Chapter 2
There was something to say about the fact that poised, perfect Petunia took one look at her childhood bed and hurled the content of her stomach all over the laminate floors.
Her stomach churned and bubbled and Petunia was almost positive that she was dying. Sweat marred the surface of her forehead, her cheeks, her chin, and when she looked up to find a red-haired nymph that looked exactly like her dead sister- who she knew had been dead for sixteen years and eleven months- she threw up again.
Tears blurred her vision and she definitely was in Hell- or was this Heaven? Because Lily would never be subdued in the depths of Hell. People like Petunia belonged there. People who ran more on hate than energy; pathetic, worthless people who despised themselves so much they took their insecurities out on a mere babe.
Lily didn’t belong in Hell and Petunia didn’t belong in Heaven. So where exactly was she?
Some sort of limbo between the two different worlds? A place where Lily could take her pent up anger over her sister out at her? Was this her penance? Was this what all the religions meant when they mentioned karma?
“Tuney!! Oh my hell! MUMMY!! Tuney is sick!! Someone HELP!” The deeply petrified voice of her baby sister filled the once ringing void in her head and Petunia was definitely sure she was about to faint now. It wasn’t even a question. It was simply a matter of when she would collapse.
She never noticed how much she missed being called that nickname. She also noticed how much, at the same time, she loathed it.
It reminded her too much of a time she was not a privy to. Of a time before the pain and anguish of loss. But a time that held pain and anguish nonetheless.
This girl wasn't her sister and yet she was at the same time. Her hair was up in a high ponytail, seeming like sparks of flames that flickered up to the air as she hovered nervously over a limp Petunia who was still unsure as to what exactly was going on. "Petunia?!" That was her mother's voice. She hadn't heard her mother's voice in years. Tears clustered around her eyes and she was almost one hundred percent certain she had passed away and left her son in the hands of that witch, who she had a feeling had been either herself, which wasn't possible seeing as she was a mere disgusting muggle as the wizards called her, or someone who wore her favourite lipstick? A friend maybe?
Besides if she was dead... why was Lily so young. She looked to be around middle-school age and the last time she had seen her sister, Lily had definitely not been a child. A war-hardened child soldier sure, but not a child.
"Up you go," A man's voice says gruffly from behind her and she was hoisted into the air like she weighed nothing. That was certainly bizarre. She might've been stick thin, as her neighbours used to gossip about, but she wasn't light enough to be lifted as if she was an insubordinate child-
Petunia abruptly had an urge to look into a mirror.
Especially seeing as her dead family members were staring at her like she had caught the plague. That was funny- She couldn't remember the last time her parents paid this much attention to her.
"Tuney are you feeling all right?" Lily demands, her voice child-like. And gosh. Had her sister really been this innocent?
"Petunia? Darling?" Her mother asks, green eyes so like Lily's, staring down at her in worry.
"She's burning up love. Seems she's delirious, let's take her to the hospital." And god that was her father.
Her father who'd been killed by death eaters when she was nineteen and starting university, when the image of a green skull with a python haunted her dreams for years to come. 'The dark mark', Lily had said. A mark placed above the houses of muggles death eaters murdered in cold blood. Because muggles didn't have magic and so muggles were worthless.
Petunia once would've loved to see the effects inbreeding must've caused them just to laugh in their bigoted faces.
"The HOSPITAL!!" Lily shrieks, looking at her sister like she might as well have been dying. Petunia sure felt like she was dying. Or she'd taken drugs and was now severely high. She'd tried cocaine once as a dare and it felt nothing like this.
"Petunia? Petunia, flower can you hear me?" Her father hadn't called her flower since Lily began school at Hogwarts. Petunia would know. She'd been keeping count. And it stung all the more, when he started calling Lily that. Someone was gently tapping her cheeks to get her attention but her eyes were blurry and unfocussed. They were pale with fright and panic, alit in a sort of hallucinatory wonder only people high off their rockers would look like. To Mr. Howard Evans and Mrs. Rose Evans, this was a very concerning sight to see in their eleven-nearly twelve year old daughter. Petunia’s eyes were usually pale in colour, but her eyes were growing more foggy by the second, more muddled and dazed. It didn’t help considering how scatterbrained their daughter was acting.
