Vernon Dursley watched television, or at least he tried to. His focus however was on the noise outside. Teenagers were in front of the house, hooting and hollering. This was very aggravating for Vernon who just wanted a restful Saturday in July with his family. His wife, Petunia was currently sewing a stuffed dogs head back onto a toy of Dudley’s his son.

Of course, the toy wouldn’t go back to his son. It would go to him, the child that Vernon did not want in his home. The boy who was building a tower with old blocks nearby while Dudley waited. They were getting along for once. His son was waiting for him to get the tower really high, and then he’d kick it down. His nephew enjoyed this game for some reason; he’d laugh and make the tower again. Luckily, half the time Harry Potter was quiet, but his mere presence still irritated Vernon. He was always worried that he’d do the unnaturalness.

“God damn teenagers,” Vernon muttered as he got up.

“Let it be Vernon, they're just having fun,” Petunia answered.

“They’re a bad example for the boys. What if he sees them behaving that way?”

“Harry’s three, going on four… I can’t really see him copying their example. Besides, the boys aren’t even paying attention. Just sit down,” Petunia said.

Vernon sighed and peered out the window, a group of boys were playing around on a skateboard. They had a ramp in the middle of the road which they were trying to clear. A couple of girls were sitting at the edge of his yard cheering them on. He was glad that the boys were only four, he couldn’t stand teenagers, so at least he didn’t have to worry about them for another eight years or so.

“Ready?” Dudley asked Harry.

“Uh huh!” Harry yelled.

He jumped up and Dudley ran to kick the blocks. Harry jumped up and down laughing; he started to clap his hands.

“Now I build and you kick!” Dudley told him.

Harry glanced over at his uncle with a nervous face. One other time when they had played the game, the boy had kicked the blocks down on Dudley. Of course, Vernon hadn’t realized they were just playing, so he had spanked Harry so hard, he hadn’t been able to sit down comfortably for a week. He also hadn’t been allowed to eat for a couple days.

“You should let Dudley have a chance to build,” he told Harry as he walked over to the blocks. It was his way to let Harry know it was okay.

Dudley was a lot slower with building, but Harry was patient. He lay on his stomach to watch, a few times he would glance at the television, but it didn’t interest him. Petunia and Vernon only let the boys watch cartoons in the morning, and also the after school specials (though the boys wouldn’t be in school until September) on weekdays.

“Can you read us a story later mummy?” Dudley asked after a few minutes.

“Both of you?” Petunia asked with surprise in her voice.

Dudley couldn’t sit next to Harry during a story time; he always pinched or poked him because he lost interest. This would cause a fight, Harry would end up with a very sore bottom and Dudley would have to stay in his room for an hour. Harry looked up sharply; there was some fear in his eyes.

“I was tired, take nap after game,” Harry said softly.

“Well I can read you a story before both of take a nap,” Petunia said. “You have to promise to get along, or neither of you will get dessert.”

Harry never got a dessert anyway. It was rare that he got any treats.

“And I don’t think anyone wants a sore bottom,” Vernon said but mainly he looked at Harry who gulped nervously.

“Ready now, Harry!” Dudley said.

Harry jumped up excitedly, and Dudley moved out of the way. Harry glanced over at Vernon again, with apprehension but then he ran quickly and knocked the blocks over. Dudley and Harry began to laugh.

“All right, put the blocks away Harry, Dudley go run upstairs and get a book.”

“YEAH! ALL RIGHT!” voices shouted from outside.

Vernon got up angrily and went to the front door to peer out. He was getting sick of them hanging around his house. He knew where they lived, he figured after the boys went to sleep, he’d go to their places to have a talk with the parents. It was getting ridiculous how parents couldn’t seem to control their own kids. He knew when Dudley was older; he’d always know where he was. His son wouldn’t be a delinquent and Harry would follow his example.

“CLEAR IT! CLEAR IT!”

“That’s it!” Vernon shouted, he started to open the door to yell at them, but he had a better idea. “Hey Harry! Come here!”

It took a few minutes, but his nephew came to the doorway of the sitting room. He stared up at him nervously. He looked a lot smaller than he really was because he wore Dudley’s old clothes. His son was slightly larger then scrawny Potter. He was the runt of the family, sometimes this embarrassed Vernon.

He used a voice he usually reserved for Dudley, “Come here, Harry. You want a treat?”

His eyes lit up and he nodded enthusiastically. He ran over with a huge smile on his face. Vernon waited until he was close enough.

SMACK!

He hit him as hard as he could. Harry fell to the floor, instantly he started to cry. Vernon picked him and opened the door. He carried his sobbing nephew outside and yelled.

“GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! DON’T DO THAT IN FRONT OF MY HOUSE ANYMORE! YOU JUST WOKE MY NEPHEW UP FROM HIS NAP! THANKS A LOT! LOOK AT HIM! LOOK AT THIS CRYING CHILD! I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY!”

He went inside and slammed the door. Harry had calmed down a little, as if understanding why he had been hit.

“Treat?” he asked hopefully as he wiped his wet face with back of his hand, a red hand print was on his cheek.

“You aren’t getting a treat!” Vernon shouted.

He threw Harry to the floor harder then he had intended to. Harry automatically started to gasp for breath. Vernon went down on his knee's quickly, appalled at what he had done. Harry started scratching at the floor gasping and crying as he struggled to breathe.

“Petunia!” Vernon shouted as he tried to soothe the boy. “Calm down Harry. If you calm down, I’ll give you a treat, I swear!”

Petunia ran into the room. She fell down to her knees, both tried to calm him down, but nothing worked and Harry was slowly turning blue.

