AN: Because Petunia is so underrepresented.
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Fairytales-
She knew what she was looking for. She'd put it here eighteen years ago and not looked at it since, but something told her it wouldn't have moved. Her hands fumbled with the box's lid, opening it with the same frantic energy that she had once sealed it. She remembered that morning, so clearly she could almost imagine it was autumn-verging-on-winter, not the height of summer. She remembered it and almost allowed herself to cry.
It didn't make a lot of sense; she never even liked the boy. But then maybe it was like they always said, blood is thicker than water. She hadn't liked Lily and she'd still cried. In a way it was like the end of her line, Dudley had always had more of Vernon in him than her, but that scruffy wizard had had his mother's eyes – her father's eyes. There had been times that she'd been so grateful for those awful glasses he had to wear; she'd wanted those eyes for her Dudley. Even now, decades on, she got a little jealous.
She'd barely known her sister, all their lives they'd been steadily growing apart, but on that morning… It had been early November and on that morning she'd know more than she'd ever wanted to. She'd known about heroism and death and what happens when you leave the place you were born to, when you fall for the wrong people… when you die for love.
She was tearing through the box now, pictures of her parents, photo albums from her childhood, and there it was – sitting amongst it all like it didn't hold the secrets of one girl's life and death. (Because she had been just a girl. Lily never grew up. Petunia always envied her that.)
A fairytale. Her sister's life had been a fairytale. Petunia had played weddings with her friends while Lily played princesses; they'd called her little sister a dreamer. But when Petunia settled for a good man with a steady income Lily found Prince Charming and fell in love, while Petunia made small talk and drank tea with neighbours Lily rode winged horses and broomsticks and fought evil and won. Petunia kept a tidy house and her sister saved the world.
She picked up the letter. It was written on parchment. (Sometimes that never ceased to amaze her.) Parchment and green ink. Her fingers shook.
My Dear Petunia Dursley,
She was crying just a little now; she could feel the tears tug at her eyelashes. It had been eighteen years and suddenly it was happening again.
There is no easy way of telling the things I am writing now to tell you. I will not do you the dishonour of holding you in suspense, but nor will I leave myself unexplained. What I write to tell you is simple enough: your sister, Lily, is dead.
When she'd first read those words she'd felt nothing, just looked from the baby sitting at her feet back to the parchment. Death wasn't something she was well acquainted with, it was something that happened to older people, people like her parents. Lily was just a child, with her childish letters and pranks and boyfriends. Lily could come and go as she pleased.
You may not have liked your sister, but your sister she was, and her tragedy is one I need you to understand. I am not certain of how much you already know, so I feel it necessary to start at the beginning, now lying over forty years in the past. It began with a boy I once used to teach, a Mr Tom Marvolo Riddle.
She hadn't recognised that name then, but now, a lifetime later, she hadn't forgotten it.
Sometime after he left Hogwarts Mr Riddle fell into what is commonly referred to as the Dark Arts; magic forbidden in the world your sister lived in. He immersed himself in it, losing much of his humanity in the process, striving towards one goal – immortality. He believed in the purity of the wizarding race and over the decades gathered to him a group of followers; men he called his Death Eaters. He took up the alias of Lord Voldemort, and began to infiltrate society, building on the idea of pureblood wizarding superiority. His main message was the destruction of people like yourself and your sister, people with no magic in their backgrounds; muggles and muggleborns.
She'd known those words, remembered her sister's terror as she'd recounted a battle to their parents. She said she'd fought and almost died; Petunia hadn't believed her.
When I first met your sister she was eleven years old and blissfully unaware of the world she had fallen into. She loved Hogwarts and the school loved her back. She was sorted into Gryffindor, the house renowned for its bravery and she made many friends, some of whom I am confident you have met. She was a favourite with the teachers, her undying enthusiasm for magic and everything surrounding it made her the ideal pupil and she excelled in all her subjects.
That had always surprised her. Lily had always been a dreamer; Petunia was the hard worker while Lily doodled in her primary school textbooks. She dreamt of magic and castles and white horses and sunsets and true love while Petunia dreamt only of the summer and the parties that came with it. But then Petunia's dream was granted quickly and short lived, whereas Lily's sprang up on her and stayed forever. In a world where all her dreams came true it was quite possible that Lily could work as hard as she once had.
