Petunia Evans & Blaise Potter
Petunia Evans kisses her husband’s too-big forehead and places a plate of eggs, toast, bacon, and sausage in front of him. He grunts and does not thank her, but the sentiment is still there. At least Petunia hopes it is.
“Has Dudley’s letter arrived yet?” he huffs out, holding open a newspaper with one hand and spooning eggs into his mouth with the other. A bit of egg gets caught in his mustache. Petunia smiles tightly.
“I’ll go check the post,” she says sweetly. Vernon grunts. She wishes he’d talk more. She wishes she did, too.
She stands up from her untouched plate of food and wonders how Vernon can eat so much of it when it looks so gross. So bland. But she supposes where there is excess, there must be scarcity. Someone’s gotta eat it.
They have a few letters. Two bills. She places the bills at the back and retakes her seat at the table, peering at the names on the letters.
“Dudley’s wrote,” she notes, her smile lax this time.
“Gimme,” Vernon says, not even looking at her, eyes still latched on the newspaper. What is so interesting that you won’t even look at me? What, Vernon, what?
She says, voice weak, “Alright,” and hands it over anyway. Why not? She wouldn’t want to look at her, either.
She looks at the other letters. One from Marge. Nancy, the widow in Three. And…
Her heart stops.
She blinks. Reads the name again. Blinks. Feels her stomach rise in her throat and says, without even thinking about it, “I’ve got to go get dressed.” She’s already dressed for the day, though, makeup and all, but if Vernon’s grunt is an acknowledgment of that, then she couldn’t tell.
He finishes her untouched plate while he climbs the stairs quickly, nearly tripping in her haste.
She enters the bathroom. She locks the door behind her and slides to the ground.
Petunia turns the letter over in her hands. The crest sealing the letter has a lion and a snake, intertwined with one another, and it glows. It glows and they move and Petunia turns up her nose at the sight of anything odd or unusual, like any self respecting member of Privet Drive but she remembers, like the rest of the Evans. She remembers her little sister. Her little sister and her little sister’s magic. Oh how she wishes she could forget.
But she cannot.
Looking at the seal, she tries to put herself in the mindset of her neighbors, her husband. What an odd trinket, oh, close the curtains, we must’ve let anyone else see, dear goodness! Technology is really advanced now days, isn’t it?
She is a perfectly normal resident of Privet Drive and what she holds in her hand is perfectly normal, if embarrassing to be seen with.
But she is also an Evans. She kept her last name for a reason.
(Magic. It has been so long since she’d thought of magic, of a sister long dead, of a war she didn’t even get an opportunity to participate in.)
The return address is a PO box and she almost finds that odd but it isn’t, not when compared to that crest.
It is addressed to her, too. She doesn't get letters addressed to her -- she is a wife and wives are secondary, aren’t they?
At the same it is the least conspicuous part of it.
From: Blaise Potter & Harry Potter
She nearly sobs. Potter! Potter, Potter, Potter. She had heckled her sister, her poor little sister, hadn’t she? Told her that Potter’s a stupid name. “Stay an Evans when you marry him,” she had said, disgusting. “Better yet, don’t marry him at all.” And Lily had stuck her tongue out at her and Petunia--
Petunia had called her a bitch. Why? Why had she done that? Why did she think that was an appropriate reaction to a lighthearted comment, a joking conversation -- and wasn’t that what she was doing, when she slighted Potter’s name, or was she seriously spiteful? She can’t remember, she can’t forget. It is an ugly mix of both.
Potter. Lily had married a Potter, a man full of magic, just like her, and Petunia hated her for it. Hated them. (Why? Why, why, why? Why can’t she remember why?) And Petunia had married a Dursley. She had always thought it was Lily who had made the wrong choice, not her. Petunia’s the one that lived, isn’t she? But she thinks about her husband’s dull responses and her son, growing to be just like him. She thinks about the lies they feed her and how she just lets them because it is easier to. She thinks about evenings spent kneeling over a toilet and thinks that, maybe, neither of them lived. Both choices made were wrong choices.
Blaise and Harry. Two new names. Are they both Lily’s children? Or are they married? Jesus -- are Lily’s children old enough to marry? How long had they gone without speaking, without even seeing each other before Lily had…
Long enough, maybe. They had gone long enough. That is an ugly thought, too, an unfitting reaction to such a pretty letter. The handwriting is nice and curled and the envelope pristine, if aged.
And on the front, marring it alongside her treacherous mind, it reads, To: Petunia Evans.