“What did you do?” She asked in tears.

“I threw him down on the floor too hard.”

“Why did you do it at all… oh no.”

Harry had stopped moving, his eyes were open, and his face had a look of shock. Vernon quickly felt for a pulse, but couldn’t find one. He was dead… he had killed his nephew. Petunia instantly tried to see if CPR would revive him, but it didn’t work. Behind them, Dudley watched with a look of horror on his face.

“What happened to my cousin?” he asked.

“Nothing, nothing, he’s fine!” Petunia said, she jumped up and scooped Dudley into her arms.

“Come, I’ll put cartoons on, Harry will join in a minute, okay?”

Vernon continued to work on his nephew. He hadn’t meant to! He felt intense remorse; the boy was only three, turning four in a few weeks. He had barely had time to live, not to mention the fact that he had lost his parents at such a young age, and now lived in a home where he wasn’t wanted. Vernon closed his eyes. No, he hadn’t wanted the boy, he hated him, but he would never have tried to do this! He was sometimes rough with the boy, but he’d never gone too far… until now.

“What are we going to do?” Petunia asked. “He’s covered in bruises, he’d underweight, and they are going to guess what happened here.”

“I know. We’ll-we’ll hide him in his cupboard for now… we’ll think of something tonight.”

Vernon lifted his nephew but changed his mind. He took him upstairs instead to the bedroom Harry had always wanted to sleep in. In his anguished state, Vernon hoped that by putting Harry in the comfortable bed, he’d wake up. He would never lay a hand on his nephew if that happened.

Petunia didn’t say a word; she just followed him up the stairs and into Dudley’s second bedroom. She pulled back the covers and Vernon gently laid him into the bed. Then they tucked him. Petunia seemed to be thinking along the lines of Vernon, for she leaned down and kissed his cheek. Vernon leaned forward and closed his eyes for him.

“Have a good nap,” she told him.

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” Vernon whispered.

She didn’t know a lot about the wizarding world, but from what she had learned from Lily and the Snape boy, underage wizards had a way to protect themselves from harm. Why hadn’t her nephew bounced, or put a force field between him and the ground? As far as Vernon knew, the boy had never done magic, but he had. She’d seen it herself, but hadn’t told her husband for fear of what he’d do.

She walked into the sitting-room and was surprised to hear Vernon sobbing. In all her years that she had known him, Vernon had never cried. He had always told both Dudley and Harry that tears were for girls, not for little men, and yet there he was crying.

“Vernon?” she asked uneasily.

“I never meant to kill him…” he said. “Sure, I hit him around a bit, but it was for his own good! I always thought that by hitting him, it would teach him to be a man. Those- those the people like him use the freaky stuff to defend themselves! I thought that if I taught him at a young age to be a man, he’d learn to control it. He hasn’t done it yet, has he? It’s worked so far. I hated him, but I never wanted to do too much harm to him. It’s why I waited until after his third birthday. I wasn’t going to teach him to be a bigger man until he was at least five-years-old. I-I thought I was doing him a favour, he’d be better off without the magic!”

“Vernon-” she began.

“No, Petunia! I am a murderer! I don’t know what made me do it. When he asked for a treat, for some reason it angered me. I don’t know why. By rights, I should have given him one, the teens left, didn’t they? Something about him has always made me go a bit further than I mean to! Just as when I spank him, I always spank him longer and harder than a boy his age needs. Now I’ve killed him.”

Petunia nodded. They sat down, and began working out a plan. They were going to bury him that night in the back yard. The next day, Vernon would buy some new grass to put over his ‘grave.’ They didn’t plan to sell the house ever; they were going to leave it to Dudley, so by the time Harry was found, if ever, they’d be long gone. Dudley was so young, he wouldn’t remember his cousin really well when he was an adult.

“The problem is, he is already registered at school for September,” Petunia told Vernon.

She knew it was wrong to do what they were doing, but she knew her husband was sorry. She didn’t want Dudley to grow up with the fact that his father was a murderer. She could go to jail as well as Vernon. Had she ever told him to lighten up on their nephew? After Harry’s body was examined it would be obvious that he didn’t eat enough, Vernon liked to punish him for a few days without food. There were also the bruises that covered his little body. He’d been given a terrible spanking the other day; his behind was still very raw from it. She had to put cream on it every night before he went to bed.

She’d felt fear when Dudley had asked her to read a story to both of them. She knew they would end up fighting and Vernon would spank Harry. His rear end was still too tender though, which meant she’d have to step in. Her husband had never raised a hand to her, but sometimes when she saw his temper, she was scared he would.

“We’ll tell them we sent him to live with other relatives. We can still cancel it. The neighbours really haven’t seen him. They know he is here, but we can tell them the same story. We’ll say that you and your sister had a cousin who had really wanted to take care of him and she thought that two young children were too much of a burden for us…” Vernon said.

Petunia nodded in agreement.

After Dudley had been put to bed, they went into the room where Harry lay. Petunia didn’t want to look at him, and perhaps if they had looked at him more closely, they would have seen that he really wasn’t dead. Perhaps because he was in Dudley’s too big clothes, Vernon couldn’t feel that little Harry Potter’s heart was beating. Perhaps they were both too stricken with grief. They didn’t realize that his magic had saved him.

Vernon still had to dig the hole. They decided on a spot by the shed and laid him down. They went back inside, Vernon was nervous that it was still too light out. He wanted to drink something alcoholic if he had to go through with this. Petunia was debating whether or not she’d watch… after a while she decided it was for the best. Her husband might need her support.

They held hands as they went back out to the backyard. However, when they got to the spot they had left Harry, they realized something was wrong. He was gone.