Author's note: Before you ask: yes, I did make myself sad writing this. Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment #8, Task #3: Holodecks - Write about something that is not what it seems.

Content Warnings: NA

Good Riddance

She pinched her lips together as she watched the man pacing Privet Drive. It was convenient that the window above the kitchen sink faced the street so that she had such a good view of the things that happened out there, but she didn't like the look of him. Frankly, she wouldn't have liked the look of him if she'd seen him on a street corner in London asking for change, and she certainly didn't like him wandering the drive aimlessly—as if he was up to something. Up to no good, no doubt.

She peeled off her yellow cleaning gloves and unpinched her lips as she lifted her teacup to them, keeping her eyes on the stranger outside. He was wringing his hands together like a nervous wreck and circling the postbox as if he was afraid of wandering too far from it. She was wondering if she should call the authorities when he looked up right at her. His haggard face was pale. His jaw dropped and his eyes widened. He ran a hand through his thin brown hair and then turned around and walked away quickly.

Good, she thought, taking another sip of her tea. I don't need the likes of you running amuck when the boys wake up from their nap and I take them to the park.

She'd pulled the living room curtains shut when she'd noticed him again, standing by the postbox like it was some sort of life ring he was wary of straying from. But then when she'd crossed the house to look at him from the kitchen window, locking the front door as she walked past it, she saw that he was still standing there looking at his feet, then at the house. Staring at his feet, and then up at the house again, staring at his feet… his shoes were awful—they were unpolished and almost ran ragged. He shifted his weight uncomfortably where he stood, as if his feet were cold through those shabby shoes on the thin sheet of snow they'd gotten that morning.

Thankfully, Vernon pulled up in the driveway—he would know what to do, how to get rid of this apparition. She went to meet him at the door, stopping along the way to pick up Dudley from the living room where he was playing with blocks on the floor not far from his cousin. She propped the baby on her hip and when she opened the door to greet her husband and point out the odd stranger to her—he was gone. As good a riddance as it was, she was unsettled by how quickly he'd made himself scarce.

"Well someone's got plenty of energy," Vernon said with a chuckle as Dudley hammered his cheek with a tightly-coiled fist, trying to scramble out of his father's arms.

"We missed our usual afternoon in the park," Petunia said casually from where she sat, reading a magazine on the upcoming winter's trends.

"Did it rain?" Vernon asked with a frown.

"No," she said. "No, there was a stray lurking on the street and I didn't want to go outside."

"A stray?" Vernon asked with a frown.

"A stranger," Petunia said, pinching her lips. "Some… some man."

"A homeless man?"

"I don't think so," Petunia said. "Though he seems rather… raggedy, yes. And a little grungy. Like a student, maybe. Or an artist."

"Hmm," Vernon said. "Not from around here, then."

"I don't suppose so, no."

"Not if he was acting dodgy like that; he must've known he was somewhere he didn't belong. The neighbourhood council ought to do something about it. That's why they'd need someone like you running it."

"Maybe I'll take it over from that useless Mrs. Figgs when Dudley is old enough to go to school," Petunia said. "Then the other one will be off too and I won't have two of them on my hands."

She looked quickly towards Harry, who was clicking the pieces of a wooden train track together, before turning back to the feature of her magazine.

It got quite a bit colder before Petunia started to realize what was so very wrong about the man.

See, when the weather truly began to turn—when they woke up to frost almost every day and the snow stayed for more than a day at a time and actually piled up—the man started appearing with a cloak thrown over his shoulders. A long, full cloak, like the ones she'd seen on that stupid hidden platform when her parents dragged her to King's Cross to gather Lily or send her off—or on that mad, twisting street where she'd gotten her schoolbooks. His cloak wasn't quite as flamboyant or decorated as some of the garments she'd seen. It was a simple, charcoal woollen coat with copper buttons, but a cloak nonetheless. And Petunia knew exactly what kind of people wore cloaks.

She shut the kitchen curtains before he saw that she was home too.

She couldn't resist peeling back a corner—just a corner—of the curtain to watch. The man was sitting against the postbox this time, his head in his hands and his shoulders shaking.

She didn't think it was from the cold, today was as soft as autumn usually was. But she also couldn't see his face, no matter how she squinted or craned her neck, so she couldn't tell if he was really crying or not. And when he looked up every so slightly, she jumped away from the window and dropped the curtain the second she saw him straighten up and raise his head. She heard the boys act up in the other room but ignored them, every nerve in her body on high alert.

When she dared to peek past the curtain again, he was gone. It was as if he'd vanished into thin air.

When she opened the door and it was him, her jaw dropped. He'd never come this close to the house before.

"I'm very sorry to bother you," the man said, his accent ever so slightly Welsh. He looked awful, just awful. There were bags under his eyes and a cut near his eye that was just healing up but that had obviously bled recently. "My name is Remus Lupin. I—I was friends with Lily and James Potter. Lily was your sister I—I think. If I got the address right..."

