She-Who-Is-Normal
Petunia Dursley is someone who presents herself as completely normal, thank-you-very-much. She makes sure to keep up to date with the neighbouring gossip, has tea at least twice a week with her friends, and hosts her book club at least once a month in her perfectly normal upper-middle class home. She has a good five pictures of her marriage and honeymoon scattered around the house and an entire wall dedicated to the many growing stages of her adorable boy.
She is proud to be completely normal.
And so is understandably ticked when her abnormal nephew—her freak sister’s freak son that she has been caring for exactly a year now—wakes up the whole house with atrocious wailing in the middle of the night.
Her poor Duddydums wakes up, terrified by the freak’s shrieking, and Petunia rushes to his nursery to coo and soothe him. Vernon, ill-tempered from being woken up before the sun is even up, stomps down the stairs and hollers at the freak to shut the bloody hell up!
Petunia spares the clock a glance, wondering how little sleep she’d gotten thanks to the little brat. She pauses as she notices the angle of the clock’s hands.
It’s three o’clock. Witching hour.
Pursing her lips, Petunia turns her back to the clock and hushes her baby boy, bouncing him with some difficulty—her son is getting a bit old to be carried, but Petunia feels her heart break with every tremble of her thin arms. One day, her boy will be too big and heavy for her to hold. One day, she won’t be able to lift him and coddle him to her heart’s content. It feels like time is running out on her, spilling like water through her fingers.
It’s almost half an hour before Petunia manages to soothe her baby back to sleep. Vernon is already back to bed, snoring away as he usually does, something that was normal but still managed to always irritate her. There’s a reason she always goes to bed first, leaving Vernon to his gin and evening news, and she would be upset at her reaction to a perfectly normal part of everyday life had all of her girlfriends not had the same complaints about their husbands.
She wouldn’t be able to fall asleep like that.
Her hands twitch. She could go bake a cake. Little cakes and cookies she could deliver to the neighbours as Halloween gifts. She disdains the holiday on principle, and Françoise at Number 9 completely agreed with how ungodly that celebration is, but it just wouldn’t do to stand out by refusing to participate in it.
Besides, Dudley had found the candy stash two days ago. There was barely anything left of the candies by the time Petunia found him, and while Vernon had rushed to the store to get some last-minute goods, what little there had been left on the shelves might make them look cheap.
Yes, she decides. She could make cookies. And if the little freak wants some, then she’ll tell him no as punishment for waking them all up. Maybe it’ll teach him not to mess with them.
Careful not to walk too loudly least she wakes up her son, Petunia goes down the stairs, throwing an acidic look at the cupboard door when she hears sniffles coming from the other side.
Does he think it will earn him any pity, acting all hurt and pathetic? Does he think her that guillable? She knows he knows that he did wrong—he’s not getting any sympathy from her by snivelling in his room!
Petunia huffs, then goes to rummage through her kitchen. Soon enough, she has all the ingredients lined up on her counter, bowls and measuring cups pulled from their respective cupboard, and she’s about to whip it all into a yummy treat for Dudley—who will eat the first cookie, of course—when she hears a door creaks open.
Immediately, she’s incensed. Vernon is still snoring away, and her baby boy was never silent—that left only one perpetrator for it, and that little freak was supposed to be locked in his room. He must have done something, must have unlocked the door through unnatural means—
Petunia passes next to the fridge, turns to walk through the door, and freezes.
There, in front of her, is Lily.
Lily who is see-through and naked and a shimmering red, her freak of a son snuggled into her arms and nuzzling her neck, all the while glowing green eyes drill into Petunia’s soul with unmistakable rage and hatred.
“Bloodtraitor,” Lily mouthes. She does not make a single sound, and yet the word stabs Petunia’s brain like the worst migraine. “Betrayer, filth, fraud, wretch! I curse you, like you cursed my son!”
“Li-Lily,” Petunia mutters, stumbling against the wall as her knees tremble. “You’re dead… they said you were dead!”
“Suffer like my son suffered,” Lily continues, and there’s red liquid pooling at her feet. Under the incomprehensible horror that possesses her, Petunia fears for the state of her carpet. “Hunger like my son hungered. Fear like my son feared!”
Petunia slides to the ground, feeling weak, a hand lifting to her mouth as she gasps. She flinches at the unexpected wetness, ripping her eyes away from Lily to see what covered her hand.
It’s blood.
Red and gleaming and warm—
“Bloodtraitor,” Lily roars, hair writhing behind her like snakes. “My life for my son! My heart for my son! My power for my son! And you betrayed us.”
Lily’s eyes flash green, acidic and sickening. In her arms, her son shifts, enough so that Petunia sees his eyes doing the same.
“Blood of my blood, no more,” Lily hisses. “Sister of my blood, no more. Sister of my heart, no more!”
Petunia feels weak. Cold. Terrified.
“You and yours, mine and mines,” Lily continues, blood pouring out of her mouth. “The same, no more.”
There’s a taste of iron in Petunia’s mouth. She doubles over, vomiting on her once-pristine carpet, heaving and shaking and sobbing uncontrollably.
Darkness presses at the edge of her mind, sucking her in.
And she falls.
Petunia Dursley is a perfectly normal woman. That’s how she likes things to be, and her husband is just as content as she is with that state of affairs.
She wakes up on the morning of Halloween of 1982 mildly confused and embarrassed, lying on her face in the middle of her hallway. A bump on her forehead and a scratch on her arm makes her think that she might have fainted, and she decides to go to bed early that night, and possibly visit a doctor if it happens again.
Her limbs feel a bit weak, and she feels uncomfortably cold, no matter how many layers she puts on. She doesn’t have a fever, however, so she limits herself to a simple jacket and thicker socks—it wouldn’t do for the neighbours to wonder if she’s gotten ill. They’d start avoiding her and the mere thought makes her feel unbearably lonely.
As she prepares breakfast for her husband and son, Petunia feels as though she is forgetting something. She isn’t sure what, but it leaves her uneasy, and she can’t walk past the cupboard under the stairs without shivering.
There is nothing about the cupboard that would prompt that kind of response, though. It’s a perfectly normal cupboard, like every other closet in her perfectly normal home. Maybe it’s a bit dusty, but she doesn’t feel like cleaning it just yet. Just opening the door has her feeling like the dark tries to suffocate her.
Which is ridiculous, of course. But. Still.
Petunia decides to avoid the cupboard from now on. She won’t say anything, because she doesn’t want to sound weird. She’ll use it if she has to.
She just.
Doesn’t like the cupboard.