Archive of Our Own ^beta

1 November 1981.

Mr. Vernon Dursley of Number Four Privet Drive likes to consider himself a perfectly normal Englishman, and on perfectly normal days, the thought that he has ever been anything but perfectly normal does not once cross his mind.  To most of society, Mr. Dursley is as normal and respectable as they get: a wife and infant son, director of a drill-making company, solid middle class.  Everything he does, has ever done has been to uphold a sense of normalcy.  There are no scandals surrounding him, no strange events occurring in his presence, nothing to suggest that he doesn’t truly belong to this world.  

Unfortunately for Mr. Dursley, today is not a perfectly normal day, and as he drives to work, the scores of jovial people congregating on street corners only remind him that he is not and will never be normal.   

Nineteen years ago, they’d fished him out of the water half-dead.  He’d insisted otherwise, but really, he did remember every bit of half-dying.  The water filling his lungs, his vision spotting with white light, and the continual desperate thought of would mother really just leave him like this ?  

In the weeks following his rescue, he’d moved like he was on slippery planks.  Like with one misstep he would fall.  Slip and fall and get lost where no one could reach him, where no one could pull him out.  

They’d put him in the hospital, where he’d woken up with bright artificial lighting in his face, and that had felt so unnatural and foreign and wrong , but he hadn’t been thinking clearly, and they still kept asking him question after question, all questions he didn’t know how to answer —

What is your name?  Did someone push you?  Where are your parents?  

He’d told them his name, and that hadn’t been the truth back then, but it was his truth now, so he’d better start sticking to it.  He’d better, because he can’t go back — can’t go back to the place where they light his bed on fire shove him off the North Pier because with some people you have to force the magic out —

Vernon , he’d said, after a moment of hesitation.  

Vernon , he’d said, even though it wasn’t.  

And the words kept coming .

He’d told them he couldn't remember.  That had been his response for the rest of the questions.  It hadn’t exactly been a lie.  

Not a lie, when a voice whispers in his ear, we’re doing this to help you, ungrateful child, do you want to live the rest of your life without magic?   Not a lie, when he wakes up to burning sheets and thrashing limbs and a bottle of burn medicine and a muttered, fix yourself , and she’d meant that in more ways than one.  Not a lie, when two hands push him shove him forward off the edge of the pier and then he’s flailing against water against current and his vision is fading and that’s not the way it’s supposed to happen wizards don’t sink they float .  

Not a lie, he tells himself, and then suddenly, he can’t … he can’t remember.

It’s a cold grey Tuesday when Mr. Dursley crosses the street to his office, feeling once again like he’s walking on slippery planks.  His steps are light and careful, as if one stumble and he will slip through the bars of the zebra crossing, sink into the depths of the road surface.  

The waves crash, the sea bubbles foams bursts —

The group is gathered in an excitable clump in front of the building, blocking his way to the door.  He knows it’s ridiculous, but he can’t help but flinch everytime one of them glances at him.  He tries to assure himself that he looks perfectly ordinary, just a man on his way to work, but he can’t shake the paranoia.  He keeps his head down, afraid of recognition even after nearly two decades, like if he catches their attention, one of them will leap out of their crowd with outstretched hands and shove him out into the street, like hands once thrust him off a pier.  He would land far out where no one could ever reach him, and the pavement would surge out surge up like waves, pulling him down, down, down.

Mr. Dursley’s legs feel like lead by the time he steps out of the lift and stumbles into his office.

He always works with his back to the window, so he doesn’t see the letter-carrying owls that swoop past in broad daylight.  He tries to snap himself out of his frazzled state by yelling at people on the phone about drill shipments, which helps a little.  At least, it makes him feel in control, a feeling that he’s felt precious little as of late.

They hadn’t told him that it was possible to fly without magic.  But suddenly he was thrust into a world with cars and televisions and aeroplanes, where anyone could do anything if they tried hard enough or worked diligently enough.  Within the decade, they put a man on the moon, all while the wizards turned up their nose at anything non-magic.  He suspects many of them still don’t know, too boxed and isolated in their own world.

In the world without magic, normal was finally possible for someone like him.  It was not something inherent flowing in one’s veins.  It was not the status one was born with.  Here, normal was rising to the top through hard work and perseverance — normal was power that anyone could wield.  

Vernon would not let this opportunity go to waste, not when he had tried and failed for so many years to be normal, accepted, acceptable.

He would try, and he would try his hardest, because he’s never done anything without putting all his effort into it, even if it nearly kills him.  He wouldn’t stop now.  

He would try.  It’s all he’s ever been good at.

That’s how he got into the drill business in the first place, he supposes.  Drills are used worldwide; they are universal.  It’s a small thing, playing a minor part in the wide greatness of the world.  But in another way, it’s no small thing.  He’s never had the chance to make a change before.  Now, everyday, he creates, and everyday, his creations change the world.  It’s a comforting thought, one that keeps him grounded.  And on days when he sits in the calm of his office, feeling the weight of the Irish Sea pressing down on his chest, thoughts swirling like murky water, it keeps him from drowning.