"Alright. Hospital it is." Rose informs her family and that was the last thing Petunia heard because her entire world shifted its axis and she retched again. Then there was nothing.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Petunia wanted to whack whatever dreaded, blasted thing was making so much noise. Her head ached and all her muscles seemed to atrophy in on themselves. She was not feeling very well at all actually and would have done anything to stop herself from opening her eyes to confront the arguing couple lounging where what seemed to be beside her bloody ear. But alas, Dudley was probably worried sick out of his mind and Vernon wasn't going to feed Dudley nutritious food like the doctor ordered- No, that entire responsibility was on her shoulders... again.
It felt like her eyelids were taped shut to her cheeks and it took effort to peel them open- only to shut them again quite quickly. It was much too bright in the room. She hated that. She much preferred quiet, dark corners with a recent romance novel and a cup of good British tea. Someone was quite honestly insane for keeping a room this bright. She was not a plant thankyouverymuch. She had no use for photosynthesis. She got her energy from caffeine, books and her son’s laughter.
"Petunia? Are you awake?" A gentle voice whispers so close to her ear, she flinches.
"Bollocks Lily, I would like to die from old age thank you and please. Not a bloody heart attack," Petunia grumbled out loud only to cause an assortment of startled giggles to flood the room. And that's when she realized what exactly she had just said and she bolts into a sitting position, eyes so wide, they were straining.
Her younger sister yelps in surprise, hurrying to her tiny feet to stand beside a flabbergasted Petunia.
"Tuney? Are you alright? You're looking a tad mental there." Lily lets out an awkward laugh that was in no way shape or form allowed to exist since she forgot how cute her sister was.
Her baby sister.
Right in front of her.
And staring at her like Petunia announced the cure for cancer. Adoringly- always adoringly and she did not deserve it.
"You're alive?" Petunia wheezes, sounding much like the smoker Vernon had been in his thirties.
"Uhhh- yes silly," Lily giggles, looking amused. Her green, emerald eyes -no one had eyes that bright Petunia should have known she had magic- flickering toward her parents and Petunia finds that she needs to sit down hastily.... before realizing she was already sitting down and plops back into her pillows like an ungraceful behemoth.
"Did you have a nightmare flower?" Her dad looked amused, placing the newspaper in his hands aside. They shared the same blurred grey eyes. They had no colours. None at all. None in their skin. None in their hair and none in their eyes. They were the blank canvases and Lily and mother were the art. They had all the colour. Sometimes Petunia used to wonder if her father married her mother to bring a whirlwind of colour into his monotone life. She wondered if that was why he preferred Lily -colourful, bright, laughing Lily- over herself -bland and grey and blonde and crooked. Petunia wondered if her father saw her blandness and avoided her because she reminded him too much of himself.
She realized it has been a couple minutes since she answered her father and now they looked like they were contemplating pressing the nurse's button for assistance.
"Yes," She blurts out, words falling from her mouth like vomit, "It was terrible you see. All of you died. Must have been a fever dream." She mutters the last words to herself. At once the three people in the room relax, the panic in their tensed up shoulders and twisted mouths fading from view. It had always been easy to lie to her family. She used to wonder why her parents never could tell when she lied, but caught Lily in every lie that passed her lips. She never had answered the question for fear of hurting her own feelings. Now she knew that she merely disappeared from their line of sight, like how the sky faded from view whenever the sun came out.
"You had a very high fever dear. The doctors said its a good thing we caught you at that moment. Your body was fighting off a very deadly infection." Her mother frets nervously pushing her auburn hair behind a pale ear. That was the colour Lily's bright red hair would become when she grew older. Another colour that belongs to Lily. Petunia didn’t know why she consistently counts them, all of the colours belong to Lily. Always.
"Ah, I see. Thank you for catching it." Petunia says with a sort of twisted, awkward smile. Oh, she loathed how gauche she was being. The women in her ‘British breakfast tea time club,’ which was simply a cover for the fact that it was a gossip group, would have shredded her to pieces so thin, there’d be nothing left of her. You didn’t show emotion among women like that. They’d catch it in an instant and know how to use it against you almost immediately. Petunia would know. Seeing as she had gotten to be quite the expert on blackmail. Those cunts always had words to say about her nephew.
She didn't know how to talk to her parents when they weren't praising Lily, when they weren't yelling at her. They rarely did that anyways- simply talk to their eldest daughter. But she'd forgotten that before the magic, before Lily became too special, much too untouchable, and much too colourful, that they had used to speak to her. That they had loved her just as equally to Lily. That she’d had parents.
