Raised Better

2 - Missing the Mark

It didn't take Vernon very long to realize something about Harry was… different. Usually, he was able to brush it off. After all, not all children were alike (or so he'd been told, anyway,) and Harry had spent his first year of life in bad company. Who knew what kind of scarring that must have left on him?

But sometimes it was very hard to explain the things that just seemed to happen as if by magic around him. Like a toy that was out of reach suddenly being in the toddler's grip, or extra peaches turning up on his plate after Vernon specifically told him no more.

Then there was when the lights flickered during a tantrum; he disliked that one the most. It scared Vernon and made him question if ghosts were actually real. It made him feel like a fool when he did, but Vernon just didn't know what to make of the happenings. The fact he couldn't find a source (though, Harry did seem a beacon for the activity) or an explanation made him fretful of what would happen with the nanny he was to hire.

What if these odd occurrences scared them off? Vernon couldn't be looking for a new one every weekend.

Thankfully, his fears were quickly put to rest. The nanny he found, Peggy Whitmore, a tiny troll of a woman nearing her sixties, didn't care about the strange incidents that happened around Harry. She simply believed there was a reason for everything and decided quite early Harry just needed to be kept on a short leash.

As time went on, and his son and nephew turned six, Vernon would come home from work to find Harry sitting in a corner with his nose to the wall.

When he would ask Peggy what had happened, she usually told him Harry was in the corner for lying. Vernon rarely asked what he'd been lying about, simply more disappointed his efforts to turn the child into an upstanding citizen were failing.

Badness had to be in the genes, Vernon figured.

(But Petunia was so perfect).

Every now and again, Dudley would get the same treatment. Though, his reason for being in the corner often had to do with him saying mean things to either Peggy or Harry. Occasionally for hitting Harry or some other child they had played with at the nearby park.

While Vernon didn't really see a problem with the latter, as boys would be boys, he never said anything. Peggy was a good nanny and he figured she'd do a better job instilling a sense of right and wrong than he ever could on his own. And that was just how things were. Peggy took care of his boys during the day and Vernon had them during the evenings and weekends.

However, despite the fact Harry and Dudley were literally night and day of one another and rarely got along for any extended interval of time, when Vernon had them, he insisted they do everything they could together. He had them clean their rooms together, take bathes together, watch the telly together and have their bedtime story together in his bedroom.

It might not have bonded them together as the son of Petunia and nephew of Petunia as he hoped, but it meant that things were easier for him. As they'd always been together, and were so young they didn't realize they could be separate, where one was the other would be also.

So, one rainy Saturday afternoon, when Vernon noticed that things had been far too quiet upstairs for much too long, Vernon didn't even have to bother with the idea that Harry might have found himself in the cupboard under the stairs and Dudley somewhere in the attic. Vernon knew, without an ounce of doubt in his giant soul, that they were both somewhere upstairs in the bedrooms.

They was most likely in his bedroom, since they were so silent.

Instead of yelling up to them as he often did, Vernon decided to get up from his chair and paper to investigate. Climbing the stairs one at a time, he muttered half-annoyed, half-curious, "What could those boys be up to?"