Chapter 1
Petunia Dursley and her husband Vernon sat in twin Queen Anne upholstered chairs, positioned in front the doctor's polished mahogany desk. The low-to-the-ground seats reminded Petunia of sitting in front of the school headmistress's desk. Even having done nothing wrong, one still felt vaguely in trouble. Inadequate. She also hated how the doctor interrupted his words with little coughs, ahems, and hesitations, and how he refused to meet her or Vernon's eyes.
"Mrs. Dursley, you have to understand... in cases such as yours, where there seems to be no obvious cause... well, there is very little we can do. We have tried the... insemination methods, which are at the limit of clinical treatments right now..."
Petunia didn't have to look at Vernon's face to see him redden. He shifted his big body in embarrassment as the doctor droned on.
"I'm sure you've heard of the Royal Oldham Hospital, in Manchester…"
"I know the region well," Petunia said through gritted teeth. Didn't she just.
Encouraged, the doctor went on. "There are the experimental techniques being developed there... highly controversial, no guarantee of success..."
"What, that nonsense in the Daily Mail last year?" Vernon broke in. "I read about that. Kid was born from a test tube."
The doctor sighed. "Mr. Dursley, that's a common misconception…" He turned to Petunia, who was shocked into an appalled silence. "I could write to apply for your inclusion in the program—"
She could take it no more. "Thank you," she said as she sprung to her feet, straight and lean, full of anger and despair. "We've all done our best over these past two years, haven't we?" She turned to her husband, already struggling to pull himself out of the deep leather chair. "Vernon, I want to go home now."
Her husband shot the doctor a look of hate. Petunia was about to cry; Vernon could tell, and he wouldn't stand for that. There had been too many tears. When he gripped her elbow to guide her out the door, she stiffened, and he hated that, too.
He sighed heavily as the heavy oak door clicked shut behind them, closing on all the humiliations of that office. Petunia's pain from the constant examinations and probings. Her thin arms black and blue from blood drawings, her slim flanks swollen and tender from hormone injections. The shame of that closed-in little room where he sat chilly and alone, trying not to see the look on the nurse's face when she handed him a cup and a stack of magazines. His occasional failures because what he wanted was her, only her, not some pumped-up, glossy tabloid tart.
Petunia wouldn't look at her husband as he helped her into the car, for her thoughts were elsewhere. As Vernon drove at a snail's pace through the congested London streets, an idea stabbed her as painfully as the doctors' probes, too strong to ignore. What she was thinking was unconscionable, horrible, but the thought wouldn't stay down. How could she even consider it? Then she imagined a baby in her arms, the smile on Vernon's face, the sum of their hopes paid into their account of sorrow at last.
Them. She had thought about them as little as she could, over the years. Until now.
She knew where to find them, too. Lily had shown her years before, when she still bragged to Petunia about her new knowledge, her new life, before she shut up about it entirely in front of her sister. It had been years, but Petunia was certain the old pub was still there, the pub whose weathered, half-timbered facade gave the pretence of an abandoned building.
Possibly they could help her with their spells, their charms, their freakish ways. And Vernon need never know.
(continued)