Chapter Text
It was the second weekend of July, 1983. Petunia was going through Dudley’s old clothing to pick something new out for Harry to wear after an incident with the glass toy that Vernon had insisted on buying for Dudley’s birthday. She wasn’t in the mood to blame her nephew for not dodging the toy that had been swung at his back, but was annoyed that the glass shards had destroyed a shirt and pants. Vernon had opted to bring Dudley for an ice cream and she’d given Harry the apple slices she’d originally prepared for Dudley, after determining that he’d escaped any serious injury.
She suspected that his freakishness was involved there, but for a change wasn’t seeing it as a bad thing. After all, she hadn’t needed to bandage wounds or clean up blood. Glass, yes, but not blood, and the glass was quite obviously Vernon’s fault in this case.
That didn’t help her with the clothing issue. Vernon didn’t want to spend money buying clothing for the boy, and she wasn’t exactly inclined to argue on that front, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that Dudley’s clothing did not fit Harry. They just weren’t built the same, Dudley having inherited a stockier build from his father. Eventually the neighbors were going to start questioning why they weren’t properly clothing her nephew and she wasn’t sure what she was going to tell them.
She was interrupted from her search by a thud against the front door downstairs. Then some knocking, because why would whoever it was use the doorbell like a civilized person? Dropping the clothing she’d been examining, she headed downstairs. A quick check showed that Harry was nearly done with the apple slices, though she knew that he would still need to be further cleaned up before she dressed him again. Satisfied, she moved to the door, only to find that there was nobody there. Instead there was a trunk of all things, sitting there. One that she vaguely recognized as having been her sister’s.
Frowning, she stepped to it, finding that there was a handwritten label on it. An obvious order number, a completion date of over a year previous, and an incomplete address label. The latter was addressed to Lily Potter in one handwriting, but had ‘care of Harry Potter’ written under it in another ink and handwriting. Petunia scowled, then looked up and down the street. She saw no freaks around, but that didn’t necessarily mean much.
Not willing to just leave the trunk sitting there, she dragged it inside and closed the door. The trunk wasn’t locked, so she was able to open it to see what had been dropped on her this time. To her genuine surprise and shock, it was larger than it should’ve been on the inside and filled with clothing. Her sister’s clothing, if she wasn’t mistaken, likely collected from their parents’ home at some point. Especially since it appeared to be sorted with basic age markings included, covering ages two to eighteen.
Petunia’s first instinct was to throw the entire trunk out, clothing and all. What did they need with her sister’s old clothing, after all? The only problem would be explaining the freakishness making the trunk larger than it should be on the inside. But as she went to close the lid of the trunk she remembered what she’d been doing. This was quite literally years worth of clothing, in what looked like incredibly good condition. Curious, she carefully collected an outfit that looked like it might fit Harry. It was a pastel blue dress, complete with matching gloves and socks. There were even shoes that she didn’t think could possibly have been Lily’s originals, if only due to how new they looked.
Staring at the outfit, and looking back at the kitchen, she wondered if she could actually get away with dressing her nephew in her sister’s old clothing. The dress certainly looked like it would fit him better than Dudley’s clothing, but what would the neighbors think? They knew the boy was her nephew, and not her niece. Then again, perhaps she could blame it on him? Something about refusing to wear proper outfits, but they’d found that he was willing to wear Lily’s old clothing?
Deciding that it was as good as an excuse as anything else, she closed the trunk and placed the complete outfit on top of it. She’d see how the outfit fit him and how he reacted to it after she’d cleaned him up properly.
Vernon’s eye was twitching as he looked over the letter that had been sent home from school. It explained that Dudley was functioning below average, easily shown up by his blasted nephew who was ‘doing better’ now that the other students had gotten past constantly causing him problems due to his clothing. Still ‘isolated’, but at least they’d stopped whining about the boy’s appearance. Looking over at the two boys, who were sitting on the couch waiting to find out what was going on, he frowned. Harry looked far too much like a proper young girl now that his hair had grown out and Dudley had obviously been roughhousing based on the state of his clothing.
