disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to Sonya for Christmas 2k14, but late as fuck OOPS SORRY I LOVE YOU
notes: here have some slytherin!Harry bc apparently I have nothing better to do with my life.

title: built a brand new family
summary: Petunia Evans has two co-parents, and neither of them are a good influence. — AU; Slytherin!Harry.

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Petunia Evans married Vernon Dursley when she was nineteen years old.

Three years later, she would have a son she named Dudley.

A year after that, a second baby tumbled into Petunia's life.

There was a letter that explained very many things attached to the little bundle left on the doorstep of Number 4, Privet Drive on the cool, misty November morning that Petunia Dursley opened the door to fetch the eggs. Of course, that was not the first thing she noticed: there was, after all, a baby boy on the stoop. He had a tuft of very dark hair and a thin scar upon his forehead, but otherwise he differed very little from other children his age.

"What are you doing here? Where's your mum?" she asked softly as she gathered him up. The sound of her voice must have roused him, for he yawned widely—there were the first signs of teeth poking out through his gums, that had to be uncomfortable, poor mite—and then he opened his eyes.

Petunia's heart nearly stopped.

She knew those eyes.

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"Harry, get the post!"

Harry Potter rolled out of bed at the sound of his aunt's voice from down the stairs. It was Dudley's turn to make breakfast, that morning; Aunt Petunia was very strict about the distribution of chores in the Evans-Dursley-Potter household, and there was no skiving off, no matter how busy you were.

Dudley was a decent cook. Harry was looking forward to breakfast already as he skittered down the stairs, and grabbed the post on his way to the kitchen.

It was a rather meager pile of post. He shuffled through it, regardless.

A thick cream envelop caught his attention. It wasn't like the other post—it was heavy, somehow, had a weight that Harry didn't have the words to describe.

And it was addressed to him.

There was never any post for him. Not for lack of trying; he didn't have many friends, and Uncle Vernon would never dream of writing Harry a letter. Both of his parents were dead, and had been so for longer than he could remember. There was no one to write him letters.

But there it was, his name written across the envelop, clear as day. The ink was a vibrant emerald green, just near the colour of his eyes.

(There weren't many things that Harry Potter liked about himself, but the colour of his eyes and the thin, lightning-bolt shaped scar on his forehead were two of them.)

"Oi, Harry, there's bacon!"

Harry made a mad dash for the kitchen, the letter clutched tightly in his hand, to find his family sitting around their little wobbly table. Aunt Petunia was sighing morosely, though about what, Harry had no idea—

"Hello, Harry!"

"Uncle Remus! Uncle Sirius!" Harry shouted at the top of his lungs, and threw himself on his godfathers. "I didn't know you were back!"

"Harry, sit down, let them breathe," Aunt Petunia said. She was staring peevishly at the mud on Sirius' boots. Sirius pretended not to notice. He was quite good at that, pretending, especially when it made Aunt Petunia's blood pressure rise.

Harry wasn't quite sure how he felt about that.

Because on one hand, Uncle Sirius was the only person who could get away with raising Aunt Petunia's blood pressure without getting promptly shrieked at for the slight. On the other, Aunt Petunia usually had a reason for shrieking, and although Harry didn't know much about blood pressure, he did know that Dudley was always complaining about how much of the weekends he spent at Uncle Vernon's were put towards listening to his uncle whinge about it. It couldn't have been a good thing, and for all that Aunt Petunia was strict and tall and pale as morning mist, she was the closest thing Harry had to a mother, and he did like her very much, and it absolutely wasn't fair to pull her braids the way Uncle Sirius was wont to do.

"Where's Dudley?" Uncle Remus was asking Aunt Petunia.

"He's in detention," Harry piped up.

Uncle Remus' face contorted just as Aunt Petunia's did—it was the exact same face, and if Harry didn't know better, he would have laughed (as it was, Uncle Sirius had to turn away to keep from losing his control, and Harry prided himself on the fact that he had more guff than that).

"What happened?"

