Stronger Than They Look

Chapter 3

"And all of a sudden, for the very first time in his life, Harry fully appreciated that Aunt Petunia was his mother's sister." --OotP, Chapter 2

Harry awoke the next morning to find Hedwig perched on the headboard with a letter tied to her leg. "Hey there, Hedwig," he said, sitting up to greet her. This time, the room stayed firmly in place around him. He started toward the desk to get his glasses, but Hedwig flew over and dropped them in his hands. "Wow, thanks," he said, and once he had them back on, he noticed Hermione's neat handwriting on the letter. "Did Hermione's mum give you a bit of salmon again?" he asked, playfully scratching her under the wing. "Is that why you're being so helpful?" He opened the letter.

"Dear Harry,

"Ron sent me a note with Pigwidgeon saying you were sick and it was horribly unfair that they weren't allowed to go and get you yet. He seems afraid that your relatives won't take care of you, but I must say that if your aunt sent a letter to Mrs. Weasley, she must be paying some attention to you. So, when Hedwig showed up at our kitchen window, I knew why she was there.

"If your relatives are mistreating you, and you're still unable to write a letter, instruct Hedwig to fly to the Weasleys and hoot three times at the first person she sees, because before I wrote this I sent her back to Ron with a note telling him that signal means you're in trouble, and he wrote back saying he passed the message on to his parents and they say that works, so if you have Hedwig do that, they or someone else from the Order will come and get you out of there.

"Even if your relatives aren't up to the task, please do your best to take care of yourself. Drink lots of clear liquids and get plenty of rest. Don't try to exert yourself until you're truly up for it.

"Hoping you feel better soon,
Hermione

"P.S. Hedwig is getting terribly spoiled, coming over here. My mum keeps giving her salmon. I'm hoping to persuade her and Dad to get their own owl, and then maybe they'll get over yours."

Harry was both pleased and confused. First, there was the verbal blitzkrieg from Hermione; even in writing, her words did not slow down. His friends knew he was sick and were prepared to come rescue him from the Dursleys if necessary...but his aunt wrote a letter to Mrs. Weasley? Yes, now he remembered, Aunt Petunia had sent a letter to Mrs. Weasley to tell her what was wrong with him, and Mrs. Weasley had sent her reply back...and then Harry had told Aunt Petunia all about life with the Weasleys and Hermione. Something was very off about this; he hadn't just told her; she had asked to hear it. Of course, Aunt Petunia would be persuaded to write a letter and send it with Hedwig if that was what it took to keep the Order from showing up at her front door, but if she'd sat there and listened to Harry tell her all about his life in the Wizarding world, then he must have been hallucinating. Yes, that was it. Some time between Aunt Petunia sending her letter and coming back into his room to learn about his favorite family, his fever must have gotten so bad that he'd started having extremely lifelike hallucinations.

Almost as if on cue, his bedroom door opened and Aunt Petunia stuck her head in. "Harry, are you awake?"

"Yes, Aunt Petunia, I just woke up," he answered.

"Oh, you're sitting up, that's good," she said, smiling as she entered his room with her arms full.

"Yeah, looks like I got better last night," said Harry. He noted that his aunt was carrying the heavy glass bottle of Stomach-Settling Solution; a new sports bottle, presumably full of more juice, and her trusty digital thermometer.

"Let's take your temperature again, to be sure," she suggested.

This time, Harry was allowed to hold the thermometer under his tongue, rather than have it jabbed under his arm again. "Thirty-nine degrees," Aunt Petunia read. "That's an improvement over yesterday, but it's still high, so I think it's best if you stay in bed until it goes back to normal."

Harry nodded. That sounded reasonable enough, though his aunt hadn't been so polite to him in all his life. Just what was she playing at?

"Did you sleep any better last night?"

"Yeah," Harry said in wonder at the improvement. He'd slept for what must have been at least 12 hours straight, with no unpleasant dreams. He felt rested, comfortable and content. "I slept really well." Better than he'd slept since before the Third Task, in fact, but he wasn't about to get into that in front of Aunt Petunia.

"Well, that's good," she said with a lovely smile, so pretty that Harry was convinced his brain had to be playing tricks on him again. "How's your stomach?"

"It's fine, for now. No more puking since you gave me that potion, if that's what you mean."

"I'm very glad to hear it," she nodded. "If you start feeling queasy again, you should take another dose. I'll leave the bottle here, and I trust you're old enough to take the right amount." She placed the potion bottle on his desk next to Hedwig's cage. "Did you get a letter since last night?" she asked, eyeing the letter from Hermione.

"Yeah. Hedwig went to Hermione's house last night, and she wrote to me."

"That was nice of her. Listen, I've got to vacuum, but once that's done, I'll be back in..." she paused, looking like she was trying to remember, "...to check on you."

"Okay," Harry agreed.

