Petunia

On the day Remus had suggested, Petunia noticed her gaze wandering to the clock far more often than usual.

He looked different this time, almost as if after his last visit, he got dragged through the bushes, slept out in the woods every night, and was now on the brink of getting a cold. His skin had an ashy tone; all the red color had vanished from his lips, and dark shadows were under his eyes like he was going through tremendous stress.

"Are you okay?" she asked, worried.

"Splendid," he replied.

She took a step back to signal him to come in, and after a short moment of hesitation, he did.

"I made tea. You ... you like Earl Grey, I hope?"

Remus shuffled off his coat with a slight smile. "Sure do."

Petunia waited in the hallway, unsure whether she was supposed to have small talk or start their conversation right here on the wing. Both knew that a more extended, more serious discussion was about to happen between them, and none of them knew how to bring it up. So, Petunia kept waiting awkwardly, standing in the hallway until Remus' coat hung neatly on one of the hangers in their corridor, and then they both went into the kitchen to sit at the table.

Remus poured an extortionate amount of milk into his Earl Grey until the beverage in his cup could be more accurately described as milk with tea instead of tea with milk. Petunia watched him, feeling a big glob of unease rise within her. Did he really like Earl Grey, or had he just said that to not offend her? Remus took a long sip from his cup and exhaled audibly.

"In your letter, you wrote that the toy broomstick I gave to Harry can't stay here," he said suddenly, breaking the silence between them. "May I ask why?"

"My husband," Petunia replied. "He's not particularly fond of Harry being ... a wizard."

"He should get used to it, then. It's not like Harry will lose his magical abilities if you act like he's a Muggle."

Petunia raised her eyebrows. She had never thought about whether that was what they had been doing. Was that their secret hope - that if they ignored where the boy came from and who he was long enough, he would turn into a normal kid they just happened to have adopted?

Remus continued. "You know, you're just going to make life more difficult for everyone involved. If he doesn't learn to control his magic, he will end up hurting someone or himself."

Remus closed the grip around his teacup and looked at her directly. Petunia froze.

"You mean ...?" she began.

Remus cleared his throat.

"In the magical community, we have a name for what might happen. I've never seen it happen, but my father overheard some cases they discussed in the Ministry. Harry might become an Obscurial, and trust me: this is the last thing you'd want."

"What is ...?" Petunia started, but the word he had used had already slipped out of her mind again.

"An Obscurus is ... think of it like the perfect mix between a cloud of dark thoughts and a bright red-burning sensation of fury. It is a dark and parasitic force that might develop within a child who is repeatedly forced to repress their magical abilities. The child can't control it, and in highly emotional moments, the Obscurus might leash out and destroy everything in its way - and in doing so, it consumes the child's energy, until ... you know." Remus visibly struggled to finish his sentence.

"There must be a way..."

"You have to arrange things with your husband, Petunia. You're putting Harry in danger, your entire family, and all the other people close to him. Neither the entire wizarding community nor I care what he thinks about Harry being a wizard. He will have to accept it - it's simply the safest and most logical thing to do."

"You don't understand. Vernon will leave me if I bother him too much with all that magic stuff. He doesn't want anything to do with it. You should have seen him on the day we got Harry. He wanted to let the boy sleep in the cupboard under the stairs!"

"He married you. Where I come from, when you marry someone, you also marry all of their issues, their dark sides. You marry them so that you might fight all your battles together from that point on."

Petunia scoffed. "You have a very idealized impression of how a marriage works."

"I don't think I do," countered Remus. "Perhaps you just married for the wrong reasons or -"

Remus

... or the wrong person. The thought was clear and sharp in his mind, like an arrow glistening in the morning sun. He knew the impact of these words, their destructive power, and where they would land, yet they almost slipped out of his mouth, so ready to be said.

"No," Petunia said harshly, a bit harsher than what would have sounded genuine. "It's all that magic. It has a way of tearing people apart. One moment, you are so close, and the next, magic destroys all the bridges between you and builds a wall so high that the other side becomes impossible to reach."

Then she looked at him, realized what she had just said, and felt her chest tighten from guilt.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that."

Remus looked at her. Petunia expected him to look angry and be mad with her, but instead, she found only sympathy in his expression.

"Oh, people have said way worse things - both to me and in general." He took another sip from his cup before he continued.

"Listen, I understand why you feel that way. I can't imagine what it must have been like for you to have Lily taken out of your life without any chance of following her. But I refuse to believe only magic is to blame for the two of you falling apart."

Petunia looked at him, her bright blue eyes bearing a telling shine.

"Why would you say that?" she said, her voice no more than a hush.

"Because I had quite the opposite experience with magic. Without it, I would have never made any friends, and I would have been a social outcast, I -"

He stopped mid-sentence, suddenly becoming aware that, as of now, he had no friends and was definitely a social outcast. And why was that? Because of magic. Magic had both taken his friends away and damned him to his life without stable jobs and proper housing. But did that mean that Petunia was right, or had he just been unlucky?

"Do you have any siblings?" Petunia asked, preventing his train of thoughts from spiraling.

