So I reblogged this post and said it needed to be a CS fic. @joneskillian then pretty much demanded *I* make it into said fic… so I did. None of this is even remotely beta’d and I am kinda just throwing it out there before I have a chance to second guess the whole thing, so I apologize for any mistakes!
Also shout out to @alexandralyman for coming up with a very hilarious quip used near the end (don’t wanna spoil it, but… she knows what it is!).
Anywho, hope you all enjoy!
It all starts with Emma walking into the guest house she rents from her brother and sister-in-law to find her ten-year-old son Henry playing with the neighborhood’s stray cat.
“What the hell, kid?” She mutters, eyeing the purring creature wearily as she kicks off her heels and chucks her keys on the kitchen counter.
Henry comes rushing up to her, brown eyes wide. “She followed me home from school, mom…” He rests his hands and chin on the counter, blinking up at her all innocent-like. “Can she stay?”
Emma’s immediate instinct is to give him a hard ‘hell no’ and chuck the cat right back outside. But then the scrawny thing comes trotting over, rubbing up against her son’s legs and meowing, her green eyes as wide as her son’s as she looks up at him, and Emma knows it’s already a lost cause.
“Yeah, fine…” She sighs and Henry whoops, reaching down to scoop the cat right up. “But you’re the one who’s telling your uncle and part of the vet bill to make sure this thing,” She points at the cat. “Isn’t infested with diseases is coming out of your allowance, got it?”
It suddenly dawned on me how Emma was always so desperate for friendships, she seems incapable of recognizing her habit of maintaining toxic friendships.
And no, I’m not just talking about her so-called friendship with Regina, which frequently included Regina belittling and talking down to Emma, low-key insulting her for her eating habits or the time she spent in jail (which, by the way, was a direct result of Regina’s actions forcing Emma’s parents to send her away in order to save her life- because Regina was clearly plotting to murder Baby Emma while her curse cloud was spreading across the Enchanted Forest). That or Regina blaming Emma for saving a woman she murdered in the original timeline and making Emma feel like she should apologize for that. (Among other things.)
I’m also thinking about how Emma referred to Lily as her first real friend. Even though that ‘friendship’ was horribly one-sided, and it largely consisted of how Emma could help Lily, with Lily never showing any real concern for Emma and what she wanted. (Such as how Lily didn’t even seem to care when she cost Emma her chances with the ‘GORP’ family.)
Or how Emma considered August to have been her friend, too. Even though he was barely there for her when she was growing up alone and feeling unloved and unwanted. When he had the chance to offer her a bit of hope by telling her that she did have loving parents out there and that they hadn’t wanted to give her up when he swung by as a teenager, he just told her his interpretation of an old bedtime story. Not to mention how it was his idea to set Emma up to go to jail for a crime she didn’t commit. And then kept the money Neal had wanted him to give her. Sure, August did the right thing in the end by trying to warn everyone about Tamara, but whether or not that was enough to make up for everything else is debatable.
It’s such a shame that the show rarely gave Emma a chance to spend time with the people she actually had formed healthy friendships with. People like Ashley and Elsa. Because those two were probably Emma’s first real friends. (Not including Mary Margret, who turned out to be her mother, and Killian Jones, who remains the closest person in Emma’s life.)
Imagine if Dudley did have a magical child though.
He and Harry haven’t spoken since ‘I don’t think you’re a waste of space’ and he’s matured enough to realise his parents were not good to Harry, especially since the birth of his own little girls because God forbid anything happened to him and they were treated like Harry was.
On Daisy Dursley’s eleventh birthday theres a knock on the door and his wife, Anita, just stares and he feels his stomach drop because the stern lady on the doorstep is wearing a cloak and pointed hat.
They listen to the woman – Professor McGonagall – explain and Anita is surprised but receptive, Daisy is excited and Dudley is terrified of what this means.
It’s a surprise to his wife and little girl when at the end of her explanation, while Daisy’s flicking through a book with moving pictures and Anita peers over her shoulder, Dudley blurts out ‘it’s safe now then? Your world?’
Professor Mcgonagall gives a wry smile and assures him that the magical world is indeed safe. It dawns on him that she was expecting this, that she’d perhaps researched him and was aware of his relation to Harry.
He then admits to Anita and Daisy that his cousin is a wizard, before turning to the Professor and asking if she by chance knows a Harry Potter. Looking amused, professor Mcgonagall acknowledges that she does.
’D’you know where he lives?’
That does surprise her a bit, and she tells him that yes, she knows and that though Daisy’s acceptance into the school has been confidential up until this point, Harry would likely not mind a visitor if he wanted a word.
Daisy begs to come along and he relents eventually, bringing Anita and their youngest, Poppy, along.
