"I am a female writer. And what's interesting about the wizarding world is when you take physical strength out of the equation, a woman can fight just as well as a man can fight, can do magic just as powerfully as a man can do magic, and I consider that I've written a lot of well rounded female characters in these books. As an author, none of the women ever gave me trouble, actually. It was always the men that gave me trouble, never the women. But Harry came to me as Harry, and I never wanted to change that. Because switching gender isn't simply putting a dress and a pretty name on a boy, is it? A lot of the preoccupations and expectations are different on men and women, and so the books would have been incredibly different, I think."

- JK Rowling, The Women of Harry Potter

"Uncle Vernon's dislike of Harry stems in part, like Severus Snape's, from Harry's close resemblance to the father they both so disliked."

- JK Rowling, Pottermore

Part One

Chapter One

Petunia was to raise the girl. Vernon wanted nothing to do with her. This was decided early on.

He sighed as he got out of his Grunnings Co car - shiny, new, black, and expensive. High grade. Vernon always kept it parked outside the garage; he wanted his neighbors to notice what he could afford. He walked up to his square white two story suburban house, past the front wall and gate, past the neat, flat green lawns and tidy flowerbeds, up the front steps to the stained glass white door with the polished bronze number four on it.

He had a beautiful homemaker wife, a boisterous young son, a nice three-piece suit with a bland tie, a good house and enough money, a sister who visited on holidays, everything he had ever wanted. Vernon didn't think that was too much to ask for. His life was entirely perfect - except for the one unwanted intrusion.

He was now raising his sister in law's orphaned daughter - his niece by marriage, Aster Potter. There was nothing wrong with this in and of itself… but if her parents were any indication, he dreaded what she would become. Privet Drive and its neat suburb had a mold, and Aster Potter had no place in it.

But in any case, that was Petunia's business.

He unlocked the door with a jangle of keys and walked in from work for the evening, shiny black shoes squeaking on the polished wood floors. He looked up, and paused in surprise.

Petunia was in the gleaming checkered kitchen, cooing at Dudley and making dinner, apparently not paying much attention to Aster. Not that Vernon could blame her. By all accounts Petunia's sister had been terrible, and raising the daughter of a woman she'd so despised must eat at her. Still… the girl was only a toddler, and she was trying to climb the entrance hall stairs by herself.

The stairs were carpeted with plush white piled cloth. Aster was about halfway up, almost level with the vase of flowers on the entrance hall's end table. Vernon watched her suspiciously as she struggled. Her quest was silent and entirely intent, and he could admit to himself she was awfully young to be making it up the stairs in the first place. In the middle of her second year.

There was nothing terribly threatening about her right now. She was just being a normal child - it was almost deceptive. He'd expected a bratty and bizarre James Potter lookalike - if Lily Potter had been awful, her husband had been if anything worse. But this little girl looked nothing like James Potter, nothing so mocking or jeering, disorganized or threatening. She had a headful of deep crimson hair, round hazel eyes, a long straight nose and a delicate little mouth, pale skin. She was tiny, even for a toddler girl, and gave off the appearance of being far too fragile to be climbing any set of stairs.

She toddled further up the staircase, then yelped and stumbled. Vernon felt a shoot of panic and he was there in a second, steadying her. "Be careful!" he barked at Aster, forceful mainly out of fear.

If she fell down a set of stairs, people would accuse them of abuse, he told himself.

But Aster looked up at him with big hazel eyes… and tears filled them. Her face screwed up and she started wailing. Even Vernon Dursley felt uneasy at making a little girl cry.

"Don't -! Really -! Don't -!" Vernon had no idea what to say. He sighed in exasperation and set down his briefcase. "Look, it's fine," he said, attempting to make his tone civil with a great effort. "Really, it's okay." Gingerly, he rubbed her back. She slowly calmed down, her sobs shuddering to a halt, looking up at him once more with more curiosity. "You were doing quite well," he admitted, begrudging. "Like this." He made a step. "See? Climbing the stairs. It's not too difficult. You can do it," he added unconvincingly.

Was he saying the right things?

Aster looked at the step he'd made - then slowly made her own.

