Summary: Envy, one of the seven sins. We all know the story from the Harry's point of view. But did you ever care to see it from Petunia's side?
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The Flowers of a Fern.
Petunia Evans is one year older than her sister Lily. Lily is a beautiful girl – she has her Mum's red curly hair and her Dad's emerald green eyes. She has nice sweet face with pleasant features, straight nose and full lips and all the neighbors they have always stop to adore Lily as they pass by.
Petunia is tall and bony. She has Dad's mousy hair and Mum's small brown-grey eyes. Her teeth are crooked, unlike Lily's smooth and white. Her face is thin and oblong and her nose is too big and crooked for her face and is the first thing that catches one's eye. When neighbors are passing by and two sisters are playing together no one even thinks they're cousins, let alone blood sisters. Sometimes neighbors are too amazed with the beauty of Lily's emerald eyes to even notice the second girl behind her.
When Petunia is six years old, her beloved uncle Jack gives her a black toy pony with long raven hair. Petunia loves uncle Jack so very much that she keeps her pony all to herself and brushes its hair every other five minutes and sleeps, hugging it closely to her chest. It's her personal reminder of uncle who loves her despite the fact that she doesn't have beautiful red hair or striking green eyes.
When Petunia doesn't give the pony to Lily, the smaller girl begins crying. She cries so hard and loud and oh-so-annoyingly that Petunia yells 'Shut up!' and the next moment her hair is gone, she is completely bald and to her horror her hair don't appear the next day or the day after the next day or the next week, so she has to go to school in a wig. Their parents are very excited with the sudden lack of Petunia's hair and they begin to treat Lily differently, more lovingly and sweetly. When Petunia shouts at her younger sister and calls her stupid, her Dad goes mad and locks Petunia in the closet under the stairs where she sobs hard till the evening, all alone in the dark and no one comes to her to comfort her, not even Lily, and she has to swallow her tears and call Lily stupid in her thoughts over and over again and it brings her a dark sadistic pleasure.
When Petunia is eight, she and Lily play on the children's playground where the beautiful fern grows and Petunia loves to stroke its soft green thin leaves. Once, Lily comes to it and touches it with a shining smile and suddenly there are flowers appearing out of nowhere on one of the fern's twig and then all over the plant. The flowers are white and look too much like lilies and all the children on the playground gape and come closer to look at it and touch it, amazed and smiling at proud Lily, leaving Petunia all alone in a shadow because she knows that it's not normal, that the fern doesn't have flowers.
Coming home Petunia immediately destroys all of her Mum's indoor ferns in the pots, she tears it apart, breaks the clay jags and cries, choking with her tears, hating Lily and the ferns, and with a corner of her ear she hears Lily tell their parents about the wonderful thing she's done on the playground.
When Petunia is ten, she meets Severus Snape for the first time. She meets him in the store with his Mum and he's dressed in an overly large closes, but for some reason she likes him. Snape watches her curiously, as if remembering something and Petunia blushes because it's a first time a boy looks at her with interest. Later that night, lying in her bed, Petunia imagines her and that boy, Snape, as friends, wondering what it would be like to have a boy as a friend, a clever boy, because Petunia saw it in his eyes and his expression that Snape boy was smart.
Some days later, she and Lily are on the playground again and Lily shows her tricks, proving Petunia and everybody who'd like to watch, that she is unusual, extraordinary, not like everybody else, not like Petunia, but special. Petunia doesn't watch her sister making the fern grow the white flowers on it, laughing while she does it. Petunia turns around and bites her lip willing herself not to cry with hurt and offence, knowing that she's not like Lily, she can't do all those magic tricks and it angers her, making her call Lily abnormal in her mind over and over.
When Snape appears out of bushes Petunia is happy. She likes that boy and she hopes he would talk to her first, and in her mind she plans on how their conversation would go, how exactly she would ask his name and tell him hers.
But all her plans crush in one moment when Snape turns to Lily, obviously nervous and blushing, not even noticing Petunia behind, swallowed by Lily's striking beauty and talents.
From that day on, Lily is always hanging around with Snape, not once calling Petunia with them, leaving her at home all alone, crying and pitying herself, miserable and ordinary, hating Lily with every fiber of her soul, and hating Snape for not hating Lily.