"N-no, I don't," Remus replied, furrowing his brows.

"Then be happy that you never experienced any comparisons, fighting for attention and affection, and feeling inadequate when more attention and affection go towards your sibling rather than you. It's one of the most painful things a human can experience."

Remus thought about his transformations, which was definitely the most painful thing a human could experience - but he didn't say that, of course.

"I don't understand what that has to do with you and Lily," he said instead.

"Isn't it obvious? As soon as Lily went to that school, it was Lily here, Lily there. She wasn't even physically present at our parents' house most of the year, yet talk was always about her. They didn't care about my stellar grades at a real school. They didn't care about my friends or extracurricular activities. They didn't even bother to come to my school play in my final year because Lily said she still had homework and couldn't go, and they didn't want to leave their precious princess alone."

Remus stared into his teacup, and the intricate shapes formed by the tea leaves reminded him of the little information Marlene had told him about her Divination classes and the tessomancy they learned in their third year. For once, he wished he could actually predict the future from the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup. What was he supposed to say to that? The way Lily had always talked about the situation had been vastly different, and he wasn't the one to say what really happened all those years ago, who hurt who, and who was telling the truth. Perhaps both of them were, to a certain degree. But whatever the reality was, Remus felt it inappropriate to discuss this now.

"I'm sorry you had to experience that," he said, but it felt hollow and fake. He thought he needed to say that like it was some formality.

Petunia scoffed. "Save it."

"No, I'm being serious," Remus countered. "I can't imagine how painful that must have been, and I wish I could provide some relief for your aching. But this -" he pointed vaguely above his head, in the direction he remembered Harry's bedroom to be - "is about more than yourself. This is an innocent child, and blaming Harry for what Lily has and hasn't done for you over the years is simply wrong. You know that."

Silence fell between them like a thick nebulous fog, and Remus felt Petunia becoming more and more distant from him. One moment she sat at the other side of the small dining table. The next, she was absolutely out of his reach, apparently trapped in her own world of thoughts. Was there anything else he could say to show her he was right, that she seriously had to reconsider her stance towards magic if she wanted to keep not only Harry but her entire family safe?

"I know you're right," Petunia suddenly whispered.

"What?" made Remus, unsure about whether he heard correctly.

Petunia held her teacup firmly in both hands and looked him straight in the eyes. "Despite what Lily might have told you, I am not stupid. I know you're right. Of course, you are. Who am I to question a wizard about magic? Needless to say, I don't know what an Obscurus is - quite frankly, you could have told me some made-up story, and I'd be none the wiser. Still, I am not blind and not oblivious to the fact that Harry has had a completely different temper ever since you visited for the first time and played with him. I knew since then that magic must somehow be good for him."

"Then where's the issue?" said Remus and re-filled his cup.

"The issue, as I explained to you many times now, is my husband. He doesn't want anything to do with that magical nonsense. He doesn't want it in our house; he doesn't want it near our Dudley. He simply doesn't want it at all."

"I understood that is an issue. But I thought I also clarified that this is an issue you'll have to work around. It simply can't stand in your way."

"I'm aware of that. But how do you suppose I go about it? As is evident, I don't have the slightest ounce of magic in me. The only thing I can give Harry is a roof above his head, a warm bed, and food."

"I can provide the magic." Remus had uttered the words before his mind even had the chance to process them. He stared at his hands, and his long fingers wrapped around his teacup, almost hoping his hands would pick up the words on the table and stuff them back into his mouth, where they belonged. Why had he said that?

"Would you?" Petunia looked at him, her eyes full of wonder.

The initial panic had faded and made some room for logical thoughts. For one, Remus didn't have a stable job at the moment. Sure, there was the odd tutoring and teaching opportunity here and there, but it wasn't like his schedule was filled, not even remotely. Second, since living in that cottage, he had often spent days without talking to people. That couldn't be healthy, and Remus could definitely feel the lack of human interaction drain the little energy and willpower he had left. Third, it would allow him to regularly see and care for the child of his best friends. Harry had been a considerable part of his life before their death, and he had spent much time in their house in Godric's Hollow. And fourth, although he was aware that this was the most selfish reason: Petunia's house was warm, and he could potentially get some food out of this.

Instead of all that, Remus said: "Honestly, my life has been pretty lonely for the past six months. I don't mind the company, and I am happy I get to see Harry again."

Petunia put her cup down and offered him a hand. "Then we have a deal."

He shook her hand, then couldn't hold back a smile as he looked into her serious face.

"I don't even know what the deal includes."

"We can meet once a week. Let's just do it here at my house for now. That's probably the safest option. I'll ensure Vernon is gone whenever you're here, and he never finds out about this."

This all sounded fair and well to Remus; however, he saw one slight issue.

"And you think Dudley won't give something away at some point?"

"Before you visited for the first time, Remus, I've never seen a man play with a child, and I haven't seen that since. Does that answer your question?"

Remus raised his eyebrows. He suddenly felt the urge to confront this Vernon Dursley about what he thought his role as a husband and father was, but he swallowed his anger.

"I think it does. Shall we go see Harry?"

Petunia nodded.