Soon, however, her eyes were opened to the cruelties that were present too, she realised that the castle, for all its magic, was rooted in the real world, and contained all the prejudices that come with it. Lily was often targeted because she didn't come from a tradition of wizardry, because effectively, she was muggleborn. She took the abuse well, far better than many others and with that she gained no small number of admirers. I have no doubt you were aware of the presence of a Mr James Potter in your sister's life, and that for the first six years of their acquaintance she hated him with a passion.
Oh, she remembered him. She remembered organising all kinds of things to keep herself out of the house in the summers, just so she wouldn't have to listen to her sister complain about that boy. She remembered that he apparently played very well with broomsticks, and that he had friends that turned the school upside down regularly. She also remembered that he was utterly infatuated with her sister. That was a word Lily liked to use a lot. "James Potter was nothing more than an infatuated schoolboy," she'd tell their mother. She passed off his intentions like they were the pranks he flooded her lessons with, while Petunia sat behind her cheesy romance novel, green with envy because she'd seen a picture of this James Potter, and he wasn't half as scrawny as Lily made him out to be. She remembered finding letters from him in Lily's room and wanting to slap her sister silly because a boy that sounded so sweet and looked so good was too good to be true, and there she was brushing him off like he was something stuck to the sole of her shoe.
Over your sister's school years, however, Mr Riddle, or Lord Voldemort as I will call him from here on, had gathered a great deal of prominence in our world and was proving to be a very real threat. By the time your sister reached her fifth year the country had broken into a state of unofficial Civil War.
She'd known nothing of this. That was what scared her most. That year when Lily came home she didn't talk about James Potter or the funny things she heard the ghost say. She didn't talk about school at all really, just waited every morning by the window for her newspaper, looking terrified until she'd read it cover to cover. Their mother had asked and Lily had simply said she was looking for friends. Petunia put the fear on her face down to Lily being Lily, and therefore not completely in touch with the real world. It scared her still sometimes, that her freak of a sister had been more in touch with it than any of them, all those years. What idiots she and Vernon must have seemed, proclaiming that all those mysterious deaths on TV must have been the IRA. Vernon had always like his conspiracy theories.
In Hogwarts Lily was both safe from the battle and on the very frontline. The students set themselves up against one another, representing the sides their parents stood for and she found herself spending more time around James Potter and his friends as the castle broke itself into groups. In those years, I myself was doing everything I could to combat Voldemort and his growing army. I gathered together the best witches and wizards of the age, people I knew would be loyal to me through whatever Lord Voldemort threw at us. Among these people were the parents of James Potter as well as a number of Lily's schoolteachers and previously graduated pupils. We worked in secret, without the backing of the Ministry of Magic, and took for ourselves the name the Order of the Phoenix.
And there it was again, the fairytale. Orders of knights out to fight evil, whatever the cost. This was the world her sister lived in. When they were little Lily would ask Petunia why she didn't like dressing up as a princess and Petunia had told her that in dressing up as a bride she was practising, all Lily was doing in that silly sparkly petticoat was pretending. She'd told her sister that she'd never have men fighting dragons to save her, she'd never live in a castle and taunt evil Lords with her beauty, because magic just wasn't real; she on the other hand would definitely get married. She was being realistic, you see, and she wouldn't expect a head-in-the-clouds little girl to understand that. Lily had just looked at her and frowned, she didn't expect men to fight dragons for her, was all she said on the matter.
The irony didn't pass her by, all these years on. James fought worse than dragons for her and her very school had been a castle. Petunia wouldn't have put it past her to taunt evil Dark Lords either. Lily had always believed in magic, and in her young cynicism Petunia had liked to think that by rejecting the idea she was saving herself from later heartbreak when it was all proven false. If she'd believed would she have seen the splendour of Hogwarts castle too? It was a question she'd never liked to dwell on.
It was two years later that Lily was made aware of us. It was James that bought her along to her first meeting. I think he was growing on her at that point (though that does not at any stretch mean she loved him yet) and she offered her services with him and his three close friends. They became some of the best loved in the small organisation, James especially, but Lily was a person that people could not dislike…
(Here Petunia begged to differ.)
No one was quite sure how it happened, I doubt even Lily herself could have told you, but over the course of her final year at Hogwarts, be it working with him as a the Head Boy or fighting along side him with the Order of the Phoenix (both situations I'll admit I had no small part in orchestrating), Lily fell in love with James. From the first moment people saw them together, it was certain they would be with each other for the rest of their lives, though, alas, that was not to be as long as we had presumed.
