Honey you're familiar like my mirror years ago
Idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword
Innocence died screaming, honey ask me I should know
I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door
~ "From Eden" by Hozier
Chapter One: A Strict Upbringing (Just Penelope)
Penelope lay on her living room floor, staring up at the ceiling, deadpan, as the priest said a bible verse standing sternly like a thunderhead above her.
"And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice -"
A massive cross hanging from rosary beads was wrapped around the priest's fingers holding the Bible. In his other hand, he was sprinkling Penelope with a tiny, opened bottle of holy water that looked kind of like those little containers of distilled water Penelope sometimes saw in the freezer section of drugstores.
Back and forth his hand moved, sprinkling the holy water across her form.
"Saying, Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God -"
Just in case it wasn't obvious, the evil spirit supposedly saying this currently resided inside the innocent-looking child's body of Penelope Potter. Her relatives the Dursleys wouldn't say much, but Penelope had gathered that every time something odd and impossible happened around her, her relatives thought it was a demonic presence within her manifesting itself.
In other words, they thought she was a witch, carrying magic - in the traditional Christian mythology sense of the word. They thought she was possessed by Satan, by a demon. They didn't want her to know they thought this, but Penelope wasn't stupid.
It was therefore their holy and solemn duty to rid her of this evil presence, in order to complete their great quest to make her The Ideal Perfect Daughter. She wasn't their daughter; she was their orphaned niece; but in their eyes that was hardly the point.
It wasn't anything ugly. They never beat their Perfect Daughter, nor locked her away and forgot about her. No, such treatment was not for their Ideal Perfect Daughter. But every time something odd happened, the exorcist priest was called out. By now Penelope considered him a dear friend, in the way one feels a tender sympathy towards someone they are around a lot who carries an impossible, fatal odd quirk.
"And Jesus rebuked him, saying, Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not -!"
Here, the priest's voice rose dramatically and he threw his arm up in a theatrical move that in actual effect made the holy water land uselessly about a foot from Penelope's head. Aunt Petunia, standing in raptures off to the side, cried out in horrified delight.
"Do you feel any different?" she asked Penelope eagerly in a hushed whisper, as though certain the priest somehow could not hear her during the ecstatic, trancelike throes of an exorcism.
"Oh, yes," Penelope lied matter of factly, "quite different."
"And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying, What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out."
Penelope knew all the favorite Bible verses for exorcists by now. This was Luke 4:33 - 4:36.
Penelope, it seemed, was a constant work in progress. She was always on her way to being The Ideal Perfect Daughter, but she never quite measured up - she never got there. Partly, it must be admitted, through her own efforts. Her own idea of who she was, and her relatives' idea of who she should be, seemed irreconcilable.
The result was a rather strict upbringing - one whose origins started long before she could remember…
"I can save her," Petunia said softly in a great epiphany, staring down at one-year-old infant Penelope Potter on the neat suburban kitchen table in front of her. The baby cooed, big eyes glancing at Petunia and then rolling around the kitchen, brightly taking everything in, little hands flailing, the polished soft yellow-brown of the burnished table shining strangely, it seemed to Petunia in that mystic moment, around her form like a halo. A cherubic angel just for her. "Vernon, don't you understand?!" she suddenly cried out, looking up excitedly.
"No, I don't," Vernon admitted from his own seat at the table, in what seemed to Petunia a very slow way. "I thought we had just agreed to take her in and squash the magic out of her. Keep her from -"
"Becoming her parents! Yes, exactly!" said Petunia impatiently. "Look, I know how this goes without help - without treatment. She'll grow up to become just like my dratted freak of a sister. But what if I helped her through it, with my knowledge and hindsight? What if I made making her normal and acceptable my special, valued project?
"What if she didn't grow up to become just like my dratted freak of a sister? What if she got the lucky chance to avoid becoming a witch that her mother Lily never got?"
