Chapter 5: Oh, come on, they were asking for this

DISCLAIMER: Is Voldemort's ability to alter memories as portrayed in the books so massively game-breaking that he shouldn't have ever needed to start an insurgency? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

CHAPTER 5

Where am I? What is this place?

It's Tom's voice, and it's coming from inside me.

Oh, for fuck's sake.

-oOo-

Harry can tell something's up. "Are you all right, Mal?" he asks, sounding worried as well he might. We were mid hug when I heard Tom speak, and I suspect I flinched or jumped or something.

"Nothing to worry about, Harry," I tell him. "Just, well, when I gobbled up the baddy ghost, it's given me a bit of a tummy ache."

Lord Voldemort is not a tummy ache.

Lord Voldemort can shut his bloody yap, I think back as hard as I can.

Harry looks worried. "Is there ghost medicine? Aunt Petunia has medicine for Dudley when he gets a tummy ache."

"It's different for ghosts, Harry. I can … hang on." Things are … different somehow. I feel heavier. Like I've got actual mass, which makes no sense because here in Harry's dream I'm just an idea. Something is very different in just the short time since I swallowed the shade of Tom Riddle.

My magic! You've stolen my magic you thieving fucking muggle!

Okay, that's funny. The cultured aristocratic drawl and the sinister Dark Lord hiss have both gone, and Tom's accent has reverted back to his London guttersnipe orphan origins. Also, it turns out Dolores Umbridge was right. Muggles can steal wizard magic, they just have to die and devour a dark lord's accidental pseudo-horcrux to do it. And oh my, is Tom salty about this latest development.

When the real me gets hold of you, you cunt, he's going to take you apart.

Shut it, Tom. You lost, you got et, end of story. Pipe down or the next thing I send down there will be kimchi. Which, you ignorant bigoted xenophobic little oik, is spicy fermented cabbage.

I know what kimchi is, I travelled widely in search of powerful magics. Even as far as -

Shut up.

"Harry," I say, "I think I know what happened. Tom, who was a very very bad man, also had magic. So his ghost had magic, and when I ate his ghost I got magic too."

"So you're a magic ghost daddy now?" Harry contrives to imply, by tone and expression, that this may just be the coolest thing ever. I, ah, kind of agree. "Can you turn Uncle Vernon into a toad?"

"I don't know what I can do just yet -"

Release me and I shall teach you -

Shut UP! " - but even if I can turn Uncle Vernon into a toad it wouldn't be right. If you're stronger than someone you shouldn't bully them just because you can."

Harry's face suggests that he's not fully on board with this line of moral reasoning. I can sympathise, but being an arsehole just for the sake of it, or even for revenge, sits ill with me. Being an arsehole in service of some more important need, however, is something I'm willing to take a view on. Case-by-case basis, sort of thing. Nothing else, if I've got Tom Riddle's magic then I might just be able to alter the Dursleys' lives to the point where they stop being so utterly ghastly.

Or, you know, put them under deep and pervasive mind control until I've trained them into better habits generally. Which better not be a suggestion from the antisocially-disordered personality I just ate.

I didn't say anything.

Good work, keep it up.

"Am I still dreaming?"

"Yes you are, Harry. Shall we see if we can have a happy dream?"

Big round eyes. Not saying yes in case he just imagined that. Know the feelin', our kid.

I focus on a memory. Harry and I are walking down a long brick-paved concourse with gift and sweet shops either side.

"Where are we, Mal?"

"Walking through one of my memories, Harry. Have you heard of Alton Towers?" I've picked this particular memory because it's one of precisely two visits where I wasn't here with my kids: showing Harry that kind of family scene would be pure cruelty right now. The other one was marked by a gigantic row and the end of a relationship, also not fit viewing for small children.

Harry starts jumping up and down. "Dudley wants to go here and he hasn't! I got to go first!"

I decide I can't tell him that this is Alton Towers in the future of an alternate universe. Leaving out the risk of the bad guys finding out that this is even possible - very bad, imagine Voldemort with a do-over - trying to explain it to a five year old little boy who's suddenly allowed to ask questions for the first time in his life? We'd be here all night.

Muggle rubbish.

You're just jealous. Pipe down and be digested in silence, Tom.

I take Harry around my memories of the better rides and remember why adults put themselves through the wringer of taking their kids to theme parks. That look on their faces makes the exhaustion worth it. The effect of the joy on my unwilling passenger - just how badly do you have to fuck yourself up that the happiness of a child is actually painful? - is just a nice little side benefit. He grumbles and moans all the way round and I mock him without mercy. I don't know why, but I just don't feel threatened by his presence: I've got his magic and I get no sense that he can get out. If he's even trying: if he is, it's too ineffectual for me to tell he's doing it.

"Mal, who are those ladies who are always with us?" Harry demonstrates his observation skills as we're strapping in for our fourth go on Nemesis.

"Well, remember I said this is my memory? This visit I went with my girlfriend and her best friend. So when I remember the rides I remember the ladies who were on them with me."

"Oh." Girls are a largely theoretical thing in Harry's mind right now, and definitely not a topic he seems to want to explore in any particular detail. I leave it there: it's my mind controlling the environment we're in and there are some capital-M Memories associated with that relationship. If my focus wanders Harry'll get a slice of education he's far, far too young for.

