ACT ONE- Prologue
Mrs. Dursley neè Evans gazes into the vibrant green of her sister’s eyes for what she knew would be the last time.
Her son. Lily’s son.
One of the many colours -of course- that once again belonged to Lily.
“I have lived in this house for twenty years,” She murmurs, her back, rod-straight and her nose relaxed unlike her usual pinched up, disgusted expression. She stares around the once filled up house. It was empty now. She supposed that this was the house that her nephew had always seen, had always lived in. She’d just been too self-absorbed to notice. No, that wasn’t right. She did. She just never cared. Perhaps this was her penance.
It wasn’t a very nice house, that was for sure. But her son grew up here. She raised him here, heard his cries and cherished his laughs. “And now in a single night…. I’m expected to leave.” Her voice was quiet and Harry was a tad dumbfounded.
He didn’t usually hear his aunt Petunia unless she was shrieking at him to get dinner ready or yapping at him to tend to the gardens or take out the trash. He called her a banshee in the most quiet crevices of his mind. A harpy, a raging lunatic. He tolerated her on good days and abhorred her on the bad. He’d been estranged for his entire life and cursed her out everyday in his head, in the creases of his small cupboard, in the agony of broken bones and concussions. And yet- all he felt right now for her was pity.
Harry felt a lump in his throat and he tried his best to swallow it down. Yet again, it was his fault a family would be uplifted from all they knew- taken from all they loved and knew just to run away from an utter madman.
“They’ll torture you,” Harry tells her, urges her to believe him with his eyes. But aunt Petunia had always hated his eyes and his eyes drop to the floor in an involuntary act of obedience. He despised that, “If they think for a moment you know where I’m going, they’ll stop at nothing.” He finalizes, hoping his words would scare her enough to run to her safety. He never would expect his family to fight with him… after all the last member of his family that would have stood by his side had died two years ago.
Petunia Dursley was not a stupid women. She was no idiot. People may forget but she had done everything to protect her family from magic. She knew how dangerous that bloody lifestyle was and for the first time in her life, she wanted to beg her nephew not to leave. To come with them. Go into hiding. Because he would end up dead just like she did. Because she couldn’t stand the thought of having to bury another pair of green eyes, because-
“Do you think I don't know what they are capable of?” She asks her nephew quietly, her voice snapping Harry’s head up from staring at his old, grimy shoes. And all she saw was green, green, GREEN a colour she hated, hated,HATED.
Harry seemed almost bewildered. This was certainly one of the rare times they had spoken to one another diplomatically. Petunia could count the number of times that had happened on one hand. Of course Vernon was always there to interrupt.
Petunia straightens up, her back becoming even more rod-like. A front of strength, Harry realized for the first time in his life. He couldn’t imagine being that stiff all hours of the day, as if she had spent months holding books on her head, forcing her back into subservience.
“You didn’t just lose a mother that night in Godric’s Hollow, you know…. I lost a sister,” She states a matter of fact, her voice hoarse with emotion, knowing that her nephew never saw her loss and had always seen his own. And maybe that was her fault- because there was no love lost between aunt and nephew. None at all.
His aunt’s eyes were always dark to Harry. He believed them cold and unfeeling and as emotionless as an abyss. They weren't cold now. They actually seemed alight with feeling, not as dark now, no.
Harry’s jaw clenched with her words and all he wanted to do was scream. Well if Petunia missed her sister that much, why despise her son? She had no right to gaslight him right before their goodbyes. Harry deserved to hate her, deserved to simply not care if they left him.
Before he could swallow down the hateful words, curse at her that she had no right to mourn a sister, whose son she abused, Petunia was walking out of the house, gliding right past him.
A pure wave of self-loathing rushed through her, like a tsunami. It was overwhelming, all encompassing and simply terrifying. Her hands trembled as they clenched onto her purse strap so tightly, her fingers ached. Because the truth of the matter was, Petunia never hated Harry. She never hated him for a second. But she loathed herself. And that self-loathing had found a way in her little messed up mind to attach itself to her nephew.
She had failed her sister.
And had been stuck in a house for seventeen years with a reminder of that failure.
Petunia didn’t think for a moment that she ever detested herself more.
No that’s not right- she had felt like this before. Only once. When the news of her sister’s passing reached her in a mere letter with a baby sitting outside in the cold for hours, crying from near hypothermia. When she was given the casket of said sister because for all her tales of friends and witches and wizards who were so much better than muggles, Petunia was the only one there during the ceremony. When she had buried her sister and brother-in-law. When she had placed white gardenias on her sister's grave, among all the other thrown about bouquets of lilies, because she knew her sister hated the flowers she was named after, because she wanted to be distinct and chose to like the most unique flower she could find.
No- Petunia Dursley had failed her sister and was now failing her nephew, allowing Lily’s son to be struck down just like his mother- just like her sister.
She would never see green again.