Definitely not roughhousing with Harry, though. That lesson had already been learned after the first couple of times the neighbors had caught Dudley ‘picking on’ Harry in an overly physical manner. Petunia’s little fib about her sister’s clothing had endeared Harry to the neighbors and they weren’t willing to see the ‘poor boy’ as a troublemaker. Vernon had to admit that they probably had a point, since even he and Petunia had come to realize that the boy was unusually well behaved despite his freakish nature.
“Dudley,” Vernon said, getting the attention of both boys. “Mrs. Stewart claims that you don’t listen to her.”
“She’s boring,” Dudley answered. “She likes Freak more than me.”
That had Vernon’s eye twitching again, because he’d had multiple letters about how inappropriate it was for Dudley to refer to his cousin as ‘Freak’. “That doesn’t mean you should ignore her.”
“Don’t want to be like Freak.”
The twitching got worse, because the letter basically said that Harry was a model student that was likely to go far. Despite obviously needing glasses that he didn’t have. Looking between the two, Vernon half considered punishing Harry for doing better than Dudley had, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. He knew it wasn’t the boy’s fault, and it would feel far too much like punishing an innocent girl for his upbringing. No, he needed to solve this another way, and he was reminded of a tactic used on him and his sister by their parents. It would even solve multiple problems at the same time.
“Harry,” Vernon said, surprising both boys. “The school nurse said that you need glasses, so we’ll be going to get you a proper pair tomorrow. I think we’ll have a couple of other things to pick up as well while we’re at it.”
Dudley didn’t know it yet, but he was about to lose his second bedroom where his toys were stored. That would solve the lingering wrongness Vernon felt from keeping what appeared to be a young girl in the cupboard, show his son that slacking off lost you privileges, and provide a better environment for his nephew to study in so that Dudley would have a proper target to overcome for rewards. Perhaps they should even give Harry larger portions at dinner when he’d behaved and Dudley hadn’t?
That might be going too far, but he tucked the idea away for later revisiting.
Petunia shook her head as she looked at the two nine-year-old boys, though Harry had only turned nine today. They’d just come in from their outdoor chores, and from looking at them you’d assume that Dudley had done all of the work while Harry had merely watched. Her son was covered in filth, his hair was a mess, and he’d somehow torn a hole in his shirt. Compared to that was Harry, who was nearly pristine in his mother’s old shirt and plaid skirt. The only things she could spot wrong with him were that his knees were dirty from kneeling in the garden, some dirt smudges on his glasses, and a few hairs that had started to come out of the mid-back length braid his hair was in. She had no clue how he kept his clothing so clean, but he’d been doing it for years and it no longer surprised her. No, the only surprise was that he couldn’t seem to keep his glasses as clean as his clothing.
Sadly, appearances aside, she knew well enough that Harry had done more work in the end. Dudley had proven to have zero patience for gardening and was barely willing to tolerate pushing the mower around when Vernon let him and had supposedly been raking today. How he turned that into the mess he’d ended up in baffled her, and she’d given up on hoping that some of her nephew’s innate neatness would rub off on her son. It obviously wasn’t happening.
“Go clean up before your father comes home,” she said, staring at her son and pointing at the stairs. Dudley groaned but complied, probably because he knew that if he made a mess then he’d have to clean it up too. Once he was on the stairs she sighed and looked at her nephew, who was in appearance the daughter she’d always wanted. Except that he was just as interested in many of the ‘boy’ things that Dudley was and kept showing her son up academically. “As for you, clean up your knees and glasses, then come upstairs. It’s about time that you took responsibility for your own clothing.”
“What?” Harry asked, obviously confused.
“We haven’t been buying you your clothing all these years, and I need the room in my closet.”