Petunia didn't know what to do. She'd slam the door in his face, but if he really had known Lily… well, if he'd been friends with her witch of a sister, he might have some magic in him himself—not that she'd go wandering about the world looking like he did if she had a lick of magic in her. Besides, he obviously wasn't much for propriety and subtlety.

He bit his lip as he looked at her, struggling to find the right words.

"I'm so sorry for your loss," he said. "I—I was in the North when I heard what happened to them, what... I couldn't make it back in time for the funeral but I heard from a mutual friend of ours that you were the one taking care of Harry now, you and your husband, I mean."

Petunia straightened up but kept her hold on the doorknob so strong that her knuckles turned white.

"What about it?" she asked, trying to keep her diction clean and clear and crisp.

The man breathed out a sigh of relief.

"I was wondering how he was doing," he said. "That's… that's all. And if I could see him, or…"

She heard it behind her then, the sound of little palms hitting the floorboards and of knees dragging themselves forwards in a crawl. Damn that boy; somehow jinxing his way out of the baby gates all around the house, always finding himself in the worst places at the worst times—and leading Dudley to trouble too...

"Moomoo?" Harry's little voice asked.

The man's shoulders dropped and his brown eyes widened.

"Harry?" he asked. "Oh, is that—"

Petunia whirled around and slammed the door in the man's face.

"Stop it," she snapped. She picked the baby up and marched back to the living room, growling in frustration when she found the baby gate wide open and Dudley nowhere to be seen. Panic bubbled in her chest.

"Moomoo!" Harry said as she plopped him back down and shoved a stuffed dog in his arm.

"Your mother isn't here," Petunia told him for the millionth time. "Stay put while I find Dudley and if he's gotten himself hurt, God help me—"

That was when she heard the sound of crying from what might be the drawing room and bolted towards it—suppressing a frustrated growl when she heard Harry start crying in the background as well.

She wouldn't have opened the door if she hadn't been expecting the plumber, not without Vernon in the house anyways.

Her stomach sank when she recognized that man, Remus Lupin, standing in the doorway.

He handed her a tin of biscuit like a peace offering.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you again, and I'm sorry I was such a mess last time I rang," Remus said in a way that sounded so elaborately rehearsed. Arguably, he still looked like a mess now. He didn't have that same cut around his eye, but there was an ugly bruise around his eye and his hands were scratched up too—God knew why.

He reached into his pocket and took out a photograph. Petunia only spared it a glance, stomach twisting as she saw it. It was one of those wizard photographs that moved, Lily had had one of her Hogwarts friends and they used to be in those papers she had delivered to her. This one, however, showed her sister sitting at a table in some backyard, perhaps her own, balancing her son on her knees. Her husband refilled her teacup, kissing her forehead as he did, and there were two other men sitting at the table caught mid-laughter. One of them was Remus Lupin, though he looked in far better shape than he did now though scrawny without his layers of warm clothes bundling him up. His smile stretched to his eyes as he curled his hands around a cup of tea, wearing a soft-looking sweater.

"James was one… James was my best friend," Remus said. "And Lily, Lily was the kindest person I've ever met. I met Harry the day he was born, and I… I saw him nearly every day since. I watched him when they went out for the first time after having him, and so many other times. I was there for his first Christmas, I brought Lily and James groceries once they went into hiding, I… I'm sorry to intrude, but I was wondering…"

"Moomoo?"

Petunia closed her eyes and took a deep breath to ground herself.

"Get back to the living room," she said, spinning around. She agreed with Vernon: if he was smart enough to get himself out of places, he was smart enough to crawl his way back. "Your mother's not here, Harry—get back."

"He's not asking for Lily, that's his nickname for me," Remus said breathlessly—and quickly, as if he was afraid she'd slam the door in her face again. She looked back to him and sharpened her gaze. He swallowed. "I know I must seem like a… like some stalker to you, I'm sorry. I just tried so many times but couldn't bring myself to ring, but then I could never stop trying either… is there any way I can see him?"

Petunia pursed her lip and started easing the door shut.

"Please!" Remus said, reaching out wildly and bracing his arm against the door. "Please, maybe not today, but sometime—"

"Moomoo!" Harry chimed in again. "Moomoo an Pafoo?"

"No," Petunia said, shutting her eyes tight as frustration boiled back up. "No, he spent weeks when we first got him asking… asking for his parents and for whatever Pafoo and Moomoo is and no, just no, I won't have him starting again."

Remus gasped.

"His parents are gone," Petunia said decisively. "He's with us now, and he's just started sleeping through the bloody nights. I won't have him… I won't have him getting confused about where he is and what that means, now. This can be a fresh start for him—no magic, none of that Voldemort nonsense or whatever it was that killed my sister. No. Just no. Now let go of my door and if I see you around here again, you can be sure that I'll be calling the police. I know your kind don't like running into proper authorities."

Remus paled but he lowered his arm. He blinked and then took a step back.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you," he said quietly. "I… I'm just so sorry."

His shoulders had gone limp and his brown eyes were so dark that Petunia couldn't tell if they'd gone hollow or if they were filling with tears. She closed the door and locked it, turning to drag the babies back into their playpen before she could spend more time on the question.

WC: 2188