Wow this is actually very dark. I always have fun writing Petunia but here I think I went a bit far. Well, anyway I'd really like to thank Alarice tay for giving me the idea and opportunity to write this. (I'm speaking of her Dark and Twisted one-shot Challenge on the HPFC. If you have nothing else to do or just need inspiration, go take a look, it's really worth it).

This OS is also written for the If You Dare… Challenge (prompt n°4, reality bites) and the Pairing Diversity Boot Camp Challenge (prompt 14, love hurts) .

Have fun and please review!

Love Hurts, Hate Burns

She would always remember the day she found the small baby on her doorstep by a cold morning of November as the worst of her life.

People always thought the worst day of her life was when her parents had died in a car crash of which she had been the only survivor – for some reason the doctors couldn't explain. But Petunia knew. Oh, she always knew and always would that the small pendant her sister had gifted her for her eighteenth birthday was the reason she was still alive. She would always remember that had her perfect witch of a sister hadn't done anything for their parents, to save them and that thing she had given her hadn't been able to save them.

She would always keep the pendant, but not as a fond memory of her sister – which was what people believed – but as a memory of how magic had failed her. Of how magic had failed her family, had destroyed the smiling and mischievous little sister she remembered having one day.

So when her sister had died she hadn't even been surprised, and she hadn't felt anything. For the woman who had died that day, in that burning house wasn't her sister anymore, it was actually a good riddance. A good riddance of the demon who had taken her sister away when she was only eleven. Or maybe later, since when she came back in the beginning, Lily had still been normal. She had still been somewhat her little and beloved little sister. But as soon as she had begun to go out with that James Potter… Well Petunia knew she had lost her sister. So she had already grieved and had been grieving for a long while when she read the letter.

No, the news of her sister's and her husband's deaths didn't surprise her. What did, however, was the news she would have to care of their son. A freak too. She could already see that he looked just like his wretched father, the one who stole her family away, who destroyed everything.

She couldn't stand to look at it – of course it was an it, it couldn't be something else, because that would be acknowledging she had responsibilities toward it – so she screamed for her husband to take it away, as far as he could.

However, as her husband came the thing opened its eyes. He had her eyes. The beautiful emerald eyes that belonged to her mother and her sister. They were exactly like Lily's when she was still normal, still hers. She couldn't let him go, not when he was a link to what she had lost. Maybe, just maybe if he grew up in a normal, nice family he would turn out okay and become everything his mother could – no should – have been.

She put him in the cupboard under the stairs. Maybe if she spent as little time looking at him as possible she would stop feeling that deep seeded hate she felt as soon as she saw his messy dark hair and that excruciating pain when her eyes met his.

As nothing happened in the first few years she felt her feelings calm down, and she could finally begin to believe that maybe she was doing this right.

And then his school called to tell them that he had somehow found himself on the roof but that nobody knew how he had done it.

It was then that she realized that yes, the cold, the harsh reality bites. And it bites hard.

Her hate flamed so high and hard that she wondered if it would ever calm back down. Gone were the feelings of a broken heart when she saw his sad looks, gone was the similarity she had seen between him and her sister. She hated him so much that looking at it – because it wasn't human, no it was a demon, the devil trying once again to tear her family apart. But she wouldn't let it do it this time, she wouldn't let that monstrosity destroy everything she held dear once again.

Her hate passed onto her husband, who had never been fond of the thing either, and her son. But it was a good thing, because if they hated it, then it wouldn't have the chance to corrupt them like the demon possessing her sister had seduced her parents, leading them to their death.

But at the same time, though she tried so very hard not to, she loved it. She knew she was already lost, there would be no redemption for her; the demon had already taken her heart all these years ago when she had seen her eyes in his face. And where her heart went she followed.

This love was unnatural, it wasn't to be, but the demon was just that, a demon so of course he wouldn't care about what was proper or not. She only hoped that her damnation wouldn't be that of her family too, that she hadn't condemned her own by loving the monster hidden in a boy's body.

She could feel the cold – for this love wasn't a fire, it didn't burn, it wasn't right. It hurt – seeping slowly in her heart as she spent more and more time watching the boy as he grew up to look like his damned father. The fact that it looked exactly like the thing that had stolen her favorite person in the world away – her sister – was just hurting her more and more with each passing day but still her love couldn't fade as easily as time did. It actually grew and grew until it became impossible to hide properly.

So she pilled layer of hate upon layer of hate in top of it, sneering at the dark haired boy each time she saw him, she encouraged her husband to be harsh and unforgiving with him, never telling him that the real reason for all this hate was just that she couldn't stand to look at herself in a mirror.

She hated him/it, but really, what was hate but twisted – and dark, oh so dark - love?