"Of course! You gave us all a scare darling. You must tell us when you're feeling unwell instantly. It shouldn't have escalated this much." Her mother hovers over her, much like Lily was, trying to tuck in the blankets around her legs and fluff up a pillow that she was currently using. Her eyes flicked between the two redheads in the room, again noting how similar they were and how besotted her father always acted whenever his two favourite girls were in the room.
"I'm feeling much better than before. So you needn't worry about me mother,” Petunia murmurs absentmindedly and at the speechlessness in the room, she carefully peers up to see her father’s dumbfounded look and her mother and sister crying silent tears. Eyes widening, she slightly eases away from both of them which, in hindsight, had been a terrible mistake because they explode in rounds of horrendous weeping. Her mouth falls open, cold shock shivering up her spine like ice.
“MUMMY TUNEY IS DYING!!” Lily screams between her wails of death. Good god, what were they on about?
“Darling!! DARLING!! Get a doctor! GET A DOCTOR!” Her mother was repeating the phrase over and over again so much that Petunia was considering the reason for this outlandish behaviour was a bloody stroke. Her mother was frantic, waving at husband like her arms were flags on a windy day. The comparison made her want to laugh, but she didn’t believe the people in the room would appreciate her bursting into rounds of giggles. She honestly suspected they’d have her shipped off to a mental asylum.
Petunia kept blinking rapidly, hoping that maybe this was another fever dream, because this couldn’t be real. What was going on?
“All right! Calm down!” Her father demands, hurrying over to sit on the edge of the hospital bed, because his wife has his eldest ensnared in her arms so tightly, splotches of red were appearing all over her face. Rose was rocking Petunia back and forth murmuring prayers as if the girl was possessed and Howard never wanted a coffee more or maybe a smoke. He couldn’t help the snort that escaped, when he realized his eldest looked like she desired the exact same.
“Calm down? CALM DOWN!? MY BABY IS POSSESSED!” Rose screeches and Petunia actually deadpans at her. Her father looked seconds from breaking out into rounds of hearty guffaws at the reaction.
“Darling wait a moment-“ Howard tells his wife, “You’re strangling the poor child,” He was grinning like he’d won the lottery. “Let’s simply ask her questions. Cutting the oxygen from her brain won’t help in this matter.”
“WHAT!?” Lily squawks and oh yes- her sister was still there and looked pale enough to collapse in a dead faint.
“Could someone inform me what on earth is all this about?” Petunia demands, waving a hand around to gesture to whatever that was.
That started the wails all over again and Petunia made a collective decision that she was going to mute herself until further notice.
“Flower, you’re acting a bit strange that is all. Your mother and sister are worried that the fever might’ve caused some….issues.” Howard tries to inform her over all the noise.
“This is a hospital! Could you two calm down!” Petunia demands in a low hiss, looking at her mother and sister in embarrassment, “I am fine. I promise. I don’t feel any different.” She tries to assure their delicate tendencies.
It was not working.
They ended up calling a physician who proceeded to run a multitude of tests on her brain, much to her chagrin.
“Well good news is that Petunia here seems completely fine. Bad news is that the change in behaviour, you all have mentioned, isn’t detectable on the scans. Nothing seems out of order. This could of course be a cause of the fever, however, I’ve only seen changes in personality after a brain injury. Usually people begin to suffer from social anxiety, irritability, anger, depression and so on. Usually the location of the brain injury is an indication of how a person changes there behaviour. From what I’ve seen, Petunia doesn’t have any history of any mental illnesses that could have caused this drastic change. We could do some more tests if you’re worried but-“
Petunia zones out, her eyes continuing to blink rapidly, hoping this was just some sort of illusion. Wasn’t she dead? This didn’t seem like death to her. Where was the huge skeleton man with the scythe that caused folk to piss themselves in fear? Petunia thought she deserved to at least see a skeleton man for her troubles. That would definitely be a tick off her things to do before she died list. Or was it after she died? The technicalities didn’t really matter.
Personality change? What on earth was going on? her eyes flicker to her form in bed, her brain catching up to what was going on slowly. Her legs were tiny- too tiny. She had long, slender legs that she considered to be highly attractive. Did someone just cut them in half?!