It's only as we're finishing that ride and I'm promising Harry we can do this again - I don't want to find out the hard way that it's a bad idea to keep going all night - that I realise that having magic has changed how my memory works. Everything's much sharper and better-realised than my former completely muggle recollection and I can make it interactive for Harry using nothing but a little imagination and focus.

Which, from the point of view of keeping Harry entertained during the long winter evenings, is great, but it does suggest that magical minds and memories are qualitatively different. Hence things like the Pensieve, I suppose. I let the speculation percolate away in the back of my mind while I'm talking Harry down to quiet, restful, un-dreaming sleep, which turns out to involve a lot of promising to still be here in the morning.

I decide I might just interrogate my guest while Harry's getting some rest, and without really knowing how I'm doing it, come out from his mind and dreams and back into the cupboard under the stairs.

-oOo-

Back in external reality Harry is sleeping peacefully. On the other hand, he's sleeping in a mess of his own piss, and blood and ichor that has leaked all over his face from the famous Scar. Petunia's going to have an absolute fit if I let her. Besides that, things have very much changed, not least of the changes being that I'm now visible to myself. I'm a sort of semi-solid glowy thing with arms and legs and hands and feet that I can see and feel, and Harry has a bit of a glow about him too. Must be the magic, it's not like there's any other candidate.

My magic, you thief. Mine.

Nope. My magic, I nicked it fair and square.

There was nothing fair about what you did. In a fair duel I would have crushed you.

Hardly an incentive for me to fight fair, now is it?

Seriously, Tom needs to stop feeding me straight lines that I can answer with movie quotes. Actually, that's interesting. He's done it several times now, and he's generally piped up when what he has to say would be apropos or amusing, mostly at his expense. Now, before I died, one of my sidelines was writing: good enough to get published in very niche markets, and Tom's interjections are a bit like having a well developed character suggest his own dialogue.

There's actually some real neurological science behind the phenomenon, too. The theory goes that our social functioning, empathy and so forth evolved as a way of modelling other peoples' minds to predict how they might react, and so we carry a copy of everyone we meet in our heads, the level of detail in the copy determined by how well we know them. Fiction writers just extend that to people they made up and when the model gets detailed enough you get the thing a lot of writers report of the characters 'taking over'.

So, if I ate Tom, then what I have now is a perfectly true-to-life model of Tom as he was after getting blown up by Lily, rent asunder by his own Dark Arts tomfoolery with horcruxes, and carried around on Harry's forehead for nearly four years.

Don't ask me for my opinion, apparently I'm just your mental marionette.

Yeah, fuck you Tom. You're a liar, a thief, and a murderer so your opinion carries no weight even if you weren't just a neurological epiphenomenon.

I've no idea what I'm about with all this - devouring minds and possibly souls wasn't taught at any school I went to - but there's a deep-seated human instinct, when faced with something one doesn't understand, to start meddling. Meddling with things we don't understand is, indeed, how we progress as a species. Meddling until you do understand is fundamental. Once you start writing it down, of course, it becomes your actual science. I turn my attention inward, looking for Tom, with a vague aim of 'begin at the beginning'

Of an instant I'm in a cramped little bedroom. Spartan would be the most generous thing I could say about it: a single bed, a small wardrobe, and nothing else. Everything is clean but shabby and well-worn. I know this scene. A young boy and a middle-aged man in a plum velvet suit are sitting on the bed. Neither individual looks anything like the movie actors, another point for this being the books' continuity.

I look closer. Nice suit, Albus, just not for this decade. It'd be fine for about 1912 or 1968, but in 1937 he looks like a music-hall caricature of a gay man. Or 'flaming great poof' in the parlance of the time, no wonder the matron of the orphanage needed a stiff drink and mind control magic to cope with leaving him alone with even her worst little boy: the popular belief at the time was that all gay men were pederasts.

Aaannd the wardrobe is on fire, way to teach the creepy kid that might makes right, Albus. It plays out how I remember: apparently what Dumbledore shows Harry in the future is the genuine article. He was either going for warts-and-all or honestly didn't think that what he was doing was wrong. Of course, he was raised in the 19th century by a father who went to prison for torturing children to death, so it could well be that this is reasonable discipline by his lights. His ideas must have improved in later life, though: he's the headmaster who stopped corporal punishment at Hogwarts.

Doing my best not to think about how Tom would react - which seems to keep him quiet - I consider what I want to learn about magic while I'm rummaging through Tom's memories. I mean, I've got seven years of Dumbledore himself teaching Transfiguration in here, and whatever else anyone says about him, he's supposed to have been a pretty good teacher.

That said, this is the word of a population that put up with a dead guy teaching history out of a textbook written by the wizarding equivalent of Hitler's great-aunt, so maybe I'm setting myself up for disappointment. Not that the muggle world doesn't have some complete deadlegs standing at the front of classrooms. Looking at you, Mrs. Chester, who left an entire O-Level Maths class to their own self-taught devices. Not that I'm bitter: I got a C at A Level entirely on my own lack of merits.

Anyway: prioritise. I need to be able to guide Harry through the minefield of interacting with the Dursleys, and the obvious choice there is legilimency. Know what they're thinking, guide Harry accordingly. And, as far as I understand it, mind control and memory modification are related disciplines, and Tom was acknowledged master of the lot. Being currently a creature of pure mind it'll be playing to the only strength I've actually got, too.

I got Tom's Hogwarts invitation just now because it was what I understood as the beginning for Tom - before that it's Tragic Backstory from my perspective as a reader - so I decide I want memories of learning and practising Legilimency.

