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What if the Dursleys had raised Harry in a loving home?
What if, yes, Petunia screamed when she stepped outside to bring in the milk and found a baby, but then she shushed his startled cries, cradling him close because he was family and he was hers now, and brought him to the nursery?
What if they never put Harry under the stairs; that cupboard was for the dustbuster and broom, and the third bedroom on the upper floor was for their nephew, once the boys were old enough to be out of the cradle and each have their own room?
This is a story in which love redeems, love is magic - it always has been. Severus Snape, who made a career out of bullying and intimidating children, was redeemed by dying for Lily Potter’s son; Narcissa Malfoy is redeemed because of that moment when her love for her son was greater than her hatred for those who were different from her.
We can’t save everyone, sure; some villains go too far beyond the pale to deserve the attempt. But there are so many who built up a more low-level evil that was formed by a combination of their worst instincts and the wrong set of circumstances and conditions. What if we tweak those circumstances, just a little? What if we alter the conditions?
Petunia and Vernon Dursley are still selfish, grasping people who fear and hate magic. But remember: Petunia loved her sister before she hated her. She loved her still, while she hated her. Isn’t that what having a sister is, sometimes? She loved her little sister because she was bright, and brave, and hers, and that love slowly curdled with hate as Lily got everything that Petunia didn’t get to have: all the successes and accolades, yes, but also magic, also an entire world with doors shut to Petunia just because of an accident of birth entirely out of her control.
It’s no wonder that she hated magic: it stole her bright, beautiful sister from her. It stole her sister from her, twice, first when Lily went where Petunia couldn’t follow, no matter how she begged and tried; and then, again, when that world that wouldn’t let Petunia in swallowed Lily up whole and spat out the bones. (Spat out a dark-haired, squalling child.)
Lily had gotten everything, but, here’s the thing: now Petunia had what had been Lily’s. She had the last laugh, didn’t she? Harry was hers, now, and she would not be made to give him back. (She did not laugh at all, for a month, not even when Dudley called “Mama” and made sweet faces, because her bright, beautiful sister was dead, never coming back, lost in a world that Petunia couldn’t even enter to mourn her properly.)
And Vernon Dursley loved his wife, remember that. Petunia supported his ambitions, playing the gracious housewife every time they had his supervisor’s family for dinner; of course he would support what was important to her, too. And besides, he had always wanted a son. He wasn’t going to turn up his nose at a second one, to mold in his own image.
Remember: Dudley Dursley grew up loved. Given the right circumstances, Harry Potter could have a happy childhood in the same home, too.
They still told him his parents died in a car crash; magic had stolen Petunia’s sister away, and she didn’t intend for it to creep into her home and take anything more. They didn’t call his parents good-for-nothings, though; they called it tragic, said drunk drivers were despicable and the law ought to do more about them. Petunia told Harry about his mother, or at least what she’d been like as a girl, and how he had her eyes. They hadn’t known James, either of them, just had a solitary non-moving (normal) photograph of the happy couple that Lily had sent with the invitation to the wedding that Petunia and Vernon had declined to attend. “He was handsome,” Petunia told Harry about his father, because a photo was all she had to go on, but then, her nephew’s hungry eyes (her sister’s eyes) melting her heart a little, she added, “He had to have been something special, if Lily chose him. And you, my Harrykins, are specialer still.”
Love is magic, and this is a Harry who grew up knowing he was loved, with a cousin who was like a brother and an aunt and uncle who spoiled them both, just a little.
When Piers Polkiss started to make fun of Harry’s glasses and scar (remember: this was not a Harry in ill-fitting hand-me-downs; all his clothing was in his size, well-laundered and fashionable enough to fit in), Dudley hit him so hard he went flying.
The school called Petunia, who insisted that her little boy was innocent and would never hurt a fly. When the school insisted he be removed from the premises for the rest of the day anyway, she scooped both boys up. She got the full story, and she took them out for ice cream.
When Vernon came home and heard about it, he commended Dudley for being a man and defending his family, and then he signed both boys up for boxing lessons. Harry might lack his cousin’s and uncle’s larger build, but he could still learn to defend himself, too. He would never be a heavyweight, but he learned to throw a mean right hook. (Years later, at Hogwarts, Hermione Granger would punch Draco Malfoy in the face for being a bigoted git. Harry would punch Draco at some point, too, probably more than once.)
Harry is still a nascent wizard; strange things do still follow him. One year, when Petunia takes the boys for their annual haircut, Harry hates how his makes him look, and his hair has grown back by the time they reach the car. Petunia sees, purses her lips, and turns the boys around to demand her money back from the barber. She cuts Harry’s hair again, herself, at home, first asking him how does he want it to look, dear, Auntie will make it all better.
