Disclaimer: Harry Potter, its characters, places and concepts belong to J.K. Rowling, not me. I only own Shirley and this story, which is done with the sole purpose of entertaining myself as well as its reader. No profit comes from publishing this.
Warnings: OC is, without a doubt, a spoiled brat and behaves as such.
Seriously, this is what, in my humble opinion, would be growing up with the Dursley's as your nuclear family. Also: the Dursley's are as shitty at parenting as they are portrayed in the source material, do not come here expecting the girl having a nice relationship with Harry and all that jazz, even if she might not see the real harm in her actions.
You've been warned. Have a nice day!
A TASTE OF THEIR OWN MEDICINE
i. PROLOGUE
Shirley's family had always been an especial one.
Her father was a famous drill-seller, a strong boned man (as he often called himself), brown of hair and eyes as little as those of a doll and equally as black. Her mother, on the other hand, was a blonde woman of blue eyes and a long neck, as well as a house-wife like those television series she often watched between schoolwork and chores. Shirley also had a twin brother, Dudley, which according to her mother was the perfect combination of his parents as he was strong boned and had hair as blonde as the straw, just like having little black eyes.
The Dursley's could consider themselves the most normal family in all of Private Drive, with her mother doing the house chores while her father would go off to work every morning, leaving her and Dudley at home as much as they wished, playing and watching TV until they got bored out of their minds. Sometimes, when she draw them for school, she would think of them as the protagonists of some American TV show that was hot at the moment— perfectly normal so that would be her example.
Maybe it was because of it that she should've notice that something wasn't according to the plan. Or rather, someone.
His name was Harry, and they didn't even share a last name to say they were related. Nonetheless (and with all the pain in the world when she said it) her mother made clear that Harry and the twins were cousins.
It wasn't like the Dursley's were really proud to say it, since her mother would tense up every time the subject of her sister would come up. As far as Shirley knew in the scarce and incredibly short conversations with her mother about the topic, she knew her aunt's name had been Lily, the one her mom would always tried to avoid talking about. And when her mother talked about her sister? Well, let's just say that she was really doubting if her mother considered her as such.
Unlike her cousin, Shirley was pretty proud to be considered a normal girl, for he was awfully short and skinny even for his age. And that hair! Only God could know if her cousin actually knew how to use the hairbrush, since his hair was as wild as a broom after a serious cleaning session. And his eyes, well, her own mother had said it: "vulgar and abnormal, just like his mother's".
Sometimes, when she wasn't focused on trying to choice the perfect outfit for her Barbie, she couldn't help but wonder what could happened between her Mum and Aunt, and specifically, what happened to the latter. At the end of the day, Shirley was just like any other little girl, and curiosity always got the best of them (especially being her mother's daughter).
Yes, Shirley's family was special. Even if her cousin was in a way nobody liked.
But, to be honest, she was pretty sure nobody liked him to begin with.
In her family, not being normal wasn't just only bad— it was almost unforgivable.
Shirley could have been a little girl back then as well as a blonde one, but she wasn't a dumb one. She could distinguish the normal from the weird, and her mind often told her that stuff breaking without even touching it was weird, but whom she was kidding? It was fun to see him being scolded when the knot on her stomach ended.
Being so young, Shirley also didn't know about a concept named 'karma' (and didn't care about it for a long, long time). If she had, maybe she wouldn't have laughed through her teeth as her mother threw Harry into the kitchen when his hair grew back.
All children made accidents, even Shirley and Dudley did when her mother thought they weren't capable of such thing. After all, they had Harry. He always got himself in trouble, what difference would it make if they gave him a little more?
Her own streak began when she was roughly eight. Her mother had pretty stuff, expensive, of value. It was the kind of stuff that she would let them touch only if they asked nicely, but it wouldn't been for long since she feared Dudley ended up smashing them up or that Shirley would just let them scattered somewhere. Between them, her mother had pearls and many kind of jewelry (which she often fantasized about of taking them to school and showing them off to her friends) from clothing and family relics (of which couldn't Shirley couldn't care any less), but there was one thing that Shirley had fantasized about putting her hands on it— a lovely crystal ballerina that, in her father's own words, had costed an eye from the face to them. More reasons to want it.
That day, and after crying and begging as much as she could (she had to punch Harry to not blow everything up) her mother finally gave in.