"It wasn't—" Harry stopped, and then looked up at Aunt Petunia. She was holding her head very still, exactly how she did whenever Uncle Vernon came to get Dudley for his weekends. She didn't have the smile, yet, but Harry could tell that it wouldn't be long before his aunt's lips thinned and pulled into something resembling a smile only in theory, and then she'd lose her temper later when no one was looking and there would be vase shards all over the floor.

(It was just that Harry was always looking, even though the vases were always ugly.)

Telling his uncles what had really happened to have Dudley in detention would be no good, Harry decided. Uncle Sirius would just go try to break him out, because that was what Uncle Sirius did to little boys in detention: he broke them out and bought them ice cream for their misbehaviour. And Uncle Remus would sigh loudly, and go on a long lecture about why he, Harry, needed to stop doing Dudley's homework for him, even if the bullies were all over him.

Aunt Petunia would just hold her head very still, steel all down her spine. She looked even more like a horse when she did this than she did normally. Harry had no desire to inflict that particular look upon the world more than it had to be.

"It was a bad day," Harry said. This was true. It had been a bad day, and Harry's lunch had ended up in the bin, and Dudley's meaty fist had ended up in Ian Milkovich's eye for putting it there, and Dudley had ended up in detention for putting it there.

Aunt Petunia's head inclined a fraction of an inch.

Harry was absurdly proud of himself.

Uncle Remus knelt down and looked Harry in the eye.

"Did you do something, Harry?" he asked, quietly, in that softly probing way of his that had been the undoing of much of Harry's childhood trouble-making. Not even Aunt Petunia's stony silences had been so effective, and this was saying something.

"No, Remus, he did not," Aunt Petunia said, voice clipped as she cut in. "I'll talk to his teachers tomorrow when I bring them to school. Why are you here?"

His Uncles were always off roaming the world for adventures, and were away much of the year. Harry wasn't quite sure why this was the case—Uncle Sirius had the look of money to him, even though Uncle Remus was shabby and often scruffy, there was something distinctly cool about the pair of them when they went off, all leather duster coats and thick boots made for walking.

"Ahh, Pet, can't we come see our favourite nephew?"

Uncle Sirius was, Harry thought sagely, going to get punched.

Harry didn't think his Aunt Petunia had ever punched anyone in her life. He had a sneaking suspicion she was break this record if it meant she could punch Uncle Sirius, just once.

Uncle Sirius really liked to make Aunt Petunia mad.

Uncle Remus stepped between them, just as he always did. "Sirius, not now. Petunia…"

"Not now, Remus?" she retorted. "I thought you were in Africa until October."

"Morocco, specifically," Uncle Sirius said cheerfully. "Finished early. Moony here was all hands on deck! I hardly had to do a thing, can you imagine?"

"Stop with the sayings, Black, you're terrible at them," Aunt Petunia said, lips pulled tight. "And go take your boots off, you're getting the floor dirty."

For once, Uncle Sirius did as he was told, and he wandered towards the front door of the flat with his hands stuffed into his pockets, whistling all the while. Both Aunt Petunia and Uncle Remus watched him go; bothered and exhausted respectively, they were.

"Would you like a cup of tea, Remus?" Aunt Petunia said, at last, her voice gentling just the littlest bit, though it sounded like she'd rather it hadn't.

"Yes, please," he said gratefully.

He settled down at the table, shoulders slumping in on themselves. They'd forgotten he was there—it wasn't something they did often, but once in a while, Harry caught a glimpse of who his adults were when he wasn't around. They were tired and old, with lines on their faces that all seemed too deep for people their ages.

His uncles weren't really his uncles. Aunt Petunia had told him that story, how his parents had died and he'd been sent to live with her instead, and how his uncles had been most displeased with the situation. Uncle Sirius had nearly gone to jail for something someone else did. Uncle Remus was always ill.

There was something there, but he couldn't quite put his finger on just what it was.

He'd figure it out eventually.

"Tea?" Uncle Remus asked hopefully.

Harry went to put the kettle on.

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