All four of them stand on the doorstep of a modest house that Dudley would call nice if there weren’t squat little creatures snickering and running around the front garden.
The door is opened by a slouching boy with turquoise hair who arches a purple eyebrow at them. He yells over his shoulder for someone named Ginny and steps back to let them in, and, when he notices Daisy staring at his hair, he smirks and a second later it’s bubblegum pink.
Daisy squeals in delight and Dudley is still trying to get his head around that when young girl and boy around Daisy’s age with bright red hair and thick brown curls respectively, hurtle down the corridor.
‘Teddy you promised you’d practice the sloth grip roll with us!’ The girl yells in an accusatory tone.
A woman with hair the same shade of flaming red as the little girl appears with what Dudley recognises as a wand in her hand as the boy with blue hair flashes a grin at them before chasing the two younger children outside to a shout of ‘No higher than the treetops Teddy!’
Harry is much like Dudley remembers him, lanky with a pointed face, straight nose and mess of untameable black hair. It’s awkward, but, apparently forewarned, Harry greets him pleasantly and introduces his wife before Ginny goes outside to reign in a gaggle of children he assumes aren’t all Harry’s.
A woman with thick, bushy hair pulled into a messy bun with a wand stuck in it smiles and makes an effort to talk to Anita. She’s not too strange, he thinks, and reassures them that her parents were just as baffled when they found out she was a witch.
‘Why don’t you take Daisy outside to see the broomsticks, Al?’ Harry suggests to Daisy’s obvious delight and Dudley swears Harry’s trying not to laugh.
By the end of the visit Dudley is more informed about the wizarding world than he ever thought he would or wanted to be. Daisy, with a bruise on her forehead and scraped knees, because despite both his and Harry’s warning she hadn’t been able to resist trying to fly, is bouncing off the walls because ‘daddy how could you not tell us?!’
They visit Harry’s a lot over summer and Daisy befriends Lily Luna Potter and Hugo Weasley. Dudley doesn’t feel up to the trip to Diagon Alley but regrets his decision to not go when Daisy comes back with two owls, ‘uncle Harry bought the second one for me! So you can write without having to wait for me to send my owl!’
Petunia Dursley faints when she finds out, and Vernon spends a good half hour cursing and brandishing things aimlessly before retreating to his shed.
Dudley being introduced to what he calls ‘all those bloody gingers’ some of whom are only just on the right side of civil to him (one cheerfully introduces himself as someone who once visited his childhood home in a flying car and asks if he’s going to need to do the same for Daisy or will she be allowed to attend without punishment).
Daisy is shocked to find out Harry’s famous, and finds out as much as she can about him during her first term, which she relays to an increasingly guilty feeling Dudley, who’s gradually coming around to the idea.
It’s not as bad as his parents made out it was. He’s learned to understand Daisy’s ramblings about her subjects and spells and is proud of her achievements at school. He’s met a handful of witches and wizards through Harry and the world that he’s always been told is terrible doesn’t seem too bad anymore, after all, how could it with his little girl in it? He is prepared come excitable little Poppy’s eleventh birthday, for her to join her sister at Hogwarts instead of standing jealously on the platform as she leaves.
Poppy Dursley never gets a letter.
I TRUSTED YOU
No, but imagine. Three generations later, this family FINALLY gets the one wizard kid/one Muggle kid thing right. Poppy is never made to feel less, even though she’s disappointed. Daisy is never made to feel like a freak. Poppy is accepted by Harry’s kids, they play with her and she doesn’t need magic to play wizard chess or toss gnomes and Teddy takes her flying sometimes (she becomes a hell of a Quidditch referee and strategist with Ginny’s help, though she never plays).
Anita and Dudley talk to Poppy about what she’d like to do for school and she goes to a prestigious Muggle school, and as it turns out she becomes really, really good at tech and coding. She takes lots of time off to visit Daisy at Hogwarts where she becomes a favorite of McGonagall (so many clever questions). Eventually she meets Luna and spends most of a summer with her, following Crumple-Horned Snorkacks with the help of some trackers Poppy built to work around magic. Everyone is terribly impressed, and although Poppy tries to be blasé about it, she’s actually really proud.
And soon enough Daisy is graduating and working at the Ministry in the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office with Arthur Weasley, who has been working on loosening some of the legislation, and when Poppy graduates she has a marvelous idea. She and Daisy open a shop in Diagon Ally for all these Muggle technologies that Poppy has fixed to work around and with magic. Dursley’s Muggle Magic, they call it.
And suddenly wizards are running around with iPhones and Kindles (Hermione made a digital copy of Hogwarts, a History RIGHT AWAY) and everyone is catching up on decades of video games and a century of movies. Scorpius Malfoy has an Apple Watch. And it’s all thanks the Poppy Dursley, the Muggle.
cshappybeginning 