Author's Note: I own none of the rights for this I'm just borrowing it. Hope you enjoy! Please review and tell me if you do or don't!
Natalie sat in the back of the car, tapping her foot nervously on an empty water bottle. Lara glanced in the rear view mirror.
"Calm down, Natalie. Please honey." She said recognising the signs of a possible oncoming panic attack. Her daughter glared at her. "Ok, not the right thing to say. But you do need to calm down. She's your grandmother." Natalie laughed harshly and Lara sighed, hating her husbands parents once more for the constant pressure to perform that they had pushed on her daughter.
After twenty minutes of more foot tapping in the car, they arrived at the sheltered houses Petunia now lived in. though not old enough to go into a residential home, after Vernon's sudden death she had begun a swift decline into mental instability. It had been decided that sheltered housing was the best choice, a decision encouraged by Lara as the alternative was that she came to live with them. Lara got up and held the door open for Natalie. She pushed Natalie ahead of her and rand the doorbell over her shoulder. They heard Petunia before they saw her.
"If that's those kids again I'm not defenceless, I've got a cricket bat and I'll call the police, not that they'll do much good." The door flew open. "See? I'm not afraid of you." There was a slight pause as she registered the absence of the screaming terrors she'd expected and the presence of her granddaughter and daughter-in-law. "Oh, it's you. Well you'd best come in I suppose." She beckoned them in and returned to the kitchen, the strength and anger gone from her voice.
"I thought you said she was better?" Petunia complained to Lara, "She's pale and shaky again." Lara glanced at her daughter, who had advanced from agitated to deathly white and shaky. "No breeding that's what it is. To think my Dudders could produce a child so reliant on sugar." Petunia muttered as she walked to the refrigerator. She poured something into a glass. "Here girl, this will fix your shakes." She returned and thrust a glass of bright yellow lemonade under Natalie's nose. "And I expect you want a coffee?" She asked Lara scathingly. Lara had never been good enough for dear iccle Duddykins in Petunia's eyes, and Petunia always made sure that Lara knew it. She chose not to see that Dudley rarely came to visit and Lara was the better of the two.
"No Petunia, I can drink a glass of lemonade as well." Petunia snorted and Lara sighed. "I brought you some cakes Petunia, scones. I baked them last night." Petunia glanced at her.
"Good good, you're baking for Dudders. Now don't stand there all day, girl, into the lounge with you." Natalie obediently followed her grandmother into the lounge at the front of the house. "So, you've come to visit, that means you have something to tell me. Go ahead, what is it this time?"
"Maybe you should…"
"What? Sit down? I'm not that frail yet." Petunia snapped, in voice wavering at the end, "Out with it."
"Alright." Lara said, sensing that this wasn't going to be an easy conversation and resigning herself to that fact. "We had a visitor last night. A cousin of Dudley's."
"But Dudley doesn't have any cousins." Petunia responded. "Except. Harry. Harry came to visit you?" as she said it her voice finally cracked and her face clouded with emotion. She sank into her armchair and Lara leaned forward anxiously on her chair.
"Petunia." She asked concerned.
"I'm fine." Petunia waved off Lara's concerned hand on her knee. "I don't need mollycoddling." She paused and looked into Lara's eyes. "How, how was he?"
"He looked well, he mentioned that he was a wife, and children too."
"Good, that's good. Why did he visit?" The fog of emotion seemed to suddenly lift and she looked at Lara sharply.
"Because Dudley asked him to, he thought, we both thought that it was time for old grudges to be put to rest."
"No, no, you're lying to me. Dudley has no grudges, it was that boy who had all the grudges, he thought we never did enough for him, but we did everything. Everything we could in the situation my sister put me in, put us in. There must be something else, something more. You're lying to me, hiding something. There must be something." She looked at Natalie, who was paler than before.
"Petunia, Natalie received a letter from Hogwarts yesterday." Petunia's eyes flicked from Natalie to Lara and back to Natalie before she lurched to her feet pointing at Natalie.
"A cuckoo! A cuckoo in the nest! Bad blood. Bad blood. I always said bad blood would out!" Natalie stared at her before suddenly jerking, her frame went rigid and all the glass in the room smashed, showering the three in the shattered sparkling remnants of crystal dolphins and the windows, as well as flowers and water as vases imploded, lemonade split over their hands as the glasses they held shattered. Petunia screamed and moved towards her granddaughter, pointing still, alternating between muttering and screaming "Bad blood bad blood." Each utterance led to a new crash upstairs as Natalie's uncontrolled magic tore through the house, destroying all the glass it came into contact with. Lara thought belatedly that this was a bad idea as she knelt down in front of her daughter.
"Natalie, calm down. Stop this. You have to pull yourself together and calm down." She gripped her daughter's arms and pulled her to the floor in time as the mirror over the mantle piece exploded. She screamed as she felt the glass land on her back and looked around for Petunia. She couldn't see her but was distracted as she heard a series of pops in the garden, followed by a voice.