"Vernon?!" Petunia called from the kitchen. "Is that you?!"

"Yes, I'll be there in a minute, Petunia!" he called. And he and Aster went like that, step by step, she following him all the way up to the top of the staircase. In the back of his mind, he wondered why he was bothering.

Still, when she got to the top of the stairs, he felt a jump of triumph. Well, the girl could be taught, and he'd taught her. That was something. "See?" he said. "I knew you could do it!"

Aster beamed up at him, then ran at his legs and threw herself around them in a hug. "Thanks, Unca Vernon!" she chirped, cuddling.

Vernon looked down at her and grunted. "Well," he said gruffly, returning to himself. "You're welcome." And he patted her awkwardly on the head, she still hugging his legs with a cherubic smile. "Now I have to get back down." She stayed there. "No," he said. "Really. I do."

Vernon wasn't one for metaphors; he found them deeply suspicious. But had he been a poetic, nonsensical sort of man, he would have said that he never really "got back down" in the non-literal sense. Every evening after work, he went into the living room with Aster, a vast clean carpeted space filled with armchairs and a massive red brick fireplace, and took to helping Aster walk, run, and play.

"You've come a great way and I'm not about to see you regress," he told her firmly, pointing a finger at her. "You are going to make steady progress, now that I know you can!"

Aster was still smiling as she played blissfully with her blocks. He wondered despairingly if she even understood him.

"I don't understand why you're bothering," Petunia once told him sharply. "Especially for the girl instead of Dudley."

Vernon knew that tone. He knew he would have to tread carefully.

"She needs extra help," he told her. "Because of her background. I'm making sure she's someone presentable for our household. Isn't that important?"

Petunia harrumphed and marched away, heels clacking. But she seemed to accept this explanation. She may even have been glad not to have to do the training herself.

So Vernon assisted Aster with walking, running, and climbing. He discovered her to be a sweet child, gentle and smiling, quiet and with a gift for physical activity. She soon found her feet, taking to running, walking, and climbing with grace.

So after that he moved on to talking, having conversations with her and trying to get her to respond. This did not go as well. Aster didn't seem to have much interest in language, only saying spare words, mostly listening, and when he yelled at her she cried. She cried easily. The smallest tension could have her wailing away; it was amazing what actual yelling could do.

So then he would try to control his heaving temper, and she would quiet down. "Is she just stupid?" he asked himself, troubled.

Still, every morning she would begin anew with bright optimism. She had spirit. So what was wrong with her language? Why didn't she talk more?

Deciding to test her intelligence, he began turning to other things. He read her books and she seemed interested; he gave her commands and she did follow them. So she could understand him. She even got perhaps overly emotional at the smallest instances of drama in the stories she was reading. It was rather alarming.

He turned to toys, buying her things "for the sake of training," he told Petunia. Aster sat on the living room play rug and scribbled with crayons, built towers of blocks, played ball, and enjoyed emptying and filling containers. He watched her copy other people's movements - playing with a toy phone, feeding a doll, pretending to drive a car. And as she got older she began doing everything herself, or wanting to. She tied her shoes wrong, put on clothes backwards, spilled juice, held cups and utensils the wrong way, but she did try doing everything for herself.

Eventually he had to conclude that there was nothing wrong with her intelligence. She was just an exceptionally quiet girl. She did even move on to eventual sentences and phrases, though used sparingly. But she was always quiet; she even enjoyed alone time. This was not necessarily a bad thing. It was not in the least reminiscent of James Potter, or indeed anything he'd expected from a Potter in the first place.

As he watched her play with her new toys on the colorful living room play rug, it wore at him that she slept in a closet and had poor secondhand clothes, as per Petunia's command. Yes, she was right, the girl was grateful to have a home with them at all and they got no compensation for having her… but that argument didn't sit with him as easily as it used to, somehow, as he watched her. She grew into a full running, playing, and babbling toddler, her face turning heart shaped with high cheekbones and delicate features. Her dark red hair grew to brush her shoulders, falling around her. She was a pretty young girl, not at all like he'd thought she'd be, and it wore on him that she didn't have a proper bedroom or dresses.

