood at the centre of all the chaos with a clipboard, pen, and the kind of grim efficiency usually reserved for accounting audits and post-holiday returns. “Mark that down,” she muttered, “Infiltration attempt number four. Failure rate: one hundred percent.” She drew a neat red X in the Threat Assessment box.

“Lucius!” Voldemort called out, voice shrill. “Come back! You’re on my side!”

Lucius Malfoy stood near the steps, pristine and perfectly coiffed even under duress. He hesitated  and then remembered two things in quick succession:

1. The image of his beloved, dragon-inlaid cane, combusting spectacularly the last time Voldemort got impatient, and 
2.  Bellatrix Lestrange’s pink-sludge hair, now plastered to his robes.
   
   

Lucius’s mouth curved in something perilously close to disgust. He smoothed his sleeves, pivoted, and walked to stand beside Petunia on the steps. He gave her a shallow bow, courtly. Almost relieved. 

Petunia didn’t acknowledge him beyond ticking something on her clipboard.

Next to her stood Harry Potter, wandless by choice and looking amused. He was encased in what looked like a padded black cocoon on two legs. The reinforced body bag bounced curses off like tennis balls, causing Harry to shuffle left and right like an oversized caterpillar. 

Voldemort sneered. “What is that ?”

“Insurance,” Petunia said. Her pen was poised above her clipboard, and she was looking at Voldemort as if he were something scraped off her shoe in Sainsbury’s.

“Name?” she added, as though he were a walk-in patient at a GP’s office who hadn’t filled out his form.

“I am Lord Voldemort,” he hissed.

“Yes, dear, but what’s your real name? We need it for the paperwork.”

The laughter came in waves this time, rolling through the students, staff, even Aurors at the back. A ripple that swelled and broke, the echo of it bouncing against the castle walls as though the stones themselves were in on the joke.

And for the first time, Voldemort didn’t look terrifying.
He looked cornered.

“You think this is a joke?” Voldemort hissed, trying to recover what was left of his dignity.  

“Absolutely,” Petunia said flatly. “I’ve been more convinced by school plays in Surrey. And believe me, they did Grease with a Danny Zuko who had stage fright and a sound system that cut out every other syllable.”

One of the Creevey brothers raised his camera and flashed him directly in the face. The Dark Lord staggered back, momentarily blinded — which, of course, was caught in high resolution by half the press.

Bellatrix’s end came with almost poetic slapstick. She lunged for Petunia, screaming, wand raised, and stepped directly into the Weasleys’ “collapsible floor panel,” a prank device they’d installed as “insurance.” It swallowed her whole with a pop! and spat her out into the Black Lake, where the giant squid patted her twice and swam off.

Timmy Creevey, meanwhile, met his fate in the middle of trying to wrestle the camera out of his brother’s hand, when the Expelliarmus Infinity Loop discharged from Harry’s bag. The spell didn’t just knock Timmy back — it kept knocking him back, pinging him between walls like a pinball until he vanished out a side window. The battle stalled for a good thirty seconds just so everyone could watch.

And then it happened.

Now dear readers, imagine this: every time  a reptilian dark lord lies, it causes his nose (or what passes from one) to grow into a sharp, beak-like snout. Each false boast also simultaneously shortens his stature.

“I am the greatest wizard alive!” Voldemort puffed, chin high.
SPROING. His nose cracked forward into a hooked, parrot-like beak. His legs shortened.

“I am feared by all!”
SPROING.  Another lie, another lurch downward.  His robes tripped him as the beak lengthened, absurd and twitching. The arms flailed inside his sleeves like a child playing dress-up.

“I will kill Harry Potter tonight!”
SPROOOINNNG. He collapsed to garden-gnome height, beak jutting so far it shadowed his face.

The crowd howled.
“He’s gone fun-size,” Seamus muttered, wiping tears.

Neville nodded solemnly. “Mini Dark Lord. Limited edition.”

Petunia only sighed, ticking something on her clipboard. “Your own Horcrux working against you, Tom. Pinocchio’s got nothing on you.”

Ron clutched his temples. “Put this out of my head. Please. ”

Harry tilted his head, voice bright and taunting. “Want to try again, Riddle? Kill me? You’ve only failed — oh, what is it now — twelve times?”

