Back then, if you had asked me how my life was going,
I would have answered without hesitation.
Fine.
Not the kind of fine that comes from sudden luck or dramatic success.
Just the quiet kind.
The kind a middle-aged man feels when he stands in front of the mirror, tying his tie, knowing he hasn't taken a wrong turn in life.
I had a stable job.
Nothing flashy.
Nothing that would ever make the papers.
But my boss trusted me.
When work was handed to me, it stayed done.
When I gave a deadline, it usually became the final one.
In the world I lived in, reliability was its own kind of currency.
And I had earned enough of it to sleep well at night.
We lived on a quiet street.
Lawns trimmed.
Fences freshly painted.
Cars parked exactly where they were supposed to be.
Neighbors nodded when they passed each other, but didn't linger.
No one borrowed money.
No one argued loudly after dark.
The best thing about our street was this:
Nothing happened here.
I liked that.
Our home was the same.
Petunia kept everything in order.
Kitchen counters clean.
Cupboards neatly arranged.
She didn't like change much.
Our grocery list barely varied year to year.
I never saw that as a flaw.
Life didn't need constant excitement.
It needed structure.
We had just had a baby.
Dudley was still very small.
Small enough that the world meant only two things to him:
Hunger.
And sleep.
Newborns cried, of course.
They cried loudly.
Unpredictably.
Often at the worst possible hours.
But it was the kind of exhaustion you could accept.
Because it had a purpose.
The doctor said he was healthy.
That was enough for me.
I believed then that if a family was healthy, stable, and predictable,
it had already won.
That night was supposed to be no different.
I remember sleeping deeply.
The kind of sleep without dreams.
Until the crying woke me.
At first, I thought it was Dudley.
In the middle of the night, a baby's cry can blur together, especially when you're half-awake.
I turned over.
Waited a moment.
The crying didn't stop.
And it sounded… distant.
I opened my eyes and checked the clock.
It was late.
Much too late.
Something wasn't right.
I sat up and pulled on a jacket, moving as quietly as I could.
Petunia stirred beside me, then woke.
"Do you hear that?" she whispered.
I nodded.
We walked toward the front door together.
The closer we got, the clearer the sound became.
Clear enough that pretending not to hear it was no longer an option.
I opened the door.
Cold night air rushed in, damp and sharp.
The streetlamp cast a pale light over our front steps.
And there he was.
A baby.
Wrapped in an old blanket.
Lying on our doorstep.
He wasn't sleeping well.
His face was scrunched.
His chest rose and fell unevenly.
The blanket was clean, but worn.
The kind of thing that had been washed again and again,
as if someone had taken great care with it
before deciding to leave it behind.
I froze.
Not out of fear.
Not out of shock.
But out of a strong, unmistakable sense that
this did not belong here.
This wasn't something that happened to people like us.
I looked up and down the street.
No movement.
No footsteps.
Curtains were tightly drawn.
The entire row of houses seemed to cooperate in silence.
Behind me, Petunia inhaled sharply.
She didn't speak right away.
Instead, she slowly crouched down,
as though afraid she might scare something away if she moved too quickly.
"This child…" she began.
Then she stopped.
I turned to her.
Her face was pale.
But not panicked.
It wasn't the expression of someone surprised.
It was the look of someone being forced
to acknowledge something long buried.
"He's my sister's," she said.
The words came too suddenly.
I frowned.
"How do you know?"
She didn't answer immediately.
She gently pulled back part of the blanket.
The streetlight fell across the baby's forehead,
revealing a thin, lightning-shaped scar.
She stared at it for several seconds.
"I recognize him," she said.
It wasn't a full explanation.
But I didn't push.
Not because I accepted it.
But because I knew—
pressing for details at moments like this
only made things worse.
"So what do we do?" I asked.
It was the most practical question I could think of.
Petunia finally lifted the baby into her arms.
Her movements were awkward.
But steady.
The baby shifted slightly, then quieted.
"We bring him inside," she said.
"He can't stay out here."
We closed the door.
The night stayed behind us.
The lights came on.
The house returned to what I recognized.
The sofa.
The coffee table.
The baby crib.
Everything exactly where it belonged.
Except now there was something else.
Something unplanned.
I stood to the side as Petunia laid the baby on the sofa
and adjusted the blanket around him.
Her hands were gentle.
Deliberate.
A thought crossed my mind then.
This was not the life we had planned.
But I said nothing.
From the next room, Dudley cried once.
Then settled again.
Two infants breathing under the same roof.
Strangely, the sound didn't feel intrusive.
"What's his name?" I asked.
"Harry," Petunia said.
I nodded.
The name meant nothing to me then.
It wasn't familiar.
It wasn't special.
I didn't know that in the years to come,
I would hear that name again and again.
Each time wearing away
at my understanding of what normal meant.
That night, I went back to bed.
Sleep didn't come easily.
Not because I was afraid.
Not because I felt uneasy.
But because, for the first time,
I realized that some things—
once brought inside—
could never be returned exactly as they were.
Even so, I still believed.
If I kept working.
Kept providing.
Kept following the rules.
Everything would eventually settle back into place.
At that moment,
I truly believed it.
I was doing fine.