The boy was obviously confused, but she didn’t let that bother her. Instead she headed upstairs and dragged her sister’s trunk out of the closet. She’d removed the couple of things that she’d hidden in there already, it having been a perfect spot to hide things from Vernon as they’d discovered that only she could open it, but it had been taking up room in their closet for far too long and Harry was definitely old enough to deal with it now. More importantly, he should be old enough to deal with the rest of the story, to prepare him for what was coming in a couple of years.
She’d dragged the trunk nearly to the bedroom door by the time Harry made it upstairs, and she first decided to confirm her theory by directing him to open the latch on it. He did, and she nodded. That was something both Vernon and Dudley couldn’t do, though finding the latter out had been a stressful day. With that confirmed, she directed him to help move it into his room. It took a little work, as the boy wasn’t as strong as Vernon, but she didn’t want to wait and didn’t really want Dudley to know all of this right now either. They placed the trunk at the end of the bed.
Closing the door, she sat down on the bed while he remained standing. She gave him a look and gestured at the trunk. “Now then, that trunk was my sister’s, your mother’s. It’s filled with all of her clothing that our parents saved as we grew up, and is where I’ve been getting all of your clothing. I’m leaving you responsible for it now, including deciding what clothing to bring out.”
Harry looked shocked at that, looking over at the trunk in wonder. “My mother’s?”
“Yes. I imagine she was hoping to have a daughter before she died, but that didn’t happen. That said, the trunk itself is special, and you have to keep why it is special a secret. Go ahead and open it up so that you can see what I mean.”
She watched as he opened the trunk, eyes going wider behind his glasses as he obviously realized that the trunk was far larger on the inside. “How?”
“Your mother, to my great annoyance, was a witch.” She’d failed to keep from spitting that out, which annoyed her, but she pushed that annoyance down. “You are almost certainly a wizard, and in two years are likely to get an invitation to attend a school of magic while Dudley will hopefully make it into Smeltings.” The latter was looking good for now, but she was certain that it was only because Harry kept her son on his toes and helped tutor him during the school year. “The existence of magic is a secret, revealing that to those not allowed to know is punishable by magical law enforcement. Vernon and I are aware of it, myself originally because of your mother, but Dudley is not right now. I’d like to keep it that way until you get your school letter, even if he is permitted to know because he lives in the same household as you.”
Harry nodded, then adopted a curious look. “Is...er...”
“Is that why odd things happen around you?”
The boy nodded, and she sighed. “Most likely. Your...outbursts have been far less significant than your mother’s were growing up, though I have no clue why. I know that you’ve had two pairs of glasses spontaneously repair themselves and am aware of at least three times that a broken dish has been fixed as well. Vernon also claims that you were likely responsible for Ripper’s injuries last year when Marge refused to keep control of the beast.”
Petunia wasn’t about to admit that she was happy about that particular incident, as it had kept the woman from being willing to return for more than an afternoon. That wasn’t likely to hold indefinitely, but with any luck any future visits would be without dogs ‘for the safety of the dogs’.
Harry frowned. “So does that mean that other people can’t talk to the garden snakes?”
“Talk to the what?”
“The garden snakes. They like our yard because I don’t try to drive them off and keep other pests out of the garden for me in thanks.”
She felt her eye trying to twitch, but suppressed it. Especially since they’d been the only house in the area other than that Figg woman’s that hadn’t had issues with mice for the past couple of years, and now she had a pretty good idea of why. “I don’t think that’s normal for a wizard either, but it definitely isn’t normal for those without magic. Be careful about when you do that.”
Harry nodded, and she noticed that he was slightly twitchy. Probably wanting to dig into the trunk to see what was in it. She stood up to leave him to it, needing to move a couple more things in her closet now that the trunk wasn’t in the way.
Vernon sat down on the bed, frowning. Dudley had asked him a couple of questions earlier that he thought he’d had an answer for, but had stopped himself from saying anything citing a need to talk to Petunia. That had originally been because he thought that he needed time to think on the answers, but now his own fib had become reality. “Pet?”
“Yes?” Petunia answered from where she was putting her hair in rollers.