* DISCONTINUITY *

I have no idea how long that took and apparently assimilating memories in bulk is a thing you can't remember doing - I've drifted out of the cupboard and it's a quarter past six. Petunia will be up soon if she doesn't lie in of a weekend. I scoot back in to check on Harry. He's smiling in his sleep and I can tell he's dreaming. I can't pick out any detail, I'd have to open his eyelids and look in to get that and how the fuck do I know that? Tom?

You've stolen my legilimency, you thieving muggle bastard.

Well, now isn't that something? I'm having a bit of an "I know Kung Fu" moment here and my newly-acquired mental model of Tom is complaining about the loss. If I take memories, I take them into myself and out of whatever he is now. That digestion crack I made earlier was actually on the money. I decide I don't care how he feels about this: if you don't want bits of your mind eaten you shouldn't leave them lying about in little boys' facial injuries while murdering their parents.

The downside is that I can remember all the stuff Tom did with these skills while he was honing them and really, if I was without scruples about Tom suffering and dying before, I now want him the fuck off my planet pronto prontissimo. Some people just need killing. I again have cause to be thankful my stomach is three and a half decades away on a mortuary slab somewhere.

Fortunately, it's a not a lot relative to who I am as a person - maybe a couple of years dedicated to learning and practising, measured against fifty years of me-as-a-whole. I know that I'm not remembering my own actions here because I also remember not having these memories and I remember a lot more of being me who straight up couldn't do this stuff even if I wanted to. On the whole I think I'm going to take it very carefully from here on in when it comes to picking out bits of Tom to digest. I didn't get all that therapy because I was a well adjusted individual after all, and splicing in too much Magic Serial Killer is unlikely to end well. Or, at least, the possible failure modes are bad enough that only the very smallest risks are acceptable. The downside is I'm not suddenly possessed of all Voldemort's skills. The upside, of course, is that I'm not suddenly possessed by an echo of Voldemort's personality.

It's quite enough that I've become able to read minds, send visions, delete or alter memories and HOLY SHIT POSSESS PEOPLE. This isn't something Voldemort could do because he delved deep into forbidden lore, it's a skill he bloody well set out to learn; apparently it's right at the top of the legilimency learning curve. It's how he got away with murdering his muggle family: he didn't do the deed himself and alter his uncle's memory, he possessed his uncle and altered the man's memory to remove the evidence of possession. Any forensic evidence would have shown the body of Morfin Gaunt present at the scene and casting the fatal spells.

Looking over his early work, he actually did very little of the memory modification Dumbledore accused him of to Harry. Not out of any scruple - what few scruples he had he took pains to divest himself of. Rather because it's difficult to get right and apparently kind of obvious to a legilimens. Not that 'forensic legilimens' is a post in anyone's law enforcement organisation despite the apparent crying need. The other problem is that if you get it wrong you leave your victim with some mix of psychosis and catatonia and even an expert like Tom is far more likely to get it wrong than right. Far easier to just possess your man, lay down real memories of eg. killing a bunch of muggles or putting poison in mistress's tea, and then edit out your presence afterward. The memories still look tampered with, but not actually fake.

That aside, the skill-set I've got now is quite enough to be going on with, and I'm going to get a live exercise very soon. Petunia is going to come down to a little boy who's had a night-time accident and the chance that she's going to deal with it as a responsible caregiver would is so small as to not be worth considering. I'm not going to give her a choice. And, just to add insult to injury, all the while I'm piloting her underfed carcass through the process of getting Harry cleaned up and fed breakfast, I'm going to be lecturing her on all her faults and failings as a wife and mother in particular and as a human being in general.

I'm about to compose myself in patience to wait for Petunia to get up when I realise that I'm selling Harry short, here. Poor kid needs a bath, proper clothes found, and a breakfast. And Dudley needs a short, sharp shock of proper parenting. Soonest begun, soonest done, after all. And it's not like beauty sleep is doing Petunia a bit of good. (I'm being unkind: a lot of what makes Petunia unattractive is her character warping her face and posture. Hate, anger, bitterness: these all can and do put ugly faces on otherwise good-looking people, a fact propaganda photographers have been milking for decades. Lily will always be the prettier Evans sister, but Petunia is far from actually ugly. On the outside, at least.)

POP.

Ah. It seems that now I've got magic I can disapparate. I'm now in the Dursley's bedroom, treated to the horrible grunting snores of the fat fuck and the sight of Petunia rolled right to the edge of the marital bed. Frame it as an oil painting and call it 'portrait of an unhappy marriage'.

I flow like smoke in through her mouth and nose. Oh dear. She's having a naughty dream. I'm pretty sure Tom Selleck can do better, to be brutally frank. I leave her to her pedestrian fantasies of Magnum, PI, and throw off the covers to get out of bed.

The immediate sense of straight-up wrongness stops me in my tracks as soon as I've got to my borrowed feet. Next time I offer my sympathies to someone with gender dysphoria it's going to mean something. Nothing's quite where I expect it to be, and some things aren't there at all. It's like driving a rental car with the seat adjusted wrong. I thank my lucky stars I'm possessing Petunia at the right time of the month; there are things Man Was Not Meant To Know. While I'm able to cope with it after a minute or so of mental adjustment, it's pretty clear that I'm not going to be able to do this long term. Not without storing up a pretty major wig-out for some unspecified future date. Even if I could, if Petunia starts acting like a complete and utter bloke people are going to notice. I'm not that good an actor and in as much as I have a feminine side she's definitely on the Ladies' Rugby end of the great spectrum of femininity. (A kind of woman I have all the time in the world for, and not just because most of them could take me in a bar fight.)

