Harry Potter and the Alchemist's Secret:

Chapter 1: The Boy They Loved

"Isn't he beautiful, Vernon?"

Vernon Dursley watched his wife putter around the kitchen. She was preparing a bottle to heat up for her nephew. Accepting defeat, he settled down into one of the dining chairs as he eyed the blanket-wrapped bundle across from him on the table.

Vernon and Petunia, his wife, had always been proud to say that they were perfectly normal. Each day, Vernon rose at six, ate breakfast and worked 9-5 at a very normal firm called Grunnings, which made drills. His wife stayed home and cared for their one-year-old son Dudley and gossiped with the neighbors. He liked to think their family the most pleasantly ordinary on their street, but this new development threatened to change all that.

"And the boy will be staying then, Petunia dear?" he asked with an overly forced attempt at a casual tone, as if he had no opinion on the matter, whatsoever.

As predicted, his wife's thin frame stiffened immediately. She put the bottle into the microwave and turned round, her angular, bony features threatening to pop out of her face.

"You don't expect we could do anything else?! He is her only son!"

Vernon Dursley slumped further down in his seat. He didn't know much about his wife's sister-having only met her a couple of times-at their wedding and Dudley's baby shower, but he did know that she and her little family were about as unDursleyish as it was possible to be. Petunia's sister Lily and her husband, whose name he could not remember, had gone to the same boarding school as children...some place in Scotland for children who couldn't handle being around normal kids like Petunia, who'd gone to her local public school.

Lily and her husband were not like other, regular people They could do things. Strange things...unnatural things...because they were…(he hardly dared even think the world)...wizards. And there was no way their son couldn't be like that given who his parents were, right? Vernon eyed the little bundle again-half expecting that the baby might shoot murderous sparks at him through its fingertips, but it merely rolled over in its bassinet.

For years before the were married, Petunia hadn't even told Vernon she had a sister because she was worried about how he would react...worried he might judge her for how her sister was...but once she'd revealed the truth, Vernon laughed and said he wouldn't think any less of her.

His own sister, Marge, for example had never claimed to have magic powers, but was probably one of the most unpleasant and lonely people in living existence… so really no family tree, however normal, was without its weaker branches.

Still...it all made Vernon Dursley more uncomfortable than he would like to feel in his own kitchen.

"I know what you're thinking," Petunia began hesitantly. She placed the bottle down in front of him and the smell of formula permeated the air like bad eggs. Meanwhile, his wife leaned over the bassinet and lifted out the baby, who was still wrapped in a thin white blanket and only visible by a single tuft of thick black hair sticking out over the top of the little bundle. "He won't be like them...no necessarily anyway," Petunia continued.

"And if he is?"

"Then we will explain everything to him when he's older...come here to Aunt Petunia, darling," she cooed at the baby as she brought him to rest against her shoulder.

"What's his name?"

"Harry...charmingly ordinary name, don't you think?"

But Vernon frowned. He knew that something terrible had happened to Petunia's sister and brother-in-law. He knew it by the way her expression changed from shock to anger to grief when she read the letter pinned to the baby's bassinet. But she didn't seem ready to talk about it yet and had busied herself at once with taking care of her nephew and explaining hurriedly that he had arrived to stay with them. No matter how awkward things sometimes became between their two families, his wife loved her sister and would love Lily's son all the same. For Vernon, his trust in Petunia would have to be enough to care for the boy as she did...or at the very least, tolerate him. And as for the other nonsense...perhaps if they raised the boy to have as normal a childhood as possible, it would all just fade into year after year of Petunia's love, or be absorbed by it.

A/N: So there it is...just a little snippet/taste of an idea I had. I'm definitely curious to know what you think :) Basically in this story, my idea is that the Dursleys themselves are the same, personality and values wise, but the only difference is that they go on to spoil Harry as much as they spoil Dudley and even though Harry's personality will be the same innately, how will his values and ambitions be different as a result of this upbringing?