"Hawes, Cavendish, stabilise the subject. Lupin Weasley, start on Memory Charms and get this crowd out of here. Tate, Tiggs, restoration." The voice was familiar and there was a crunching of glass as someone climbed in through the broken window. The smashing stopped suddenly, but Natalie remained rigid and Lara realised it had only stopped because she had run out of glass to smash. Two feet appeared in her line of vision. "Can you stand?" She nodded dumbly and cried out as the hand she put down to push herself up with found purchase on a shard of glass. A hand was offered to her and she took it, and found herself being heaved to her feet. "I'll get someone to look at that for you." The voice said and she used the other hand to push the hair out of her face. And looked up at him.
"Harry." She gasped. He grinned tightly.
"This is my job. Well, sort of. I saw the address and took charge of this one." He shifted slightly and led her to one side as two men in red cloaks came towards Natalie. "We should let them do their jobs." He picked his way to the door to the hall and led her into the kitchen. "Lets have a look at that cut shall we?" He reached out and took her hand in his, holding it under the tap before waving his wand over it. "Episkey" he murmured and she looked at her hand in shock as the cut healed in front of her eyes. He shrugged. "That's one of the perks. You wouldn't believe the amounts of times people healed my nose and glasses like that when I was a little older than Natalie." She took on a guarded look as he said her name. "Has anything like this happened before?"
"No, she's always gotten tense around Petunia and Vernon, but she's never… little things would break, things you could explain swiftly as falling off a shelf, or the string holding the picture up must have broken, never on this scale." Harry nodded. "Is she… will she be ok?"
"It's just her magic asserting itself. She'll be fine, and once we get her to Hogwarts she'll learn to control it."
"He used to make his hair grow back when I cut it." A voice in the doorway said. They turned to see that Petunia had followed them. "And clothes he didn't like would shrink so that I couldn't make him wear them. It was infuriating. I could never work out what was going on. Of course I knew, but I didn't want to see it. He'd be too much like Lily if I saw it. he already tortured me everyday with those eyes." Petunia seemed to have either forgotten or overcome her shock and stood staring at Harry in wonder. "It really is you." She stumbled as she came forward and Harry automatically went to her side to guide her to a chair. She reached a hand up. "I'm so very sorry Harry. I never said that, but I was. I am. I know we should have treated you better, but I was so scared."
"There was nothing to be scared about about me." Harry replied angrily.
"Not about you dear, about Vernon. I was scared he would leave me. I never thought he'd stay after you appeared on the doorstep and I explained about Lily. He didn't even know about Lily until then. She was my special secret. The photos she sent of you were in a box, along with all the photos of my childhood. Vernon never saw them. I was proud of Lily, and scared of her power, and that boy who sneered at me. Sneverus or whatever his name was. When you came I had to admit it all, and Vernon was so shocked that I had such a family. He said 'bad blood. It's bad blood that's all. We'll squash it out of him.' And then you got the letter. And he said 'it's all that bad blood.' And I replied, God help me, 'that bad blood will out.'" She stopped. "Is Natalie alright? I didn't mean to upset her." she looked at Lara with tears in her eyes. And Lara sighed.
"She's fine Petunia, she'll be fine. You need to rest, take your tablets. Have you been taking them Petunia?" Petunia's gray head shook. "No, I didn't think so." She got a mug out, all the glasses had been smashed, and gave it to Petunia once she'd filled with water, pressing a tablet into her hand. She beckoned Harry away from her. "She goes like this, all sad and upset, but when she hasn't taken her tablets… sometimes it's like she's channelling Vernon from beyond the grave. I should've left as soon as I heard her screaming at the boys that she'd hit them with a cricket bat if they didn't leave her alone." Harry patted her shoulder still watching Petunia who smiled sadly back at him.
"I'm sorry Harry. And you Lara. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to forget the tablets, and I didn't mean to upset Natalie. Is she going to be alright? You'll look after her won't you Harry?"
"Of course I will Aunt Petunia." He said, suddenly feeling sad that he'd never really gotten to know his Aunt.
"I have a box for you upstairs. When the men in red cloaks have gone I'll get it out. You'll like it." she smiled excitedly.
They were interrupted as Ron appeared in the doorway.
"We've done all we can for now. It's only her memory that we haven't changed." He nodded towards Petunia. "Do you want us to or not? The only thing is, the house is uninhabitable. There was glass in the brick work, Tate and Tiggs say it could be a week before they've got it stabilised." Harry looked at Lara and then at Petunia. Lara looked horrified at the prospect of Petunia having to stay with her, and Petunia looked worried as well.
"I don't want to be a burden Lara…" she said feebly.
"And you won't be." Harry said decisively. "Lara, if Hawes and Cavendish are done you can take Natalie home. She should be fine. Give her some sugar and something for her nerves and keep an eye on her. We'll see you on Sunday."
"What about Petunia?" Lara asked worriedly. Harry smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, and not the smile of a doomed psychopath on his way to his death sentence.
"Don't worry, we're going to look at the box she has for me, and then I'll look after her. Afterall, she is my family."