At 9.30am on Christmas Eve 2002, Petunia Dursley carefully locked the front door to No.4, Privet Drive and turned to face the imposing black car that had been sent to pick her up. She took a deep breath as she smoothed her knee-length lilac tunic dress and matching long coat and touched her hat lightly. She was unused to such attire but Dudley had insisted on spoiling her. It was cold but it didn't smell of snow yet and the sun was actually shining for once that December.
Dudley stepped forward to take her bag and she smiled in appreciation. He looked so very smart. He wore a full traditional morning suit with grey stripped trousers and the long black jacket to mid-thigh. He even had the top hat. He had hired his suit; said he wanted to dress properly for his cousin, especially as Harry had asked him to be an usher and sent him the waistcoat. The waistcoat was petrol-blue and embroidered with large pink honeysuckle flowers and gold leaves. He wore a plain matching cravat and had a matching pocket handkerchief too. Petunia was very proud; he'd grown up into a lovely boy.
As Dudley placed her overnight bag in the trunk, squashing it in between the baby paraphernalia, she knew the neighbours' curtains were twitching.
She smiled at her son as she walked towards the car that was parked on her driveway - so proud of him.
A very tall and broad man dressed entirely in a black suit with an earpiece, like a bodyguard to the famous, held open the car door for her. She looked up at him with a meek smile. He had a chauffeur's hat absurdly balanced on his head because it was too small for him. He looked nearly normal, for one of that lot. Harry had arranged the car for them, he said it was the only way they'd be able to get into the grounds of Beaumont Hall.
Dudley got into the car on the other side to join his fiancée, Ronica, and their baby daughter, Daisy. Daisy wasn't planned but Dudley was determined to the right thing by Ronica and loved his daughter with all his heart. The little girl filled Petunia's heart with joy, something she hadn't experienced for such a long time. Even Dudley's birth had come with its fill of anxiety, but by then Vernon was already telling her she was doing everything wrong. Maybe, she thought ruefully, she hadn't felt true joy since she was a child. From before when Lily met that freakish boy with the black hair and sallow complexion who lived on the other side of Cokeworth. She had been jealous; she knew that now. Jealous of her sister when she should have been celebrating her uniqueness with her.
Dudley took the large flat gift she carried as she carefully clipped the seatbelt across her. She smiled in appreciation. Until Dudley had mentioned that Harry was researching his family history and gathering portraits together, she hadn't known what to get him and his... husband. She was still getting used to the idea that he was marrying another man but then Dudley had said surely it didn't matter so long as they loved each other and treated each other with kindness and respect. Besides, Harry was the same man who'd stood up in court for her, he was the same man Dudley went out for beers with every couple of months. Who Harry slept with didn't change how he was as a person. And he still cared. There had been that strange business a few months ago when Dudley and Ronica and Daisy had arrived on the doorstep with a man who looked remarkably like the chauffeur and they stayed for nearly week and then were told they could go home. She supposed Dudley was right, it was always about what was in Harry's heart. It was just Vernon had very strong opinions on such matters and it was hard to shake that mindset after years of being bullied by it.
She carefully flattened her dress and held out her hands to take the present back but Dudley shook his head and kept hold of it. She adjusted her hat again.
'Stop touching it, mum, it looks lovely. You look lovely,' said Dudley.
The car was surprisingly spacious inside, despite the three of them and the baby carrier in the back. She didn't dare look out of the windows, the landscape seemed to be passing unnaturally fast and she had to squeeze her eyes shut as the huge car wove between other road users with surprising ease in a way that seemed to defy logic. Instead, she focused on inspecting her daughter-in-law (to be). Ronica was wearing a very sparkly gold and sequined fishtail dress and a white fur stole. It had a plunging neck line with some complex spaghetti-strapping across her shoulders. Petunia supposed it showed off Ronica's dark skin beautifully and she did have some fabulous curves that made Petunia feel more like an ironing board than usual. The dress looked a little too Hollywood in Petunia's opinion but who was she to judge these young people these days.