Later, she tells him, “Do not differ from the norm,” reminds him what comfort and safety there is in normalcy.
They go to the zoo for Dudley’s birthday (they go to the museum for Harry’s, a couple of months later), and Harry talks to a boa, makes the glass vanish. Piers is not there, because Dudley burned that bridge long ago and has no interest in being friends with someone who is cruel to his cousin. (Harry and Dudley each have their own groups of friends, but neither one will associate with anyone who is unfriendly to the other. Harry has disowned friends for mocking Dudley’s size just as quickly as Dudley will hit anyone who looks at Harry’s scar sideways.) When they see the glass vanish, Vernon grasps Dudley’s hand tightly and Petunia takes Harry’s and they walk the boys away to another exhibit with a purposeful nonchalance before anyone can connect them with something weird.
They still try to evade the Hogwarts letters, when the owls descend on the house. They still nail the mailbox shut, still pack up the family and flee to a remote island for an impromptu vacation. This is not done to deprive Harry of a birthright; this is done out of fear. They have always feared and hated magic, and now it has come calling to take their youngest son away from them. Petunia has already lost her sister to this world of magic (twice!) and Harry is hers, hers, and when she picked him up that first time when he was one year old she had told herself that she would never have to let him go.
But Hagrid finds them, at that hut on the rock, brings a small, squashed birthday cake that they manage to split a polite five ways (there was a lovely bakery cake for Harry, too, but they had forgotten it in the fridge at Privet Drive in the hurry to flee the letters, so it is nice to have this one to tide them over; he will get his presents later, too, once they go home). And– “I want to go,” Harry says, uncertain at first, and then repeating himself more firmly. “I want to go.” And Petunia and Vernon Dursley have never been good at denying their sons what they want.
“I want to go, too,” Dudley starts, and Petunia’s chest fills and fills with a preemptive rage, with renewed hatred for this world of magic that will tear her boys apart just like it tore apart her and her sister, by pulling one in and shutting the other out, but Vernon knows her stories, even if he doesn’t like to talk about magic, and he has thought far enough to resolve this one, stepping in to remind Dudley what a privilege it will be to go to Smeltings, to follow in the footsteps of his father.
This is what they will tell their friends: Harry’s father’s alma mater offered him a full scholarship because he was a legacy, and it’s a very prestigious offer, somewhere in Scotland but very old, highly ranked as a school, and besides, it was a chance for him to connect with that side of his heritage that they didn’t know as well, so of course he had to go. And wasn’t it nice, Petunia would add brightly, that Dudley got to attend his father’s private school and Harry went to his father’s private school, even though of course Harry would always be like a son to them.
Hagrid still took him shopping for his schoolbooks and supplies; even without having been there, Harry knew that Diagon Alley was not the sort of place his magic-fearing aunt and uncle would enjoy. They were concerned about this stranger, this giant of a man taking Harry around, but, Harry pointed out, he had been sent by the school, so he must be all right, and he had been friends with Harry’s mum and dad. Still, when Hagrid offered to get Harry an owl, he called his aunt and uncle on the cellphone they made him take with him, and asked if it would be all right, and begged to get a cat for Dudley, too. He was doubly glad he had Hagrid with him to help carry all his things, when they finally left, laden down with books, robes, a magic wand still packed in its box, the cage with the snowy owl, and a large cat spilling out of Harry’s arms with an expression that reminded him affectionately of his cousin.
Petunia frowned and frowned at the train station, as they puzzled over the platform and then, when Molly offered her help (“New at Hogwarts, dear? It’s Ron’s first year, too”), at the realization that she could either wave and wave to Harry until the train carried him out of sight, or she could keep well out of the world of magic that didn’t want her, but she couldn’t have both.
“It’s all right, Auntie,” Harry said, wrapping his arms around her and going on tiptoe to give her a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll be all right.” He finished his goodbyes, nestling into Uncle Vernon’s girth for a cozy hug, grabbing Dudley’s arm to pull him into a half-hug, half-secret-handshake, before he followed the next in the gaggle of redheads to run straight at the platform. Petunia waved and waved until Harry disappeared straight through it into thin air, and tried not to feel like the world of magic had just stolen away one of her boys.
(When Draco Malfoy offered to help keep Harry away from the “wrong sort,” Harry put his nose in the air in his best approximation of his aunt, offended at the suggestion that he was not a downright expert in the right sort, thank you very much.
When Harry looked in the Mirror of Erised for the first time, he saw his whole family around him - his father and mother, his aunt and uncle and cousin. When he looked in it for the last time, he saw himself finding the Stone because he wanted it, not to use it, but to find it, to want it - his aunt and cousin had taught him well about how to want.)