A quick dig in Petunia's memories of last night shows me where she's laid out today's outfit and oh dear me, really? I don't care to take the time to pick something else, so it seems I'm wearing a mauve crimplene trouser-suit today. The eighties: the Decade That Taste Forgot. Harry better appreciate the sacrifice, is all I'm saying. Bright side: I'm going to be cleaning up piss and blood in this outfit, I can justify taking it out in the back garden and burning it afterwards. I grab the clothes and head for the bathroom to wash and brush up for the day: Petunia smeared some concoction from Avon on her face last night and the need to wash it off is getting overwhelming. And the less said about the curlers in the hair the better. How the hell do women sleep with those things in?

It's probably good that Petunia's asleep and still dreaming, she'd probably chuck a fit at the way I apply my own standards of ready-for-the-day. The curlers come out and I scrape back a ponytail that's only about half a notch short of a full-on Croydon Facelift, then a quick standing wash at the sink before I get dressed. She's a make-up every day kind of woman, but the chances of me getting that right are zero, so I skip it. She's probably going to get aerated over the fact that I've seen her naked, too. Tough shit, Petunia, I wouldn't be doing this if I could trust you not to abuse your children.

I'm alive to the ethical problem, obviously, but in a choice between the bodily autonomy of one mean-spirited shrew and the welfare of the two children she's abusing? Not difficult. And if there was a universal rule that said 'Thou Shalt Protect Children From Abuse Regardless Of The Personal Discomfort Of Their Abusers' I'd be completely OK with it. There. Categorical Imperative satisfied, unquiet shade of Immanuel Kant told to bugger off because you've to cut your ethical coat to suit your situational cloth. I turn the taps on to have a bath ready for Harry. He's going to need it.

Really going to need it. A stop in the kitchen to grab a bin-bag from under the sink (no need to plunder Petunia's memories, the bin bags are always under the sink) and I open the cupboard door to a truly impressive stink. He hasn't just wet the bed and bled all over it, somewhere in the course of that nightmare and attempted possession he went for the Triple Threat. The piss and shit aren't a problem - well, beyond the obvious - but I mutter a silent thanks to whoever's watching over him that he didn't choke on that vomit. Accidental magic, maybe?

Whatever. "Harry? Wake up, our kid. You've had an accident and we need to get you cleaned up."

The sound of Petunia's voice startles him awake like a belt from a truck battery. That look of fear in his eyes has me damning the Dursleys to the Special Hell all over again.

"Harry, it's Mal." I try and project as powerful an air of me-ness as I can. "I'm doing ghost magic to use Petunia like a puppet." Not sure how else to explain possession to a five-year-old who doesn't properly know about magic yet.

"Mal?" Harry looks me in Petunia's eyes and they suddenly glow. A deep, rich, sunlight-in-a-woodland-glade green. You, my lad, are going to grow up an absolute moral hazard to girls if we get you contacts instead of NHS spectacles.

A look of worry comes over his face. "I don't want to hurt girls!"

"You won't, Harry, it's a joke you're not old enough to understand. You can tell it's me in here, can't you?"

Harry nods. Accidental magic legilimency, and may this run of good luck continue. Hopefully it's not from Tom, or if it is he's only got the talent and nothing else.

He makes to sit up and suddenly stops, wide eyed. "Oh, no!"

"I know, Harry. We're going to get you cleaned up - no, don't put your hand in it. Come here and I'll carry you up to the bath so we don't get any of it on the carpet."

"But I'm all over sick and wee and, and…" he stutters to a halt in shame and worry and utter mortification.

"I know. But I've borrowed Petunia so I can do Daddy stuff in the real world too, and that means not minding that you need a good scrub. So, c'mere, Harry." I hold out my arms.

"I'm sorry," he says as I pick him up with a grunt of effort. Fuck's sake, Petunia, an exercise class or two wouldn't have fucking killed you. It's the eighties, aerobics is totally a thing.

"Don't you worry, Harry," I tell him as I get him arranged so nothing falls out of his pyjama pants, a sort of bridal-carry arrangement. The bagginess is working in his favour right now, it's keeping the mess off his poor skin. "I've been a Daddy three times over, this is far from the worst I've had to clean up."

"Didn't their Mummy do that?" Seems Harry hasn't ever seen Vernon do a hand's turn around the house. Despite, you know, fucking living here, the useless ringpiece.

"Sometimes. But proper daddies do their share so their children know that daddy cares."

We get to the bathroom and I kick the bath-mat out of the way. What's about to happen needs to happen on the lino for obvious reasons. Fortunately Harry's a few years off developing body modesty, so I get him undressed and in a nice hot bath without any fuss. "Have a splash about while I sort this out, Harry. Or start washing yourself, if you know how. The soap and flannel are right there. Be careful with your forehead, that cut has opened up a bit."

Memo to self: get Vernon on to having a shower fitted. A soak in the bath is all very well, just the ticket sometimes, but showers are more convenient and economical and there's going to be two teenage boys in this house over the summer before too long. Why this hasn't already been done I have no idea: getting an electric shower fitted was a massive fad in the seventies as I recall.

