AN- This one is not specifically about the Hinny pairing. It came from something I read on FB about the Horcrux in Harry and its effect on the Dursleys.

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Country Air

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Her days weren't full up with much lately. No one in the house to make food for, no one stopping by that she had call to impress. Her new home was not near enough to any neighbors that the garden needed to be in perfect shape either.

This left her with a lot of free time and nothing in the way of a hobby to fill it.

Her life had revolved around her husband and son for so long that now that her husband had passed away after his third heart attack and her son had moved out and moved on with his own life, she was entirely bored.

And she had no friends to call on either.

It was sad.

She was sad.

A lonely, old widow; this would be all that her eventual obituary would read.

One wouldn't think that a newspaper would be so bold as to print something like that in the obituary section, but one day she had read it, and it shocked her to her core.

She didn't want to be alone with no friends and a son that never visited. She wanted adventure. She knew that there was great and wonderfully majestic things in the world and she wanted to experience some of it for herself.

There was a time when she'd come so close to experiencing that kind of wonderful world of magic for herself, but those doors had been closed to her and she'd never quite recovered from being unwanted beyond them. She'd decided she detested anything magnificent and wonderful and that she only wanted 'normal'.

Not too long ago, coming to the decision that she wanted to try out something, anything, that might give her a thrill or open her eyes to new things, she went to the bookstore and started looking through all there was to offer in the world; her world.

She'd tried visiting all the historic sites around the United Kingdom, and even crossed the channel to Paris and took a cooking class. She'd tried knitting, then given up knitting after managing only one scarf that wasn't quite right. She'd joined a book club and gone to only three meetings because the ladies were a few years older than her and the books were dreadfully dull. Now she was taking to driving her car around to here and there when there was word of a farmers' market somewhere. She wanted to try all the different jelly's and produce that her lovely country had to offer, and she did like sitting by the tea carts and watching the people go by while she enjoyed a baked good and sipped her tea.

Today was a sunny day, she was wearing her favorite sunhat and was dressed in her white, pressed summer dress with sensible flats.

As she sat, she tried not to draw her lips together; after so long of wearing the same expression it was natural for her now to take on a pursed expression when she wasn't meaning to, it was off-putting.

Her eye caught on the sight of a young boy with emerald green hair. He was quite young for his parents to let him color his hair like it was. He couldn't be any more than ten years old. And it was such a bold color. He was playing with a younger boy that was likely his little brother and they began tussling.

Petunia Dursley couldn't resist making the pursed expression now.

This expression was wiped right off her face when she watched the father step in to break the boys apart. The man was carrying another little boy in his arm as he pulled the middle boy away from the older one and gave them both a talking to.

His unruly black hair, the glasses, the slight frame, his narrow face. There was no mistaking it, the man with the three boys was none other than her nephew.

Flashes of memories swept through her mind, painful memories of her being wretched to him.

She didn't know why she had been so terrible to him.

For a long time it had plagued her.

He'd been only a baby when he showed up on her doorstep, yet there had been something off about him.

It hadn't been because he was magical, she'd lived around her sister for near two decades and they'd been the best of friends for the first decade. No, it was something else. There had been something about him that made her feel no discomfort about giving him a broom cupboard as a bedroom.

Now though, if she were to have heard that someone took in a child and blamed them for everything that went wrong, gave them next to no food, offered them only hand-me-down clothes that clearly didn't fit. It would offend her. She would find whomever was treating a child that way entirely deplorable.

So, why had she done it?

Petunia continued staring at him and how his children were now hugging him and the whole family was full of smiles now that the disagreement was settled.

His children looked up to him, in a way that Dudley had never looked up to either herself or Vernon.

"Do you mind if I join you?"

The voice seemed to come out of nowhere and made her jump. It came from a young woman that was dressed in an airy blouse under cut off overall's. She had lovely red hair that reminded Petunia of her sister, the lady was covered in freckles though and had bright brown eyes, so there were no more comparisons to be made there.

"Of course not," Petunia said as she arranged her things so they weren't encroaching on the space her new table mate might require.

"I know this is not what Miss Manners would do, but I must put my feet up. They're incredibly sore."

"Do you work at one of the vendor stalls?" she asked politely. The lady was dressed for it.

"Oh, no. I was simply running around after my brood all morning and now it is my turn to sit." She pointed across the way from them, back to where Petunia's nephew was. "That's them over there."

Her voice caught in her throat a moment. "T-that, the three boys with their f-father?" This was her nephews wife? Her eye caught on the ring on the lady's hand. It was a delicate band with three small, lovely diamonds.

"Yes. He's likely going to bribe them to be good with the promise of an ice-lolly. So long as he is the one to wipe them all off after, I suppose I can't complain about it."

Petunia's brow furrowed as she did the math; Harry had been only seventeen when she'd last seen him, which was ten years ago, which meant that the green haired boy would have needed to be conceived around then as well. Yet, hadn't there been a war going on?

It wasn't so uncommon, she supposed. There were many a bastard child borne because some soldier claimed he was going to be fighting for his life and a woman would swoon and find herself with child.