At the end of the year, when Harry came back to her (he had gone home for Christmas, but it had been so many months since then) bruised and bandaged from his encounter with the evil wizard who had killed his parents, Petunia’s heart filled with jealous rage again, and she penned a letter to Albus Dumbledore with a shaking hand, telling him exactly what she thought about someone who asked her to keep a child safe and then put that same child directly in harm’s way when he was in his care. She borrowed Harry’s owl to send the letter. But he insisted he was all right, really, and then he put his arms around her and told her that it was because of her, that her love had saved him, because Lily had died protecting him, eleven years ago (Lily had died, eleven years ago) protected him with a mother’s love, and Petunia was Lily’s blood and had taken Harry in, had given him that mother’s love over again - and love was magic, a kind of magic that Petunia had in spades even if that selfish world of magic wouldn’t let her in.
And he does seem fine; he played with Dudley all summer, the two boys still close, still on good terms despite their different schools, their different worlds. (He brought home chocolate frogs, which Dudley thought were “wicked” and Petunia and Vernon thought practically obscene, but the chocolate did taste good, so at least there was that.)
Harry had still made youngest Seeker; once he explained what that meant, Vernon swelled with pride at the idea that both his boys were sports stars at their school (Harry in Quidditch, which he would just gloss over, and Dudley on the Smeltings rugby team).
When Dobby tries to prevent Harry from returning for his second year, the results are… regrettable. No one blames Harry; he had done his best from the start to contribute to a successful dinner party, even playing up for the guests how kind and gracious his wonderful aunt and uncle had been to take him in as a baby and raise him as their own, and after the mess that Dobby made, Harry raced around the kitchen with Petunia, trying to salvage it before the guests saw or heard anything further untoward. They did suggest that perhaps he should simply agree not to go back, to stave off more incidents like this. When he refused, Vernon boarded up some of the windows, reinforced others with bars, to prevent more magical intruders from encroaching on their home (they didn’t understand about Apparition, Portkeys, or Floo, to know why this was an exercise in futility).
Harry didn’t need rescue, per se, but it was… a weird time, and when Ron invited him to join the Weasley family for the last couple of weeks of summer, Harry gratefully accepted, and his aunt and uncle even more gratefully approved, even though Petunia knew she would worry and worry until she got both her boys back in one piece at the end of term. But she had seen Molly at the train station a few times now, and recognized that even if she was a bit of a freak, being a witch, she loved her children as much as Petunia loved hers; Harry would be safe in her home, and Harry going to the Burrow meant that no more elves or goblins or whatever they were would burst in on the Dursleys.
At the end of the year, Harry still managed to effect Dobby’s release; his aunt always packed his trunk with plenty of warm socks in an array of sizes, including a few pairs from his uncle’s drawer, worried he would catch a chill in that drafty Scottish castle, hoping that if she focused on those worries, she would have nothing bigger to worry about for him. The pair he had layered on for entering the Chamber of Secrets were too grimy for anyone to want back, anyway; he might as well put them to use with a good deed.
(When he came home in June, Petunia sat down and wrote a letter to Molly, opening with a calm and polite greeting and good wishes for the welfare of Molly’s family, continuing with her deepest consternation to hear about what had transpired that year as it affected Molly’s children, and ending with an invitation to start some sort of petition together to demand safer conditions for the children at Hogwarts. Molly wrote back, offering to help her send a Howler, and a correspondence friendship was formed.)
Harry did not blow up an aunt the summer he turned thirteen, but it was a near thing.
Petunia and Vernon did not play favourites, at least not much; Petunia knew all too well the bile taste of being noticeably the less special child, and she was bitterly determined to ensure that neither of her boys was made to feel the same. Vernon’s sister, however, had no such compunctions, and cared quite a bit less about the boy who was no true nephew of hers. Vernon had warned her quite harshly once about speaking ill of the dead in front of their son, and she had made some modicum of effort in that regard, but she still favoured Dudley quite outrageously. Petunia bought Harry an ice cream every time Aunt Marge visited, to reward him for putting up with her. When she saw that Marge was getting a little out of pocket again that visit, and that Harry was getting tenser and tenser, she invited him brightly to come to the other room with her to help her with dessert. She gave him an extra helping in advance, and by the time they got back to the table, the conversation had moved on.
When Harry returned after his third year with a gaunt godfather who was also an escaped convict (that part they only found out later), Petunia and Vernon were skeptical, but they opened their home to him, if only to keep him from looking like a homeless person loitering outside.