Getting the poo scraped down the loo and the pyjamas bagged up - they're probably a dead loss, and Harry's due a shopping trip - is the work of a moment. Repairing Petunia's manicure might represent more of a challenge, but it's not my problem. Her memories tell me there's a box of Dudley's old clothes in the box-room - the one Dudley thinks of as his second bedroom - and I should be able to find something for Harry to wear in there. I go get the box and come back to find Harry sorting himself out like a little trooper. Take that, Petunia, your attempts to beat him down taught him self-reliance.

I make sure he's got the soap and flannel everywhere, get some gauze out of the medicine cabinet to clean around where his scar has opened up, help him with shampoo and rinsing because the last thing he wants is soap in an open cut, which I know from personal experience fucking wrecks - and lift him out to towel off. "Vernon and Dudley are sleeping in because it's Saturday, so we can go make breakfast and eat it in front of the telly."

"Won't Uncle shout?" Harry frets as I rummage through the old-clothes box.

I give him my best bring-it-on grin. "I'll shout back worse. He's expecting Petunia, but it's really Mal, and I've got the magic from gobbling up that bad ghost, so I can make him sit down and shut up and be told what's what."

"Brilliant!" Harry's a little savage at heart, as all small children are. He'll have to be taught better, of course, but for now I haven't the heart to stop him revelling in it a bit. Thoughts of magic revenge keep him cooperative while I'm getting him dressed - Dudley's stuff from last year is a bit baggy, but serviceable, and there's a pair of buckle-up shoes just like ones I had at Harry's age that fit him quite well. Not much growing room in them, so we're going to have to find the nearest branch of Clarks before school starts.

I also take a comb to the trademark Harry Potter hair, while it's still damp from being washed and towel-dried. Turns out that it behaves itself if you treat it kindly. It could be accidental magic again, of course, responding to the care and attention with contented compliance. I take a moment with scissors and sticking-plaster to butterfly the opened scar closed and then tape a gauze pad across it in case it seeps. Harry doesn't complain even though it pretty obviously stings. That sense of malignity the scar had the other night? Gone entirely. Fuckin' score!

"Are you going to be Aunt Petunia forever, Mal?" Harry has clearly been thinking about this while I was putting the box of clothes away and leading him down to the kitchen. He asks the question in a tone of fascinated horror, as well he might.

"No, I don't think so. I'm not very good at pretending to be a girl, so once we've got everyone fed and things cleaned up I'll go be Uncle Vernon for a bit. That means we can use the car and get stuff done around here. I'll be making sure Aunt Petunia behaves, and hopefully they'll both learn to be nicer people."

Harry adopts an expression of scepticism about this last thing.

"Uncle is also going to find that he and Dudley are on a diet from now until they look like human beings. That and exercising. You need feeding up a bit, and then we'll get you exercising too. Growing up big and strong is important." Turns out if you encourage little boys enough they actually do that. The shorter of my sons was six foot four and both of them were built like brick shithouses, very handy when I needed heavy objects lifted and moved. I used to tell them it was why I paid all those gym fees if they complained about getting press-ganged into moving furniture.

I take the cot mattress out of the cupboard under the stairs and carefully move it and the bag of soiled pyjamas out into the back garden to be dealt with later, and hit the whole interior of the cupboard with spray cleaner so it'll keep until after breakfast. Harry waits while I pop upstairs for a change of clothes - Vernon and Dudley still dead to the world at half past eight, the slugs, and I turn the alarm off to keep them that way - and change in the bathroom after draining the bath, putting things back tidy and scrubbing my hands as near surgical standards as I can get. I haven't let my face show anything in Harry's presence, but doing a grotty job because you care doesn't actually make the job any less grotty.

"Am I not to sleep in the cupboard any more?" Harry asks when I get back down. I lift him up to sit on the kitchen sink draining board so he can watch me cooking.

"No, Harry, you're not. Tonight you're in the guest bedroom, and then we'll sort you out with your own room. Or we'll get bunkbeds so you and Dudley have a bedroom and a playroom to share. We'll only do that if Dudley learns to be a good boy, though." I'm taking a bit of a flying leap with this one: Dudley needs to learn to be part of a family rather than a yawning pit of greed, and Harry wants to be part of a family and having shared space with someone who he ought to have seen as a brother would do that. My boys lived that way up until the divorce when the big house had to go the way of all things and were thick as thieves as a result.

The look of hope on Harry's face tells me I got it right. It's a pity that Dudley's such a little aflliction for the time being, but one step at a time and all that. "Remember," I say, "we've got to teach Dudley to be as good a boy as you, so I want you to set a good example. Savvy?"

"Savvy!" Harry nods like he's going to nod his head clean off.

"Now, pay attention to what I'm doing while I'm cooking. This is an important skill for young gentlemen to learn. You'll have your own place some day so you'll need to know how to cook for yourself. And when you're old enough to be interested in girls, cooking for them is a great way to get them interested in you. Now: scrambled eggs. The trick with these is cooking them slooooooowly, which is why we get them started first ..."

It takes us half an hour to get four plates of breakfast - scrambled eggs and bacon on toast, sensible portions - and two of them in the oven to keep warm. I have to rummage in Petunia's memories to find out how to work the gas oven: I hadn't seen one in decades by the time I died. It seems to be sitting down in front of Saturday Superstore to eat off our knees that's the final straw for Petunia, who I've been vaguely aware has been awake since halfway through making breakfast but has been too confused to make her presence felt up to now.

