Chapter 7: Interlude: Welcome to Privet Drive
When Petunia Dursley did find her two nephews wrapped in a blanket and left on her doorstep, the first thing she did was scream. The second thing she did was stop, looking around for any neighbor who might have witnessed her momentary shock. Seeing no one, she examined the two boys more thoroughly. The first thing she noticed was that they were both asleep. The second thing was the letter. Petunia carefully extracted it from Harry's fist without waking him, and opened it. The longer she read, the grimmer her face became. It told her exactly why her infant nephews were left on her doorstep, and why she had been chosen to take care of the two boys. Petunia was not the only one who had let the loving relationship the two girls had shared as children fall into the complicated mess it had become. Now Lily was dead, and there was nothing Petunia could do about that. However, she did have a choice to make. Magic had always made Petunia uncomfortable. It was unnatural, chaotic and crazy, dazzling and insidious. There were reasons, Petunia acknowledged in her own head, why magic might have called more to Lily's soul than her own. And here were her two boys, the children Lily had died protecting, and Petunia was sure, absolutely without doubt, that they both possessed their mother's unnatural ability. She had no proof of this, but nothing would persuade her otherwise. Petunia did not want this kind of unnaturalness in her life. She had cut her ties, burned her bridges, and steeled her heart. She'd done so most thoroughly too. Yet. Petunia remembered before. When it had been just Tuney and Lily, and they hadn't known about anything that could drive them apart so thoroughly they both denied they were sisters. The heart is a complicated thing. Petunia loved Lily. Had always loved her sister, even when she hated her too. And she knew her feelings had been mirrored in her sister. Now she was dead. Lily was gone, and Petunia knew she would not ever be able to grieve for her sister properly. Petunia knew love. She knew hatred. Most of all, Petunia knew duty, and penance. This was her duty to take, to care for her sister's children. This was Petunia's penance. She would do it, would take the boys in and offer her house and her blood as their protection. That was duty. Penance was watching them grow, these sons of Lily. However, that was all Petunia owed, and that was all she would do. She might have loved her sister, but these children, spawn of a wizard who had seduced her sister away into a world she could not enter forever, with the magic she hated, running through their veins? She did not owe them anything more. For Lily, and because they were blood, she would take them in, and offer her protection. That was all.
It didn't take her long after she had finished reading the letter to make her decision. It was not one she ever regretted. Petunia would, throughout her life, become bitter and unhappy, and she would have many regrets. This was not one of them. She picked up the two boys off her doorstep and went quietly back inside. She settled them in the downstairs playpen, and went to the kitchen to make breakfast for her husband as she began to consider how she would explain this to him. She also began to tally costs in her head, trying to work out how an extra two children, with the many expenses they incurred, would stress the small family's budget, and their time. Babies and small children are expensive things. They require clothes, food, bottles, toys, cribs, and a plethora of miscellaneous items that are costly. Also, they require time. In this regard, Petunia was quite lucky. Harry was nearly the same age as Dudley, and could share most of his things for a while. Leon, on the other hand, would require a bit more. Petunia would have to see what she had not yet gotten rid of. Over the next few years, a shadow of the worry Lily had experienced would whisper across her mind. Unlike her sister, Petunia did not love her nephews. She would brush her doubts aside, and ignore the whispers. Anything odd she saw in Leon Potter she would blame on magic.
It was for this reason that Harry and Leon Potter grew up in a very unconventional way. Their guardians did not care enough about them to notice their peculiarities unless they directly influenced their own lives in a negative manner. This negligence was quickly seized as the opportunity it was by the younger Potter boy; he also showed his brother how their guardians' negligence might benefit them both. The boys grew up neglected and alone, shaping their lives their own way.
Before the boys came into her life, Petunia had been considering extra training once Dudley was old enough to go to prep, and then when he started school, a job of her own. With two extra children to take care of, she knew she would have to bury that longing inside her. Vernon would never agree. Not with three boys and her husband to care for. It was a dream she would have to set aside. Inside her heart, Petunia's bitterness grew with every new cost she and her husband would pay for the burden of accepting their nephews into their lives.
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