Because she was, he eventually realized, just a child. A little girl like any other. She smiled often and liked hugs, rarely had tantrums and cried easily when yelled at and preferred quiet, harmonious surroundings. She followed orders matter of factly and was easygoing - though confusingly, she broke the rules a lot. This at first angered Vernon, until he realized she simply often got lost in her own thoughts and forgot airily about the rules she'd been given. She only seemed to purposefully ignore the rules when she had a goal she needed met and a rule stood in her way. In that moment, she ignored them altogether.

She was curious - she held everything and put almost all of it in her mouth and quite often was found exploring places she was not supposed to be. She sucked her thumb for a long time after Petunia thought she was supposed to have stopped, and for a long time dragged a security blanket around on the floor behind her. She got emotional easily, around stories especially so, and Vernon found she loved animals.

At first his sister Marge hadn't liked Aster anymore than Vernon himself had. But one day when Marge was visiting, one of her bulldogs charged at Aster, who ran away and was starting to cry. Vernon stormed to his feet and held back the dog, shouting so loud it quieted into a whimper. Then he gave Aster a dog treat. She held the dog treat out to the dog, and the dog paused before starting to quietly munch away at it.

After that, Aster and the bulldog Ripper were perfect friends. She sat and played with him on the floor, beaming.

"She likes dogs," said Marge, a dog breeder herself, wonderingly as she watched.

"It makes sense," Vernon said, sitting back down at the table. "Dogs are friendly and they don't talk much. Same with her."

Marge chuckled. "Well," she said, warming to the girl, "at least someone in this family knows how to keep their mouth shut!"

Petunia sniffed. She despised animals and their uncleanliness, and her coldness toward Aster was beginning to seem increasingly odd and concerning to Vernon. Aster now charged up to greet him cheering every evening after work, but she seemed almost afraid of Petunia. Vernon wondered what happened when he was at work.

"So she's not a burden?" Marge asked curiously.

Vernon turned to look at Aster with a veiled expression. "... She's getting better," he said at last.

"Well," said Marge, "if anyone can turn her around from that awful mess of her parents, you can!" She patted her brother on the hand. She was much fonder of Aster after that.

One thing Aster became was clingy around Vernon. From a boy, this would have been irritating, but from a little girl it was endearing. She would cry and wail every time she was left with her babysitter, little old Mrs Figg, or every time he left for work in the morning. Petunia would look like she was holding back a screech, but Vernon always comforted Aster for a few minutes before leaving.

Aster learned to deal with his leaving, but she never liked it. She even grew to enjoy Mrs Figg's cats.

Hard also was a big girl bed and potty training. Petunia left the entire thing up to Vernon, which he thought might be her way of trying to get back at him for spending so much time with "the girl." Aster had to learn how not only to dress and eat for herself, but now how to do other things for herself as well: sleeping, potty, bath, that sort of thing.

Aster was cheerful and obliging but extremely absent-minded and Vernon - the polar opposite in personality - was often despairing. Somehow they got through it all in the end. He was even learning to discipline her without shouting at her. His hold on his temper was better than it used to be.

"Why is she coloring?" Petunia asked suddenly one day in the living room doorway.

Vernon stood up from where he'd been sitting on the floor with Aster, and went to his wife. "What do you mean?" he asked, frowning, as they watched her scribble on a piece of paper.

"Is she getting that from one of those silly books you've been reading her?" Petunia asked sharply. "What about what we discussed?"

Vernon turned to look at Aster, bewildered. "She's drawing a crayon picture of a blue elephant," he said. "Not summoning Satan. And our last picture book was actually about a bat."

"I still think it's suspicious," said Petunia stridently.

Aster looked up at her tone, glanced between them, and shrunk into herself a little bit, stopping what she was doing.

"Darling, she's coloring," said Vernon, pained. "Children do that. Dudley does that."

"She's not children!" Petunia snapped. "She's not Dudley! She's her!" And she stormed away.

Vernon saw Aster's expression. He decided to risk something and knelt down before her. "Aster," he said, "listen to me." She leaned forward closely. "Sometimes people aren't going to like things you do. People don't always like things I do. But if you go your whole life worrying what other people think, you'll be walked all over. Do you understand? Treated badly? Taken advantage of?"

