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Then again, some things did change.
Massively.
The day after the Marge Incident the three Dursley-born members of the household went out, leaving behind those of Evans ancestry and that was before things really went sideways.
The first indication that she had entered the twilight zone was Petunia gently steering in what looked to be R2-D2's ancient ancestor. Seriously, it looked exactly like the little Star Wars guy, complete with a rounded, thick plastic dome with what looked to be two red eyes sitting on a black piece of plastic in the middle. It even had arms, for goodness' sake! Old school design, to be sure, and the center chest area held what looked more akin to the 70s square-button, multi-panel display than she had expected, but it was still an honest-to-goodness robot!
And all of that incredulity was before Petunia pushed a button- just above the proudly displayed TOMY logo- and the little guy started playing Hey Jude from his chest.
'This is beyond weird.' Heather thought rather dazedly as Harry clapped and squealed in delight, mesmerized by the little blinking lights and simple black-and-grey display panel.
Petunia had come strolling into their room not fifteen minutes- there was a clock on the wall opposite the window; one she could just barely make out and numbers on, yay eye strain!- after the others had left and, once her tunes started playing, set to work clearing away all the room's junk. Heather counted Petunia taking no less than sixteen trips out of the room in order to remove stuff from the room before she was summarily distracted by Harry's fussing and lost count.
When the dust settled- literally, some of the nooks hadn't been dusted in years, apparently- the room seemed about twice as large as it had been before. The floor was obviously scratched and scuffed up, even after Petunia's thorough scouring, but the woman came back with a worn circular white-yellow-orange rug that she laboriously unrolled at the center of the room. The next thing that Petunia brought in was, at first, just a stack of folded wooden frame, but as the thing took shape Heather was happy to note that it looked to be a playpen.
Freedom to move!
Granted, more like a braced fence that just barely managed fit on the edges of the rug, but hey; she'd take what she could get.
-XXX-
Petunia dabbed her forehead with the hem of her apron before the wiped her hands off with a nearby rag.
She had done it! And with at least an hour to spare, as well!
The woman did her best to keep from tearing up- she didn't want to set off the toddlers!- but it was hard. Because this was the playpen her mother had used for Petunia and Lily, and the one she had used for Dudley.
The one Lily-
'Stop it.' She ordered herself firmly, closing her eyes and fighting against the burn of tears. It had been nearly two full months since her niece and nephew had arrived on her doorstep, with nothing more than a letter to inform her of her sister's passing and it still hurt her to think about.
While she and Lily had been estranged to the point of only Holiday Cards since that disastrous double dinner date the sisters had tried to go on just a few weeks after their parents' funeral, Lily had still been her little sister. The little girl that Petunia had spent so much time happily entertaining in this very playpen, on this very rug, all those years ago in that now-decrepit house on Spinners End. And time and resentment and hurt and anger only carried her so far in the face of the inexcusable truth that her little sister was now gone forever.
Petunia had done her best to distance herself from her niece and nephew. She cared for their physical needs easily enough, but she just couldn't bring herself to establish proper bonds with them. At first it had been easy to hang on to her resentment of their intrusion into her perfectly ordered life, what with their incessant screaming and crying at all hours. Then Duddy had caught the croup not ten days after they arrived and she had been too tired and frazzled to spend the emotional energy doing more than just the bare minimum for the other two.
It was during that first round of medicine and sleepless nights that she had separated the twins. She had kept them together in the vain hopes that they would eventually settle down and realize they still had each other, but by that point she just wanted them to be quiet.
And it had worked.
They still cried, of course, but without the other right beside them they quickly tired out and went quiet. It had felt wrong, but she just didn't know what else to do.
Then Marge had bloody insisted on still coming down for the Hols, even with Dudley just now getting better and the recent addition of the twins, and Petunia just knew Vernon would be beyond unreasonable if Marge was not able to stay in 'her' room. Her husband loved her in his own way, but he was also a man very set in his ways and 'my word is law' and when he chose to be unpleasant- well, he was very good at it and knew all her weakest points.
So she had grimly gone into the girl's room to put her back with her brother, muttering to herself as went, and somehow, for the first time in months, it seemed as if luck had been on Petunia's side.
The two had begun to amuse themselves, and when they did cry it was usually for good reason- like a soiled nappy in between changing times.
Petunia greatly appreciated peace in her household.
It had not been until the Marge Incident yesterday- and how dare that she devil lay hands on her sister's children! Petunia might not appreciate their presence, but that didn't give Marge the right to manhandle them!- that Petunia had come up with her new plan.
Heather had spoken. Heather, who had not said a single word in the two months she had been under Petunia's care, had spoken clearly and had managed to appeal to Vernon's practicality, derailing the situation before it went nuclear.
Protecting a troublesome younger sibling and pragmatism were things Petunia could appreciate.
Thus came the new plan: getting Heather to see that things for her and Harry would be much more pleasant if they stayed to themselves.
While it might sound calloused, Petunia had no intention of pouring herself and her care and her time into two children that would just be taken away from her in a few years. She lost her grandparents five years ago, her parents nearly three years ago, and her sister just a few months ago.
Petunia was more than done losing people she loved. It would be much better for her to keep her distance from these two, and if she and Heather could come to a ladies agreement early on, it would be better for everyone.
With that thought firmly in mind, she spun around to complete her self-appointed mission. She only had a little more time before her family returned, after all, and it wouldn't do for Vernon to return and not find lunch waiting for him.
