Chapter Text

2nd of November, 1982 - LITTLE WHINGING

It truly was a curious thing, how quickly everything could change. 

Petunia Dursley née Evans had not been best pleased when she awoke on the second of November, 1981 to the sight of a baby on her doorstep. It had clearly been out all night, and an orphan for two, if the note that was left with it was anything to go by. Of course, Petunia was reluctant to believe what those … people had to say about anything. 

She had tried, at first, but the boy was inconsolable. Nothing worked to stop his crying, and it upset her son, her actual baby, to hear such a racket. No, no one could blame Petunia for putting the crib under the stairs, if only for a moment, just to be able to hear herself think. 

A year on, and the boy screamed less for it, even if he still cried far too much for a toddler. Still, that the boy quieted when in the cupboard was a small relief that she would not turn up her nose at. Just as well, Petunia thought. If he’d continued on the way he had, there would have been nothing for it but to get rid of him entirely. Indeed, Vernon had suggested as such from the outset, and Petunia had considered it. Perhaps it’s not the thing to do, to admit to wanting to throw a boy out, one’s own nephew, like the evening’s rubbish, but hadn’t Petunia had enough on her plate already? How else was she meant to react to the news that her estranged sister had been murdered in the midst of a war by some kind of evil lord? She’d been overwhelmed, and the letter had not made things much clearer.

The letter had been clear on something, however — the evil freak’s followers would be after the boy. Petunia might’ve grown apart from her sister, but even she would not turn a toddler out to be murdered on his parents’ heels for a cause he had no part in. 

The boy had stayed — and now? Well, a year later was just far too late to send the boy away. The boy was registered as a dependent with the state; for pity’s sake, they received child support — getting rid of him now would be a legal and social nightmare. No, no — better to quietly tolerate the boy until he was old enough to attend that strange school of his mother’s. Of course, Petunia wouldn’t dream of mentioning it to her husband — then she might have to explain that the boy’s mother was truly a—a—witch. What would he think of her? She was already afraid her own son would somehow inherit the strangeness, that it was genetic and had simply skipped her.

No, Vernon would hear nothing of the school — by the time it would be relevant, it would be clear that their son was normal. Until then, she professed a half-truth to explain her keeping him; the boy was the final link she had to her family. 

Her parents died only a handful of years before her one and only sister, their grandparents many years before that. The boy was all that remained. While that did not sting as maybe it should have, it was still something that lingered in the back of her mind every time the boy was in sight.

A year of having him, and nothing was easier. 

The screaming, the crying, the strange occurrences — the boy wouldn’t even speak. Silent and eerie, with those luminous green eyes. Far too bright to be natural, Petunia thought. Had Lily’s eyes ever been that vivid? They can’t have been, surely. 

Petunia met those eyes uneasily, putting a plate of mushy peas on the floor of the cupboard. There was just no question of getting the boy at the table, even if she’d wanted him there. Unless dragged, the boy refused to leave the crawlspace. The fact that Vernon couldn’t quite reach him when he was tucked into the corner certainly made removing him all the more difficult. They’d mostly given up on regular baths.

She watched with morbid fascination as the boy pulled the plate closer, squinting those glassy eyes and lowering his face to the plate until his nose almost touched the food. He did that with most things, she thought. She wondered what he was looking for. 

Petunia was startled out of her musing by the rapping of a knock at the door. Quickly, she shut the cupboard door, leaving the boy to his food. Dudley was down for his mid-morning nap, and she couldn’t let some door-to-door salesman wake him or else she’d never get him back down. She yanked the door open, sucking in a startled breath. 

On her doorstep were two of those … people. It was completely obvious with their bright red old-fashioned frocks and ridiculous pointed hats. Immediately, Petunia scanned up and down the street anxiously, looking for witnesses. Thankfully, she saw no one. Keeping the door half closed against her body, she swept her eyes over the two strangers. “What do you want?” she said quickly. “We were told we’d never have to talk to your sort — the boy is fine!”

One of the two conspicuously dressed strangers smiled tightly. “Good morning, Mrs. Dursley, my name is Captain Milford Selpie, and this is my partner, Auror Ackerly Proudfoot. We’re with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. May we come in?”

“No you may not!” Petunia said. “We’ve nothing to do with your lot. Good day!” When Petunia attempted to shut the door, she found she could not, meeting some invisible resistance. The second one, Proudfoot — and what a ridiculous name that was — had his stick, his wand, in his hand. 

“I’m afraid we must insist, Mrs. Dursley,” the first one, the woman, said. 

