Disclaimer: Harry Potter isn't mine.
Screaming seemed an appropriate response. It is, after all, not a normal occurrence to open the door and nearly trip over a baby. It is also not normal for the neighbors to be woken by the sound of shrieking. It was a lapse on my part. It won't happen again. I allowed myself to be shocked. I've let the distance make me complacent.
I should have known last night that something was coming. Vernon – my dependable, steeped in normalcy, plodding, average, unremarkable Vernon – was asking questions. He was hinting that he had heard . . . something, but I shut the conversation down. I was desperate to believe that I had succeeded in escaping. I had dreamed and hoped that the life I had worked so hard to build would escape being touched by the life I had before. It was foolish for me to believe. It was foolish for me to hope. I was tainted. It was only a matter of time before I infected my husband and my son. I choke as I think of my son.
I have a brief, shining glimpse of a world that could have been. I see Sunday afternoons that will never be. I see family gatherings where the muffled voices of husbands talking business drifts over the comfortable conversation of sisters contented with their lives and with each other as they clean up the kitchen and spare glances out the window at two little boys playing together in the yard. I blink back tears at the sheer beauty of the image and quickly push it away. I did my mourning long, long ago. There is no use in revisiting it. That world is something I can never have. It is because of them. It is because of it.
My precious baby is just enough older than this interloper in our lives to become the protector, the confidant, the older sibling. It would be so easy for him to build his childhood around this precious little person his parents will drop into his life. It would be so easy for him to be broken when he gets left behind. He will get left behind. That is where this path ends. I know. I have traveled it before. I have been the one left behind, the one broken, and the one left to try to repair the shattered pieces. My baby will not have to live that life. He will not suffer because of the machinations of a world that insists upon imposing itself on our own. I will not allow it. I cannot allow him to get attached.
I feel a moment of pity at what kind of childhood that will mean for the little boy sleeping tucked onto the sofa at my side, but I can't save him. I can only save my own. It won't be difficult. I'm not stupid. I know my son is spoiled. It has been my doing. What did Vernon know of children? He follows where I lead. When the doctor said no more children, Vernon held me while I cried. He didn't know they were tears of relief – relief that my baby would never know the pain of losing a sibling. I poured all the attention and doting that were intended for a house full of children into one little boy. There was no way for him to not be self-centered.
If I direct that properly, I can turn that self-absorption into something more. My child will be unpleasant, a bully even, but he won't be attached. He won't be hurt. He won't have to bury the memory of a beloved younger sibling who won't stay with him. Vernon will be even easier to manage. My mood over the next few days will determine his behavior for the next few years. He's predictable like that, and I love him for it.
The baby wakes and stares up at me with wide, confused eyes – eyes that belong to my other lifetime. I crush the letter in my hand into a wrinkled mess of parchment as a bolt of anger shoots through me. What is wrong with those people?
"Keep the baby." The baby they left on my doorstep. Who leaves a child on a doorstep? He could have been taken. He could have toddled off into traffic. He could have wandered far enough away that no one ever knew who he was. They don't think.
"Your sister is dead." The girl who was my sister died when she was eleven, but who leaves information like that to be found in a letter.
"He is safest with you." Who entrusts a child to those who do not want it? They don't care.
"The normal arrangements will be made for his schooling." They only use. They want to leave him here while it is convenient for them. Then, they will take him back to that world. The world that will look down on him for not being entirely of it. The world that pulled his mother in, destroyed who she had been, and killed her. The world that broke my once proud parents as they watched their once beloved child slide farther and farther into a place they could not follow. They will give us enough time to be attached, to care, and then they will snatch him away.
It will be, but it won't be Vernon, it won't be Dudley, and it won't be me. I can't survive that again. It doesn't matter how badly I want to look into those trusting green eyes, cuddle him to my chest, and pretend that I don't know what is coming. This rift between the worlds that they create is harsh, and I have learned to be harsh with it.
It's ironic that the one who wasn't worth staying for is the only one who can protect her child. The writer smugly talks of "blood ties." He knows nothing. We could have told him – couldn't we have, Lily? We could have told him just how frail blood ties really are.
Don't worry, my precious, once beloved, best friend and sister who was. I will save his life, but it won't be at my family's expense. You once chose other ties. I have as well. There will be no grieving, ever dwindling from his life parents. There will be no confused, scared, and broken older brother. Your child won't suffer guilt in his choosing. He will be happy to leave. We will be happy to have him go. The heartbreak of the cycle will be at end. It's the only way.
"Vernon," I say pushing the now whimpering child away from me. "It will have to stay."