He heard her crying.

It was late, he had work the next morning though he was debating on calling in sick, and he'd had a hell of a time getting her to come to bed at all. He'd gone to bed and woke up later to find she was still downstairs, cleaning the oven again. He'd pleaded with her, told her she needed her rest. Now she was lying awake crying beside him with her back turned.

Vernon wasn't enough of a bigger man to say good things about Petunia's sister and brother-in-law after they died, and he wasn't good enough of a husband to comfort his wife in her grief. He hated them both; Lily because of how she'd hurt his love- and whatever could be said of him, that he didn't love Petunia with everything he had wasn't one- and James because he was a snide little freak who thought he was better because he could wave a stick around. So he had no placebic words to use in hopes of lifted her sorrows. Anything he might normally say to one who has lost family would fall flat and be fake on his part, and that wouldn't do. She deserved better.

So he pretended he was already asleep.

Harry; that was the boy's name, the long lost nephew that they had never met but were now the guardians of in the wake of his parents' death. Murder, that letter said. He didn't care who you were, or who you were in charge of informing about anyone's death- a letter was not sufficient. Maybe that was the part of this that was bothering him the most, angering him the most. That man Dumbledore, he'd never forget the name it was so insane, had left Harry, a fifteen-month-old infant, on their doorstep in November with only a letter to explain the child's being there. He raged about it for a solid seventeen minutes before Petunia stopped him and told him shakily that that was quite enough and he was scaring the children.

Children.

They had two now, plural. More than one.

Indeed Harry and Dudley were both looking at him in fearful apprehension that ate away at his anger until it was merely simmering below the surface. Harry was particularly looking up at him with those big, green eyes that hurt his wife so to look at. It would fall to him to look after the infant for a bit now, until her grief had sufficiently run its course.

Harry knew, Vernon was sure, what had happened and why he'd come to live with these- to him- strange people. It was deep in those big green eyes, the resignation and sorrow that reminded him of Petunia's after she read that letter.

That letter.

Once. Harry asked for five different people once each- each name stranger than the one before it. "Mama" was self-explanatory enough. He called for Lily first, on the first day, and Petunia quickly handed him to Vernon and went for a nap with Dudley. James was second, "Dada", and Vernon wasn't good enough of a man not to sneer at the infant- who seemed quite affronted in return.

After James, Harry looked at Vernon quite specifically as before and asked for something or someone- with these people you could never tell- a "Pa'foot". He was very deliberate in asking and, like before, when the person in question didn't appear the boy deflated and tucked his head in the shirt of whoever was holding him- or in this case, the blanket he'd arrived on their doorstep wrapped in.

The fourth day was the turn of someone called "Wer'tail", emphatically at the sight of a rat on a cartoon they'd put on at Dudley's behest. The rat danced across the screen, which Vernon would admit he didn't quite approve of- dancing rats, whatever would they think of next- and Harry's eyes lit up in recognition. He said the name three times in a singsong giggle, moving in place as though he too were dancing, and then he looked around in search of whoever was called "Wer'tail."

The last name Harry called was the one that stuck the firmest in Vernon's mind.

"Moony."

It was the clearest of the names except for Lily and James', and he cried it one night almost a week after they'd found him on their doorstep. It started low, quiet, and then Harry was calling for him in the dark in desperation. Like he knew the person wouldn't be there. Like he knew he'd never see them again. Vernon knew Petunia was awake. They'd been talking quietly, laying side by side, when she tensed at Harry's voice. Vernon squeezed her hand three separate times and heaved himself into a sitting position.

"I'd better go see what's the matter," he gruffed. "Otherwise he'll wake Dudley and we'll never get them back asleep."

Petunia didn't answer. Not verbally at least, as though hearing Harry's voice caused her to lose her own. Instead she very pointedly, very sadly and very dejectedly, rolled over and away from him with her back to the door. With her back to Harry. Vernon sat there a moment longer, eyes still glued to her movement and wishing with everything he had that Harry had ended up on someone else's doorstop. Anyone else's.

When he went into Dudley's room, where his son and nephew were sharing a crib, Harry was sitting up and still calling for "Moony".

"They're not here," he said, a bit sharper than he meant to and still thinking about the pain his wife was going through. Pain because of this…. thing. He softened his voice again, as soft as his voice ever went. "They're not coming. They're gone, and we're all you got."

He would swear that the boy understood him. He had to have understood him. Harry whimpered, like he'd already known, and laid back down next to Dudley- who was fast asleep despite his cousin, like any decent person should be at such an hour. Harry was crying softly when Vernon went back to his own bed to his wife that still refused to turn back towards him- that refused to acknowledge his return- and he was crying softer still when Vernon fell asleep.