“When was the last time Harry did something...freakish?”
“Two weeks ago, as far as I know, but I think he started to work on doing little things intentionally in private shortly after I gave him Lily’s trunk.”
That had him blinking. “What? Two weeks ago? What did I miss?”
She turned around so that he could see her roll her eyes. “Do you really think that I helped a nine year old dye his hair red for Christmas with a dye that washed out perfectly that evening?”
“I hadn’t even realized that was his freakishness. You said it was your doing, even.”
“I gave him a picture of Lily that morning before you and Dudley were up and the emotional outburst caused his hair to change color in response. In hindsight, I was lucky that his reaction was that mild. It wore off when he went to sleep that night, I was able to see it fading when I checked on him.”
“Oh.” That...had implications. There had been a time when he’d considered if freakishness could be beaten out of the boy. That could’ve been bad if emotional outbursts were directly tied into freak incidents. He’d seen the aftermath of Marge’s dog attacking the boy and was fairly certain that he’d not have come out on top if it had been him attacking Harry that day. Though Petunia had said something else. “What was that about little things?”
She sighed, put the roller she’d not yet started to put in her hair down, and sat down next to him on the bed. “I might’ve admitted that Lily had gotten a wand when she turned eleven and had needed it to cast magic. He got a curious look on his face then and I think he’s been practicing anyway. There’s a cracked bowl in his room that I catch him staring at on occasion, I think he’s trying to fix it intentionally like he’s done when things were dropped before. I’ve seen him pulling an unsharpened pencil to his hand as well, almost like he was trying to play with a yo-yo, but the two times I’ve seen it work he looked shocked that it happened as the end of the pencil bounced off of his hand. I think he’s decided that things he knows he’s done are fair game for doing without a wand, but I’m not sure and haven’t wanted to confront him about it.”
“Since when are you comfortable talking about his...”
“He didn’t ask to be born a wizard. Lily didn’t ask to be born a witch either. I lost my sister to magic in part because of my jealousy, and I forced my own nephew to wear clothing intended for a young girl out of spite.” She paused, closing her eyes for a moment, before continuing. “Did you know that the school insisted that I try to get Harry to wear ‘proper clothing’ back in September?”
“I remember getting an apology letter about it, saying they wouldn’t try again, and figured that you’d gone and given them a talking to.”
“They didn’t give me a chance to. One of the staff, and I never found out who, tried to bypass us and take Harry shopping directly before the first letter had even arrived here to warn us. I’m under the impression that it didn’t go well, and that he used the same reasoning that I did with the neighbors and refused to be parted with one of the only links he had to his parents. Reasoning that I’m fairly certain I never told him about.”
That didn’t sound like the impetus for such a drastic change in her attitude towards magic. “Okay...”
“Vernon, the school asked me what would’ve happened if Dudley had ended up with Lily and James. Can you honestly say that they’d have let Dudley not know his own name until he started school? Let Harry think that Dudley’s name was freak? Would Dudley not have known our names until he was nine? Would he have had to wear old clothing from one of us instead of having proper clothing of his own, only to refuse to give up said clothing because it was the only connection he had to us? It took me two months to find a single picture of Lily, only finding one from when she was eleven, and I don’t think I have any pictures of James. But I know that Lily kept pictures of both of us and that they would’ve made sure Dudley had copies.”
He stared at Petunia, wanting to say that Dudley would’ve lived a horrible life with the Potters. But as much as he disliked James, and as freaked out he generally was about their abnormal abilities, he couldn’t see them treating Dudley anything like they’d ended up treating Harry. Worst case, if they felt they couldn’t raise Dudley properly, they’d have likely ensured that he made it to Marge...
Who probably would’ve been a worse choice, as much as he didn’t want to admit it out loud.
Rubbing his eyes to avoid looking at Petunia for a moment, he grimaced. “Why didn’t you tell me this when the school called you?”