Yes. It’s to her, for her, is hers. She doesn’t want to open it but she knows she will hate herself more and forever if she doesn’t.
Dear Petunia,
My name is Harry Potter. When Lily died, I was left without my mother and without home. They considered putting me with you. But they decided against it. Why? I do not know. Do you? I’m not sure of the possible nature of such an answer, or if you are willing and able to supply one because I do not know you. I would like to, I think. For Lily.
She tears her eyes away from it then and is overwhelmed with images of a life where she has not one but two children to raise. What would he look like? Tall, short, skinny -- would he be like Dudley, look like Dudley, act like Dudley? The idea depressingly repulses her.
And his magic.
His letter and his heritage (for could a child like Lily ever produce someone like Petunia?) tell her that this boy is a part of the world she violently rejected. If Petunia raised him… When his magic sharted showing, would it be like Lily all over again? She would ruin another life. She would force him to go by Evans, too, she just knows it, because, even now, Evans is a prettier name. He would hate her. She…
She would hate him, too, this hypothetical child. Petunia Evans has never grown up.
It is best that they had put him far, far away from her, in the one place she would have never found him; the magical world.
The letter continues:
I think about Lily a lot. I was young when she died, and my memory is poor, so I did not know her well. Being raised in a place that grew up with her, I’d hoped I’d get to hear more about the mother I never got to have.
I did not. People seem resolute not to even speak her name around me, like the vowels themselves are cursed. I have gotten a few lines here and there but, for the most part, she is a stranger.
Who was she? That is what I want to know.
Who was Lily? Lily was a muggleborn, someone who had a right to both worlds, but was not able to indulge them. During the summers, she would complain about the other students thinking lesser of her for her blood and Petunia would tell her adamantly that she is, just not in the way Lily’s thinking. She should’ve had the best of both worlds and thanks to Petunia, thanks to her peers and Snape, Merlin, Snape, Lily got the worst of both. Lily was someone who was done unjustly and died too soon -- too young -- for any chance of rectification.
Who was Lily? Who was Lily? Petunia tugs on her brittle hair and suddenly she hates more than the hypothetical version of this boy. Let the dead stay dead, why don’t you? Who was Lily? A fool who got herself killed, that’s what! Who was she? Was, Harry, was! She was and now she’s not so it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter who she was.
She hates him. She loves and hates Lily, though, so she keeps reading.
I also want answers. Why have you not reached out to me, in all my years of living? Did you know I existed? What was your relation to my mother? Do you know who killed her? Do you know why? Do you know anything about my father’s side of the family? Why haven’t they reached out, either? I have so many questions, none of which anyone will answer.
God! thinks Petunia, the insanity of this situation hitting her. Why is Petunia -- of all people! -- the one this child is turning to for answers? Petunia Evans is normal. Petunia Evans is a Muggle. Petunia Evans is a monster. Petunia Evans shoved her sister away from her so if it’s her that Harry wants information on, she doesn’t have it. She has less.
To the heart of the matter: I am different. By even wizarding standards, I am unique. How, or why, I don’t know. I can put my hands together and hold someone’s magic and that is impossible. It should be impossible.
So I guess I will end my letter of long winded questions with just one more: were James and Lily different, too?
Signed, with the aid of Blaise Potter,
HP
Different? They were freaks. And this child is one, too, maybe even more so.
Petunia realizes how awful it is to call a child a freak. Harry comes to her, begging her for stories and answers and not only does Petunia want to turn him away, she wants to insult him. If someone did that to Dudley, she would tear their ear off. Why is it different now that the names are changed? It isn’t. She’s just… mean.
Petunia spends hours sitting on that cold bathroom floor, reading and rereading the letter. Her response is different each time. Anger. Sadness. Pity. Disgust. She settles on numbness.
At one point, she hears the front door open and close and buries her head in her hands. Vernon’s gone for work. She’s got to get up now -- she’s got chores to do, doesn’t she? She is a wife. Getting up, even when you could lie there forever, is what a wife does.
But she is newly embedded with resurrected ideas of magic and a nephew who might be old enough to marry, it is hard to muster the strength. Hours pass and still she sits.
She thinks she might be broken.
Eventually, her legs are numb and her bones feel like she is walking on sticks. If she does not get up now, she never will.
Petunia’s legs shake as she rises, one hand gripped deathly hard around the letter, crumbling the pretty paper, the other leaning on the door frame.
She looks down at her hand and slowly opens up her palm. The letter. Right. Yes. The letter. She can take care of that. Easily.
