Author's Note: Written for the Particular Pairing Challenge.
Pairing: Petunia/Harry
Prompt: Protection
Quote: "The Ravenclaws really know how to party!"
It's a very apprehensive Petunia Dursley who slips out of her marital bed that evening, Vernon snoring obliviously beside her. She slides her feet into worn pink slippers, shrugging her robe on over her night-dress. She doesn't know what she's doing, where she's going-but then again, she does, doesn't she? For her feet have once again led her to Harry's room, to the freak's room.
He is still locked in, but she undoes the locks, as quietly as she can. She's had years of practice and she knows Vernon won't wake up. Besides, he's more than half-drunk, flushed with success after a promotion, and nothing but a bullhorn blared in his ear will do anything to stir him. Dudley's sleeping over at Piers' house. There is no one to stop her...but herself.
Harry is curled in the center of his worn and filthy mattress, the lone thin blanket drawn tight around his too-thin frame. He is wearing one of Dudley's cast-off shirts, and it's slipped off one shoulder, revealing a pale expanse of skin that has Petunia's mouth going dry.
She crosses the room, avoiding the board that creaks from long practice, and stops by the edge of the bed, as she always does. Harry mumbles something that she just barely catches, straining her ears to hear.
"The Ravenclaws really know how to party," Harry mumbles in a voice thick with sleep as he turns over, settling more properly into the hollow his body has made in the mattress. Petunia has no idea what he's talking about but assumes it's something to do with that freaky school he attends. The freaky school full of freaks, she thinks viciously, and ignores the stab of regret that she is not one of them.
She longs to touch him, longs to unwind him from his patched blanket, to pull that over-sized tee shirt over his head. Her feelings are frightening, do not fit the perfect little mold for her perfect little life. She is not supposed to "have the hots" for her nephew, particularly not when he is barely fourteen years old. She is not supposed to want to fit her mouth to his, to discover if he's kissed anyone at that freakish school of his, to discover what his hands can do. What other things can do.
He stirs again, and she freezes, breath trapped in her throat. She doesn't know what she will do if he wakes up. The truth is written all over her face, she cannot think up a lie. But he stills, still asleep, and she takes a deep breath. Before she can stop herself, her hand darts out, brushes daringly against his shoulder.
"Good night, Harry," she mouths and carefully retreats, back into the hallway where sanity reigns, where she can lock him back up and pretend. For her own protection, and for his.
He sleeps on, oblivious as always.