“You have no right!” Petunia said, a little desperately. Vernon wouldn’t be home until the evening, but she had no idea how long these people intended to invade her home. She could not risk them remaining in the house — not to mention the two toddlers she had to care for.

The second one, the man, scoffed in her face. “On your head then,” he said snidely. 

“Proudfoot,” Selpie snapped. She turned to Petunia with something of a sympathetic expression. “We mean you no harm, Mrs. Dursely, but this is really a matter of safety for you and your family. We understand you might not want to see anyone from our world, not after what happened to your sister, but it truly is quite urgent. You see, we’re the wixen equivalent of the police in the Muggle world — you understand?”

Petunia paled, her eyes darting between the two. Proudfoot looked annoyed, yes, but he also had a white-knuckle grip on his … wand. Petunia imagined herself opening the door to two police officers, one with his gun out, only a year after the supposed end to a bloody war, the murder of her sister, and thought perhaps it might be best if she heard them out. 

“Quickly, then,” she said, opening the door and urging them inside. “You must be gone before my husband returns.”

“Unfortunately, this concerns your entire family, ma’am,” Selpie said. 

Proudfoot swept through the house, checking around corners, his wand extended. With a few flicks that emitted concerning colourful sparks, he nodded to his partner. “Just the two children inside.”

“Cheers,” Selpie replied, turning back to Petunia. “Ma’am, have you heard the name Sirius Black?”

“No,” Petunia said shortly. Even if she had, if it was one of those people, it wouldn’t have meant anything to her had she heard it.

Strangely, Selpie looked surprised. “I see,” she said, quickly recovering. “Black is the man who betrayed your sister and her husband that Hallowe’en,” she continued sombrely. Even Proudfoot’s sneer turned grim.

Petunia shifted from foot-to-foot nervously. She very much wanted these people to say what they wanted to say and leave, quickly, but when Selpie gestured at the sofa, she realised that wasn’t likely to happen any time soon. Petunia begrudgingly sat, not offering tea. Selpie sat with her. Proudfoot remained at attention in the doorway.

“He was caught soon after that day, after killing thirteen people,” Selpie continued briskly. “He was sentenced to life in Azkaban — do you know what that is?” 

Petunia gave a short, queasy nod.

Selpie continued. “Just last night, Black escaped.”

“What!” Petunia hissed, her hands clutching her knees. “Isn’t that meant to be impossible?”

“It’s certainly never happened before,” Proudfoot said absently, squinting at one of her photographs on the wall. 

“Yes,” Selpie said, “no one has escaped before. We have reason to believe he may have escaped due to this article.” Selpie reached into the pocket of her strange coat and pulled out a file. It looked so mundane, so normal, Petunia was taken aback. From inside the folder, Selpie retrieved a newspaper clipping — only, the pictures moved — and Petunia’s stomach dropped. 

On the front page was a picture of her — Dudley in his pram and the boy toddling along behind her as she yanked at his hand. As she watched, he stumbled and righted himself quickly, squinting around at the street. A breeze picks up, his messy hair lifts from his face and a glimpse of that awful scar could be seen. The whole scene began to loop as she read the headline: ONE YEAR ON, BOY-WHO-LIVED, CONFIRMED AS BOY-WHO-LIVES!

Petunia shoved the paper away. Selpie returned it to the folder and slipped the file into a pocket again. “We think Black may have escaped to finish the job. The article lists Surrey as Mr. Potter’s home.”

Petunia blinked rapidly. “Surely that’s not legal,” she protested, if only to have something to say. 

“Legal action has already been initiated, Mrs. Dursely, but as Muggles, there’s not much you can personally do, not in our courts. Albus Dumbledore is doing everything he can to hold the paper responsible, but personally, I don’t see them being able to prosecute.”

“So what do we do?” Petunia said, leaning forward, heart thumping horribly hard in her chest. 

Selpie smiled, a little sadly. “I’m afraid you will have to leave Surrey as soon as possible.”

4th of November, 1982 - GABLEHAM

The town of Gableham, Shropshire was entirely too close to Cokeworth for Petunia’s liking. She’d thought with her marriage and her move to London she could finally leave the midlands behind, and yet here she was, dragged back once again because of Lily. 

The move had been uncannily quick. Their entire lives, packed up in the blink of an eye, all four of them carted off through several unpleasant means of freakish transportation. She could hardly stand it, but what else could they do? Those officers had made it abundantly clear that they were in mortal peril on Privet Drive. Petunia may not care for her nephew, but she cared about her son and her husband. They had to move. 

Vernon had not been pleased. Dudley had been inconsolable. Even the boy seemed unhappy, but that one was no mystery; there was no cupboard under the stairs for him to hide. In fact, there really wasn’t a suitable place for him at all. They would have to sort something out once the freaks had left. 