“Because I didn’t think that you were ready to hear that the school thinks that we’re the freaks. They’ve had us on a watch list since the boys started attending, which I only know about now because they apologized for the entries on it from not believing us about Harry’s insistence on wearing Lily’s clothing. And I suspect that if they’d tried to go around us to get him into something proper before this year then even that would’ve come out as being a lie.”
“How do we fix this?”
“We can’t.”
He blinked, and looked at her. “What?”
Petuna sighed. “We can’t go back and change how we raised the boy and the damage is done. He doesn’t see us as parents, only his largely-uncaring aunt and uncle. The lie that I concocted when we didn’t want to spend money on him has become the truth and we’d likely be causing more harm trying to force him to wear normal clothes now. There isn’t enough time before he goes off to learn magic to reverse the isolation from his peers caused by how we treated him, even if I had any idea of how to do that.”
“What are you saying?”
“We can do our best to treat him better right now, but that won’t ever be enough to fix our mistakes.”
He nodded. “Is that why you insisted on getting him more gifts for Christmas this year?”
“Part of it, yes, though he really did need most of what we got him anyway. Giving them to him as Christmas gifts was honestly a shitty way to deal with it.”
“I suppose it was, wasn’t it.”
She gave him a look. “What brought this on, anyway?”
He grimaced again. “Dudley asked why he got ‘fun things’ for Christmas while Harry got ‘useful things’ instead. Admittedly, I think it was partially because he gets annoyed when Harry barters help with homework for access to Dudley’s toys, but I didn’t have a good answer for him either way.”
“Oh...”
“And then he asked why Harry has never seen the ocean. Apparently he’s the only one in his class that hasn’t seen it at least once they can remember.”
She groaned at that, and he felt that it was going to be a long night.
Petunia had enlisted Dudley’s help in coming up with a list of things that Harry hadn’t been taught growing up. Something that her son hadn’t wanted to do until she promised him an extra dessert. With that incentive he’d been able to produce quite the list, though most of it wasn’t actually a problem. At the same time, he’d also gone ahead and listed things that Harry could do but Dudley couldn’t. She hadn’t intended for that, but the way she’d worded the request was easily interpreted that way and it was enlightening on its own.
The list had been cut down to things that were a significant problem in her and Vernon’s eyes. Harry didn’t know how to ride a bicycle, swim, throw a cricket ball properly, or even how to jump rope. Dudley hadn’t been taught how to cook anything, run the washer and dryer, repair torn clothing, use the vacuum, use a first aid kit, or braid hair. She’d had to question him on the inclusion of the latter one, but he’d apparently included it because the older brother of one of his friends thought that it was a good thing for guys to know even if they didn’t normally have the hair to do it themselves.
That Harry’s list of important items was entirely ‘playing’ activities and Dudley’s was almost entirely ‘chore’ activities didn’t escape them and they started correcting things in the Spring. Dudley’s first lesson was use of a first aid kit so that he could potentially bandage himself when he inevitably got hurt, with both boys being given a small kit of their own to carry with them. Harry’s first lesson was jumping rope, followed by Dudley helping teach him how to ride a bicycle in exchange for Harry letting Dudley learn the basics of braiding on his hair.
Vernon had opted to send both boys to get proper swimming lessons instead of trying to teach Harry himself, but had opted to teach Harry how to roll with taking a punch and how to fight back after one of the other boys in the class had decided to attack him for his ‘girly swimsuit’. They’d given up on Harry throwing a cricket ball properly though, the boy couldn’t aim one to save his life. On the flip side, Dudley had fought against learning how to do laundry or cook, but had at least gotten to be able to do his own laundry. Unlike with Harry, who Petunia was now ashamed had been doing quite dangerous cooking for a child for several years, they opted to put all but the most basic cooking lessons off until Dudley was older. They still ensured that he could make toast for himself, boil water, and follow simple directions on packages of frozen meals.