She snuck a glance at the lady's hand and saw the wedding band again, then licked her lips as she thought about how to approach the subject.

It turned out she didn't have to.

"Teddy, that's the eldest one with the green hair, he's our Godson. His parents were lost in the war and his father had asked Harry to be godfather straight after he was born. He stays with us on most weekends ever since he was a baby. The other two are ours all the time," the lady smiled.

It was a relief to hear that. While Harry may not have been her child, she had raised him and would feel that it was on her head if he turned out to make a woman pregnant by accident. "That seems like a lot of work, raising two boys, sometimes three," Petunia offered.

"Well, let's hope this one is a girl," she grinned and put a hand on her belly.

Four children! That was much too much to handle. Yet this young woman seemed so happy about it. "Oh! Congratulations," she smiled politely.

Harry had certainly made a full and busy life for himself; two sons, a godson, a wife and another baby on the way.

Something his wife said nagged at her though.

The war.

There was a war, but it hadn't started when the godson was a baby. Had it been a slip of her tongue to talk to a Muggle about the magical war?

Petunia had been regarding Harry and the boys as they walked away through the crowd, she now turned to face her nephews wife, and found her staring at her intensely.

"I recognized you right away," the wife said. She held out her hand, "I'm Ginny."

Years of being little more than a hostess had ingrained into her that when someone holds out their hand in greeting, you shake it, so automatically her hand slipped into Ginny's. "Petunia."

"Dursley, yes, I know," Ginny nodded.

"How is it that you recognized me?" She hardly believed that Harry would have a picture of her laying around, she certainly hadn't included him in any of the family photos.

"Dudley has a photo of you in the upstairs hall."

Whatever she might have expected Ginny to say, it wasn't that. "You've been to my Dudley's house?"

"Yes, we visit him once every other month or so."

Once every other month? She didn't even get to see him that often!

"I, are, are you saying that he and Harry are friends now?"

"Yes, and have been for quite some time. He was even at our wedding."

"How?! Why? W-when… how?" This was all so confusing. Dudley never talked about Harry so far as she knew. When they'd been taken away for that year to live in a safe house she knew Dudley had several questions, and had asked them to the woman that helped get them settled, other than that she had thought he was completely done with that world and all the questions he had about it.

"Dudley reached out to him sometime while I was in my last year of school. They started getting together for a drink here and there. He has been by to our house a few times, dropped off stuffed animals for the boys when they were born, things like that."

There was so much about the lives of the children she had raised that she didn't know. It was making her eyes well up with tears.

She knew she had done wrong by Harry, but Dudley? Why wouldn't he have told her about this?

The tears ran over her eyelids and down her cheeks. "I'm so sorry," she burst out. "I am so sorry now for how I went about it. I don't know what I was thinking! The way I behaved! It… it should have been someone else that raised him. Someone else would have treated him right. Someone else would have done a better job of raising both of those boys."

When that man with the long white beard had come to their home and told she and her husband that they had mistreated Dudley and done him harm, she didn't know then what he was talking about, but now she knew. If it hadn't been for that traumatic night that had scared the wits out of Dudley when he was in his mid-teens, or had it not been for the woman Hestia, she knew her son would have wound up being a bastard of a man that thought the world owed him everything.

"I was a terrible mother," she sobbed into her handkerchief.

Ginny put a hand over hers on the table. "The way that you raised Harry, it made him the way he is today. He's kind and grateful, noble to a fault, he's been through many terrible ordeals and even sacrificed himself for others. I did used to think horrible things about you, but now we know better."

"W-what do you mean?" Petunia asked as she wiped her eyes with the dry ends of her handkerchief.

"Harry and Dudley have done plenty of talking about their childhood, that talk and their discoveries have been relayed back to me, so let me ease your conscience; there was something about Harry that would have made you want to treat him the way you did. Everyone else that didn't live with him for years on end mightn't have picked up on it, but your prolonged exposure to him, it did make you irrational about how to treat him."

"Something about him? What do you mean? Do you not live with him now?" They had children together, this wife of his nephew was practically radiating happiness.

Ginny shook her head, "he got rid of the part of him that had him walking around in a cloud of darkness. When he was seventeen he got rid of it. He's been happy, mostly anyhow, ever since."

"So… it wasn't my fault? The way I… treated him." She'd done her best not to think about it and leave the past in the past but when it did creep up in her thoughts, she hated herself for it and would be glad of having anyone or anything else to place blame on.

Ginny pursed her lips then and that was enough to know that there was still blame to be had on her part. "You could have been nicer, but it could have been worse. Luckily, he had my house to go to for most of his summers and my mother fed him properly."

"Your house? You are part of that family of poor gingers?" Immediately she regretted saying it. Ginny's face took on a dark expression then. "Sorry! No, I didn't mean… it's only that the only time I saw the family of the friend he went to stay with there were always so many people around and I was very caught up in first impressions then."

"And you aren't now?" Ginny asked, giving a pointed look to the outfit Petunia wore.

She was just digging herself a deeper hole here. "I'm sorry if I offended you. I wasn't thinking when I spoke. I'm glad that Harry has a family and is happy now, I just wish that my son might have told me something, anything, about it."