“You give me permission to kill you, Potter?” Voldemort squawked, wand trembling in his tiny fist.

“Oh no,” Harry said, grinning. “I dare you.”

Petunia reached into her coat pocket. Her fingers brushed against a small, unassuming black stone. She pulled it out, and the air around her shimmered faintly. “This,” she muttered, dryly, “is the paperwork for the tragic family reunion.”

And then Merope Gaunt appeared.

Pale and eyes staring in opposite directions, she looked as if she’d spent centuries exhausted by disappointment. Hair tangled, dress hanging in tatters like it had been borrowed from a particularly gloomy theater production. She bent forward, hands outstretched. “Tommy,” she said softly. “Please… come back.”

Petunia, standing a few paces away, raised an eyebrow and said, flatly: “Well, Merope, I suppose he finally inherited your taste in dramatic entrances. Minus the coordination.” 

Merope’s hollow eyes lingered on her son. “I came back… not to scold, but to save,” she whispered. 

Her eyes scanned the hall with that deadpan appraisal of everything Voldemort had ever ruined. “Really, dear, all this chaos, and for what?” she murmured under her breath, as though reading the minutes of a poorly-run management meeting. “You could have at least filed your debts before attempting world domination.”

Voldemort’s tiny, beaked face twisted in confusion and anger. “I—” he hissed.

“Shhh,” Merope said, holding up a slender finger. “Come back. Let’s… do this properly this time. The wardrobe budget alone was criminal. And the robe hem lengths! Honestly, darling, have you consulted a tailor? Aren’t you worried about what they’ll say in the obituary columns?”

She bent down, hands outstretched. “Tommy, please.”

Voldemort’s red eyes flicked between her and Harry as pride battled reason. He blinked under the weight of maternal scorn. For a heartbeat, it seemed he might let her take him  to whatever strange, forgiving place she had in mind. 

Harry winced. He’d seen the afterlife form Voldemort had left behind when the Horcruxes were destroyed, it looked like regret and guilt had a baby and bleached it.

“Yeah, Tom,” Harry said, wincing, “trust me, you don’t want to end up back in that place. Not a good retirement plan.”

Voldemort’s red eyes darted. His ego, fragile as spun glass, won out. He jerked his garden-gnome arm high, wand shaking.

“Avada Kedavra!”

The curse slammed into Harry’s padded cocoon, ricocheted like a tennis ball, and sent him rolling sideways like an errant suitcase.

The spell snapped back.

Merope gasped, her face breaking into sorrow, then vanished in a single wail. The curse struck Voldemort square in his own chest.

There was no scream, no drama. Just a pop — like a soap bubble bursting.

And then he was gone.

Utterly. Finally. Stupidly.

The crowd didn’t cheer. Not at first. They blinked at the empty patch of grass where the greatest terror of their age had just — boinked — himself out of existence.

Petunia clicked her pen, brisk as a tax auditor.
“Well,” she said crisply, tucking the clipboard under her arm, “that’s that.”

It was Rita Skeeter who recovered first, shoving a goblin aside to shriek for her photographer. Quills scratched furiously.

The headline was already forming:

THE DAY THE DARK LORD BOUNCED HIMSELF INTO OBLIVION.

And just like that, it was over.

Chapter Text

Petunia Dursley had perfected the Ministry of Magic.
Not single-handedly, of course, she would have found that gauche, but with the same ruthless efficiency she’d once applied to pruning hydrangeas or wielding a cutting smile at a neighborhood barbecue. Departments ran on time. Paperwork was filed in triplicate. The cafeteria no longer served that horrid shepherd’s pie with the grey peas.

By the end of her tenure, even goblins muttered grudgingly about “standards being raised."

And she never let her great-nephews and niece forget it.

“James Sirius, that hair is a human rights violation. Albus Severus, do try not to glower like a Dickensian orphan when the cameras are on you. And Lily Luna, for heaven’s sake, if you’re going to dye your hair green, at least pick a shade that doesn’t make you look like a traffic light.”

The children grew. They rolled their eyes. They inherited both Weasley charm and Potter stubbornness, which made for a dangerous combination. Life marched forward in rambunctious bursts of Quidditch matches, family dinners, and the occasional scolding memo from Aunt Petunia.