As she left the room, Harry decided that, while she was undoubtedly a hallucination and the real Aunt Petunia was somewhere else in the house, waging war on dirt or dancing attendance on Dudley, while studiously ignoring Harry, it was a rather pleasant hallucination and he was not going to struggle with it.

Petunia had vacuuming to do, as she promised. Dudley went to the gym for boxing practice in the mornings, so once he was there, she didn't have to worry about him. After she finished detailing the guest room, and made a note not to neglect it for so long again, she went back into Harry's room.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"Okay, I guess," he answered, shrugging.

She didn't know quite what to say. Molly Weasley hadn't instructed her very well on getting started. She stalled for time by picking up his desk chair and putting it again beside the head of his bed.

"So..." she began, feeling quite awkward as Harry looked up at her expectantly. "How would you like to hear a story about your father?" she offered. She was ready to follow Molly Weasley's advice, but talking about Lily was another matter.

"You knew my dad?"

"I did, briefly. Your mother brought him home for the Christmas holidays of their seventh year at school, so I was around him for three weeks."

"And how was that?" he asked, already grinning.

"Your father was..." she searched for the right word, "interesting. He was a good guest. On the first evening of the holidays, we all sat down to dinner and my father--your grandfather--asked your father what he got up to with your mother."

"He asked my dad that when my mum was sitting right there?"

"Well, yes, he was watching for her reaction, too. So, your father--James--looked like a deer in headlights for a moment, then he told my father this story about how..." she searched for an appropriate substitute. The tale involved Sirius Black, but Petunia worried about how Harry would react if he heard about his godfather who had recently died an innocent, wrongfully accused man, so she thought it better to gloss over that part. "...some other boy he knew tried to steal your mother's underwear and do something ludicrous with it, but she caught him at it. Then she got him in a headlock, and it took your father and two of his best friends something like twenty minutes to pull her off him, and so your father found her quite impressive and was reluctant to trifle with her."

"Wow," muttered Harry.

"Yes, and my father found that quite amusing, and he said, 'you'd best watch out for my girls, James. They're stronger than they look,'" she finished. She neglected to tell Harry about how pleased she'd felt to hear her father acknowledge that he had two daughters and have the same thing to say about both of them for once. "So, your father sort of looked at me with this scared face, and I looked back at him like this," she dropped all expression from her face, narrowed her eyes very slightly, and raised an eyebrow, "and he decided it was best to get back to his dinner."

Harry laughed out loud. Petunia sat still, taking in the sound of it.

She'd never heard him do that before.

"Wait a minute," he said through his laughter. "How did this other boy try to steal my mum's underthings? The staircases to the girls' dormitories are bewitched. Boys can't go up them."

Petunia racked her brain. In seven years of Lily's letters home from Hogwarts, she'd never heard about the girls' staircases being magically programmed to keep out boys. "They didn't tell us about that. I don't know how far he got into it, to tell the truth."

Harry chuckled some more. He looked better that day. The red fever flush had calmed down to a softer pink, his eyes were bright again, and his hair was sticking up in all directions as usual, mocking her with its incessant messiness. That boy's hair had always driven her mad. Combing only made it fluffy, cutting made no difference, even water wouldn't get that mop under control. She reached over and sank her hand into his hair, if only to give herself a feeling of control over it for the moment. He gave little response, but she knew what that slight, sudden inhalation meant.

The reaction stirred something in Petunia's memory. Something very old, and strange, but real nonetheless.

"Your mother enjoyed this, too."

Harry looked up at her, surprised. "She did?"

"Well, yes, she did. I used to braid her hair for her, and she liked when I did that," Petunia explained. "Lily used to sit at my feet, and make funny little noises while I did her hair up." A more emotionally self-aware woman would have noticed that this time, the usual noxious blend of resentment, revulsion and longing that flared up inside her whenever she brought up Lily did not rear its head. She enjoyed the sound of her nephew laughing too much to notice how much pain she wasn't feeling. She stroked his fringe down over his forehead while she remembered the dreamy look that had so often passed over Lily's face when she leaned her head back into Petunia's hands, and how relieved she'd felt to hear Lily make those silly little crooning noises, because when she did, Petunia knew she didn't have to be afraid of her sister's bewildering, at that time unexplained, powers.

"Mum sounds like she was..." Harry began, snapping Petunia out of her reverie. He stared upward, searching for the right description.

"Quite a character," she filled in for him.

"Yeah," he agreed. "Quite a character. I wonder..." he trailed off again.

"You wonder...what?"

"I wonder if I'm like her in any way. People tell me all the time about how much I remind them of my dad, but is there anything I got from my mum?" he asked. He seemed to be wondering aloud rather than asking her for information.

"Other than her sensitive scalp?" she offered, and Harry laughed again. "Lily was--usually--very good about being polite to strangers, and I saw the same thing in you when you were a little boy." This much was true. Harry had always been a wonderfully charming, sunny child in outside situations, so much that shopkeepers, concession booth workers, and other strangers used to compliment her on what a polite little boy she had. She would always respond by pointing out that he wasn't hers, perturbed as she was that Dudley didn't get such compliments, but the fact remained that Harry seemed to have inherited Lily's charm.

