Petunia Dursley had always believed that the best part of the day was the half-hour before anyone else in the house stirred.
The kettle would hiss softly on the stove, the newspaper would crackle under her fingers, and the world outside Number Four, Privet Drive would remain exactly as it should be: ordinary, predictable, and blessedly free of anything strange.
This morning, the world had other ideas.
She had stepped onto the front step in her quilted housecoat, slippers damp from the first frost of November, and nearly tripped over the bundle.
At first she thought it was a sack of something left by the milkman.
Then the bundle moved.
A tiny fist poked out from the blankets, clutching a thick envelope addressed in emerald-green ink to Mrs.
Petunia Dursley, The Smallest Bedroom, Number Four, Privet Drive.
Petunia’s breath caught.
She knew that handwriting.
She had seen it once before, years ago, on a letter that had changed everything.
With shaking hands she lifted the bundle.
The child inside was no more than a year old, fast asleep despite the cold.
Jet-black hair.
And when his head lolled to one side, she saw the eyes.
Lily’s eyes.
Green as grass.
Bright even in the grey morning light.
A thin, lightning-shaped scar stood out on the pale forehead, still pink at the edges.
Petunia stared at it for three full seconds before the implications crashed over her like ice water.
She slammed the door behind her, heart hammering so hard she could feel it in her throat.
“Vernon!”
Her husband was already awake, sitting up in bed with the look of a man who had noticed the absence of bacon.
One glance at her face and he was reaching for his glasses.
“Petunia?
What in blazes—”
She thrust the bundle at him.
The letter came with it.
Vernon read in silence, his face darkening with every line.
When he finished he didn’t shout.
Not at first.
He simply sat there, the paper trembling slightly in his large hands, and said very quietly, “They’ve got to be joking.”
“They’re not,” Petunia whispered.
Her voice sounded thin even to her own ears.
“That’s Lily’s boy.
I’d know those eyes anywhere.”
Vernon’s colour rose.
“Then they can bloody well come and collect him.
We are not raising some stranger’s child just because his parents got themselves killed playing at magic.”
“He’s not a stranger,” Petunia said, though the words tasted wrong in her mouth.
“He’s… family.”
Vernon snorted.
“Family?
Your sister stopped being family the day she chose those freaks over us.
And now they expect us to take in their mess?
Not a chance.
We’ll take him back where he belongs.”
Petunia’s stomach twisted.
“The letter says he’ll be protected here.
That we’ll all be protected.
Dudley—”
“Dudley will be protected by his father calling the police if any of those lunatics come near this house,” Vernon snapped.
He was already swinging his legs out of bed, reaching for his trousers.
“I’ll find that place you mentioned.
Diagon something.
Hand the boy over to the first responsible-looking person I see and explain we want nothing to do with their world.
They can have their precious saviour back.”
Petunia opened her mouth, then closed it.
What was there to say?
She had spent years telling herself that Lily was already gone—had been gone since the day she boarded that train and never really came back.
The girl who used to braid her hair and laugh at her terrible jokes had died long before any dark wizard came calling.
So why did the thought of this child being carried off again make her feel faintly sick?
She didn’t have time to examine the feeling.
Vernon was already tucking the letter back into its envelope with brisk, angry movements.
“Make breakfast,” he said.
“I’ll need it before I go traipsing halfway across London with that thing.”
Petunia went downstairs without another word.
By the time Vernon left the house, the baby was awake and grizzling in the crook of his arm.
The dummy dipped in honey—Dudley’s old one, fished out of a drawer—had been Vernon’s idea.
It worked.
The child sucked contentedly, one small hand wrapped around Vernon’s thick finger with surprising strength.
Vernon told himself the weight in his arms was nothing.
Just another chore.
Like taking the bins out or dealing with a blocked drain.
Unpleasant, but temporary.
Charing Cross Road was already busy.
Commuters, tourists, the usual London chaos.
Vernon walked the length of it twice, then a third time, the baby growing heavier with every step.
He kept his eyes peeled for anyone who looked… off.
The sort of people Lily used to bring home during school holidays.
Cloaks.
Strange hats.
That twitchy little man who had once tried to sell him a pocket watch that ran backwards.
He saw plenty of odd characters.
A woman in a long purple coat who seemed to shimmer at the edges.
A man with a beard down to his knees who vanished between one blink and the next.
But every time Vernon tried to focus on them, something else caught his eye—a bus, a pigeon, a shop window—and when he looked back, they were gone.
“Typical,” he muttered.
“Bloody typical.”
The baby made a small, unhappy sound around the dummy.
Vernon jiggled him automatically, the way he used to do with Dudley.
It didn’t help much.
The street was loud, the November wind cutting through his coat, and the child’s weight was starting to make his left arm ache.
He stopped outside a dingy little pub he could have sworn hadn’t been there on his first pass.
The sign above the door flickered like a dying lightbulb.
The Leaky Cauldron.
Vernon stared at it.
The letters seemed to shift if he looked at them too long.
He took a step closer.
A man in a pointed hat and a long cloak brushed past him, muttering something that sounded like “—Potter, can you believe it—” before disappearing through the pub door as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Vernon’s grip on the baby tightened.
This was it.
This was the place.
He stood on the pavement for a long moment, the honey-sweetened dummy still working its magic, the child’s small fingers curled trustingly around his own.
For the first time that morning, Vernon Dursley hesitated.
Then he squared his shoulders, pushed the door open, and stepped inside.
The noise hit him first—laughter, clinking glasses, the low murmur of dozens of conversations.
The smell hit second: woodsmoke, something herbal, and underneath it all the faint, metallic tang of magic that made the hair on his arms stand up.
No one turned to look at him.
Vernon Dursley, with a baby in one arm and murder in his heart, had finally arrived in the place he had spent years pretending did not exist.
And he had every intention of leaving the child here before the day was out.