[ Petunia's P.O.V upon finding out about the attack on her family in thistle & weeds. ]

tried to square not being there,

but think that i should've been

…

hold back the river (james bay)

Her heart drops.

Mum and Dad are dead — I'm sorry

I'm sorry

I'm sorry —

She swallows the grief threatening to consume her, swallows the bile rising in her throat. She fights the urge to throw something with her perfectly manicured hands now clenching into indelicately angry fists. She can feel the acrylic making tiny crescent moon indents in the skin of her palm. She heartily considers slamming the phone back onto the hook just then, Lily's precious feelings be damned.

Poppy is in the hospital. Fatally injured

— her memory has been wiped —

there's not much we can do but wait and see —

Freak.

That freak…The nerve of her. Normal people don't just have their memories stolen. Normal people aren't in danger of having their families slaughtered by evil — evil wizards! Her youngest sister shouldn't have nearly bled out on the kitchen tiles of their childhood home…! She shouldn't have to be left here alone to make preparations to put their parents in their early graves. Not like this… It's unnatural. It's going to tear her to pieces. It fucking hurts.

(The image of her youngest sister's sickly face — blue lips, blue tinted skin, muddy green eyes firmly shut in unrestful sleep — it shouldn't be haunting Petunia every time she tries to shut her eyes. It shouldn't.)

It's a bitter pill to swallow that the first thing to come to mind is that it could've been her.

She could've been home that night if fate had something different in store for her.

Vernon had called.

Dinner with his parents, the usual.

They'd had flan for dessert. They'd chatted casually about the weather and Vernon's workplace whilst her parents were being killed. She'd gone to the restroom to powder her nose and pick at her flaxen locks - is that when Poppy had struggled? When she'd been attacked severely enough to hospitalize her for a week?

She hates that she can so clearly imagine her sweet little sister barging in with a score to settle with - with bloody evil wizards!

Why hadn't she run?

She hates that she could've died in her parents' stead, or with them. She could very easily be the one destined to wake up with her memories cleansed, no, purged, alone in a hospital, terrified... But she didn't, and she won't be, and all she can think about is how Poppy had last left a message at her office reminding her to call more often because she missed her. The way the receptionist had practically rolled her eyes whilst relaying the message - she didn't know, she didn't know, she didn't know.

How could she have?

Petunia puts her head in her hands and for the first time in a very long while, she cries.

AN;

i'm in a bad mood can u tell haha zzzzz

main story update tomorrow hopefully if i feel better we'll see