Aster paused, and then nodded. "Yes, Uncle Vernon," she whispered.

After that, Aster became harder in her airiness, firmer and more ignorant of what other people thought of what she was doing. She didn't cry at the tiniest sign of disapproval the way she used to. She was still eccentric - odd -

But slowly, she became okay with being different.

Soon being read to was her favorite thing, and she took to being creative in all kinds of ways. She painted, drew, played with clay and play-do, and she liked music. As with books, the smallest detail of a piece of music could leave her extraordinarily emotional.

She became a precocious little thing, using increasingly bigger words and bigger ideas, enacting the part of the little adult. It was cute, Vernon supposed, in its own way. She was quite earnest and proud about it.

But she had one last attachment to her clingy, emotional childhood and it was a worn old stuffed bear. She carried it around everywhere with her, cried when it was taken away.

So one day Vernon opened the front door, and waited. No Aster came to greet him. Curious, he walked over and peeked into the cupboard under the stairs, opening the door - and he was horrified.

As opposed to the rest of the gleaming house, with its red brick fireplace, polished mantel, squeaky wooden floors, and piled white carpets… this cupboard was filthy. Petunia was supposed to have been cleaning it. But it was covered in cobwebs and filthy rags and crawling black spiders.

Aster was curled up in the center in her plain secondhand dress, face in her hands, crying. That was unusual. Aster didn't cry much anymore.

"What's wrong?" he asked urgently, frowning.

"My - my teddy - my teddy is gone -"

"Well, maybe you just lost it -" Vernon began soothingly.

"She threw it away!"

And for the first time anger entered Vernon. Hot, choking anger. He stormed down the hall into the kitchen, brushed past a startled Petunia, grabbed the trash can, took the teddy bear out, and stomped away. He handed it back to Aster's eager, snatching fingers. She held the teddy bear tight to herself and sat there amidst the shadows and spiders, eyes big - quiet - watchful - like she was when she was about to intentionally break a rule, when she was exploring somewhere forbidden, when she was being quiet or wanted to understand something or wanted to be independent and alone.

Maybe he was just being romantic, but he thought of airy, eccentric, quiet, graceful, different, precocious Aster becoming that way all the time. She was already hard, harder than she was supposed to be, fierce. It bothered him.

He stomped back out to the kitchen. "You threw away a toddler's favorite teddy bear!" he barked at Petunia, and for once he did not become nervous when she grew angry, poisonous, and spiteful, her face ugly. "And you let her room with black widow spiders!"

"You are becoming far too fond of that little monster!"

"She's just a child!"

"But she's not just a child! She's their child!"

"DO YOU PAY NO ATTENTION TO HER AT ALL?!"

Petunia stared at him uncomprehendingly as Vernon stormed away.

Aster stored her teddy bear safe away on a shelf and never dared take him out again. That was it. Vernon was through appeasing his wife.

He suggested he'd pay for Petunia and Dudley going out somewhere fun together for the weekend. "I'll stay here and look after the girl. A little mother-son bonding time," he said thoughtfully.

Petunia, delighted to spend any time with Dudley, said yes immediately.

While she was gone, Vernon did it all. He mail-ordered Aster several new pretty dresses set to be delivered over the weekend, and he paged through a magazine full of girl's bedrooms with Aster, asking her which one she'd like.

Their house had four bedrooms. One was a guest room, one was for Vernon and Petunia, one was for Dudley - why not give the empty fourth room to Aster instead of making her sleep in that effing closet?

Petunia was supposed to take care of the girl. She was clearly unfit for the job, so now it was Vernon's turn. This was always the way it worked when he was firm director at Grunnings. If someone can't do the job, give it to someone else more qualified.

He was the husband. He paid for the house and it was his. If he wanted the girl to have a bedroom, she was getting a bedroom.

Once they'd picked one out, they had a designer and movers come in and decorate the whole bedroom as per Aster's choice, complete with big girl bed. All her toys, art supplies, books, and new dresses were put inside, and the room was hers.

