Summary: Petunia Dursley has a secret. Drabble.

A/N: I bet this has probably been done, but I though I would throw my own spin on the story out there.


Petunia Dursley has a secret.

Of course, there's the big secret that she and her husband have managed to keep from the neighborhood: that a few months ago, her estranged sister's son was unceremoniously dumped on their front porch with only a note to explain why.

But there's something that even her husband does not know, and it concerns little mister Harry Potter.

At first, when Dudley would wake Petunia in the middle of the night screaming to be fed, she completely ignored the other infant in the room, sleeping in a second-hand crib they had smuggled into the house under the cover of darkness one evening. After a month or so of that behavior, she realized that she had never, not once, heard Harry cry, not even when he was overdue for a nappy change. She fed Dudley and laid him back down before curiously checking on the other baby. To her surprise, Harry was wide awake and looking at her.

A shiver went down her spine. Lily's eyes were staring right into her own.

"Go to sleep," she whispered furiously at the child, who disobediently blinked before cracking a hesitant smile at his aunt. Petunia backed quickly out of the room, heading back to bed with Vernon.

The next week brought the same results – when she went to feed her own son, Harry would be alert and watching her inquisitively. He never once fussed that he was not getting attention, but merely gazed at Petunia with those big green eyes.

And finally, she could not take it. After feeding Dudley and putting him back to sleep, she marched over to Harry's crib, picked him up, and -

He cooed at her before reaching his tiny arms out to try and latch on to her nightclothes. Instinctively, she allowed him to snuggle up against her, where he happily nestled up to the warm body.

The woman froze. Dudley was a rambunctious child and Vernon had never liked her to hold their son overlong; he was concerned that it would make him a sissy-boy. Therefore, she never truly got the chance to cuddle with a loving child the way she had dreamed about as a little girl.

But here was an opportunity to change that. She took the baby downstairs, where she sat in the old rocking chair that her mother had used when she and Lily were both children. Rocking gently back and forth, she hummed an old lullaby that lulled Harry to sleep.

It became a nightly event, even if Dudley wasn't screaming for food. Vernon was a deep sleeper who never noticed if she left the bed. Petunia would sneak into the boys' room late at night, and Harry would be ready to be rocked and hummed to until he finally fell asleep.

Not even her husband knows that she takes comfort in her dead sister's child, seeking the love that she could never get from her own son and trying to atone for the jealousy she displayed towards Lily for years.

Petunia Dursley has a secret.


A/N: Babies need to be held and loved to thrive. I figure that Harry's own parents probably loved him enough for two lifetimes, but there's always room for a little more. And I think that, no matter how much resentment Petunia might have held towards Lily, she wouldn't have been able to help caring for Harry at least a little bit – or else he probably would have been dead waaay before the events in the first book.

That being said, the Dursleys were still completely asinine in their treatment of young Harry.

Let me know if there are any errors or Americanisms, thanks!