In those years James and Lily were the only ones besides myself to successfully defy Lord Voldemort three times and live to tell the tale. James was something of a leader in the battle while Lily devoted all her efforts to healing those hit worst by the attacks. Though she never took the official training, she became quite skilled as a healer.
All of this had passed Petunia by. She'd met the infamous James only once, and it had been instant dislike, much as it had been for her sister (only sometimes did she allow herself to wonder if he'd have grown on her as he did on Lily – maybe she could have put up with him, given time?). After their marriage Petunia had severed all bonds with her sister. After the other left home she saw her only once, on the day of their parents' funeral.
Shortly after their marriage Lily announced that she was pregnant, and shortly after that a prophecy was made about the expected child. I was there myself as Sybil Trelawny told that their young Harry Potter would alone have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. I only wish now, that I alone had been present, because there was another there, unseen, who heard the prophecy, and through him Lord Voldemort was alerted. Your sister was moved immediately into hiding, much of the drama that followed I do not consider it necessary for you to know, only that after over a year your sister and her husband were betrayed and Lord Voldemort found their hiding place.
Her heart had stopped there, eighteen years ago; she was barely registering this Lily as her sister, just reading with her heart in her throat. (It registered now. Years had been spent adjusting to the fact and now she read it and felt… something. Regret perhaps.)
When that howler had told her Voldemort was back she'd been scared (so scared). She hadn't understood it but she remembered her sister's eyes when his name was mentioned, remembered the fear on the fearless James Potter's face when it was uttered.
It is this that is the crux of this letter; the events that follow are ones that freed the wizarding world of a war that could have destroyed it entirely, I am sure that even you noticed some of the celebrations that lit up Britain over the past twenty-four hours – owls in daylight, celestial fireworks etc.
On the evening of this Halloween Voldemort broke into the Potter's home and killed James, who fought to the death to defend Lily and Harry. He then found your sister, shielding her child. She was an exceptionally gifted witch and an utterly devoted mother, and her dying wishes were ones that could not have come to anyone less. She died instantly, but the life she'd given for her child was enough to repel the unavoidable death spell in a feat that has never been seen before. Her son was hit by the same curse as her, and yet he still lives. The curse was reflected instead back into Voldemort, who, not yet capable of death, was driven fully from his body. His reign of terror is over and little Harry Potter is a hero.
Heroes and martyrs. This was the world her sister lived in. Heroes and martyrs and she felt so small in the wake of her sister's sacrifice. Would she have the strength to die for Dudley? Would she ever be able to give him even half of what her sister had given Harry? That was a notion that had haunted her through all the years of the boys' childhood. She'd loathed her sister then for making her feel like a bad mother, just like she'd felt like a bad daughter and a bad student and even a bad wife in the past. Even after death she left Petunia inadequate.
I like to think that you will understand my reasons for placing him with you.
Oh, that was a morning she'd never forget, that morning when she'd found her nephew on her doorstep with a milkman who didn't seem to want to ask any questions. She'd hated him first for that. For the respectable old man walking away to his electric milk float, too normal and respectable to ask why one of his neighbours had a baby sleeping on her doorstep. He just handed her the milk and went on his way. (But he knew she was curious. He'd never rung the bell before.) She'd looked at the baby then and felt the beginnings of a lifetime's resentment.
I feel it is the one place that he will be safe from the overpowering fame that would greet him in the world your sister lived in. I am also certain that in staying with you he will be safer than if he stayed with any of the most powerful wizards still living after the war. Lily's sacrifice is what protects him from Voldemort's remaining followers and the remnants of her blood in you will keep that protection present, even after her death. You are all he has left of her and for that protection I ask you, on behalf of an entire world, to take him in, care for him as your own. You may not have liked your sister, but she died for her son and in doing so saved not only my world, but yours also, because Voldemort's threat needs only to get through Harry Potter before it spreads to even your sheltered people. He mustn't know it, not yet, but that little boy is the only thing keeping the future of Muggle Britain safe.
And there she was again, better and brighter than drab little Petunia. Her son went to playschool and liked yellow diggers and red trains while Lily's was a superstar with an entire world at his feet.
