It didn't hurt right away.
One moment, she was walking across a wet street, keys in hand, trying not to think about the empty nursery or the empty home her husband, well ex-husband, left her in the divorce.
Then—
Headlights.
A horn.
A snap of white-hot silence.
Her life flashed moments of heartbreak across her vision.
The miscarriage.
The bitter fights after.
The way her friends drifted away like smoke.
The affair she had known about long before he confessed.
Then the awful, weightless understanding:
'So this is it. This is how the universe cashes me out.'
Her last thought was small, broken, and humiliatingly human:
'I never got to hold my baby.'
And darkness took her.
---
She wakes choking.
Cold air slams into lungs that aren't hers. A ceiling she doesn't recognize swims overhead — a low, cream-colored plaster, dimly lit by a cheap bedside lamp.
Her pulse is too fast. Her hands are too young. Her skin is wrong.
Her memories surge in a torrent:
the accident, the grief, the years of feeling unwanted in her own marriage — and then the information is downloaded into memories with horrifying clarity:
Harry Potter.
The Dursleys.
Privet Drive.
Magic.
Canon.
Fandom.
Truck-kun.
"Oh, hell," she whispers, voice young and trembling. "I got isekai'd into Petunia?"
A wave of disorientation hits hard.
She clutches her stomach, breath heaving.
Unknown to her in the moment, her soulmarks burn faintly under the skin — fourteen dormant stars spiraling along her ribs like a forgotten constellation.
She's Petunia, but she's not.
She's a 30-something grieving mother shoved into a 21-year-old body with a destiny she never asked for.
The universe really looked at her and said: Try again.
---
Ding-dong.
A sound she remembers from canon.
Her heart drops.
"No," she breathes. "Not yet. Not already."
She wouldn't be able to warn Lily and James.
It would seem she was past that point in time.
She staggers down the hall, bare feet slapping against the too-clean floor, her mind flashing through every meta detail she ever learned:
Dumbledore.
The blood wards.
The manipulations.
The casual cruelty of leaving a baby outside in October.
She knows exactly what she will find before she opens the door.
She opens it anyway.
Harry is tiny.
Too tiny, too pale, wrapped in a blanket that was never meant for cold nights. A letter pinned to his chest like he's an afterthought.
His green eyes blink open, glassy with confusion and leftover tears.
And that's all it takes.
Her past-life grief explodes inside her ribs — the ache of empty arms, the echo of a child she never got to hold.
Something cracks open.
Raw, violent maternal instinct floods her system.
"Oh, sweetheart," she whispers, voice breaking on the edge of a life she lost.
She scoops him up before the October air can touch him again.
He curls into her automatically, trembling.
His magic snaps and sparks, wild and grieving.
She presses him against her chest, shields him with her coat, and somewhere deep inside —
an anchor sinks in place.
---
A small thump of footsteps behind her.
Dudley — chubby, pink, utterly untainted by Vernon's future indulgence — toddles toward them with a bright, drooling smile. Leaving behind a TV that has a kids movie on, anger spikes inside her as she realizes the old Petunia had just left a toddler on his own downstairs.
Her attention comes back to Dudley who pats Harry's trailing blanket once, gentle and curious.
Not jealous.
Not possessive.
Just… welcoming.
The sight nearly breaks her.
In another world, these two boys grew up as enemies.
In this one?
"Brothers," Petunia whispers, voice trembling. "You'll grow up as brothers."
Dudley babbles in agreement, tugging her pajama hem.
Petunia feels something inside her begin to heal.
---
After settling both boys into the nursery— Petunia slips into the bathroom.
Steam fogs the mirror as she strips off her nightgown.
Her reflection is young. Too young.
The face of a woman who never had time to break.
Her mind realizing how young Lily Evans-Potter must have been, thrust into a war while just starting a family right out of school.
But her breath catches when she lifts the fabric fully.
Fourteen soulmarks glow across her ribs — forming a faint constellation, dormant stars waiting for fate to awaken them.
Her fingers hover above the nearest one, a small starburst near her heart.
In her old world, she loved too much and lost everything.
In this world?
She has fourteen possible loves and an entire universe trying to use her.
Her throat tightens.
"Not again," she murmurs. "I won't let anyone choose my fate for me. Not this time."
And then the system finally wakes.
A soft-blue interface lights the room, reflected in the mirror like floating moonlight.
[SYSTEM BOOTING… SYNCHRONIZING HOST MEMORY…]
[Welcome, Reincarnated Host: The Survivor.]
[New Identity Integrating: Petunia Evans-Dursley]
[Soulbond Slots Detected: 14 — All Dormant]
[Evans Lineage Clearance Granted, Squib Status Fluctuating with new integration.]
[Fandom Encyclopedia Installed]
[Primary Questline Triggered]
[Preserve the Boy Who Lived.
Protect the Arcane Nexus Child.]
A pulse of soft gold sweeps across her torso.
[Guardian/Child Arcane Anchor Bond Forming]
[Target: Harry James Potter
Host: Petunia Dursley]
[Bond Type: FAMILIAL – PROTECTIVE]
[Detecting unstable magical signature…]
[Stabilizing reserves: 12% → 47% → 83% → 100%]
[Blood Wards Recalibrated]
[Strength: DOUBLE]
The light fades into a gentle shimmer.
Petunia grips the counter.
Her voice is soft, hoarse, but steady:
"I'm his mother now. Maybe not by blood. But by choice."
Her eyes in the mirror glow silver-blue.
She looks like a quiet Englishwoman with starlight under her skin.
And she vows — for Harry, for Dudley, for herself:
"I will not fail either of them. I will not fail again."