who: Petunia Dursley & Harry Potter (zombie) when: June 5 where: Fort Neill What: Harry’s arrival~ warnings: Giant snake murder, sad feels, zombie discussion, dead parent feels status: COMPLETE.
Harry’s arm hurt, and his vision was blurry. Warmth was returning to his body as the basilisk’s poison receded. It broke his heart that he’d had to kill it, that he hadn’t been able to convince it to stop attacking anyone. He felt hands on him, pulling him back from the zombies; Fawkes had left him, flying away somewhere, hopefully back to Dumbledore. He held on numbly to the sword, even though he didn’t need it any longer, because it felt like it shouldn’t be left out here, in case Voldemort somehow got his hands on it.
His vision was starting to come back, but there was a bright light from somewhere above his head. He managed to look up at it just in time to see the portal before it dragged him through…
...And spat him out of a doorway inside a building. Harry stumbled and fell to his knees, the sword in his hand clattering to the floor just beside his hand He blinked up at the people around him. He didn’t recognize any of them, but they weren’t zombies, and they were talking to him like they were trying to help him. He renewed his grip on the sword all the same, and got slowly to his feet, holding it at his side.
Eventually, he let them look him over, but not before they had let him use their network to contact his Aunt Petunia. Then, reassured that she had said he was safe and that she was on her way to get him, he settled into one of the chairs and let them look him over, and started filling out their paperwork.
--
The message from Harry had happened just before Petunia was getting off work. She’d spent far more time than she intended to just staring at the message before she replied back that things were okay and that she’d be right down to see him. There would, of course, be time before she could take him back to her home, which was currently still the Cottage. She was likely going to have to change that before long, however. But until then, at least there was another teenager around the place and she figured Eliot wouldn’t be overly upset about it. Just to be safe, though, she sent Kylo a text to let him know that she was bringing Harry home once all the paperwork and everything was filled out and he was able to leave.
She made her way as quickly as she could to the Fort and collected herself enough not to outright demand that the people there take her to her nephew. She walked into the fort with her escort and forced herself to stay collected enough not to immediately rush at him. But she did walk very fast over to him (faster than likely necessary). Once she reached him, she leaned down to press a quick kiss to the top of his head. “Are you all right? Do you need anything?”
--
Harry stood up and hugged her, his arms going around her waist. He hadn’t known if she was okay, with the zombies all coming in after everyone even after the basilisk was dead. And he was sad, and scared, and he had no idea what was going on. It made him feel so much better that she was here.
“I’m okay,” he said, after he pulled back. “Are you? Is everyone else okay?”
--
There was a hint of a pained expression which she tried to cover up quickly. “I’m fine, love. Nothing to worry about here.” She carefully smoothed his hair before looking him over. “I…” She really didn’t know how to explain how they were the only ones so far. It was going to be one of those things that he’d have to get used to along with the information about his parents being alive. “There’s a lot to tell you,” she said quietly after a moment. “Did they finish your paperwork or do we have some more things to do?” If they were finished, at least she could go into what was going on.
--
Harry looked up at her. She wasn’t wearing her usual scared or sad face, or even the one when she was trying to cover up one or both of those things. He didn’t really know what to expect, but he had learned to trust her and follow her lead, so he nodded.
“I finished mine,” he said. “They said you have to sign something, though. As my guardian?” He didn’t quite know what that meant; his aunt had been looking after him and protecting him as long as he could remember, and no one had ever needed her to file paperwork for it before. At least not since he had been too young to remember. “But then I think we can go.”
--
Petunia nodded at the comment about her having to sign paperwork. “This place seems very set on paperwork,” she said after a moment, but she asked for the paperwork anyway. She’d sign it even if it seemed ridiculous to do so. She’d been his guardian since he was a little thing. Once she was finished with the paperwork, she made sure that she could take him with her before reaching out to take his hand. He was very obviously not eleven, but she was also still holding onto him if she could because it had been so long.
“Hogwarts isn’t here,” she started with. “And so far, no zombies.” But there’d been a lot of other dangerous things. There were so many things, though. She wanted to make sure not to overload him, but the fact was that he was going to be overloaded whether or not she wanted him to be because the people here didn’t always hold back about things. “It might be a lot of information at once, but I’d rather you find out from me than from the people on the network. They forget to consider the things they say and whether or not they should.” She’d seen it with Kylo, she’d seen it with quite a few people. Even she had been subject to it on occasion.
“We’re the only ones that are at all aware of zombies being part of our world. There are people here that you’ll know, but they aren’t the ones that we know.” She glanced at him for a moment. “A lot of people know about us. More specifically you. They’re probably going to react to your being here in a very strange way.”
--
“Why are we here?” Harry asked, after a moment. “They said we can’t go back. Why can’t we go back?”
He already missed Hogwarts and everyone in it. More importantly, he was worried about them. He had just risked his life trying to protect them from the basilisk, and he’d done that, but there were still zombies.
The rest of it didn’t make any sense. People that he knew, but not the ones that he knew -- Harry looked up at his aunt, his brow furrowed. “What does that mean?”
--
“I don’t know why,” she said after a moment. “For both of those questions. The portal does most of the deciding on who comes and goes. From what I’m told, whatever is going to happen at home will still happen, but we are here as well.”
