Conditions

By Mother of Memory

A Harry Potter Fanfiction

Petunia watched her nephew as he lay in his crib.

Dudley was asleep on his blanket in front of the windows, sprawled out in the sunshine like a cat. Harry was much smaller and had an unfortunate tendency to roll about in his sleep. If he'd been an adult, Petunia might have said he was thrashing about in a nightmare… but Harry was barely over a year and babies didn't have nightmares –did they?

Perhaps wizard babies did. It wouldn't have surprised her, they weren't normal in any other regard… but she wasn't sure. When Lily had had nightmares windows shattered and things flew about the room. Either Harry was a calmer sort or he just didn't have the same strength his mother had.

Talent, he had. Petunia could attest to that after she'd come in from fetching the post one day to find motes of light dancing over the boy's bassinet. The child had clapped his hands and laughed, patting at them the way Dudley had his mobile.

Her nephew was all together tiny and frail almost. He'd gotten his mother's bone structure that was for sure. One of the things Petunia thanks her stars for every day was that her son had inherited his father's bones and not hers. Lily's frame had given her a sort of elfin delicacy because she was so short. Petunia had inherited their father's height and looked like a version of Lily that had been stretched thin. Between her and his father, Dudley was doomed to be tall. He'd soon dwarf his cousin.

Harry slept curled up on his side in a fetal curl. Petunia wasn't sure how she felt about it. Dudley still slept in that carefree sprawl that only small children managed with his belly up and his arms akimbo. Her father had once commented that babies slept like that until something hurt them. She wasn't sure she liked the idea of any child being hurt so early on.

So far he hadn't been as… intense as Lily had been.

The fairy lights had been the most drastic thing she'd seen the child do. Harry talent seemed more… benign than Lily's had been. Her sister had been forever enchanting things and making them behave in unnatural and more often irritating fashions. As far as she was concerned she could go her entire life without having her tea kettle sing 'Waltzing Matilda' when the water was ready.

Harry didn't enchant things. He seemed… quieter. Petunia had caught on quick that her nephew was never subject to the same crib fevers and rashes that Dudley was… and the more time Dudley spent near his cousin the less he was too. As first she'd been afraid that contact with his cousin had been turning Dudley strange, after all… whatever had given Lily magic was in Petunia too even if it hadn't blossomed for her.

Then one night Harry had given himself a nasty scratch on the cheek after an abortive attempt at standing up. Petunia had gone to clean his face and put a bandage on it as a matter of course, but no sooner has she wiped the blood away then the scratch had healed itself.

Now, in a pinch Petunia's firsthand knowledge of the magical world might be enough to fill a thimble. She only knew what tidbits of information that Lily had dropped in passing conversation, but even she knew that there were Healers among the Wizards and Witches.

So she sat and contemplated her nephew while Dudley napped.

Perhaps it could be done… Petunia knew her contact with magical folk had been limited to her sister and her half-cocked husband. While not inherently evil, neither had been the most pleasant of folk. Lily had always had a tendency to wound even as she tried to sympathize and her husband had been one of those rich handsome types who had never really had to work for anything in life.

Part of Petunia wanted to believe that bad blood would always tell, but surely after knowing so much loss in his short life the boy could be taught? There wasn't a way to stop him from being magical, not that Petunia hadn't considered it. She remembered the one time her parents had tried to keep Lily from being what she was. That… magic had built up inside her like she was a bottle of soda pop that someone kept shaking. That awful pressure had built up and up until one day Lily broke down and shattered every window for a mile around.

No, this was the sort of thing that had to be used or it would just pile up. So while her nephew's crib magic was frightening in one fashion, it was comforting in another.

With hands which shook only a little, Petunia reached into the crib and smoothed her nephew's downy cap of soft black hair. She paused, as though waiting for something… but nothing happened. No lightening came to strike her down. There was no sense of wrongness… just soft hair and warm skin beneath her palm.

The boy stirred under her hand and burbled in his sleep. He wasn't talking quite yet, being a more reserved child. Dudley wasn't talking either exactly, more like animated practicing.

Taking a breath, Petunia lifted her nephew out of his crib and laid him against her shoulder. The boy didn't wake up, but the contact seemed to soothe his sleep. "That's a good boy…" She murmured. "Good Harry. Sleep quietly."

When Vernon came home that night, the boys were on the mat together playing with the wooden trains that the old woman from Wisteria Walk had given them as a present. He paused in the doorway for a moment and watched, then he turned to cast a questioning eye at his wife.

"They play well together." Petunia chose her words with care. "I think he'll be all right."

Vernon looked back to the mat just in time to see his son squint down at a scrape on his knuckles and present it imperiously to his cousin. "Kiss better!" Without hesitating, Harry patted his hand to his mouth and pressed his fingers to Dudley's maltreated hand. Dudley examined his hand once Harry was finished and turned to beam at his mother. "All better!" He declared.

There was a pause as Vernon frowned at the children in thought. "… your sister was different, wasn't she. Did you say that she…?"

Petunia looked up from her knitting. "She was. She did." She made a few more stitches before letting her hands fall into her lap. "I think Harry is different. Lily broke things or made them fly around. She didn't fix them. Maybe Harry is just different… or maybe Lily was. I don't know, I'm just... just tired of being afraid of a baby."

Without speaking, her husband set his case down by the door and tossed his coat at the rack. As usual he missed and it fell to the floor. Later he'd go and pick it up when she couldn't see and pretend like he'd made it in the first place.

He sat down next to her and draped an arm over her shoulder. For a while neither of them spoke as they watched their son and nephew.

Notes: So this was the prologue. No, this isn't necessarily going to be a 'nice Dursleys' story. I find the canon Dursleys to be a little over the top. There are many different levels of abuse and some of it isn't even intentional. Here I'm going to explore what might have happened if the Dursleys had reacted to Harry a little differently. We're starting out with the Dursleys as a young couple, so of course they're going to be a little different than when we got a good look at them in the canon.

What I'm going for is to see how much they change Harry and how much Harry changes them.