War?
It was nine in the morning on the seventh of August, 1996, and Petunia had been locked in her room for a full day. The hunger didn’t really bother her, and her mother had briefly unlocked the door to give her some water so she wasn’t that thirsty, but by god was she bored. She was on the thousandth read of that same stupid book, and she had just heard the boy arrive. Petunia let her head fall back onto the pillow. She could hear her mother talking in the kitchen at the end of the hall, and two sets of footsteps made their way towards her. She sat up, putting her book down and wiping the sweat off her nose. Was she being freed?
The lock on her door clicked and her mother’s pinched face appeared in the doorway. “Severus is here and I have to go out, you will watch him until Lily gets home. Be nice, and do not leave.”
Petunia refrained from rolling her eyes and said, “Yes, mum.”
Her mother narrowed her eyes at her, then opened the door wider to reveal the boy standing beside her. With one final glare at her oldest daughter, Petunia’s mother vanished out of the doorway and Petunia heard the front door slam. She glanced at the boy. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think you need watching.”
The boy scowled at her. Petunia took this as an agreement. “Look, you can stay if you want, but if mother sees me out of my room, I won’t eat.”
The boy looked vaguely alarmed at this, stepping in and closing the door behind him. Petunia gestured to the end of her bed and fetched her book again. “Sit if you want.”
Two minutes of mind-numbing reading later, the boy spoke up. “Are you getting married?”
Petunia looked up in surprise. “How do you know that?”
“I didn’t, but you just confirmed it for me.”
“You little shit,” Petunia said with little heat. The boy smirked at her.
“When are you leaving?”
She considered his question, weighing the pros and cons of telling him. In the end, she supposed that her parents couldn’t exactly stop her if they found out. “October.”
The boy stared across the room at a stain in the carpet and said nothing. Petunia went back to reading her book. Then, “Good.”
“What?” Petunia looked up and stared at him suspiciously. “What do you mean?”
“I see how they treat you,” the boy said, quieter than she had ever heard him speak. “I’m glad you’re getting out.”
Petunia swallowed and put her book down, sitting up properly. “Me too, kid.”
“Is your fiance nice?”
“Yeah,” she said, staring down at her hands. “Yeah, he’s the best.”
“Good.”
Petunia sat in silence, studying the boy, fourteen-year-old Severus with bruises on his arms and too-big clothes, a boy she barely knew who wanted her to be safe. “Thank you. You’re a good kid. Don’t forget that.”
The boy shrugged jerkily and stood up to leave. Petunia let him, picking up her book again and watching the door close behind him.
Two weeks later, the boy appeared back in her doorway. She looked over at him and raised an eyebrow. He looked nervous. “You okay, kid?”
“Can I come in?”
Petunia stood up and gestured to the end of her bed, closing the door behind him. “What happened?”
“You’re leaving in October, right?” he asked hurriedly.
She eyed him, sitting on the other end of the bed. “Yes.”
The boy wrung his hands a little. “Are you planning on visiting?”
Petunia’s other eyebrow joined the first. “What, you think you’ll miss me?” she asked, half teasing.
“No!” the boy snapped, glaring at her as his cheeks went a little pink. “Answer the question!”
“No, I’m never coming back if I can help it,” she said after a moment.
He took a deep breath and nodded. “Good. Don’t come back.”
“Do you hate me that much?” Petunia asked mildly, leaning back against the wall to watch his reaction. The boy glared venomously at her.
“There’s a war,” he spat.
Petunia blinked, then blinked again, then lurched forward when she realised he wasn’t joking. “A war?” she hissed.
The boy sneered at her. “So don’t come back.”
“Okay.” She looked down at her hands. “Okay. A war. A just-magical war?” she asked, glancing back up at him. He looked away.
“Hopefully.”
Petunia understood what he wasn’t saying. A magical war, until it isn’t. Don’t be seen with us, run, run, get away, save your life. She nodded. “Okay. Thank you.”
The boy nodded and stood up, fleeing from her room. Petunia stared at her door for a while.
Then, it was the first of October, and Petunia was packing. Dragging the suitcase out from under her bed, Petunia scooped her clothes out of the chest of drawers and onto the floor. Slowly, she began to sort, letting her hands work as she listened to the sounds of the house. Her door was slightly ajar, and she could hear her mother working in the kitchen, singing along faintly to the radio. Her father was in their bedroom right above her; she could hear him working at the desk that wobbled against the floorboards when he moved. Lily was probably studying in her room up the stairs and across the hall, the boy was in the potions lab - she could hear the gas pipes and the steady bubble of some potion or another - and Petunia was here. Petunia was here, sorting through clothing that barely fit her because Lily had owned it first, and deciding what she wanted to take with her.