They were going to Wiltshire; Dudley had told her. It should have taken a couple of hours from Surrey but seemed to take a quarter of that. Dudley and Ronica seemed unperturbed by the whole experience and Daisy slept for the entire journey.
'Oh, we're near home,' Ronica announced as they passed between familiar hills and saw signs for Lacock Abbey. Even Petunia thought of it as home and wondered once more about moving to the area.
'I was thinking of moving back here,' Petunia said quietly, voicing it for the first time.
'That would be wonderful,' said Dudley. 'You were very happy when we were here, despite the circumstances.'
'Yes,' said Petunia, thinking of a little cottage and garden tucked away in a row of little terraced houses.
'Did you know that Lily and James Potter lived in the village too?' Ronica asked cautiously.
'My sister? Lived here?' tears sprang to Petunia's eyes. She felt the need to go back to the village, to see where her sister had lived, to see her house. To think she'd lived so close to it for nearly a year. She suddenly felt so sad that she allowed herself to become estranged from Lily.
'Yes...'
'Are you okay, mum,' said Dudley, reaching across and taking her hand.
'Yes,' she smiled sadly. 'Perhaps we could go and see where on Boxing Day.'
Dudley gave her hand a squeeze, 'Harry still owns the house. He's wondering what to do with it. It's a wreck, hasn't been touched since the night they were killed...'
Petunia couldn't help the little fluster of an idea that grew in the pit of her stomach. Perhaps she could do her sister right after all this time. Perhaps she could restore it and look after her house. She wondered if there would be terrible ghosts there or if it was a place of peace. Albus Dumbledore said they had died for love, protecting their son and future of the Wizarding kind and into their world too. If they died for love, perhaps she could preserve Lily and James's memories with love too. Far better than the life Vernon had set out for her. She would have to talk to Harry about it...
When they pulled into a farm track, they seemed to pass through a shimmering veil and what had looked like farmland transformed into open mature parkland. They drove past a pretty gatehouse and up the long sweeping gravel driveway. Ahead lay an enormous castle, for want of a better word.
Her mouth fell open.
'I did warn you, mum,' said Dudley with a slight chuckle. 'He's a bloody lord in this world as well as a sir in ours.'
'Language, Teddy-bear. Daisy might be listening,' scolded Ronica but she was too excited to care. When Dudley had told her about his posh cousin and who he was, she couldn't believe it, and now it looked like she was about to step into the set of Downton Abbey. There was a gatehouse, and deer in the park, and follies, and a lake. And they were staying until Boxing Day. She wondered if she had enough posh clothes and whether she should have invested in a pair of Hunter wellies.
'You should have seen Aunt Marge's face when I told her,' said Dudley.
Ronica tried not to frown at the mention of Marge Dursley. She'd met the woman once and utterly disliked her. But then Marge was overtly racist and was very sneering towards Ronica. It was only through Marge that Ronica found it possible to believe Dudley's stories about his childhood and his father. It was so hard to believe that her giant cuddly teddy-bear could have come from such a toxic environment. She was almost pleased that Aunt Marge had decided to ostracise Petunia and Dudley since the divorce. The odious woman had sided with her brother and was still pleading his innocence and his wrongful imprisonment. To Ronica, that spoke volumes about her. Dudley had turned away from trying to be nice to his aunt after that and Ronica couldn't say she was heartbroken about it. They didn't need people like that in their lives.
When the car swept around the side of the house and pulled into a stableyard, they were met by a good-looking man with messy raven-black hair, startling green eyes, and an unusual lightning-bolt scar on his forehead. He was dressed in a strange sort of long black military dress coat that flared out from his waist and nearly reached his ankles. It buckled asymmetrically across his chest and he wore a collection of medals on his left breast above his heart. It was nearly the same as normal military dress wear but not quite, partly because it was lined with petrol-blue satin which showed as he walked towards the car. On one side of him was a young boy in grey trousers and the same petrol-blue waistcoat as the one Dudley wore. The boy had very similar messy hair but lacked the vibrant green eyes of his father. On the other side was an enormous black shaggy Irish Wolfhound wearing a petrol-blue collar which looked remarkably like it was studded with crystals.
