It was enough for Petunia to live on the Upper East Side and pay for an immigration lawyer of the highest caliber. She quit work at the firm without further ado, signed an NDA, and received both a lump sum and a monthly stipend from a trust.
She was set.
And, consequently, so was the parasite in her stomach.
The third week of June in 1980 was extremely eventful for one Petunia Evans-never-to-be-Dursley. That was the week she gave birth to a healthy baby boy. He was oversized even as a newborn —and he’d nearly killed her on the way out. But Ulright had paid for the best maternity ward in the city and the doctors came with it. So she’d been all right.
Petunia of then was a rather doting mother. She gave the boy whatever he wanted and was always on his side. The Petunia of now held the baby at arms length. Unable to convince herself otherwise, she still named the boy Dudley. Why? She couldn’t say much other than that she had already stolen from him his original story, she couldn’t very well steal his name too.
Thinking that, she drafted a letter.
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To Lily Evans,
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
As mother and father are no longer with us, I figured I may as well inform my only living relative. You have a nephew and his name is Dudley. He was born on the 23rd of June.
Your sister,
Petunia Evans
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Perhaps she should have addressed it to Lily Potter neé Evans, but Petunia was only sending the letter as a courtesy —and she really rather agreed that magic is strange. So she didn’t leave a return address and mailed it to her childhood home in Cokeworth. Maybe it made it to Lily, maybe it didn’t, but either way Petunia felt fine. This was not her family, after all.
It wasn’t until late one night in early July, when the world was set aflame with fireworks and cheers, that Petunia was overwhelmed, shushing Dudley. He just kept crying. As soon as she had gotten him to settle down, the building shook with a new round of explosions above the skyline and caused him to rally his screams.
“Shut up- shut up! SHUT UP!”
And the apartment went quiet, the lights flickered off, and for a single moment the world was silent. Until Petunia, strung beyond her limits, looked down in the sun light and saw a still screaming child in her arms. A still screaming child that was encased in a bubble.
“Bullocks,” Petunia hiccuped, tears streaming down her face, “How am I supposed to get you out?”