I do not ask you to love him, but he is your nephew as Lily was your sister, and I need you to promise you will allow him to live with you and your family. You needn't write anything, only speak the words aloud and it will be binding. Allow him into your home and no harm will come of him. If you cannot do it for your sister then do it for yourself, and for an entire world that tonight owes their lives to him.
She'd said the words and felt the hum of magic tingling through her veins for the first time in a lifetime. (Was that what Lily felt every time she cast a spell? Was that what it was like to fly on broomsticks and see dragons and fight evil? Was that what it was like truly believe in magic?) It was the stuff of fairytales and she'd cried that evening, so out of touch with the mother of the boy she was left to care for.
Your Sincerely,
Albus Dumbledore.
She had made another promise that night, as she stood over her son's cot. She'd promised that she would care for her nephew, as demanded, but she'd never ever let him come between her and her son. He might not have her father's eyes but he was hers and nothing Lily had done could take that away from her.
And she did care for him, as much as her memories and pride would allow her to, but that promise was always there, making her rig party games and under-fill one plate at the table. It was true; she punished him for his mother's faults, for his father's looks, for his grandfather's eyes. She punished him harder still for his magic, but first and foremost she punished him for being her sister – elbowing in on one of the few things she had accomplished for herself. He could save the world six times over and he'd never be equal to her Dudley, whether he'd been branded a hero from birth or not.
There were times where she'd thought she hated him. And really, she still did; only now she felt a little shame along with it. Because she hadn't known him either. Just like she hadn't known her sister. That was a mistake she'd made twice and with time she knew she'd come to regret it more than ever.
She closed her eyes then, closed them so tight she wondered if she'd wake up to Vernon hurling Harry back into his cupboard, or even to her father laughing at Lily's stories; she wondered if she could just wish herself back and maybe change it so she understood. She looked at the two letters in her hands, stared at them hard through the haze of half-shed tears, and wished a little that she'd allowed herself to listen to all her sister's explanations of magic – all those tales that had fallen on deaf ears. She wished she'd listened so that she could look on these letters and perhaps understand what it had all been for.
One was old, green ink on parchment, the elegant script of an old man. It told the story of her sister's life and death, told Lily in the way Petunia had never known her. The other was paper, a simple sheet, plain and flimsy, written on in neat, black print. It contained only three sentences and a large smudge that Petunia imagined to be caused by the writer's tears.
They were both so different and yet in essence they were utterly the same.
She dragged her hands across her eyes and folded the parchment letter again, resting it back against that old photo album and her mum's beloved antique tea set. And then she turned to the sheet of paper.
Dear Mrs Dursley,
I don't know how you will take this news, but I offer you my sincerest condolences, as no matter the love lost between the two of you, he was still your nephew. My message is simple: Harry Potter is dead, and with him he has taken Lord Voldemort. The war is over.
Your Sincerely,
Hermione Granger.
It had arrived by normal post, with the postman and his bicycle. There had been no feathers, no excess stamps, no orphaned infants accompanying it. It was just a letter. Just a simple letter from a girl (or woman?) she'd never met. She spoke of no ties with her nephew, but if the tear stains were anything to go by, he meant more to her than she felt necessary to convey to the estranged aunt of the boy.
She stared at it hard and wondered what it meant that it was so short, that it offered no explanation, no reassurances. But she knew – the only people left in that world who knew of her knew only the woman Harry Potter had known - the cruel aunt, grudgingly keeping a roof over his head. She wasn't a person to them, she'd had a sister, had a nephew, but she didn't really care. She didn't understand, and she didn't need to (but then, she never really had).
She took a deep breath and as the sound of Vernon's car drew up in the driveway she folded the second letter too, placing it carefully over the first. She'd mention it after dinner, perhaps, that Harry was dead. Maybe Vernon would grunt "about time" or Dudley would ask for gory details, but within a week they'd have forgotten. She pulled the box closer and firmly closed the lid, securing the edges with the detached precision with which she sealed Tupperware.
It was over.
That dream world here sister had lived in had amounted to just that, a box of bad memories, stashed away in the attic.
She stood, brushing dust from her knees and blinking the redness from her eyes, before quietly turning off the light and making her way downstairs.
"You wouldn't believe the number of people dressed in black today, Petunia," she heard Vernon's voice from in front of the TV as she entered the hall. "Hoards of them. You'd think the Queen had died or something. It's these teenage gangs you see, Goths. All this New Age business, mark my words – they're up to no good…"
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