Vernon's eyes were slowly changing as he turned over the idea in his mind. The Dursley couple shared a hushed, dramatic look across their kitchen table that November morning, broken only by the smashes of their infant son Dudley throwing bits of baby cereal and the bowl carrying it all over the room from his high chair.
"I have wanted a girl always," said Petunia eagerly. "What if this is my chance to create the perfect daughter, the way I already have the perfect son? She needs so much work - but I could do it! I could fix her!
"Just think about it," she said dreamily, putting her folded hands up to her cheek. "Lots of pretty, feminine little dresses… pink everywhere… etiquette lessons and excellent manners and neat little girlish behavior… quiet reading and sophisticated interests such as French music and ballet… lessons and chores in cooking and baking and gardening… oh, but of course, she would have to be treated very strictly."
"Yes, exactly. We would have to watch her closely for signs of unnatural freakishness showing through," said Vernon sternly. "But… I'll agree with what you think best, Petunia. Anyway, you know I believe in men being men and women being women."
"As do I," said Petunia stoutly, with a single nod.
"Now… should we rename her?" said Vernon uneasily. "If we're going to craft her into our own perfect daughter…"
Petunia went over it all in her head. The pause this created was tense. Even the Dursleys knew by now, after learning their niece's full previous story, that this was almost heresy to even think. Names like Charlotte and Evelyn briefly flitted through Petunia's head longingly…
But: "No," Petunia decided, "that man would never allow it," she added in disgusted, snobbish distaste, thinking of Dumbledore. "And besides." She sobered. "Lily's sacrifice… it was brave. I'll allow that. That brave sacrifice for her child is the only real reason I convinced you to allow me to take my niece in, despite everything acting against her.
"It would feel… wrong, somehow, to change the name Lily chose for her daughter," said Petunia stiffly. "Lily died for Penelope Potter. However freakish their world is, however much of a horrid witch Lily was. Lily died for Penelope Potter. Penelope Potter she shall remain. It is… one of my only concessions."
Petunia straightened and looked down neutrally at the table, pretending very hard that she had never loved her sister and did not care that she was now dead.
"So the name stays," said Vernon. "Penelope Lily Potter. No nickname.
"Just Penelope."
Petunia's desire to "fix" Penelope, to "make Penelope perfect," was only emphasized as Penelope grew into a young girl. That fanaticism and zeal inside Petunia only heightened.
Because not only was Penelope born a witch… Penelope looked almost exactly like Lily. The only major trait of her father's she seemed to have inherited was his eyes.
Penelope had long, straight, dark-red hair and a pale, heart-shaped face with high cheekbones. She had a long, straight nose, a small mouth, a delicate chin, and round hazel eyes. Even as a little girl, her body was small and slim, tiny and pixie-like.
And so Petunia tried. Even before the magic showed up, she tried in the other ways. She did her level best for the side of feminine dresses and the color pink, of etiquette and manners and general girlish behavior, of quiet reading and sophisticated cultural loves such as French music and the ballet, of chores such as cooking and baking and gardening. She erred on the side of strict treatment, becoming the stern, upright, quietly feminine aunt figure. She pulled every trick out of the book she could think of, tried for every opportunity and every teachable moment and every lesson and every chore. Right from the beginning.
And almost from the beginning there was conflict. Because Penelope didn't agree on most of these fronts at all.
Penelope was a tomboy, but more than that she was an imaginative one. She loved playing outside and getting dirty, she hated skirts, and she was always drawing pictures and talking about her dreams. An imaginative tomboy! These were two of the most horrible traits the Dursleys could think of from anyone, but most especially from a girl! Rousing, shrieking arguments between Petunia and Penelope could therefore often be heard in the Dursley household, each woman getting tearful and upset.
"I just want to be me!" Penelope would insist desperately, some hard spirit inside her never flagging.
"That's just who you think is you! It's not you!" Petunia would insist with equal desperation. "You're… you're someone else, someone more proper, just waiting to come out!"