She'd chosen a pink and green color scheme. Her checkered bed had lots of pillows, a a quilt, a teddy bear and a doll. Her furniture was white with intricate carvings. Her bedside lamp was fanciful and tasseled, and there was a striped armchair, a mirrored wardrobe, and favorite story quotes stenciled in pink on the green walls. An intricately carved white desk sat near the gauzy curtained window.

Vernon was proud of himself as Aster bounced on her new bed in delight - he calmly picked her up and put her down on the floor again, which she went along with willingly enough - and he was positively gleeful as he waited for the fireworks.

Petunia came home, saw the new bedroom and Aster wearing her new clothes, and she had a fit.

"That girl has you entranced!" she spat.

"I have not been entranced by anyone!" said Vernon indignantly. He did not like the implication that he was being manipulated by something as silly as magic.

"How dare you!"

"Oh yes, I gave a little girl a pink bedroom, how dare I!" Vernon yelled in irritation, a tick going in his temple. "Petunia, do you have any idea how ironically abnormal this entire resentment is! We claim to be so normal and we had a child sleeping in a spider infested closet!"

"How much did this cost?! You could have spent this on Dudley!"

"Well fortunately for Dudley, he already has a bedroom!" Vernon barked, and Petunia flinched. "And far more expensive toys than are present in this room!"

"... We'll be encouraging her," Petunia whispered.

Vernon softened. "I haven't seen any evidence of strangeness," he told her gently, helplessly. He raised his hands as if not knowing what to do.

Petunia put her head into her hand, face scrunched up as if something pained her. "Dudley is joining your living room sessions," she snapped at last. "You are not ignoring my son in favor of that wretched girl."

"That's perfectly fine," said Vernon softly. "Why do you hate the girl so much?"

"Can't you see?" said Petunia heatedly. "She's just like her. Perfect Lily," she snarled. "Well I won't fall for it!"

And that was when Vernon saw it clearly for the first time: jealousy.

And so Dudley joined their living room evening-times.

A large and energetic, sporty blond boy, Dudley had always caused a bit of a ruckus in behavior. Vernon had always told himself that was just how boys were. But watching Aster with Dudley, comparing the two… he became troubled.

Dudley had horribly spoilt behavior. He threw tantrums far more often than Aster, broke toys without thinking, did everything no matter the consequences, and he physically bullied Aster, punching her around and yanking at her hair, making her cry.

This could not be allowed to continue, Vernon realized, troubled.

At last, he saw Dudley hit Aster for the fifth time and he put his foot down. "Dudley! No!" he barked, pulling his son away. Dudley looked up - and promptly began throwing a tantrum, yelling all over the floor. Vernon watched in horror as his son - his son! - tried to cry his way out of his problems! Entitlement - Vernon's worst enemy.

Did this work with Petunia?

Vernon put his foot down. "Dudley!" he repeated thunderously, face ruddy. "NO!" And Dudley stilled in surprise. Vernon knelt down beside him. "Real men," he told his son furiously, "do not cry their way out of their problems. And real men don't hit their sisters. They protect them instead."

He took Aster by the shoulder.

"This is your little sister," he told Dudley fiercely. "She's the only person you'll have your whole life. And it is your job to protect her. Not to hurt her."

He turned to Aster.

"That's your big brother," he said, pointing at Dudley. "You're a little girl and he's the big boy. That's how things are going to be."

Aster and Dudley looked at one another in wide-eyed surprise. The first stirrings formed: Teasing but fiercely protective Dudley Dursley, and his tiny odd but firmly nonconformist cousin Aster Potter. The tough big brother, and the protected younger sister.

"That," said Vernon, "is how you're going to be treated from now on." His eyes narrowed as he considered his horribly behaved, bullying son. "It is time for a little more discipline," he said gravely, "and a little less entitlement in the Dursley house."

He and Petunia had always wanted a son-and-daughter, a loving little house with a white picket fence. Well - and why hadn't he realized this sooner? - now they could have one.

Petunia would just have to be brought round. And Aster and Dudley would be taught to fill their son-and-daughter roles. Did that mean they suddenly had to be new people? No.

But who they were currently could certainly be added to.