Remember: Vernon Dursley was an ambitious man, hosting dinner parties to climb higher into senior management in his drill company. He aimed high. (He did not have a magical bone in his body, but if the Sorting Hat had ever been placed on his head and forced to make a choice, it might well have sent him to Slytherin.) He was competitive. He had no interest in being Harry’s favourite uncle only by attrition, when instead he could win the title as his own.
So, faced with the introduction of Harry’s father’s two best friends, who if things had been different, if Lily and James had lived, would have been his uncles, Vernon welcomed them to the competition, so to speak. He lavished Harry with gifts, as if to buy his place above the other two contenders (little did he know about the depths of Sirius’ Gringotts vault). Sirius bought Harry a Firebolt; Vernon bought him a Playstation, so he wouldn’t have to share with Dudley on his. Lupin taught him life-saving spells; Vernon got him a gym membership for over the summer, and lessons to keep up with his boxing.
Sirius and the Dursleys would always eye each other with suspicion, and Lupin, his clothes shabby but well-kempt and polite would confuse them just as they did him, but they were all united in wanting what was best for Harry. Sirius stayed in the Dursleys’ basement for the first quarter of Harry’s fourth year, before he decided that he’d better not overstay his welcome and, anyway, he wanted to keep a closer eye on Harry in this tournament, especially when his aunt and uncle couldn’t.
When Dementors came after Harry and Dudley, the summer after Harry came back from the tournament and the graveyard and his fourth year (Petunia had held back tears, seeing him return to her in even worse shape than before, had penned Howlers to Dumbledore; long, frantic, venting letters to Molly Weasley; and angry letters to the editor of the Daily Prophet that she never sent because she didn’t know which would be worse, being ignored because that world rejected her, or having her name printed in the paper), Harry chased them off with a Patronus. Vernon commended him, for being a man and protecting his family, and he thought, and thought, staying up late into the night, reminded of Dudley’s eight-year-old scraped knuckles from knocking down someone who had taunted his cousin.
Even without Dudley’s burly frame, Harry had been able to learn how to defend himself a little better, with his boxing lessons; surely, even without Harry’s magic, Dudley could, and should, learn how to defend himself, too. When Harry left to the Order of the Phoenix headquarters, Vernon and Petunia sat Dudley down, and told him that he had a choice, that he had a right to learn to defend himself, even if not all of his cousin’s techniques would work for him.
Dudley joined the Order of the Phoenix. His parents had told him that he had a choice, but he didn’t think of it as one, not really; all his life, he had learned that the right thing to do was to defend his family, and some nutter was going after his cousin. (Some nutter was going after him, and his parents, and when he thought about it, wasn’t this his fight, too, at least as much as Harry’s and his schoolmates’?) He ran missions while attending Smeltings like it was an extracurricular, like it was a part-time job (he told his friends that it was a part-time job, to explain why he was always rushing off like his boss had called him in last minute), his pockets filled with bottled spells and Weasley tricks and also a trusty pocketknife from his dad, that scarred its share of Death Eaters before the war was over.
Vernon and Petunia do not join the Order, but while their boys are away at school, they lend out the empty bedrooms like a temporary safehouse, to any Order members who are clean and unobtrusive and vouched for by Molly Weasley. (When Arthur Weasley is injured, Petunia writes a get well card for him and a short, polite letter of commiseration to Molly, and purchases a small but respectable fruit basket before marching down with her package, ill at ease, to the Diagon Alley post office so that she can send it to his hospital room without needing to wait for Harry to come home so she can borrow his owl or for Molly to write to her so she can send her reply back with the same bird. When Bill is injured, she does the same; that’s simply what is done, for friends. She does not attend Bill and Fleur’s wedding because she never knew Bill, but years later, she will attend Ron’s and Hermione’s, and will dance at Harry’s and Ginny’s. She does attend Fred’s funeral, stiff and out of place in her black hat and dress, because Molly is her friend and she did not know Fred but always regretted not attending Lily’s.)
At Harry’s urging, they vacate their house, but do not go far, with Harry and Dudley both in regular peril; they rent a modest but comfortable flat elsewhere in Surrey until the end of the war - still keeping bedrooms that are nominally for the boys but in reality for whoever in the Order needs it at the moment.
Not a lot changes, really, except - after the war, Harry goes home to his aunt and uncle. Petunia holds him and Dudley so, so tight, grateful to have them back and furious for their every injury; Vernon will attend Harry’s son’s first Quidditch game, because there may be flying broomsticks and witches and wizards but this is his grandson (great-nephew, technically, but who’s counting), and after that, he watches the sport religiously. He is suitably proud of his daughter-in-law the professional athlete (whose job he understands better than Harry’s).
Not a lot changes, because love was already magic, in this story. Love redeems, and love is magic; not a lot changes, except a few more people have a little more magic in their grasp.