She smiled, shoving the bin pile under her bed where the suitcase used to live and folding what she wanted to keep into said suitcase. It was falling apart a little, but she was good at sewing and Vernon taught her how to fix broken hinges, so it held itself together well enough. Petunia sighed, pressing the last wearable blouse into a corner of the suitcase. It was barely half full. She glanced around her room. There was a picture on the wall of her and her friends, but if she took that down so soon her mother would immediately realise something was happening. She had no attachment to any of her bedding, and anything that was hanging in the wardrobe were things she would need to wear between now and her escape. Petunia looked back down at the suitcase and patted it. She was done.
The zip was mostly broken, but Petunia knew that if she wiggled it just the right way it would close as smoothly as butter, it just took time. Her tongue poked out of the corner of her mouth as she worked the zip, twisting it this way and that until finally, zzzzzip, the suitcase was closed. She grinned at it and shoved it under her bed with the useless clothes, making sure that none of it could be seen from the doorway before flopping onto her covers. One more sleep.
The next morning greeted her uncomfortably early, but she could barely bring herself to care. She was leaving at long, long last. Not much could dampen her mood, not even being denied breakfast yet again, leaving her to read some boring novel until she heard her parents’ car start and Lily’s chatter fade down the driveway. She let a puff of air out of her mouth as she sat up, leaning over to try the door handle. It turned and her door swung open, and Petunia grinned. Hiding the key from her mother had worked, then. Gently closing the door again, she reached over to crack her curtains open, eyeing the empty street. Two more hours.
A repeat of the book later, a click made her look up, and she raised an eyebrow to see the boy peeking around her doorway. “Do my parents know you’re here?” she asked.
The boy snorted and went a little pink. “‘Course not. They’re not here, are they?”
“No,” Petunia replied, sitting up. “They’re not.”
The boy stared at the floor for a moment. “Be safe.”
She barely stopped herself from gaping at him. He was so hurt, so obviously abused, and he wanted her to be safe. Petunia sniffled a little. “Don’t die, kid.”
“I’ll try.” The boy scuffed his ratty shoe on the carpet. “I’ll write to you when the war’s over,” he whispered.
Petunia definitely gaped at him this time. “You will?”
He scowled at her to hide the glimmer of hurt in his eyes. “Unless you don’t want me to.”
“No!” Petunia backtracked, raising her hands and leaning forward. “No, I’d like that. We could be friends when…all this is over. We could run from magic together.”
The boy smiled a tiny, tiny smile at her, and Petunia counted that as a win, so she smiled back. “Yeah. That’d be fun,” he murmured.
“I shall await your owl,” Petunia said softly. The boy nodded, paused for a moment, then rushed forward to hug her. She felt an inexplicable affection rise in her throat and, eyes stinging, she hugged the too-skinny kid back. Then, he pulled away and scuttled out of her room. Petunia grinned after him. Yeah, he was a good kid. She was still grinning when Vernon arrived and she was dragging her suitcase out to his car, thanking the stars that her parents weren’t home.
She left her goodbye note on the table - a short, angry thing written on the back of one of Lily’s essays - crammed her single suitcase into Vernon’s little blue hatchback, then cried with happiness as she left London behind for good.
When they arrived in the small town by the coast, Petunia thought the place was charming, and when they arrived at their new house, she knew it was perfect.
The pair slept on the floor on the first night because they couldn’t yet afford a bed frame.
Waking up with sore backs and happy grins, they quickly bonded with the neighbourhood, and soon news spread that a fit young man and his fit young girlfriend had moved in. Construction was a wanted profession in their small town, and it made good money, so Vernon took the opportunity with a grateful smile. He even had enough time in the evenings to keep playing football in the local league. Petunia took a job at the local library and volunteered at the pet shelter, one day bringing home a five-year-old deaf spaniel named Trumpet. (Vernon thought whoever named him was a creative genius, and told Petunia on no uncertain terms that the next pet they’d get would be named after another part of the orchestra.)
Soon, Petunia was twenty-one and planning her wedding in her backyard, laughing as Vernon tripped over Trumpet and face planted onto the grass. She threw a pen at him and reprimanded him for getting distracted, to which he responded by poking out his tongue and tripping again.
Her wedding was a quiet one, with only her closest friends from school and Vernon’s mates from work and sport, nobody batting an eye at the distinct lack of blood family present, because those who weren’t told could guess and kept their mouths shut. It was the best day of her life, the rings cementing what she had desperately wanted for almost twenty-three years of her life, to be loved.
She didn’t take her husband’s last name, nor did he hers. They were individuals who had found each other and decided that they could be better, to remake their names and their lives into something they could be proud of.
And Petunia was proud.