"You now have the age to have it, my poppy," and as if it had been some important prize, her Mum put it on the room she shared with Dudley back then. "Take care of it."
But when she was finally alone with it, Shirley didn't even touch it. She did not play with the ballerina as she imagined, and instead, imagined that the figure was like any other dancer she liked to watch on the living room's TV, and that it danced some tune Mum liked.
But one thing was using a child's imagination, and a very different thing was seeing it actually happen. And to Shirley's own terror, that was exactly what happened.
Suddenly, the ballerina wasn't stiff anymore, but it was dancing— dancing in all of her dresser not only like real dancers, but like Shirley had imagined.
Nothing had scared her so much to the point of running out of her room, screaming and yelling until she had been in front of her parents.
"What happened, sweetheart?" asked her father, putting his hands on her shoulders. She hiccupped until she was able to talk, and once she did, she signaled the room.
"The ballerina, the ballerina— it moved!"
Her father's face drained all of its colors and then went red as a tomato, before running upstairs as fast as a lightning bolt. When Shirley came, not only the ballerina had stopped its dance, but was smashed into little pieces, scattered all across the floor. But it wasn't alone, no.
Harry was the one holding some of the pieces.
Shirley never told her father that the ballerina didn't break because Harry threw it but because it stopped— and even less she told him that it was her the one to make it dance. She was too scared and why not say it, angry to defend her cousin from her parent's scolding and Dudley's taunt.
After all, blaming Harry had always been the easiest choice.
In all those years, Shirley didn't wish anything as hard as to make the strange happenings stop (except for one of her mother's pearl necklaces, which she got). She thought that maybe it would be like one of those movies or Halloween's specials, where scary stuff happened only in those moments and the characters then lived their lives as if nothing ever occurred.
She would never forget the time when she was so angry that her Aunt Marge gave an automatic robot to Dudley and she only got one Barbie doll, all before the robot exploded out of nowhere. Harry had been way too far that day enjoying his dog biscuits to blame him, but Dudley yelled with her help that their aunt gave them something broken. Happy that Dudley got the short end of the stick, she could finally enjoy her doll, but the moment when the robot exploded as she was about to snap Barbie's neck out of pure anger could never leave her mind.
It had not been her fault. It was broken, just that. Because, if it had been indeed her fault, then that would meant that she was… that she was just like…
Good lord, not. She wasn't like her cousin. She. Was. Not.
"It wasn't me, I swear!"
Normally, she would never payed attention to what Harry said to avoid his punishment, and it was better when he received it.
"Be quiet and get in there! I told you many times to never do… do… your freak stuff around your Aunt Marge!"
Aunt Marge, during her visit during the twins' birthday, had been eating an enormous plate full of spaghetti (far better than that of Shirley's, much to her chagrin, and it had been dipped with that sauce she liked so much but couldn't eat if she wanted to classify for the beauty pageant Little Miss Surrey) before she started screaming in horror as especially large worms came out of her mouth. It had been a grotesque image that caused both disgust and fascination to Shirley as Dudley laughed with little to no care.
After spitting out the worms and that her father, at the verge of tears, calmed her Aunt, there was only one thing left to do: seeking the culprit. And what a coincidence, it had been Harry the one serving the food.
Nobody noticed (or ever would) that when Shirley's chubby face blushed in anger was the exact moment the worms came out, dipped in béchamel sauce. But it had not been her fault, if it had it would meant that… that she was just like Harry.
No, she wasn't.
Right?
a/n: I've warned you, she is a spoiled brat.
So, here it is folks: my own take on the "harry has a female relative of her age with magic and alive!" trope, a cruel one if I might add. I've been toying around with this idea since I was fifteen, and now that I'm in college you might guess how long I've been thinking of it xD it wasn't until I saw a little movie called Silent Voice (and just the mention of it might tell where this will be going) and then found my old prisoner of azkaban edition that I finally gave it a go.
Also, Jason Isaacs man. Jason Isaacs.
If Shirley bothers you, well, that's the idea- she is not a nice girl, but at the end of the day doesn't see the consequences her behaviour could have. Don't worry, those consequences will show up through the next chapters, I promise -evil laughter-
So, what did you thought of this? garbage, it has potential, do you want to kill me? please tell on a review, they're free and they keep me going!
