Plucking Flowers
Summary: In which Petunia is born with magic. On the outside, it changes very little.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
One: Violet
The petunia flower symbolizes anger and resentment, especially when they are presented by someone with whom you have recently had a heated disagreement. They can also symbolize your desire to spend time with someone because you find their company soothing and peaceful. According to some sources, petunias are also a symbol of not losing hope.
Petunia watched as Lily eagerly opens the letter, eyes just as blank and grey as their color. Their parents crowd closer, beaming in anticipation. Lily's gasp nearly makes the plain, blond-haired girl flinch, but it goes unnoticed as her sister continues to read aloud, eager voice rising as she goes on. And when Mr. Evans asks to hear it again, Lily is happy to oblige, their mother leaning over the polished dining room table to pat a red-haired head. As for Petunia, sat upon the uncomfortable surface of a rigid, hard-back chair, well… she had stopped listening after the first sentence. She knew what it said, after all. And she knew what it meant.
There was no flash of light. No sound. The prickling feeling of needles beneath her skin did not abate. Air whooshed in and out of her lungs, but she couldn't feel it. Her throat was raw from screaming, her eyes stinging from begged sobs. She saw red. Red pain, red horror, and the red of her sons' blood.
When sound returned, she wished it away with the fervor of one about to die.
Hoarse laughter, jeering masks. And a question. Always a question.
"Where is the boy?" The creature asks.
She doesn't answer. How can she, when she can't possibly know?
"SCREAM LITTLE PIGGY!" The loud mockery of a pigs' squeals. A whimper in a voice as familiar as her own heartbeat, though it raced so disconcertingly with in her heaving chest. She couldn't see, but in the far corner of this wretched room smelling of copper and filth, her husband's body lay, dead.
But this, this is fear, fear the likes of which she never felt in his presence, even when words of spite and anger where thrown, the snobbish pleasure of his flinch.
Freak. A bitter realization.
In her desperation, she finds it within herself to pity him. Fate was not kind, to match him against a monster. Then all thoughts of the boy vanish as starlight bursts beneath what were once her eyelids, scarlet red, sickly green and, oddly enough, cool, soothing violet.
When she wakes, the world is far from the comforting lap of the everyday ordinary.
Petunia Evans is a quiet child. Demure, like a good little lady. She minds her manners, minds her parents, and minds her betters. Never fusses or complains. Yes, she is a perfectly normal child. Ordinary, even.
And if that quietness becomes a bit unnerving at times, well. It's just a phase. She'll grow out of it.
And if her dull blue eyes seem to quicken and spark at odd intervals, or her behavior seems skittish in the face of loud sounds and bright, sudden colors, what is it anyway? She has an average, Arian appearance, but of course, that isn't mentioned in polite company, especially not in times like these.
Petunia Evans is a quiet child.
Withdrawn. Stubborn. Vindictive.
Things happen when she is around.
Petunia Evans is a quiet child.
Perhaps that is why the Evans decided to have another.