The Last Image of My Sister
She stands uncertainly before me, the swollen dome of her stomach jutting out below her thin ribcage like a pendulum, the fire that always burned so brightly in her eyes dimming with every word I say. It is unusually cool for a day this late in June; the wind sighs across the bare surface of her moon-kissed skin, gently teasing the goose-pimples out, though she barely notices. She parts her lips and breathes a single word, a word that drops to my feet when it finds my palm as tightly closed against it as my unforgiving heart. "Please", she begs, and it lies there, pitifully thin and struggling beneath the weight of all the meaning it must convey, and when I shake my head slowly she lets out a sob of despair, a single discordant note dryly scraping the tender flesh of her throat.
"I've already told you why not," I say, anticipating the question I don't want to hear her ask me, biting the words of my answer off at the ends so that they are easier to digest. "Don't ask me to explain it again."
She doesn't answer immediately. She stares at the curve of her stomach, cupping the base of it with one hand, her lips moving carefully. I know what she is doing. I know, because I have spent almost a year doing it myself. Before my son was born I whispered a thousand truths to him, and when I felt him squirming in the space between heartbeats I knew he was listening. I spent hours speaking to him, secure in the solitude of the bathroom in the smallest, safest part of the night, tracing my fingers over the arc of his home, as if I could feel the shape of him by intuition alone. My son knew every one of my secret hopes, my childish dreams, my terrors and my regrets, and all before he had even sucked in his first breath. I know what she is doing, and this makes it all the harder to turn her away.
"Please, Tuney. My son will be here in less than a month," she tells me gently, looking up. "I'd like him to know he has a family outside of me and James." She fixes her eyes on me, the liquid jade of them quietly beseeching me. "Please. You've barely spoken to me since we were kids. You didn't even come to my wedding. The least you could do is be a part of my son's life when he's born."
"I need you to go," I tell her, moving past her quiet, raw words, because if I linger over them for too long I will surely break. "The baby will wake up soon."
At this she looks up, her attention snared. "What did you have?" she breathes, as though she hardly dares to ask the question. "You never told me."
I hesitate. "A boy," I tell her proudly, and I stop myself before I can launch into my monologue on the wonder that is my newborn son. I don't tell her the way his eyes are a bright, clear blue, but that sometimes, in certain lights, the green reflected in them is so pure that I have to choke down the sob in my chest. I don't tell her the way he sleeps so peacefully that I have to stop myself from waking him, just so that I know he is okay. I don't tell her how it feels to watch his tiny starfish hands splayed across my breast when I hold him to me, or how the gentle rhythm of his little chest moving with each breath he takes is capable of mesmerising me for hours at a time.
When she smiles her already pretty features soften somehow, rendering her beautiful in the milky half-light of the fading sun. I had forgotten how beautiful she is. "Can I see him?" she asks, her voice tugging at my sore heart. I never dreamed my sister would one day beg for one glimpse of her baby nephew. "Just once. Please?"
She doesn't need to know that my baby is not here, that he is visiting his aunt with his father, and so I shake my head no, softly, and try not to notice the way she dips her head to mask the tears I know have sprung to her eyes. I know her too well, and suddenly this is far harder than I expected it to be, because every inch of her is so familiar that it feels as though my skin is aflame. I remember the fire-spun strands of her hair and the way they seem to crackle when she is angry, though they lie subdued over her slim shoulders now. I remember every nuance and colour that her eyes flash with every phase and mood she enters; I remember the precise curve of her smile and the tilt of her frown; and, worse than anything else, I remember the exact weight and shape of her heart, because of all the times I helped piece it back together as a child, splinter by shattered splinter, because of all the times over the years that she has proven how large it is, and tonight it is the heaviest I have ever felt it.
I don't tell her that when I was pregnant I sat in the twilight hoping I would have a daughter, so that the memory would not pain me so, so that I would have some tiny part of her. I don't tell her that I'm sorry, and I don't tell her that I'm too proud to say a word. I don't tell her anything because part of me realises that she already knows.
"It wouldn't be a good idea," I tell her. "I'm sorry." I try to fit in every possible reason that I might say those final two words to her, hoping she will understand, knowing that she never will.
"Are you ever going to let me back into your life, Tuney?" she asks me, and she smiles so sadly and so disarmingly that I almost feel myself nodding, my gaze directed at her heavy stomach, so that if I squint I swear I can see the faint outline of my unborn nephew bubbling against the surface of her stretched vanilla skin. My fingertips fizz with longing to trace the gentle slope of her tightly laced belly, and I clench my fist shut, knowing what will happen if I give in.
I remember the hot sting of humiliation as that pale dark-haired boy told her what she was, the way I stared down at my skin, sure I was as translucent as he clearly believed I was, and was surprised not to see the bone and sinew knitted there beneath my pallid skin. I remember how worthless I felt; how for weeks after that first meeting I wandered alone in the woods, seizing every likely-looking stick I came across and waving it artlessly, pathetically trying to prove to myself that I was like her, I could do it too. I remember how long I sweated over that wretched letter to the elderly man with the kind liquid eyes, how it felt as though I couldn't breathe when I read his reply. I remember sitting at my desk, curled over like a question mark, struggling with my algebra homework, whilst she sat behind me, furiously scribbling rapid and indecipherable symbols onto a yellowed piece of parchment, surrounded by enormous tomes bearing names such as The Mega Book of Magic. I remember watching her as she told our parents excitedly about her new boyfriend, about how talented he was, how handsome and clever; how excited they were when she first brought him home to meet them and he produced a bouquet of tulips for my mother from thin air; how when they met poor Vernon they maintained politeness but all they could talk of afterwards was how amazing James was, how funny and how generous; how that had only made me love Vernon more.
I remember all of this and more as I shake my head again. I remember it even as the rogue tears slide treacherously down the plane of my cheeks. I remember it as I whisper, "I can't," and watch her face twist with misery. I remember it as I step hesitatingly forward to embrace my sister one final time, a last hug made awkward by the bulk of her belly and my guilt, and step back inside my house, closing the door with difficulty as I try to shut out the memories that crowd me. As the sheet of wood closes I make sure that the last image I have of her is her belly, crowded with life, and her face, creased with tears and hurt though it is, because somehow I know that this is the last image I will carry of her, to the end of my days, and anything is better than nothing.
I wish I had been wrong. I wish I could go back in time and make everything right. But right now, more than anything else in the world, I wish that my sister hadn't been crying because of me the very last time I saw her alive.
This is a oneshot that I thought of, wrote the first sentence for, and then had to continue. I've never written from Petunia's perspective, and I hope I have done it justice. I believe that, for all her bravado and jealous hysterics, she truly loved her sister and regretted all that passed between them; if she hadn't, she would not have agreed to raise Harry, or to protect him all those years. In case the storyline is unclear, it is set sometime between Dudley's birth and Harry's, so that Dudley is only around a week old, as if my calculations are correct there is approximately a month between them. Lily is still heavily pregnant and is visiting her sister one final time to beg for reconciliation.