She felt bad for Harry, for the shifts that would undoubtedly happen and that he would have to deal with. The people that he knew didn’t know him the way he knew them and Sirius wasn’t here. That one felt a little more painful than most of the things she had to tell him. Then she’d have to tell him that his parents were here and alive. She’d have to tell them. A selfish part of her didn’t want to because she wasn’t sure what that would mean for her. That part of her wasn’t very fair to her sister, so she knew that she wouldn’t listen to it, but she worried all the same that maybe she’d become less. She didn’t want that to be the case. That didn’t mean she could keep things from him. Especially not when she’d constantly stressed the importance of honesty to him when it came to her.
“It means that there is a version of our story that doesn’t involve zombies, so their lives are different. Also people can come in from different points in time. You were still eleven for me when I showed up. Remus is here, but he remembers things differently. Sirius used to be here, but not ours and he recently disappeared again.” There was a pause before she said, “Your parents are here.”
--
It all felt like a very strange dream. Or maybe he was actually dead; maybe the basilisk had killed him and this was some kind of afterlife. Harry looked up at her again. She was wearing the wrong clothes. You were still eleven for me when I showed up. That was even harder to comprehend than the possibility of others who had lived a life without zombies. That sounded impossible, far-fetched, a fantasy. But Aunt Petunia not remembering things… so much had happened since he was eleven.
It bothered him. And hearing about a different Remus, a different Sirius, bothered him too. They wouldn’t really know him, wouldn’t remember any of the things they’d told him, or that Harry had told them. How were they going to act around him?
There weren’t many things that would have distracted him from that train of thought, but the last thing that Aunt Petunia said was one of them. It was a punch in the gut, making his breathing stop for a moment.
“What?” he asked. “My parents?”
--
Petunia watched his expressions with her own feelings carefully guarded. This wasn’t about her. Not the information that she was giving him. It was, in a way, to keep him from being blindsided when he went on the network. There were people here that he would know intimately, that he would have emotional attachments to. She’d experienced it all before. She knew the feeling of it. She remembered how coldly Remus had responded to her when she first arrived. She remembered friends of Lilys who had responded similarly. There’d been a Sirius there when she first arrived and he had, in no uncertain terms, disliked her quite a bit. It had been a lot for her as an adult, but for Harry.
She reached for her ring finger, forgetting that she hadn’t worn her wedding band in a while, so she wasn’t able to fidget with it anymore. Her fingers reached up, carefully pulling the hairtie so that her hair fell around her face. “Yes. Your parents.” Her voice was even even though it felt like her throat was constricting around the words. “I’m sure they’d love to meet you whenever you’re ready.”
--
Harry was watching her, and his attention was caught by the way she moved her hands. It was normal for her to play with her ring, but -- the ring wasn’t there. He frowned. There were so many things different that he was having trouble believing any of it was real. And then he remembered the way that the adults verified their identities, just to be safe, whenever someone left Hogwarts and returned.
“Tell me something only my real aunt would know,” he said. It wasn’t that really he thought she was someone else, exactly, it was just that things were so strange that he needed to be sure. If she was his real Aunt Petunia, then he could trust what she said about this place being safe, even if it was strange, and he would go with her. If she wasn’t -- well, he would have to do something. Get away from her, for starters, and try to find his way back home.
--
Something only she would know. There were so many things that all of them knew, but she sorted through those things to find something uniquely them. “When you were six, you and Dudley woke me up with breakfast. Of course, you both mostly spilled food on me while trying to climb the bed and hold it at the same time.” A pause. “Sirius teased me about it for days after.”
She considered other things just in case. “You lost your first tooth when you were six and and three quarters. Your specific words and not mine. We gave you a few sweets as payment instead of money because they seemed a more favourable present than money at that point.”
--
Harry let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. She was real. Which meant that everything she was saying was true. It was still hard to believe, but at least it wasn’t some kind of awful trick.
He looked up at her. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” He didn’t know how to go about meeting his parents, he didn’t know how to deal with the people talking to him on the network, didn’t know what to think about being in this new world at all.
--
Petunia gave him a small smile, something bordering on apologetic. “You don’t have to do anything, love. Not right away. You can decide how you want to handle things as you go.” She held out a hand for him to take hold of in case he felt like he needed it. She wasn’t sure if fifteen year olds still held hands with their aunts. “I know there’s a lot to think through, but…” She paused. “Are you hungry? They tell me there’s a place with excellent waffles. Or I can take you back to the Cottage and make you anything you’d like.”
Really, she was happy just to go home even if it wasn’t home. She was going to have to reach out to Remus and talk to him about moving on that house. She was going to need to explain that, too. Merlin, there were so many things to think about. “We can worry about everything after that.”
--
Relieved, Harry nodded. He wasn’t really hungry, but doing something normal like eating food sounded like the best idea. He wasn’t ready to see his parents, or even think too hard about the fact that they were here; he wasn’t even really ready to see Ron, who was now nine years older than him. It was just too weird, and he was still sad about the basilisk.
“Anything is fine,” he said. “Wherever you want to go.”
He wasn’t sure what the Cottage was, but he didn’t know a place that made waffles either, so either one of them would be new and unfamiliar to him. As long as Petunia thought they were safe places to go, it didn’t make much of a difference.
--
Considering it for a minute, Petunia decided to just take him to the Cottage. The people there were unusual, but there would be considerably less people there than there would be at JJ’s. She’d take him there later and then she’d make him a cup of hot tea, perhaps hot chocolate and let him spend a little time before he had to face the rest of the world.
Letting out a breath, she led him out to the car, one he’d remember from the house. Though, it was much cleaner than it had been then. “I’ll secure one of the rooms for you and in the morning, we can figure out how to deal with everything else, even if it takes time.”