NOT ON MY UPHOLSTERY!

Oh shut up, you dreadful muggle fishwife. You're already filthy, what's more dirt?

I can't help but smile - Harry's on the hearthrug, enraptured with the first actual meal of his own he can remember and seeing the pictures that go with the noise of the telly for the first time ever - and I've got the Tom And Petunia show to make me laugh.

Keep it down to a dull roar, you two. Petunia, you're currently possessed by the spirit of a decent human being. This is temporary, I'll be moving over to Vernon when he gets up, which will save us all having to listen to him complaining about the size of his breakfast. Don't bother protesting, there's nothing you can do about it, and it's for your own good anyway.

Oh, sophistry! And you call me the villain of the piece…

Nothing sophistical about it at all, Tom. Everyone's happier when they're living their best lives, and that's what I'm going to give them, whether they like it or not.

Ah! 'For the Greater Good!' Isn't that carved over the gate of Nurmengard?

I believe so. Difference is, Gellert and Albus believed they were superior because they had magic. At the risk of damning myself with faint praise, I know I'm superior to Mr. and Mrs. Dursley regardless of magic. They are not my inferiors by lack of magic, but because they are completely irrepressibly ghastly and awful in every possible way. You could give them all the magic of Merlin and they'd still be terrible people. Just like you, Tom.

They and I are NOTHING ALIKE!

He seems to have missed the reference to Dumbledore's shady past. He's either too angry to care or already knows. I'll find out when I eat the relevant memories. You forget I know you as well as you know yourself, Tom. Humdrum evil, operatic evil, it's all still evil and putting a wand in your hand made you no better a man. It just opened you to more temptations. You could fling a half-brick over the wall of any Category B Prison in the land and it'd bounce off three better people than any of the three of you before it hit the ground.

I firmly quash Tom - it's ultimately my mind that's doing the Tom thinking, and it doesn't do to let that sort of thing get out of hand.

Petunia, alas, I have no such control over.

WHO THE HELL ARE YOU? LET ME GO AT ONCE!

I'm a spirit. An instrument of divine agency. And, no. You gave up your chance to have a say when you started mistreating your children.

I ONLY HAVE ONE CHILD! It's all I can do not to facepalm. If missing the important point was an Olympic sport she'd be Britain's shining hope of a gold medal.

I don't know if it's her emotional state or the fact that I'm right next to the source that makes her so loud, but the tone is actually getting on my wick far more than the content. Which is to say I already knew she was a nasty cow, but I really don't need the yelling.

Lily sends her regards.

What?

Oh, so you can communicate in less than a shriek. Good to know. Now, in mortal life I was a gentleman, a professional, and a father to three children. And, for all my mistakes, I was a better parent on my worst day than you've ever even tried to be, and while I was on the other side I gave Lily my word that I'd sort things out around here. This is, strictly speaking, a lie, but it's easier than telling the whole damn story and explaining about the relationship between spirits, magic, time and causality, which on the evidence is far from absolute, not that I understand all that much anyway. So things are going to improve for those two little boys - Dudley won't like it at first, but he's going to grow up a criminal at the rate you're going - and you're going to shut up and take it.

But Vernon -

Vernon doesn't get a say either. Not least because I'm moving over to him when he gets up, like I told you. He'll be doing better at his job, better around the house, better as a father, and he'll be losing weight and taking regular exercise. It'll actually look like you have a decent husband for the first time in years.

The disappointment and resentment she harbours for the way Vernon turned out is a palpable thing, so telling her this is by way of carrot. An apparently magical solution to the problem that doesn't involve putting rat poison in his morning tea - she's considered it, because for some reason she considers murder less shameful than divorce - isn't actually that hard a sell.

You don't expect me to -

NO! The half-formed question came with an image of the last time Vernon talked her into a bout of the ol' conjugals. The only use of which is telling me his cardiovascular health is in really shit order: if Petunia had actually wanted it she'd have been a very disappointed woman. While I'm probably better at that too, fucking the wife of the man I'm possessing is a line I don't propose to cross. The Imp of the Perverse bids me add: You can make your own decision about the improved model Vernon that'll be left behind when I'm done with him.

I sense her about to protest the size of the breakfast I'm putting down her neck, and quell her with a dump of facts and figures about human health and nutrition, the role of exercise in healthy weight management, and a pithy observation or two regarding the state of her health as observed from the inside. I can tell that my time with this family is going to involve me administering a considerable helping of Mens Sana in Thingummy Doodah.

It's while we're finishing washing up the breakfast things - Harry stands on a chair to watch and learn, and also handle the important responsibility of putting plates in the drying rack - that I hear movement upstairs.

"The drying up can wait, Harry," I tell him, "When your Uncle Vernon comes down I'm going to move from Petunia in to him, so don't be scared when you see that happen. I'll probably be Uncle Vernon most of the time, because I'm better at being a man, and being him will let me use the car."

Harry takes the weirdness in stride. It's not like he knows any different, he's spent most of his time in that bloody cupboard after all. I feel a twinge of the shame that Petunia feels. Oh, so you have a conscience after all.

Vernon comes down in his pyjamas and dressing gown - fair play, it is the weekend - and tries to assert himself. "Petunia, why - urk!"

I notice that this business of hopping from one to the other is a lot easier than Tom found it, because he had the inconvenience of having to manage his own body as well as someone else's. I just sort of … zip across. The magic makes me faster in spirit form along with everything else.