Then she would sit down and begin crying into her hand. Tiny young Penelope would sigh, and come over to Aunt Petunia's seat, and pat her comfortingly on the shoulder.
Penelope was a complicated girl, however, not easy to fit into one box. She was not all the rebel, not all the way through.
Penelope was down to earth and she didn't believe in following rules for their own sake - she only followed the rules that made sense to her, and often wanted to know why she was supposed to do this thing or that thing. She was interested in concrete skills and tools, loved having fun, and preferred to see the future optimistically. She was from the beginning a tiny and precocious cynic, however, when it came to human nature. She took pride in her imagination, quite fiercely, and also in being bold and rebellious. She took equal pride, however, in her resilience - her calm, quiet adaptability to negative circumstances.
She was impulsive, and wanted to do big, impressive things and have amazing talent in whatever she took up. She was always giving of what she had, quite kindly and openly, to other people. She was graceful, quick, slight, and immediately took to almost anything physical. She was cripplingly blunt even as a young child and not much of a diplomat. She was friendly, but very quiet and reserved.
Penelope had incredibly sharp, keen senses. She could tell apart different textures of cloth before she had words for what each one was, could taste and even smell even the tiniest ingredients in foods and recipes, could hear the most minute tones in a person's voice, and the first thing she learned was the names of colors. Forever afterward, she never just called something purple - it was always "deep plum" or "violet" or "puce." She found many of Petunia's clothing choices stoutly "repulsive," knowing exactly what she liked and always recommending something she felt was better - usually something more baggy and comfortable and not as violently pink or purple, hence her inherent tomboyishness.
She could be hard to read and harder to understand. Penelope did not express herself with words, but with actions, unusual in a young girl. She hardly ever spoke as a young child, though when she did it was always in complete, sophisticated sentences. She saw the world through her sharp senses, and only expressed herself in nonverbal ways. She could be incredibly reticent and stoical.
Impulsively artistic, Penelope was prone to being suddenly seized by whirlwinds of action, and in that state she could work for hours seeming completely oblivious to fatigue or even pain. It was not that she was hardened; it was that when seized by a true action, she stopped noticing things like fatigue and pain until the impulsive urge was through. She never planned out anything, not even things she was supposed to like cooking recipes assigned to her by Petunia. This trait was why she so loved and was so good at forbidden activities like drawing; her lack of care for the rules and getting along, her quiet pride in being rebellious, was why she flouted such rules so often. It was also why she hated assigned rules and deadlines, and anything else where she was locked into one action with little time to be creative and sensory and no space to move around.
Penelope was incredibly kind, very giving, especially to those she felt were in pain. Another's pain could move her like little else could. Even as a little girl, she loved babies, animals, and she had a chronic, impulsive (and remarkably dirt-ridden) love for the outdoors. Anything living and gentle seemed to inspire her, and she talked to babies and animals just as though they were regular people whenever she encountered them around others. (This trait could embarrass Petunia, who laughed nervously about "children being so eccentric and silly!")
Friendly and soft-spoken, despite all this Penelope put up with the Dursleys remarkably patiently. In a weird way, the Dursleys were her anchor and her tether to a sterner reality, and she was capable of putting up with a great deal of interpersonal tension in order to basically get along. With her family, she could be a good friend and playmate if they let her, though she was very reserved - and even for the people who lived with her, hard to get to know. She just kept so much inside, never speaking it sometimes even in her own mind.
Penelope's brain was a vivid inner mindscape full of sounds and colors. She spoke even to herself very little - there was no great flow of wordage she was necessarily holding back. She spoke through an act - preferably a creative one. And she only took charge in any situation when there was a project she felt she wanted done.