Her arm swung the blanket off her legs to discover that oh- no she was not cut in half after all, but she had shrunk.
Alright, Petunia required the assistance of a mirror. Right this second.
She gets up, tugging the IV behind her a tad more aggressively than she should have. She ignores all the questions the dead people around her were issuing her, a ringing in her ears growing louder and louder before she was in the bathroom- in front of a mirror and she was staring at her reflection.
The face of her child self was staring back at her, the horror growing on her reflection’s face more and more with every second that passed. White, white, white hair. Grey, grey, grey eyes.
She’d done everything to differentiate herself from the bland child she had once been, without stealing any of Lily’s colours. Because she didn’t get colours. She didn’t deserve them.
But here she was- baby Petunia staring back at her. The child she despised with every fibre of her being.
She couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve here. Tiny. God she was so tiny. And the ringing was getting worse. She couldn’t hear anything or anyone.
Petunia stumbles back. Staring at herself in the mirror had been a chore for her. It was something she’d done for a single second to see if she looked alright, to see if there was a hair out of place. She didn’t think she’d stared into a mirror this long since she was seven and screaming words of hurt at herself into a bathroom mirror. Petunia Evans didn’t get to look into a mirror. Mirrors were for the pretty people. Mirrors liked those with beauty and showed them the best parts of them. She disliked mirrors and so they absolutely abhorred her. All she saw in mirrors were her crooked edges -always crooked, always hideous- never straight and perfect, never even fairly. Always beastly, always ugly and always arid. Like a pizza with nothing on it. Lily had all three types of cheese and Petunia didn’t even have one.
Boring, drab, hideous, grey, grey, GREY, white, white, WHITE, colourless, colourless, COLOURLESS.
The words were being screamed at her. Louder than the ringing. Always louder than anything she ever heard.
She finds herself back in the hospital room, ignoring her dead parents, her dead sister- ignoring everyone.
She looks down at the newspaper her father had been reading. And a small voice in her head started to plead, beg, promise anything for her suspicions to be rendered null, for her thoughts to be lies. ‘Please be lies. Please. Please. Please. Please be fake. Please. Please. Please. I’d give anything. My eyes, my hair, my hands, my legs. Just please. Please. Please no. Take my life. Anything. Anything-“ Her pleas were still overshadowed by the screams roaring in her head, overshadowed by the hate spewing in every which direction.
BRITISH PRIME MINISTER CAUGHT IN AN AFFAIR
Tuesday January 20th, 1971
The year was staring at her, mockingly and the ringing was blaring. It was booming in her head like thunder and she had a headache, but she was also dizzy and oh- she was feeling quite faint.
1971. 1971. 1971.
Dudley. Dudley. Dudley. Her son. Her son. Her son.
He was gone. She was twelve…. twelve. A sob escapes and she was bunching the newspaper in her fingers before she was falling to the ground, disregarding the terror of her alive parents and her alive sister.
God they were alive.
And the sobs were broken, and in between frets of screams. They were shrill and deafening and the stomach of every person in that room dropped to the floor. Lily had taken to falling beside her sister, her hands shaking and fingers trembling. Her hands were fluttering around her sister because she didn’t know what to do. Petunia wasn’t breathing properly, her nails digging holes into the newspaper, into her palms. She was rocking back and forth, the paper clutched to her chest, muttering words under her breath when she was wasn’t screaming and sobbing so hard she couldn’t breathe. Her sister’s screams were done with her entire body and Lily had never heard a sound so terrible. They stuck her straight in the heart every time. Petunia screamed with her fingers and her eyes and her mouth. She screamed with her entire body and then screamed even more.
Doctors were trying to subdue her, inject her with something, dragging a vicious Lily from her sister, kicking and punching and howling, nails scratching at the people trying to seize her sister- steal Petunia away.
Magic had taken Lily from Petunia but it’d given Lily back and had taken her son as revenge. This was retribution. Punishment. Damnation. Condemning her to a world without her son. Because her Dudley was gone. She might have another child in the years to come, but the child would never be the same son she lost.
This was her own form of Hell.
Because as much as she’d begged for this to be fake, a lie. She knew it wasn’t. Because her eyes meant nothing. Her hair meant nothing. Her hands and legs? Nothing. Her life meant nothing.
And this was all the proof she needed.