Do you know what the most important thing in the world is? Respectability.
It's a funny thing, really. I sometimes find it hard remembering what is respectable at the moment and what isn't. They seem to move the goalposts overnight. Better to stay in or eat out? Drive a sports car or a Landrover? Holiday in Spain or the South Pacific? It confuses me, but Petunia always knows what the most respectable course is. She must have some kind of internal radar, I suppose.
Oh, I love Petunia. I've loved her from the first day we met. Of course, she was a little different back then. She had a sister, Lily, and was desperately jealous of her. Lily was so special; everyone adored her. Petunia hadn't been blessed with her sister's gifts, but she was determined to achieve something great so that *she* could be the popular one for a while.
When I met Petunia, she was absorbed in a game of one-upmanship with her sister, a game that had consumed her whole life. Lily probably didn't even know what was going on, but Petunia was desperate to outshine her somehow. She was always being outdone. When Petunia bought a motorbike, Lily bought a new broomstick. When Petunia scored highly in an important exam, Lily scored 105% in one of hers. I know that I was a part of the game Petunia was playing. Lily was popular with boys, and Petunia had an idea that she could outdo her by marrying first. So we became engaged and set the date. Petunia was terribly happy. It was probably the happiest she has ever been. But then James Potter came out of the blue and swept Lily off her feet, and they beat us to the altar.
I was no James Potter. I could never compare. I loved Petunia, but I knew that she would always feel that she had settled for second best. I tried to please her, but it was so hard. She was always searching for some way she could beat Lily, although she tried not to show it.
And then Lily died.
The shock nearly did for Petunia. It wasn't sadness at losing her sister - no, it was anger. Even hatred. Lily had ended the game without letting Petunia win even a single hand. Now she was untouchable, enshrined upon a pedestal somewhere beyond Petunia's reach. It was the touch of the sublime in Lily that exposed the mundanity of everything around Petunia. She would have lost her mind, I think, if she had continued to envy Lily. Instead, the jealousy was replaced by absolute loathing. The magic, the eccentricity, it all became repellent to her. Petunia had always valued respectability, and it now became her Holy Grail.
As for Harry? His great misfortune was his parentage. He was a permanent reminder of Lily and James, and Petunia resented him for that. I did too, I suppose. And as he grew up, he was so strange – introspective and odd, with flashes of some kind of brilliance. Some kind of gift. He had inherited all the traits that made his parents so outstanding, and that Petunia despised. Her having to raise this misfit was Lily's final triumph. So we decided to raise him as a normal person. A respectable person. And so we didn't ever tell him the truth about his parents, or his gift.
I think we made the right choice. We did our best for the boy. Respectability is, after all, the most important thing.
Or perhaps…
We all have to settle for something, don't we?
Author's Note
Please review with any thoughts, opinions, offers of million-dollar book contracts... I love everyone who reviews me. However, please don't bother telling me that I got some details wrong. I have a terrible head for details – rather like a sieve after all the wires have been taken out. If I made mistakes, I didn't do it deliberately. I just had an idea and ran with it. Actually, I was inspired by Miss Scarlet's wonderful fic 'Tears'. It would never have occurred to me to write from the Dursley perspective otherwise.
Disclaimer: Everyone here belongs to the great JK Rowling. I just borrowed them for a minute.