Looking back at Petunia, she seems a bit staggered at suddenly having to pilot her own body again. She's taken no harm: it's only willing possessions that corrupt the host. "Vernon?" she asks, her voice quavering. Only natural she's afraid, of course.

"Told you I'd be taking over Vernon," I tell her in as soothing a tone as I can muster. "Put the kettle on, lass, I'll get my own breakfast out. Oh, and no sugar, I'm sweet enough already and Vernon can't afford the calories. Harry, you go and watch telly for a bit while I talk to your Aunt Petunia." Harry scampers with a massive grin on his face. When I try and move I discover I'm short of breath, and apparently some tosser has turned up the gravity in here. "How does he live like this?" I ask of the world in general.

Petunia's nose wrinkles. "I did tell him he needed to lose weight, but he insisted that he had years yet to worry about that."

I check Vernon's memories. I don't know if he knew he was deluding himself, but he seems to have had hold of the idea that the school and university boxing and rugger meant he was fit for life, despite not having practised either in nearly ten years. From the looks of his family - a miserable shower, of whom Marge is the worst - he's got the genes for being a great big beefy brute of a man, and was when he and Petunia met. He just doesn't have the willpower to maintain it. "I'll get in to see the GP during the week for a dietitian referral, this is going to take an expert to fix."

Just bending down to get the breakfast I made out of the oven is a serious undertaking. It's dried out a bit and the eggs have gone rubbery, but it'll do for blood sugar until dinnertime. I don't hear any complaint from Vernon about the thought of skipping meals. Tom's experience is that most hosts experience the whole thing as a dreamlike state: it takes a strong willed host to make himself heard by the possessor. Vernon doesn't have the will to refuse second helpings, so I don't anticipate any trouble from him.

When Petunia sets down a mug of tea - a quick skim over her thoughts reassures me there's no rat poison in it - and sits down at the kitchen table with me, it piques my curiosity. "You're taking this rather better than I expected, Mrs. Dursley?"

"Did… did you really speak to Lily? On the other side?" There are actual tears in her eyes. Unshed, starting to brim. I may have only walked a few yards in her shoes, and a few paces in Vernon's, but I'm getting some understanding. They're dim, small-minded people who are afraid of how big the world really is and they've been touched by the fringes of one of the scariest parts of it. This doesn't excuse anything they did to Harry, but it does explain the motive behind their reprehensible choices. And tells me there actually is capacity for improvement in Petunia at least. Vernon, for the moment, abides the question on that score. It may help a bit that I've got to them six years before they become the arseholes depicted in the books, of course.

I'm going to have to feed her a bit of a line over this, because the truth involves either literal gods or the bizarre hallucinations of a dying brain, I'm still not fully decided which. "Only briefly, Petunia. Only briefly. There aren't really words for how it is in the beyond, so the only part that makes sense in mortal terms is when I passed through the moment of her death on the way to this precise moment here and now. If it helps, she stood firm to the last against the bastard that murdered her, and I gave her my word in …" I pause to pick up my tea. That moment is still vivid in my thoughts and dropping to bits over it won't help. A deep breath, some throat clearing and a sip of my brew covers the near thing I just had. "In honour of her courage. And her husband's courage: the swine only got to Lily over his dead body. I've already told Harry that his parents died as heroes, and you won't be contradicting that. Say you don't know the story and send him to me if you feel you can't talk to him about it."

She nods. Dumbstruck for the moment, tears falling. Why didn't Dumbledore tell her any of this? I've seen her memories of the letter he left with Harry - take a moment to cross-check them against Vernon's - and it was terse to the point of insult on the subject of her sister's death. It also harped on the theme of hiding Harry, which is how the cupboard-under-the-stairs and not-allowed-out-of-the-house bullshit started. That 'Lily sends her regards' was an act of spite on my part, in all honesty. That it seems to be a spur to Petunia's conscience makes me feel a lot better about it, and grateful for the good luck.

She collects herself over the course of her cup of tea. "I'd better get Dudley up and fed. And fix my face and hair, you made a complete mess."

I shrug. "I lived my whole mortal life as a man, so I never needed to learn the how of all that stuff. Also, I was in a hurry. Harry suffered an attack last night, which caused his poor little body to lose control and caring for him took priority. We're lucky he didn't inhale any of that vomit and choke. He's had a bath, but the cupboard will need deep cleaning before we can go back to using it for storage."

"Attack?" Is that genuine concern on your face, Petunia?

"Yes. I've been here in spirit form for a while, you see, watching over Harry and whispering comforting things to him in his despair." I pause a moment to relish the look of horrified guilt on Petunia's face as she realises I've seen her dealings with him. And well you might feel guilty, you utter, utter, disgrace of a human being. "He had a bad nightmare last night, along with some kind of seizure. He doesn't consciously remember the night his parents died, but he was right there in the room where Lily was killed so it comes to him in dreams. I went into his dream to try and help, comforting words if nothing else, and a malign spirit took the chance to follow me in. That scar? It had an evil spirit in it. Your sister, who seems by all accounts to have been a very useful young witch, laid protections on Harry that stopped it even trying to do him any harm until last night."

"The- H- Harry's all right, isn't he? There's no more danger?"

I grin. It turns out Vernon's face isn't suited to the slasher-smile I want for this, too many chins and a lot more moustache than I'm used to, but I do what I can with it. "The nasty little bleeder was expecting a frightened child. What he got was me. He won't be any trouble any more."