Then, ten years after Lily Luna’s birth, Harry and Ginny in a fit of middle-aged spontaneity (and perhaps one too many celebratory Firewhiskies after a Harpies win), found themselves expecting again.

By the time Petunia passed away, peacefully and without fuss, the wizarding world had been running in tidy order for so long it hardly noticed the loss. Harry did. He barely finished the eulogy before Ginny’s water broke.

The newborn had tufts of pale blonde hair, eyes like sharpened glass, and a gaze that seemed to size up the room as though calculating the inefficiency of each attending healer. Harry named her without hesitation:

"Petunia Minerva Potter." 

And as if on cue, the infant gave an approving sniff — the exact sort of unimpressed exhalation that once struck fear into Ministry officials, Dursley neighbors, and Dark Lords alike.

Petunia woke to the afterlife standing at King’s Cross. The tiles gleamed whiter than ever, and for once there were actual trains, gliding in and out with the punctuality of divine intervention.

Lily appeared again, looking exactly as she had the day she was sent to that madhouse — young, fierce, alive.

“No budget afterlife problems,” she said cheerfully.

Petunia squinted. “What?”

“Come on, Tuney! We’re going to Hogwarts.”

Petunia glanced around. “Where’s Severus?"

“Oh, he’s a muggle Tesco bagger now,” Lily said breezily. “Infinitely happier. No bullying, no unrequited love, no tragic backstory. Just high all the time and very fond of arranging the reduced bakery items.”

A projection flickered in the air: Severus Snape in a faded polo shirt, whistling as he double-bagged digestive biscuits and chatted amiably with an old lady about sherbet lemons. He looked the most relaxed Petunia had ever seen him.

Even Tobias Snape had reformed from a wife-beating alcoholic to a sherbet-drop enthusiast after finding his son's stash. He ended up getting mildly hallucination-prone from them and promptly sent his son to the best school. Snape went to Exeter and never looked back.  

Petunia folded her arms. “Marvelous. The afterlife rewrites people like OOC fanfiction characters. So, I’m truly his replacement?”

“Yes,” said Lily, beaming. “You’re riding back to Hogwarts in his place.”

A crowd at King’s Cross, both the living and the dead, waved them off as though they were celebrities on a farewell tour. Ghostly hands tossed roses. Living hands threw half-eaten Pumpkin Pasties. Someone shouted: “And tell Dumbledore his fashion crimes remain unforgiven!"

Petunia sniffed with approval at that.

The train carried her not to the castle proper, but straight to the Headmaster’s office, where she materialized the next day as a portrait.

Usually, it took decades for portraits to complete. Petunia, however, seemed to have skipped the queue. The universe had apparently decided she’d waited long enough to do magic. 

And wield it she did. From the confines of her gilt frame, Petunia discovered she was brilliant at it.

Snape’s mellowed, constantly high stoned afterlife self sometimes projected into her frame for conversation, finding her sarcasm oddly soothing. His new hobbies included herbal imports from Professor Sprout’s greenhouse and giving Albus Severus dubious life advice. Somewhere between eternity and paperwork, they became something dangerously close to friends.

Seventeen years later, her great-niece Petunia Minerva Potter stood in front of the portrait. She’d grown into her name—sharp-eyed, razor-witted, and absolutely unafraid to call out the sub-in for the Minister of Magic “a bureaucratic mediocrity with a TikTok account.”

It was nearly time for the annual Ministry Talent Exhibition, revived in 2025 after the last Minister's unfortunate and terminal broom accident. Petunia Minerva had finally reached the eligible age.

“You’ll have to win without nepotism, of course,” Portrait Petunia sniffed.

“Did that really hold up in the old days?” the younger Petunia asked.

“Yes. Ask Scorpius,” came another voice.  Snape’s portrait (high as ever, of course) mimicking Lucius Malfoy’s drawl and cane with theatrical flourish.

Petunia Minerva stepped onto the stage and won. Naturally, of course. 

And to thunderous applause, she was crowned the new Minister for Magic. Minerva McGonagall’s portrait looked on with pride, while Petunia Dursley’s own frame grinned like a Cheshire cat, who’d just audited the world and found every last box ticked.