She folds the letter in half, resolves to tear it up and flush it down the toilet, but for whatever reason doesn’t. Can’t. Instead she opens the door and walks, trembling, down the stairs. It is time to vacuum.
•─────⋅☾ ☽⋅─────•
For a good while she is in limbo. Whatever she does, she does outside her head. She makes love to Vernon, lying unmoving with her eyes plastered to the paint. Vernon doesn’t seem to notice. She eats and speaks less. Vernon doesn’t notice that, either.
She sweeps and thinks of Harry’s questions. Thinks of the past and the sour present. Who was Lily? Someone endearingly sweet. When Petunia was young, her body image issues just then blooming into existence, Lily was the first to notice. She told Petunia she had a special spell for her. “It’ll make your body perfect,” she’d said. Petunia had not liked magic but she took one look at her body (imperfect) and asked, warily, for Lily to cast it.
“Okay. Close your eyes.” Petunia closed them. “Psshshs! Okay. It’s done! Open up.”
Petunia frowns -- because she does not know much of magic, refuses to, but knows that ‘psshshs’ is probably not an official spell -- but opens her eyes. To her utter dismay and disappointment, her body is the exact same as before. Magic is good for nothing. Not even fixing her. What else could she have expected?
But Lily sees the despair on her sister’s face and throws her arms around Petunia’s shoulders. “Your body’s already perfect, silly. So stop trying to change it.”
It didn’t help. Petunia remembers it vividly regardless. It was the first time anyone had told her her body wasn’t horrible or ‘just alright’ and in her darkest moments, the idea that at least someone thought she was perfect is what she clings to.
Petunia cooks breakfast she won’t eat and almost burns the eggs because she is wondering where that letter Lily sent her was, the one she sent when Lily first started attending Hogwarts, leaving Petunia all alone. You abandoned me so many times, Lily. When you first chose magic and first went to Hogwarts and every time after that you kept going back, and then. Then when you died.
Petunia washes the dishes and wonder where Snape is now and if Harry knows him and if he does, what does he think and if it's something good, then did Severus tell him anything about Lily and if he really didn't, then why is it Petunia he went to instead.
Petunia writes a response to Dudely’s letter and thinks Who is Lily? No, Harry, who are you? His situation perplexes her. He wrote the letter with Blaise but didn't mention him once. He wants information but gives none. It is the letter of a child and Petunia feels stupid to have ever wondered if Harry was old enough to wed.
She goes throughout her days absent and hungry and when she deems her time ‘free,’ she sits down to write a response. She writes about Lily, then crosses it out. She asks about him, then Blaise, and crosses that out, too. Every word she tries is lacking.
Vernon finds her like that, hours later. He asks what’s got her “panties in a twist” and grabs Harry’s letter from her weak grasp and Petunia can’t fight him. She’s a wife. Wives don’t fight.
Vernon asks if this is about her sister -- her freak, weirdo, (dead) sister -- and she says yes. Vernon growls and throws the letter on the floor and paces, closing the blinds. Petunia blinks at him. Her husband is… throwing a tantrum. Muttering about people in cloaks and abnormal outlaws, ruining their own reputations, he is the very mirror of Dudley. She puts herself in the mindset of any other perfectly normal resident of Number Four, Privet Drive, and when there she thinks she could be throwing a tantrum, too. That is a rational, normal person, wife-ly response.
But she is also an Evans and she kept her last name for a reason so she does not join but watch.
Vernon calms down enough to ask her if she’s written up a response yet and she says no. He huffs and says he’ll take it over from here, then.
The wife-ly thing to do would be to let him. She knows what he will say and it will be more vile than any of the awful things she’s thought. And she will. Let him, that is. Because this life is all she knows and even though it is not that much of a life, it is all she has. If Lily was still alive it would be different. If Lily was still alive she would have someplace to go.
But Lily is not. All she has now is Harry and Vernon and she will sit squarely in both corners. She will choose neither and choose both because Lily’s dead and it doesn’t matter anyway, does it?
So Lily tells him she has an idea. (Wives are not supposed to have ideas.) “It involves a little magic -- terrible, Vernon, I know -- but will really make our message pop. What do you say?” And he of course says no but she pushes and pushes and when a woman who says nothing starts yelling, you suddenly start listening. That’s how it works.
Lily had taught her to make a howler in his tenth year after a particularly bad breakup. Petunia had sneered at her then but, now, she decides it is the perfect way to find a balance. A little bit of Lily with a lot of Vernon.
Harry will hate her for it. Like Lily might. And isn’t that a bonus, bringing this piece of her sister back to life?