"You … killed it?"

"And ate him. Which sounds barbaric, but it's how these things go." Extrapolating from a sample size of one, here, but I'm working with what I've got. "His power is now part of mine, so I'm a more effective protector for Harry, and by extension you and Vernon and Dudley. Now, that's not to say the threat is entirely past. The spirit was a fragment of the criminal wizard who killed Lily, and he and his followers are still out here. Keeping quiet about Harry's heritage like young Mr. Dumbledore asked you to will help, of course, although we can let Harry in on the secret now, as soon as the time seems right. Despite everything he's a sensible little boy, but refer any questions to me, please. I've got more experience in managing information."

"What do I call you? Can Vernon hear me in there?"

"Vernon feels like he's dreaming all this. He's not as strong willed as you, so he won't wake up like you did. And while my name is Malcolm, Mal to my friends, don't get used to calling me that. I'm the ace in the hole when it comes to protecting Harry, giving my presence away would defeat the purpose." I finish up my tea, stand, and lean as far forward over the table as Vernon's gut lets me. "If you'd treated Harry decently, either of you, you'd never even have known I was here."

"What do we do now?"

I've been thinking this over all morning, and don't have any definite conclusions yet. "For now, one day at a time. I'll take the time to come up with a long term plan while we get this household ship-shape and let you know accordingly when I've decided. For today, you've got three tasks. First, deep clean the cupboard, the soiled bedding and pyjamas are out on the patio and probably a write-off. Harry's moving in to the guest room tonight, Marge won't be visiting again until Christmas. He'll need a room of his own, so the second task is sorting out all the stuff we've got stacked in the smallest bedroom. Once it's cleared out we can furnish it for Harry. The third task is the most important, and it'll probably stop you making much progress on the other two. Dudley needs to improve, a lot. The bottom step is now the naughty step, and every time he tries to bully you, dump him on it and tell him he's not leaving it until he's sat still for five minutes. Don't let him anger you, be firm and calm. He'll probably have a complete meltdown, just let it blow itself out and keep your cool the while. I'll be working on him myself starting tomorrow, but Harry and I will be out most of the day shopping today. Clothes mostly, and some books so I can get him started reading before school starts. And remedial work for Dudley, I won't be accepting a school report like the last one. It might have done for Vernon, but I hew to higher standards than that."

"You're spending our money?" There's a sharp note to Petunia's voice over that.

"Come Monday, I'll be going out to earn it, too. And I rather suspect I'm better at finances than Vernon; with his salary and this mortgage, you shouldn't be even mildly struggling. As for spending it, the childrens' needs come first, including making up for the neglect you visited on Harry. Which neglect, Petunia, is why you aren't permitted to complain about me fixing the problem. You know I could make this so much worse for you."

-oOo-

AUTHOR NOTES

The bit about memory modification in the disclaimer? I stand by that. We are the sum of our experiences, after all, and an immortal wizard who can literally change who people are is, while not unstoppable or all-powerful, deeply bloody dangerous. The only fanfic I know that shows someone taking the piss on the scale that you can with this particular magic is Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, by LessWrong. In among all the things I dislike about that fic - mostly matters of personal taste - that was a truly brilliant turn of plot that I won't spoil. I've retconned that ability out of Voldemort's hands for this fic because, bluntly, if I left the main villain with a nuclear weapon I'd be sore tempted to have him use it.

Mens Sana in Thingummy Doodah: the original latin proverb is 'Mens sana in corpore sano' - a healthy mind in a healthy body - but the version here is the title of a Victoria Wood comedy series from the 80s (1989, I just looked it up) which starred, among others, Julie Walters. Molly Weasley to most of you. I daren't go back and watch it again - comedy ages dreadfully - but I remember it as hilarious.

Finally, I've never been able to find a source for it - it's certainly not in the books - but a number of fan resources have it that Petunia arranged the Potters' burial at Godric's Hollow. Which I find implausible to start with - you'd need a team of obliviators to cover everything up to the point where death certificates could be issued (a legal requirement to bury anyone) and stop the coroner taking an interest, which immediately blows the secrecy of Harry's placement from the wizarding world and involves a whole raft of agencies on the muggle side with regard to Harry's placement, to include regular social-worker visits. Nothing in the books says it didn't happen that way with the social workers stopping their visits before Harry could become aware of them, but the scene where Harry's dropped off doesn't include any of what it ought to to suggest that it did.

Even if the responsibility of Lily's burial was dumped on Petunia, she's exactly petty enough to refuse any role in James's funeral, not least because in her eyes he got her sister killed. The Potters would be buried in different places, and Lily's gravestone would probably have the surname 'Evans' on it with an epitaph that slyly implies James killed her. A joint grave with a tasteful monument and a hopeful christian epitaph? Petunia had nothing to do with that.

So I've gone with Petunia getting a next-of-kin notification in Dumbledore's letter left with Harry and then silence, but that, and the consequences, are for a later chapter.

Fic recommendation: The entire body of work by Silently Watches on FFN. The one-shots and Faery Heroes I have no hesitation in recommending to everyone. The Black Queen series, while superb, is very much not for everyone, since it deals with some appallingly grim themes and there are maybe two or three characters in it who aren't morally repugnant, merely morally compromised. Brilliantly written, just … challenging as to content. Silently Watches is where I first encountered the style of disclaimer I've been using, and may even have invented it.