They were loitering far too long, and there were far too many of them — along with Proudfoot and Selpie, a man from some other Ministry department had turned up, seeming much more of a bureaucrat, providing them with falsified documentation. A fourth freak, the freakiest of them all, lingered in the doorway. 

In a dark cloak with the hood up, they looked like nothing but the freak they were, much more so than any other Petunia had seen. They hadn’t introduced themselves at all but had been identified as ‘a Specialised Obliviator from the DoM’, whatever that meant. Then there was the fifth, who had taken the boy aside and done something with her wand — lightening the boy’s hair a shade, changing the shape of his nose, but unfortunately leaving those unsettling eyes as they were. That one had left with the ‘Obliviator’ before only the latter had returned.

“Then there’s the matter of his name,” Mr. Harmon Willows the bureaucrat said, reaching into his surprisingly normal briefcase to produce a piece of paper. 

“His name?” Vernon sneered. “What of it?”

“In our world, it is incredibly famous,” Mr. Willows explained, sounding utterly uninterested. He pressed the paper at Vernon again until her husband reluctantly took it gingerly. Petunia peered over his shoulder. It was an ordinary birth certificate, something she was startled to realise she did not have for the boy until now. His name had been listed as ‘Hardwin Lily’.

“This way you can continue to call him Harry, but his identity will be a little less obvious,” Selpie said.

Vernon’s face began to purple. “We are not having a boy named Hardwin in this house,” he exclaimed. “And certainly not a boy named Lily.”

Mr. Willows gave Vernon a strange look. Selpie sighed. “I assure you, Mr. Dursley, Hardwin is a perfectly ordinary, albeit uncommon, name in the Muggle world, and Lily as a surname is completely mundane.”

“I think not!” Vernon said. “Change it at once!”

The two, Selpie and Mr. Willows, exchanged looks before Mr. Willows tapped his wand to the paper, causing the name to disappear. “What should it be, then?”

“Something normal,” Vernon insisted. “I don’t care what, just not bloody Hardwin, for Pete’s sake!”

“Very well,” Mr. Willows said, impatiently. “What about Hartford? Harrington?”

“Something normal!” Vernon repeated. Petunia began to grow nervous.

Mr. Willows didn’t seem to care one way or the other, and Selpie just seemed eager for them to move on, so she clapped her hands and declared, “Hadrian Vernon Fleamont, it is.” Petunia fought off a flush of embarrassment, scowling at the horrid woman. When would these people leave her family alone?

“Fleamont was James’ father’s name, wasn’t it?” Selpie said, like she thought Petunia would know or care about such a thing. “And his grandfather was Henry. Perhaps Harry was named after him in the first place. Keeping the nickname Harry seems like it would be a nice tribute.”

Petunia was grateful Vernon chose not to boast that they had never called him Harry in the first place; he was too busy trying not to blow a gasket at the mere idea of the boy carrying his name. Hurriedly, Petunia agreed while he was distracted, knowing they wouldn’t really have to use the boy’s name. Hopefully Vernon would forget it was legally — was this all legal? — once she hid the birth certificate away.

Finally, they left, and Vernon rounded on Petunia. “Tell me the freaks won’t return,” he demanded.

“I don’t know,” Petunia said miserably. “Where are we going to put the boy?”

“Never should have kept him,” Vernon grumbled, trundling out of the sitting room without giving Petunia a response. She wrung her hands, glancing over her shoulder. The boy had sat himself down in the corner as soon as they had arrived, observing everything with those unnatural eyes. She hadn’t seen him leave the corner once in the hours since. 

Frantically, Petunia cast her mind around for a solution. Vernon was already cross with her — there was no way she could convince him to put the boy in what he’d already decided was to be a home office for himself. Dudley’s room was a non-starter, and Vernon would want to reserve the third bedroom as a guest room. There were no suitable cupboards — all had inbuilt shelves that meant the boy would not physically fit — and there was no way she was leaving him out in the open. That only left one place.

“Come, boy,” she said, snapping her fingers at the child. Slowly, he got to his feet, stumbling along behind her as she opened the back door. She strode across the grass, stopping to wait for the boy impatiently. “You’ll sleep here,” she decided, sliding back the bolt on the shed door. He looked up at her, still mute. He wasn’t yet three. 

They stared at one another for a long moment. Then, the boy nodded. 

Petunia turned to go back inside to fetch the boy’s cot and bedding, then paused. “You should know,” she said over her shoulder, “your name is Henry Evans.”