Growing Up
Finally, peace fell back over the Evans-Dursley household, relatively speaking. There were still two children, two owls, two marauders, and a potions master living in said household.
Peace was always relative to Petunia. It always had been, and always would be if she had her way. Quiet unnerved her. Quiet meant sleepless nights and missing owls and dead sisters, so her house was always wonderfully noisy and chaotic and alive.
Severus was scratching his owl under its chin with a soft look previously reserved only for his husbands, shooting venomous glances over his shoulder to where said husbands giggled at him from the couch. Petunia’s son and nephew laughed from the living room where they were playing a board game with Vernon, a mixture of Monopoly and Exploding Snap that she had watched them make the previous evening. And Petunia? Petunia was sitting on her kitchen table, legs akimbo in a way that would have made Lily laugh, nursing a glass of wine and an inexplicable warmth in her chest.
Soon, the quiet would be back. Sirius would go back to the ministry and become a communal pain in every potential criminal’s ass, Severus would reopen his apothecary after the summer and disappear back into the brewery, Vernon would return to rebuilding people’s homes and lives, Remus would spend the mornings in the library before coming home to help her with the chores, and her boys…
Her boys would be at Hogwarts.
Petunia sighed and took a sip of her wine, focusing on it travelling down her throat. When they were gone, she could only hope that she had taught them enough. Goodness knows she tried.
Harry would be famous for dead parents and told to celebrate it by most of his world, a martyr more than a hero. Dudley, a squib-born wizard with a legend for a cousin, would be doomed always to be second place in his second world.
No, Petunia wouldn’t let that happen. She raised two strong, healthy boys that picked up her swearing habit, Vernon’s logic, Remus’s knack for pretending to be unremarkable, Sirius’s healthy taste for revenge, and Severus’s menacing aura. They would be children, and nobody would make them be anything else. They were owed at least that much.
Vernon bustled into the kitchen, covered in soot, and grabbed a washcloth. Petunia laughed at him, and he poked his tongue out at her as he wiped his face and hands. “Brutal, I tell you.”
“I did warn you,” she said mildly, raising her glass to him. “They pull no punches.”
Vernon grunted good-naturedly, ambling back into the living room.
And then it was the day. She fussed over them, brushing their hair because first impressions mattered, then laughing and ruffling it back up when they disagreed. The entire household piled into the car, much to Harry and Dudley’s delight, and the boy-who-lived walked through the barrier into Platform 9 ¾ surrounded by his weird amalgamation of family.
Petunia filed a redheaded woman’s scanning glances away for future review, and cheered and sobbed as she watched her boys wave from the retreating train, waving madly.
And the quiet from the war was back.
The first letter Petunia got from her boys arrived two days later, scribbled in red ink with terrible penmanship, and made her smile until her face hurt.
“HI AUNTIE!” it read. “It’s Harry, Dudley’s next to me, we’re in the library, it’s HUGE!
“You’ll never guess what house I got into! This old hat sang us a weird song and there were people everywhere and they got all quiet when my name was called like you said they would, but I ignored them like you said! The hat spoke in my head which was weird and-”
The rest of the sentence was practically illegible, but Petunia got the gist from the scrawled “GRYFFINDOR” that spanned most of the page. She flipped it over and grinned as she noticed the handwriting change.
“Hi mama!
“Harry was very excited, I can’t read what he just wrote so I hope you ca-”
A blotch of ink stretched across the rest of the line.
“Sorry about that, Harry bumped me.”
Petunia snickered.
“Anyway, I got sorted into Hufflepuff! One of my roommates has a camera so I’ll send you a photo of the common room with my next letter. I’m a bit sad that Harry and I aren’t in the same house, but we share lots of classes together!
“We miss you, we promise not to get in trouble, and Harry says to give the other paper to Moony. I hope you’re okay! Give Kora lots of pets for me, Uncle Sev refused to let me come to the store to say goodbye to her, he said I’ll see her when he writes but it’s not the same. I miss you, hug dad and the uncles for me please.
“Bye mama, I’ll write to you soon!”
Petunia folded the letter up and placed it reverently on the kitchen counter before looking back in the envelope and pulling out a wad of paper covered in red scribbles to give to Remus. Her boys were okay. They would be fine. They would make friends that she could bake for and invite over for holidays. The quiet wouldn’t be here for long.
And it wasn’t. Remus spent most of his time in his study by the kitchen, laughing and joking with Petunia and researching his time away, so the house was filled with a different kind of quiet, one that wasn’t so scary for Petunia. She was almost certain the werewolf had picked up on her fear of quiet, and, as much as he denied it, she knew that he had quit his job at the nearby muggle school to make sure she wasn’t alone. Sirius would come home with stories upon stories to regale her with, her husband would return either with an invite to dinner from some coworkers or a creation he had made, and Severus helped her with everything from cooking to painting Halloween decorations, but Remus…he knew her. He knew her like only Lily ever did.
And so he and his golden eyes would stave off the quiet and the fears. Even on full moons, when he had four paws and no voice, Moony would help her in the way he knew how. He would trail after her as she pottered around, fall asleep and snore on her feet as she read, and skid down the hall in such a manner that she couldn’t get mad at him for scuffing the floorboard with his claws.
Even in Hogwarts times, Remus would read with her when the Marauders were over, praise her art in his quiet and bashful way, and change the subject so smoothly when she got uncomfortable that even she could barely tell it was intentional.
And when the letters started arriving from her boys, she would gravitate to the seat beside Remus, poring over the parchment as he read over her shoulder.