'That's my cousin Harry,' Dudley said proudly. 'And his adopted son, Teddy, he's nearly five. And his dog, Hercules.'
When a pretty blond girl in a pale-blue tulip dress and with perfect ringlets appeared at the doorway and ran across to tug on Teddy's hand, Dudley added, 'and I think the little girl is Victoire, she's the same age as Teddy and Harry's niece, sort of... it's complex... she's part... fairy or something... French anyway...'
The biggest thing for Ronica to get her head around was Dudley's closeness to that other world. Harry Potter's world with its own government and own law enforcement officers and witness protection programmes. She was, to a degree, aware of this other sector of society. Her job meant that sometimes their worlds crossed over and she had to work with a number of strange folks who tended to wear slightly odd uniforms or not quite right clothing. She'd been sworn to secrecy but she was never told too many details about this other world. Occasionally she'd hear whisperings of strange names and odd practices and the name of Harry Potter. It was then that she pieced together the mysterious deaths of the Potters who had once lived in the village with the Harry Potter who was Dudley's cousin and revered in this other world. She grown up knowing about those deaths; the whole village knew about the strange gas-explosion, the lack of marks on the two bodies, the disappearance of the boy, the deserted house which no one went near, not even adventurous and daring teenagers who searched for something to ease the boredom.
It wasn't until the job with the Dursleys that she found out the truth. She'd only been given a role in their protection because she'd once lived the village, because her parents still lived there. In many ways it was surprising that the Dursleys had been placed in Godric's Hollow but sometimes it worked to hide those placed under the Witness Protection Act in plain sight. Plus, she found out, it was a place where people knew what they were protecting the Dursleys from. She still couldn't believe that Devereux Aldwyn who ran the Off-Licence was a wizard, though perhaps it wasn't so surprising to find out that old Mrs Henrietta Ravenclough was a witch. Dudley and Petunia's protection was the first time she's worked with the Others.
She hadn't realised the scope of this other world until she and Dudley started dating and he began to explain the magic and witches and wizards and magical creatures and that there had been a war and Harry Potter was a hero. It felt like now she was truly being allowed into this world and was learning far more through her private life. She was a little bit excited about it.
Harry held the car door open and held out his hand to help Petunia out of the car. He kissed her on both cheeks and admired her outfit. Ronica noticed she kept touching her hat again.
The funny silent chauffeur held open the door and took the gift from Dudley, before waiting for Ronica to carefully manoeuvre out of the car in her impractical dress. When she'd tried it on in the shop as a joke, she'd felt like a mermaid and she knew the dress looked stunning, if not a little over the top for a humble Witness Protection Officer. She was more used to modest black tailored suits and starched white shirts. The shopkeeper had cooed a lot and Dudley's eyes had nearly popped out of his head and he said he wanted her to wear it, so long as she'd be comfortable, because she looked like a princess... his princess.
Dudley had unclipped Daisy from her carrier and was holding her in his arms.
'Oh my!' cooed Harry before he was even introduced. 'This is little Daisy, is it? Can I? She's beautiful,' he held out his hands to take the baby from Dudley who promptly complied. 'You alright, Big D?' he asked with a mischievous glint in his green eyes. It made Ronica feel a little weak-kneed.
'Yeh, Little H!' Dudley teased back. 'You? Nervous?'
Harry shook his head. 'Faced worse things than getting married,' he joked. 'You must be Ronica. Now I see where Daisy gets her looks from because it certainly ain't Big D!'
He kissed her hand with a small bow, like a gentleman would, and she giggled, embarrassed.
'Big D's told me lots about you. Glad to meet you at last.'
'And you, Harry. I've been hearing about you for a long time, through work as well as Dudley, so I feel very privileged to meet you.' She felt like she ought to curtsey.