"He probably thinks that you're still prejudiced. Maybe you should try bringing it up with him at some point."

Petunia looked down at her tea and nodded gently. Her relationship with her son was clearly strained, he never invited her around to his home and she didn't know what was going on in his life, clearly. Perhaps a sit down and having a talk about what they'd been through might help bring them closer.

She looked up sharply at Ginny then. "Are you asking me to have a talk with Harry about our history?"

"Merlin, no!" Ginny laughed. "He would absolutely hate that. I've a hard enough time trying to pry his feelings out of him, you certainly aren't going to be able to get more than an 'I'm fine' out of him. I'm not telling you any of this so you'll reconcile with him. I'm telling you this because I made the mistake of trusting the wrong person before and it hurt people as a result of it, so I know what that feels like. If I did something to cause a rift between one of my sons and myself, I'd want to know if there was something I could do to fix it. That's why I came to talk to you when I recognized you,"

"Now though," she put her feet back down and stood up, standing sideways so Petunia could now see her profile and the belly she was sporting. "I have to go and track down my boys before they're too sugared up. I'd say it was nice meeting you, but really, I'm just glad I finally got a chance to speak to you at all."

"Thank you," Petunia told her honestly. "I really did need to hear that."

Ginny went off in the direction they had seen Harry and the boys go and Petunia got up and went the opposite way, to where her car was parked.

She got in the car and drove directly to Dudley's house, which was two hours away with traffic. She knocked on the door and there was no answer. There was noise coming from around the back though and she followed it and found Dudley with a few of his friends, enjoying the weather with a few drinks between them.

"Sorry to interrupt," she excused herself.

"Mother!" Dudley stood up in surprise. "What brings you here?"

"I was at a farmers' market in the neighborhood," she lied. "Thought I'd pop around and say hello."

His friends nodded at her in greeting.

"Oh, well," Dudley looked around at his friends, clearly wondering whether he should tell them all to go home.

"Don't worry yourself," she waved him off. "You're busy. I just, do you mind if I use the facilities?" she pointed to the door.

"No, go right ahead," he told her eagerly, clearly glad not to have to make the choice between his mother and the persons he actually wanted there.

Dudley stayed outside with his friends, likely apologizing for the interruption from his snooty mother. She took her time to look around at his place. It was obvious that he lived alone, but there were a few feminine touches around, it made her think that he had a girlfriend that came over and gave him suggestions or improvements.

She made her way slowly through his home and up the stairs where she poked her nose into his office and saw a few binders on the bookshelf that looked like they held photographs. She took one of these out, one that looked like it was recently added to. These plastic pages held the pictures of his life that she had been missing out on. There were photos of him at his friends weddings, there were a few of him on trips, several of them with the same woman; both on holiday and in and around London. Finally she came to a page that held six photographs of him with Ginny and Harry, and with the woman that was possibly her sons girlfriend that she knew nothing about.

She flipped through the rest of the binder and finally put it away and made her way to the bathroom.

As she was coming out of the loo Dudley greeted her on the stairs.

"You were taking a while, I wanted to come and check on you."

She studied his face, it was no where near the plump cheeked face of the son that she'd raised. She'd always thought he resembled his father, but now he looked more like her; he'd lost the weight that she'd helped him put on and his little eyes had sunk a bit now so that he had hooded eyelids like she did.

"I am sorry I interrupted your time with your friends. I just, I wanted to talk with you. Really talk with you."

Dudley shifted uncomfortably. "About what?"

She made him uncomfortable. She hated that she had that affect on him. "I saw Harry today."

Dudley nodded once, clearly very used to hearing the name, then comprehension dawned and he realized the gravity of what she'd just said. "You talked to him?"

"No. I just saw him, from a bit of a distance. His wife saw me though and talked to me." She let out a little laugh that was completely out of character for her. "She managed to tell me off and make me feel better all at once."

Dudley grinned, "yeah, that Ginny is good at that."

Petunia managed a small smile in return. "I'd like to be closer to you Dudley, and I've thought on how to make that happen, and for me, that starts with admitting something to you that I haven't told anyone in a very, very long time."

His shoulders noticeably tensed. "And what's that?"

"I was always jealous of my sister, and I I've never said this, but I think I was a bit jealous of Harry too, because I wanted to be a witch." There, she hadn't said anything about how desperately jealous she was of Lily since sending a letter to Hogwarts and Albus Dumbledore to beg him to check if they'd made a mistake by not accepting her as well at the age of thirteen.

He stared at her for a while in surprise before he grinned again. "I'm going to tell my friends to head out. I've got a few things here that Harry has brought me over the years from his brother-in-law's shop that I think you'll like."

For the next several hours she and Dudley moved from one room to the next as he showed her all kinds of trick toys from the magical world that he had, he ordered them take-away to be delivered then showed her how he used the internet to keep in touch with his friends, and he finally admitted that he was in a four year relationship with a woman named Fiona and they had started talking about getting married and moving in together.

It was the most wonderful afternoon and evening that she could ever remember having.

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