By Djinn Hashiba-Maxwell
Sometimes I feel like an innocent one
To deserve this fate what I have I ever done
I know that I made all the rules
But time can even change the hopeless ways of fools
--Melissa Etheridge, 'The Angels'
When Harry was eight years old we sent him upstairs to clean out the attic, and halfway through the evening he came running downstairs, manners forgotten, to scream that some picture he'd found up there had waved at him. Vernon had jumped out of his favorite chair, red-faced, and screamed at Harry not to tell such filthy lies, but I hadn't said a word, and I don't know if Harry ever wondered why.
I'd forgetten about the picture, you see--the wedding picture you and that bloody wizard had sent to me. I'd forgotten about you and your wizard photographs, pictures that were actually moments stolen out of time, rather than reflections of things that had once been.
Those sort of things aren't supposed to exist, Lily. You aren't meant to steal moments out of time.
After Harry had been shut away in the cupboard under the stairs, and after Vernon and Dudley were fast asleep, I crept up to the attic that night and found the very picture Harry had seen. There must have been a surplus of pictures, that you bothered to send one to me. Vernon had wanted to burn it, had not wanted such foul wizardry in his home, but somehow, I could not bring myself to do it. I had buried it instead in a box of old pictures of our childhood, of a time before we learned you were ... what you were.
I've always wondered about your pictures, Lily. The people in them, are they waving to me, or to the picture-taker? Do they know that they're nothing but cheap parodies of someone else? Is a bit of your soul left in them, to keep them there?
You in your white gown, and him in the tuxedo, staring longing into each other's eyes while the wedding party hangs about you, that black-haired convict waving madly at your husband's side, and the two groomsmen, more bloody wizards, the quiet one and the round-faced one.
I'm there, in my tafetta bridsemaid dress, beside you, overshadowed by your radiance. Everyone knew you were the pretty one, Lily--the pretty, smart, kind, magical one. I was the second daughter, the throw-away child, the afterthought once the perfect one had already been had. Mum and Dad tried to love me the same, but how could anyone love me as much as they loved you?
You turn and smile at the camera, but you don't smile at the me beside you, in her obnoxious violet tafetta dress, trying vainly to look as if she belonged; oh no, no smile for little Petunia. You had to have her there because she's your sister, but no one has to pretend they want her there. No need had to pretend there was room in your wonderful, magical life for a little Muggle sister, who only wanted a scrap of your attention, who only came to hate you because she loved you so much.
When we found little Harry on our doorstep, which a note saying you were gone, I'd looked down into green eyes so very like yours and thought that maybe I could learn to love him, that maybe this was my chance to have a piece of my sister back. But now, your eyes stare out at me from James Potter's face, and I hate him.
I hate him.
Disclaimer: Characters are copyright J.K. Rowling and are used for no profit and with no intention of infringement. Its JKR's sandbox--I'm just playing in it.