Petunia did begrudgingly put up with many of Penelope's eccentricities, fonder of her as her "work in progress daughter" than she liked to admit. Just as Penelope put up with learning Petunia's stupid lessons, Petunia put up with Penelope. She gave Penelope an upstairs bedroom, eventually caved in to the basics of most of the essential things Penelope wanted (in clothing and food, for example), and put up with Penelope's likes and interests in ways she had to and ways she felt were properly parental and safe.
This trend would continue as Penelope grew more defined likes and interests when she grew into an older child.
And so Penelope did have some basic good memories of birthdays, holidays, vacations, and outings with her family. She did get some gifts, she did get small birthday celebrations, and she did get times with a basic functioning family unit, little adventures out in the world. It was never a perfect or ideal situation - she was treated strictly and there was everybody's quirks to put up with - but she was familiar with the essential elements of family celebrations.
Still, with Petunia, there was often much histrionics and nagging and complaining where her "difficult" niece was concerned.
Vernon treated Penelope with a distinct lack of aggression and a general aura of paternal protectiveness. In his own way, he was begrudgingly fond of her. He had hated her father, but Penelope looked and acted refreshingly little like her father, and so Vernon eventually began to look past his prejudice and see who Penelope truly was - and in his own reluctant way, he became fond of that, as he helped raise her. In general, he saw her as a female child who needed strict watching-over, but also stoical protecting and sympathy.
In the end, he became the sarcastic, exasperated father-uncle figure around the house who was constantly almost up to here with the histrionics and drama of his wife and his household, and the silent, stubborn, intelligent rebelliousness of his niece-daughter. He made many sharp, exasperated comments and was often the grumbling, calm one, not having as much history with magic nor Penelope's parents - nor, perhaps, having as much personal responsibility for Penelope, who his wife had taken over. Privately, he counted himself lucky that he could afford to be the fond, exasperated, sarcastic father-uncle.
Dudley perhaps went through the vastest changes when Penelope entered his household.
He was not allowed to either hit or roughhouse with someone who was essentially his sister figure; she was not allowed to look at all ragged. This was unheard of socially, far different from the general situation with brothers and boys, and anyway Petunia and Vernon were protective of a female Penelope. "No!" a surprised Dudley often got snapped at in the beginning as a baby. "Don't hurt your sister!"
It was a mantra that would become ingrained into his brain by the time he was an older child. Just as boys were capable of hurting a girl like Penelope, he learned even on an unconscious level, boys never should.
Dudley also began to be disciplined more after Penelope became established in the household. Penelope (who was after all treated very strictly but also an established portion of their family with her rightful "single daughter" place in the social hierarchy) became remarkably well behaved… and Dudley began to look badly in comparison. People started saying, "Oh, that awful little boy. Look at how well behaved his sister figure is."
When Petunia and Vernon realized uneasily that they couldn't rightfully brag about their perfect son anymore, the disciplining began.
Dudley grew up to be far less spoiled as a result. Then and only then, he learned - only once he'd become a better person - was it okay for his parents to brag about him to others once again.
And so the tantrums left, as did the lack of discipline and motivation, the endless numbers of broken toys and gifts, the bullying, the food addiction, and the budding television and video game addictions.
Dudley Dursley, of an age with Penelope Potter, became a vastly different person.
He still had enormous, rambunctious physical energy and appetite, but learned to handle both more healthfully and in a better way. He became a muscular, sporty large blond boy, not an obesely overweight and ruddy-faced one. He became less cruel and a bit smarter about his teasing, mischievous sense of humor.
He and Penelope "roasted" each other a lot - their constant sparring of sarcastic back and forth could make strangers erupt with hilarity just as much as it embarrassed their parents. But Dudley and Penelope knew the score: it was all in good fun.
In fact, Dudley grew up to be very protective of Penelope as his tiny, firebrand sister figure. The mantra never stopped being repeated in the back of his head: "Don't hurt your sister."
Three main things happened next: Dudley and Penelope grew both older and more well defined as people with interests. Dudley and Penelope went to school and made primary school friends.
And Penelope first manifested what she would come to think of as her magic.