"You taught me my manners," he pointed out, with the air of someone who has just remembered something important.

"Well, yes, I suppose I did. But you made such good use of them." She also remembered the time that Harry had ruined their dinner party with the Masons, but something told her Mrs. Weasley would send her a Howler if she brought that up, and now that she thought about it, maybe Harry wasn't quite as guilty as they'd thought. There had been something about that scene that didn't add up; something about it to suggest that Harry had not intended to smash her beautiful pudding all over the kitchen. It did bring something else to her mind, though.

"You also have her temper," she said. By now, she'd taken her hand out of his hair and folded it in her lap.

Harry frowned. "Did Mum shout at people a lot?"

"She didn't just shout at people. She used to fly off the handle a lot when she was young, and she just sort of blew up. It didn't take very much to set her off, but getting her calmed down again wasn't so easy." The words tumbled out in a rush, after decades of holding it in. "And she'd always reach a point where she just wanted to run away, go hide somewhere the rest of us would leave her alone, and she'd do anything it took to escape. That's what her temper was like."

"And I'm like that, too," Harry said to himself, solemnly.

"Well, you don't get angry nearly as often as she did, but when you do, everyone knows it. That's what reminds me of her," she explained, perturbed by the concerned, introspective look on his face.

"I got angry pretty often this year," he mumbled.

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley said it was a difficult year for you," offered Petunia, picking up his hand. They were both silent for a moment; Petunia watching Harry, while he looked toward the floor. "I don't suppose..."

Harry shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it," he muttered.

"Listen, I don't mean to say--I mean, I haven't seen you lose your temper that much," she stammered. "I'm thinking of that incident with your Aunt Marge three years ago."

"That was an accident," said Harry, facing her again. "But she still deserved it."

At that moment, Petunia was torn between being taken aback by her nephew's boldness and reminded of a thought that had plagued her ever since her sister-in-law had been punctured and Obliviated. Once the trauma of the evening had worn off and Marge had gone home with Ripper, Petunia had started thinking Marge's treatment of Harry was wholly unnecessary. Didn't she have better things to do on a rare visit to her baby brother than harass his wife's supposedly delinquent nephew?

"I can see why you'd be angry with her, yes."

"I could let it lie when she was just having a go at me, but once she got started on Mum and Dad, I couldn't help it. I lost control."

"You don't like hearing people speak ill of your parents, do you?"

"It's horrible. I mean, they're dead. They can't even defend themselves. And Aunt Marge didn't know them. Why do I have to call her Aunt Marge, anyway? It's not like she's ever treated me like a part of her family."

"She's a part of our family, and we wanted you to address her as such. But it doesn't matter anymore. Your uncle and I have had a discussion, and we've decided not to invite Marge over here again while you're home with us."

Harry's eyes shone with unrestrained relief and gratitude. He squeezed her hand as he shifted up closer to her. "Really? You mean I won't have to see Marge again?"

"Really. I don't want any more Memory Charms performed in my house any more than you want to hear anyone accuse your parents of crashing their car while drunk."

The smile on his face would have made a clown look dignified. "I love you, Aunt Petunia."

"Oh, stop that," she said, looking away from him but not dropping his hand.

"Only as long as I'll never have to call that woman Aunt Marge again?"

"You won't."

"Good. I only have one aunt."

She turned back toward him to find him still beaming up at her. "Such a sweet boy," she whispered to herself, squeezing his hand back. Then she heard the front door open and close downstairs. "Dudley's home, so I've got to go downstairs and make lunch. But I'll be back later." She laid his hand back on the bed and left the room.

Harry blinked as the door closed behind his aunt. Even with hallucinations, some things never changed. It was sad, really, that she was only a figment of his imagination. The thought of his teenage aunt giving That Look to his father was too funny, and the prospect of never having to see Marjorie Dursley again made his heart swell with joy, except it wasn't real. It didn't really matter, though, that his real aunt hadn't come to that agreement with his uncle. If they ever brought Marge into the house again while he was there, he would simply hop on the Knight Bus into London and write to the nearest Order member (as long as it wasn't Snape) from the Leaky Cauldron. He'd have them all worried sick for a few hours, but that would be far superior to what would happen if he were forced into Marge's company again.

The other stories...were clearly derived from the untapped depths of his own imagination, but that didn't mean Harry couldn't enjoy them. The image of his mother making funny noises while his aunt braided her hair stuck with him. Most other boys wouldn't be interested in hearing such silly, trivial stories about their mothers, but then, most other boys didn't know what it was like to wait so long to hear their guardians talk about their parents. Hearing that frivolous little anecdote was like seeing the sun for the first time. He could have listened to it for hours.