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Despite the constant effort of trying to block out the fact that she had lost an entire life in the blink of an eye- and had recently lost her third set of parents- entertaining Harry was pretty fun. He was such an energetic little guy and always willing to try something new as long as she did it with him. It was far more involved than she was used to, but it tired them both out and most of her silly games were actually educational, so there.
Her favorite question to answer was his excited, "Why?", which he said about every two and a half seconds.
It also was her least favorite word of his.
It was complicated.
Time marched on. Though sometimes it felt slower whenever she was smacked in the face with her chafing lack of independence, Heather knew that she absolutely must concentrate on the individual steps instead of how she had to go, otherwise she would go positively insane.
The only particular thing of note that happened in the early part of the new year was that Petunia actually gave them a pack of fruit snacks- they never got those, just fruit cups- one day, murmuring: "She would have been twenty-two today.".
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By the time spring rolled around Harry had gotten fairly good at the 'holding it' game. His vocabulary and speech had also improved by leaps and bounds, as Heather was constantly chatting away at him or singing half-remembered baby songs to him in order to better improve her own articulation skills.
It was a win-win situation, really.
However, one morning when Petunia came to give them their mid-morning check-up Heather interrupted the status quo.
She was so done with diapers and being helpless it was positively unreal.
"We would like to use the big person potty, Aunt Petunia." Heather informed her firmly, dying a little on the inside at her phrasing, but she hadn't figured eloquence would be needed- or appreciated- in this situation.
Besides, they hadn't even been given any books to paw at just yet, so how was she supposed to know the proper word for 'toilet' or 'loo'?
Petunia paused just passed the doorway and a strange look came over her face before she stepped fully inside and crossed her arms. "Oh?"
Heather nodded decisively and Harry copied her enthusiastically. "We wanna go by ourselves, like big kids!" The adult-turned-toddler tried out her most innocent smile. "Please?"
Thus began the reclamation of Heather's independence.
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The slow but steady reclamation of her independence.
It was a work in progress, really.
In other news, Heather was so proud of her baby!
Er, her brother. They were the same physical age, she often had to remind herself.
The thing about living to be nearly forty was that a person realized that age, after a certain amount of years, sort of blurred into the background.
She was fully supportive of protecting children and adolescents from predators, and particularly passionate about protecting youngsters from authority figures who would abuse the inherent trust that came from such positions, but she also knew that sometime in the mid-twenties a person woke up wondering when in the sam hell they had become a 'responsible adult'. From there on out, time was measured more in important events and significant happenings than linear years, causing a fundamental shift in perspective.
Really, from that point on there were whippersnappers, peers, and elders.
Whippersnappers, of course, generally referring to anyone under the age of twenty. At first, that was. For her that threshold seemed to progress upwards the more tired of melodramatic crap and manufactured drama she got permanently fed up with. There was the occasional whippersnapper who was the exception to the rule, of course, but they were viewed more akin to little padwans or younger cousins. Young people who might need some old person wisdom that isn't totally out of date, really.
Peers were a wide-ranging category who ran the gamut from barely tolerated coworkers, to potential love interests, to people she actually liked to converse with occasionally. For Before-her, that transition period after high school had been painful, mostly because she had stepped back and took a long look at the people she had once known. And- well, her values as a humbled being who had needed to move home after a series of truly unfortunate mishaps, had changed her greatly. She hadn't stayed there long, but it had happened, and it had caused a difference the size of the Grand Canyon between her and her former friends. And making friends as an adult was strange, especially for an introvert of her caliber.
Her husband was her awesome best friend with benefits. Dear God in Heaven, did she miss that man. Maybe they hadn't been the traditional couple, with roses and anniversary dates or makeup kisses in the rain, but they'd loved each other fiercely in their own way. They had had each other's backs in any situation; they had been each other's shoulder to cry on when things imploded or exploded, and his absence was a nearly physical ache, more so than any of the others that she had lost. Then again, she had gotten married young, so by the time her memories of Before cut out, she had been married for over half her life, to the same man.
Elders. Most were given a baseline of respect until they proved to be entirely undeserving of it. Most were amusing and more than a little refreshingly blunt.
The point was, after a certain point, to the mind; age was mostly relative to experiences or milestones. Sure, the body got creakier the older one got, and certain things began to sag that didn't use to, but a certain type of person just really didn't care about that as much as the sum of their experiences.
But her internal struggles did nothing to dampen her excitement at her baby's accomplishments!
It had only taken a month for him to get a real grasp of using the toilet properly, and now they only had to wear nappies at night! The nappies at night thing didn't make Heather very happy, but it was a work in progress.
Now to convince Petunia that they were able to properly clean themselves afterwards.
'Little steps.' She reminded herself firmly as she turned on Harry's newest favorite thing ever: the Speak and Spell. The orange, yellow, and red plastic noisemaker was a hand-me-down, Dudley had gotten it for Christmas and the screen was now splinter cracked as a result of one of his tantrums. Petunia had given it to them as a 'reward' for their potty training efforts, which annoyed Heather to no end as Petunia had hardly done anything, but at least it gave Heather an excuse to jump start Harry's education.
Toddlers did not do abstract, but as long as she could make it a game or something he could see, touch, taste, or smell, Harry was all too happy to indulge her.
Her baby was so cute!
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