'Oh Merlin, don't listen to the rumours, half of them are made up,' he grimaced, slightly flushed as if embarrassed. But then he was laughing because Daisy was pulling at his glasses and making dirty smudges all over them and Ronica was horrified.
'Oh, Daisy!' he laughed. 'Maybe I can adopt you too. What do you think, Teds? A little sister to add to the household?'
'But what about Aunty Luna's babies in her tummy?' said the boy, concerned.
'Oh, the more the merrier! Anyway, we can't really have Daisy, I don't think Big-D and Ronica would like that, but I'm sure she can come and visit often.'
Harry held onto Daisy as he took them into the huge house, followed closely by the enormous dog. He led them into a grand black and white hallway that was the size of the little flat she and Dudley rented on the outskirts of London for a great deal of money. There were two suits of armour on each side of the door and Ronica was fairly certain she saw one of them move.
She was also slightly taken aback when Harry turned to it with a finger raised and growled threateningly, 'don't you dare, Ralston, or I'll vanish your lance. And if I so much as hear you've frightened one of my guests, I'll move you permanently to guard the goat folly.'
The suit of armour seemed to bristle somehow, while the other one looked very smug.
Harry smiled sheepishly. 'Trials and tribulations of owning a magical house filled with magical objects. Not all of them behave!'
'Can't you, you know, get rid of them?' she whispered, afraid of offending two things holding pointy weapons.
'I tried but they keep coming back,' he whispered. 'I had to hide their more lethal weapons, the lances were a compromise.'
Ronica wasn't quite sure if Harry was being serious or not. She had the feeling he was.
'Right,' he announced. 'Let me introduce you to Ammy, she's going to be looking after you. All you need to do is call her name and she'll appear.
Ronica stifled the embarrassing scream and was quite glad she wasn't holding Daisy because she might have dropped her. It was one thing to hear about these things second-hand but to actually witness them... Dudley and Petunia looked equally as shocked to be greeted by the knee-high creature with huge bat-like ears and eyes the size of tennis balls. It wore a black tunic with a gold phoenix on one breast and a coat of arms on the other side. The coat of arms showed gold mantling falling around a red and yellow escutcheon which bore three crows and a gauntlet holding a wand against a starred background. Underneath it read 'Toujours dans les étoile'.
'Ammy is a House-Elf, a free one,' Harry added, not that it made any sense to Ronica or the Dursleys. He looked the elf up and down. 'A new uniform, Ammy?'
'Yes, Master Harry. Especially for today.'
'Very smart. Is that the Black coat of arms?'
'Yes, Master Harry. For Lord Black and for Master Teddy.'
'I thought the motto was "Toujours Pur".'
Ammy wrinkled her nose. 'That is no longer being appropriate. Master Teddy suggested it should be "Always in the Stars" for his mum who is being in the stars with Granny Lily. And because of the names of his Granny Andromeda and his second-daddy Sirius. He is changing the skull head to the wolf-head too. Master Blaise helped with the drawing and Miss Granger helped with re-registering it at the Department of Heraldry at the Ministry. It is already being accepted,' she said proudly. Ammy turned to Petunia, Dudley, and Ronica and didn't see Harry swallow deeply. 'Hello. I is very honoured to be helping Master Harry's Muggle family. I is sorting out your rooms and unpacking for you. But if you is not finding anything or is needing help or is getting lost, please just be calling my name. Or if you is wanting help with the baby Daisy, I is helping her too. I is easily making up bottles or getting food and we is having a special highchair for her so she is sitting next to you during the wedding feast. But if you is wishing, I can babysit while she is sleeping in your room.'
'T-thank you,' stammered Ronica, unsure whether she entirely trusted the strange creature. But then Teddy took Ammy's hand and dragged her and Victoire off into the stableyard to look at the car.