He met Petunia Evans in the break room at Grunnings during the summer of 1978.  Blonde hair neatly curled, ankle length skirt ironed stiffly, pressed blouse without a single wrinkle.  The young secretary carried herself rigidly, head held high as if she had something to prove.  She and a couple other women gathered in the corner of the room, gossipping fiercely about their coworkers at previous jobs.  Eventually, on days he felt the rare desire to relax, Vernon sat beside her, nodding sympathetically as she scandalously whispered stories of a freak sister gone off to a freak school, running off with a jobless nobody at eighteen.  Last she heard, they were going to get married, the horror .  

She spoke like she had to show that she was worthy of belonging, that despite the shame of her family, she could still fit in with decent folk.  Vernon could understand.  He had never met anyone so devoted to normalcy as himself.  Frankly, it was very attractive.

They’d both tried to leave their pasts behind, but like the tide, it all came flooding back.  

He proposed to her at the end of 1978.  Kneeling to the floor, he offered her a ring, and she burst into tears. 

She confessed that her sister was a witch, a degenerate, a freak.  And that therefore, Petunia was not and would never be normal.  And for the first time since he nearly drowned, enveloped in crashing waves, Vernon had to acknowledge, had to remember , that he too was not and would never be normal.

Petunia had been afraid, then, that he would not love her.  But how could he, when it was not something she could control?  All he asked of her was that she make an effort to move past it.  That was all a person could do.  It was the least a person could do, he knew from experience.

They were married by Christmas, and he bought a nice suburban home for them to move into together, complete with a manicured lawn and a back garden.  A perfectly normal home for perfectly normal people.

      Rosy cheeked and demanding, Dudley was the child of his dreams.  When his cry split the air when he was born, loud and fierce and formidable — strong lungs just like his father, something within Vernon’s heart broke.  That moment, he vowed to the world, to the boy lost in tossing waves, to the man still bogged down by phantom waters, that his son would want for nothing.

2 November 1981.

They wake up to a baby on their doorstep.  Or rather, Vernon wakes up to Petunia’s shriek when she goes out to collect the milk in the morning.  He hurries out of bed to the sight of his wife pale and thin-lipped, a piece of parchment gripped in white-knuckled hands.  She stands rigidly, gaze fixed on the blanket-wrapped baby at her feet dozing placidly by the mail slot.

“Petunia dear,” Vernon says after a moment.  Petunia gives no answer.  At his prompt, she wordlessly hands him the letter.

“Perhaps we should bring the child inside,” he says.  “Lest the neighbors see.  Wouldn’t want a scandal, would we—”

“Just read it,” she croaks.

He takes the letter from her hand, muttering under his breath.  Irresponsible parents.  Criminals, mostly likely.  Yes — criminals, unemployed, young and immoral — that was exactly the type of person to do something like this.  How selfish it was, abandoning a baby on somebody’s doorstep when you weren’t sure if the people living there could be trusted.  Not that the Dursleys weren’t trustworthy — no, they were probably one of the most upright, honest people in all of Surrey.  But it was always this same sort of story on the news: some poor, wretched woman leaving her child on a rich man’s doorstep — jealous of his success, no doubt — and then it was the rich man who always got blamed when the child inevitably died in the cold.  Outrageous.

He gives the letter a skim, because the quicker they get this over with, the quicker they can drop the child off at the orphanage and go back to living their perfectly normal lives in peace.  They wouldn’t ever see the child again after this morning, but it wouldn’t hurt to read the letter, see what the woman has to say.

your sister — Lily and James Potter killed — Dark Lord — magic — blood protection — take in their son — wizard —

… Wouldn’t hurt at all.

Vernon glances up at Petunia, who seems to have composed herself somewhat.

She shrugs disparagingly.  “You see,” she says.  “We can’t keep him.”

Could he turn down an innocent child?  

“Be reasonable, Petunia,” Vernon says.

“This is as reasonable as it gets.  Just when I thought I was rid of freaks, here comes another one to ruin our lives.  Unfortunate, but it’s off to the orphanage with this one.”

Two hands push him falling forward —

Suspended for eternity waves cresting over his head —

He had tried for so long to be normal, but —  

But where would he be today without the opportunities he had been given?

“Neither of us asked for our connection to magic,” says Mr. Dursley.  “We can rid the boy of his wrongness.  Raise him to be good.  Decent.  Normal.  

“Give him a chance,” he says.  “It’s only fair.”

Petunia pauses, freezing up.  “Fine,” she says at last.  “I’ll do it for you.  For us.  Our pasts.”

And so the family steps through the doorway, the rising sun on the horizon.  Vernon and the child, with Petunia following.  Their lives may be the furthest from normal at the moment, but they will make it work.  

They will make it work, because they’ve always made it work.  Time and time again, they’ve carved out their destinies, cut out everything that is wrong, that is different.  This child will be no exception, because both Petunia and Vernon have come from magic and turned out normal.  The Dursleys’ home is the sanctuary of normalcy, and so they will teach him to be normal.  They will shape him like they shaped their own destinies.  Create a world where neither of their children will want for anything.  

This, they vow to their pasts: to a boy pushed off a pier, and to a girl pushed aside by her sister.  This boy will want for nothing.  Not even magic.