Their vacation visit to the beach had given Harry a proper view of the ocean, an intense dislike for sand, and inadvertently given Dudley his first concrete example of Harry being magical when the younger boy had apologized to a snake that they’d disturbed to keep it from biting them. Dudley had decided that it was ‘awesome’ and wanted to know what other animals were saying, only to be disappointed when he found out that Harry could only talk to snakes ‘because snakes are never around home’. She and Harry had both kept quiet about the snakes in the garden.
Despite all of that, Harry still didn’t have friends to play with and retreated into books more often than not. He would ride his new bicycle to the library and jog or ride around the neighborhood for exercise at Vernon’s urging, but otherwise resumed retreating into books when he had free time and wasn’t trying to practice his magic. He was able to summon a sharpened pencil to himself safely by September, and occasionally Petunia swore that his hair was a different color than it should be for an hour or two. That had led to a reminder that he had to keep his magic a secret before the boys went off to school again.
Vernon heard the mailman and sighed, as he’d just started eating. He looked over at the two boys, seeing that both had just finished eating. He knew that Petunia was upstairs. “Would one of you please get the mail?”
“I’ll grab it,” Dudley said, jumping up without putting his plate in the sink.
Harry rolled his eyes and collected his and Dudley’s plates, bringing them over to the sink to rinse them. He’d just started that when a thud came from the hall.
“IT’S THE APOCALYPSE!” Dudley yelled a moment later. Despite the yelling he walked back into the kitchen.
“What are you on about now?” Vernon asked, annoyed with his son’s rudeness and antics.
Said son waved one of the envelopes he’d carried back. One that looked like it was decidedly unusual for the modern age, honestly. “Harry has a letter!”
“I do?” Harry said, turning around. “I never get mail, even when we try to send things to me ourselves.”
“This would be the second time in ten years,” Vernon agreed. “But it’s probably your school letter.”
Harry took the letter from Dudley, frowning at the front before opening it. He pulled several sheets of parchment out and looked over them once, then carefully read each a second time. Finally he frowned. “There’s no return address, just some talk about an owl. How are we supposed to send them anything?”
That had Vernon sighing. “Petunia feared that they’d screw that up. She knows how to get a letter to the blasted school through the normal post. Hopefully they’ll be willing to send someone to help, given that we don’t have any of their money and she doesn’t know how to get to their shopping center. That said, may I see the list of supplies?”
It only took a moment to look over things, and in doing so it was blatantly obvious that Harry’s normal education was going to be completely ignored at Hogwarts. Petunia had told him as much, but he hadn’t wanted to believe her. How was the boy supposed to be able to function in the normal world without a normal...
It hit Vernon then. Harry wasn’t supposed to be able to function in the normal world, was he. The bloody magicals didn’t want their kind in the normal world at all, and not teaching normal subjects would isolate the children just as badly as Harry had already ended up isolated thanks to the screw-ups with his upbringing. Petunia hadn’t lost her sister to the magical world due to any screwups on her own part, she’d lost her sister to the magical world because the blasted magical world didn’t want their people in the normal world.
“When Pet comes down we’ll talk about a couple of things,” Vernon finally said. “Including some extra shopping that we’re going to have to do before September.”
“Extra shopping?” Harry asked.
“Yes, nothing for your normal subjects is listed on there. If you’re going to keep ahead of Dudley like you’ve been doing then you’ll need study materials to bring with you. Oh, and we’ll probably want to see if fountain pens are suitable instead of the quills that your parents used, even if it’s only for while you’re here.”
“He needs a watch and probably a mechanical alarm clock too,” Dudley added, blushing slightly when they looked at him. “From what mum said, do either of you think that they’ll have electrical outlets?”
Vernon frowned. “No, they won’t, and now that I think about it I think the watch will need to be mechanical too. Though seeing if something suitable is available in their shopping district might be best.”
“What are you talking about?” Petunia asked as she came into the kitchen.
“Getting the boy mechanical timekeepers for Hogwarts,” Vernon answered, gesturing at Harry. “His letter came, you were right about them sending the wrong version.”
“Of course they did.”