'Teddy's very attached to Ammy... and Victoire...' Harry smiled fondly at them as he watched Teddy plaguing the ministry driver into opening the car doors so they could explore the inside. 'Dudley, Ronica, I've put you in the Fleamont room, there's a cot in there too. Petunia, you're next door in the Dorea Room. The shared bathroom is next to you, Petunia, but we've put up signs everywhere. The rooms are in the north wing, up there and turn right,' he pointed to a spiralling staircase. 'You're welcome to go there now or would you like to come through and meet some people? Big D, I'll need to introduce you to Ron and he'll show you the ropes.'
Harry ended up leading them straight into the Dragon Room after pointing out the library to them. 'I've locked it over Christmas otherwise Hebe will start working and this weekend she's here as a guest. But if you get a chance, have a wander around the outside and peer in through a window. It's beautiful. I'm really proud of what we've achieved. Everywhere was such a mess and so bloody disorganised when I inherited the place.'
Ronica had never seen a room as huge as the Dragon Room. There was an enormous Christmas tree in one corner with presents already stacked underneath it for the morning. She wanted to explore everywhere as she stared in wonder at the sage-green and gold tapestry that covered the walls with what was clearly a family tree. The room then opened into a turret room with a grand piano. Her fingers itched and she wondered if it was in tune.
She nearly screamed again when she saw a shaggy-looking hairy giant in a murky-green kilt and matching waistcoat wave cheerfully at Harry. The large dagger in his heavy Arran sock looked like a sword. She gulped away her fear because everyone else seemed utterly unperturbed by the man. In fact, she could hear him being ribbed by a man with red-hair about what he was wearing under his kilt. She decided she definitely didn't want to know.
Another one of the funny creatures with big ears was gliding around the room with a tray full of champagne glasses. This one wore a sage-green tunic with just the gold phoenix on display. The phoenix seemed to breaking out of a strange symbol of a circle within a triangle and a line down the centre. Ronica wondered what it all meant and longed to ask. Harry swiped three glasses and pressed them on Ronica, Dudley, and Petunia.
'We're not normally this formal. Generally, nobody is allowed to stand on ceremony,' he said, sounding embarrassed as he ran a hand through his messy hair. 'But Draco insisted and then his mother and Aunt Dromeda got involved and that was that: champagne and 'breakfast' canapes before the ceremony is apparently the way...' he laughed lightly. 'I even have no say about wearing my military dress-robes, apparently it's the done thing, at least I was allowed boots rather than brogues... Tomorrow and Boxing Day will be a lot more relaxed, despite the numbers; jeans and Christmas jumpers are the dress code. Anyway, don't worry about anything, just relax and enjoy yourselves and help us celebrate.'
'Harry,' Petunia said quietly. 'I think you should open part of your gift now. I know your... husband isn't here but I think you'd like this before the ceremony.' She signalled Dudley to hand over the parcel he carried and Harry handed back Daisy to his cousin.
They watched as Harry carefully unwrapped a large framed canvas photograph.
'It's Dennis and Mary Evans. Your maternal grandparents, Lily's and my parents... I'm sure it's not as fancy as some of your...'
When Harry looked up at Petunia, he had tears in his eyes. 'This is amazing. Thank you. I mean it, thank you. I must hang it immediately so they can join everyone else.'
He stood up abruptly, clearly moved. Perhaps because, Ronica thought ruefully, it was an obvious sign that he was been accepted as family after all this time and after all that bad treatment that clearly rejected him for being different.
'Once, back when I was eleven, I desired more than anything that I could know my family... but I stopped thinking that because I was told it doesn't do to dwell on dreams and forget to live...' he kissed Petunia on the cheek. 'These past few months I've learnt so much about the Potters so this... thank you. It means the world to me to include the Evanses too... Thank you... Well... I'd best go and do the rounds too; the Minister has just arrived... and my boss and his wife... Ron!' he shouted over a tall, broad-shouldered man with red hair, 'this is Dudley, Petunia, and Ronica. Perhaps you could introduce them to a few people, Walter and Jean too. And can you show Dudley around and show him the ropes. I'll be back for more cuddles with Daisy later!' He wove between the people, his huge dog following closely behind.
***