When Petunia is twelve, Lily receives the letter from the magic school and their parents are so, so proud to have a real Witch in the family and they go to the Diagon Alley together, happy for their younger daughter, leaving Petunia at home to do her homework for her normal school. When they all come back, with lots of textbooks, an owl, robes and a brand new wand for Lily, all shining with proud and happiness, Petunia calls Lily a freak and infuriated Dad locks her in the closet under the stairs till the evening.
It is too much for Petunia, it is too damn unfair, she's tired of crying, she can't do anything with it, desperation and helplessness boiling inside of her, so she gets up in the dead of night and takes a sheet of paper and a pen and writes a letter to Dumbledore, desperate letter with drops of tears on it, asking him, begging him to please allow her to come to the school with Lily, that she would do her best to learn magic and then she takes Lily's owl and sends it to that school Headmaster.
She doesn't sleep that night, waiting for a reply, which comes early in the morning when everyone is asleep, and with trembling hands Petunia opens the letter which is surprisingly short and reads that Dumbledore is truly sorry, but her request is impossible to allow, and Dumbledore wishes her good luck in the future.
Petunia crumples the parchment violently and throws it to the trash bin, storming out of the room, crying her head off, throwing the vases to the walls, breaking things in the whole house, tearing all the ferns her Mum so emphatically kept on planting, shouting something she doesn't understand herself, and hating, so much hating Lily and magic and Snape, and then she slides down the wall and drops to her knees, sobbing quietly and whispering maniacally "I hate you, you fucking bitch, I hate you so much, you freak, you stupid ugly freak"
That day she for the first time wishes Lily to die.
Lily sends a letter to her family almost every day, like a kind caring girl she is. In her letters she asks to say hello to the neighbors, Tuney, and to each fish that swims in the aquarium in Lily's room. First two months she emphatically sends letters to Petunia, pretending there was no scene of parting on the King Cross station and her letters are warm and nice, sometimes with a photograph with it, and not normal photo but a moving magical one and Petunia tears it apart along with every letters and throws them into the fireplace, watching them burn with sadistic pleasure, the images of Snape and Lily fresh and vivid in her mind and the feeling of pain, offence and crying injustice boil in her, making the Hatred increase.
Petunia forbids herself to even think the words 'magic' or 'Snape' or 'Hogwarts' or 'Muggle' or any other words that would remind her of her sister and that school for freaks she's gone to. She makes her own friends, ugly stupid girls, with whom she feels beautiful and smart and she hangs out with them, but the feeling of misery and desperation never leaves her, eating her from the inside every day of her pathetic little life, making her cry into the pillow each night she lies in her bed, unable to fall asleep.
When Petunia is twenty-one, Lily sends her a letter with the wonderful news of her getting married to some guy named James Potter. Along with the letter Lily sends her a beautiful white flower and Petunia immediately recognizes it and as she does she hates it immensely. She slowly tears apart the magical moving picture of her beautiful red-headed sister in a long white wedding dress, namesake flowers in her hair, smiling happily at her. She tears off the head at first, then she lights a cigarette and burns holes in the picture where Lily's body is, her arms and legs and Petunia enjoys watching her sister's face blacken and become charred.
When Petunia is twenty-two, her precious sister sends her a letter, saying she had a son called Harry and when Petunia looks into his emerald green eyes on the picture she knows she hates him no less than she hates Lily herself. She burns the picture and walks into her own son's room, her normal son's room and no longer thinks about her sister and her son until the night she gets a letter from Dumbledore with the tragic news of her sister's and her husband's death.
A year later, on the 31st of October, Petunia Dursley goes to Godric's Hollow and finds her sister's grave, Lily Potter's grave and she spits on it and says to the air "Now look where your magic got you, freak" and she throws a white flower she kept in her locker for almost two years. The flower fells on the grave, withered and old and Petunia turns around and leaves, tears running down her cheeks, but she doesn't stop but keeps going to her normal house, where her normal son and husband are waiting for her.
When she almost reaches the graveyard gates she stops and turns around and gives one last look to the white flower being visible from the distance. With a rush of wind it is lifted in the air and carried out of sight.
Since that day Petunia can't stand the sight of white flowers. Each time she sees one of them she can hear the word 'Muggle' in her ears. Especially white lilies as they so kindly remind her of her long dead sister.
And also of the white flowers that don't really exist.
The Flowers of a Fern.
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