Author: Clara Fox
Title: Awful Boy
Rating: T for language.
Summary: Spec fic explaining how Petunia found out about dementors. Set just after Lilly's Hogwarts graduation.
Disclaimer: The characters and plot seed belong only to JK Rowling. I'm expounding on some hints she's dropped.
Petunia Evans was angry. This morning made the third day since Lily had come back from that freak school that Petunia had been rudely awoken by abnormality. Three days ago it had been a foul-smelling orange liquid dripping through the ceiling of her closet and melting holes in her favorite coctail dress. Yesterday at daybreak, an owl had sat on her windowsill, tapping and scratching at the glass hard enough to crack a pane. This morning she had woken the whole house with her screams after a horrid, snuffling rodent had spilled out the contents of her perfectly-organized dresser and then lunged for her neck.
And each time, before Petunia could collect her outrage enough to form it into words of complaint, their parents seemed to have already forgiven Lily, already written off these encroachments on Petunia's space as understandable, just a few accidental byproducts of Lily's "talents." Petunia's only comfort was that her mother had absolutely refused to let Lily keep that animal in the house after it had upturned the kitchen, scattering pots and pans and almost ruining their new copper repipe job by worrying at the fixture below the sink.
Lily had gone back to that horrible school to get rid of the animal, and Petunia couldn't help but agree with what she had overheard - the recipient, if he wasn't already "haggard," certainly would be after a day with that beaver, or whatever it was.
Petunia leaned back in her armchair and blew on her tea. The afternoon had been sunny, idyllic, and Lily-free, perfect conditions for observing the continued saga of the son from the family across the street and the younger and older daughters of the next door neighbors. From her armchair in the corner of the window, Petunia could see both yards, and when the light was just right, the sitting room across the street as well. The whole situation was indecent, Petunia thought. The boy and the older sister were well past twenty, probably 23 at least. But the younger sister had been in Lilly's class at school—she couldn't be more than seventeen. Petunia sniffed and sipped her tea.
It looked as though the older daughter had just found out about the younger one, and Petunia had just set her cup on its saucer and settled in to watch what was shaping up to be quite a showdown when she heard the back door slam. She froze, fleetingly convinced both that someone had just broken into the empty house, and that if she was quiet enough, the high back of her chair would shield her from the burgler's view. But then she heard the voices, and wished just a little that could have been a burgler after all.
"I said don't follow me!" Petunia had only heard the icy edge on her sister's voice once before.
"And I said I wouldn't leave you until you listened to me." The boy's voice was low; Petunia didn't recognize it.
"I've listened to you, Severus. I've listened to you lie to my face, I've listened to you enumerate every single flaw of Sirius and James's, and I seem to remember a time when all I heard from you was how dirty my blood was."
"Lily -" The voices were much closer now; the boy must have pursued Lily into the sitting room. Petunia tried to sink herself lower into the upholstery.
"No, now you get to listen to me. I know why you used to say those horrible things to me. I knew it then, though I can see that you don't believe me. And that's another reason why you can't do this. If I could see it in your eyes that you were lying, before I even knew what legilimency was -"
"I'm better at it now, Lily. And it was always different, with you. I couldn't ever keep it all back with you."
"And you think it'll be easier to hold it back from them? You think a bunch of the darkest wizards in Britain won't be quite as good as I am at reading your feelings? I'm pretty sure if any of them were here right now, they'd also be able to see all the foolish crap you're full of."
"You don't understand. You've never understood. I don't have a choice."
"Of course you have a choice!" Lily's voice had risen an octave. Petunia eyed her tea warily as tiny waves formed on its surface.
"I suppose you're about to tell me what it is, then. Since you know more about my life than I do."
"Don't start that. Your sneering doesn't work on me, Severus, you know that very well. And I will tell you what your choice is, just so you can hear out loud how utterly stupid it sounds. You've been asked to join the Death Eaters. Fine - fine!" Petunia guessed that the boy had made to protest, and was glad that both his and Lily's attention seemed to be on their argument, rather than the still-steaming cup of tea near the window.
"You've been told you are to join the Death Eaters. So you can either join, pretend to love killing innocent people while secretly, and vainly, trying to subvert an organization of dark wizards, and then get killed when they find you out, which they will, or you can refuse to join their Slytherin alumni club and help us fight aginst them. You'd probably get to die heroically doing that, too, if that's what you want. But at least you'd have tried to stop them. At least you'd have had a chance."
There was silence in the room. Petunia didn't know what 'death eaters' were, but they didn't sound like they had much to do with the usual horrible magic tricks her sister did. She had never heard Lily mention 'death' anything before, but then whenever she began one of those serious-sounding conversations with that rumple-haired boyfriend of hers, Petunia found them almost impossible to hear over a sort of buzzing or humming in her own head. She could hear clearly now, though, clearly enough to catch the sudden change in the boy's voice when he next spoke.
"You're probably right that I'll die either way. But you're wrong about the rest."
"Oh, I'm wrong about them finding you out? You're right, of course you're right. I forgot to mention that even if they don't find you out right away, you'll end up caught by the Aurors and thrown in Azkaban. And then it'll be a bit too late to try and convince people you weren't really evil like the rest of them. But then, of course, you'd be nice and safe from the Death Eaters in Azkaban, so I suppose you wouldn't want to get out."
"Lily."
"Lovely and safe, in Azkaban. Have you seen a Dementor up close? You know why they use them as prison guards? They drain every bit of happiness out of your body. You're incapable of escaping because you're barely capable of breathing."
"I think I know what Dementors do, Lily."
"Well then you must not really appreciate it. Have you been near one? Well I have - remember, last autumn? I couldn't feel warm for weeks. All the time I was near it all I could think of were the worst things that had ever happened to me. It tried to drown me in my own worst memories. And that was only one of them! In Azkaban there are flocks, hundreds of them all on an island with nothing to do but slowly to chip away at your soul!"
"I know what Azkaban is like. I know that could be my future if I do this. But I have to do it."
"You idiot! You stupid cowardly . . . git! You don't have to do anything. You have a choice."
"I never had a choice, Lily. If I join them, you'll hate me, I know that." The boy paused, and when he spoke again his voice was softer, and for the first time slightly menacing.
"But if I don't join, they will kill you."
Lily must have been as shocked as Petunia was at hearing this, because she didn't answer for a long moment. When she did speak, however, it was with in the same icy a tone that she had started the argument with.
"I will not be your excuse, Severus. I will not be some sort of - of symbol of your sacrifice. The only man who gets to stand between me and anyone is the man I'm going to marry."
In the gathering shadows outside the window, Petunia could now see the scene behind her reflected dimly. Her attention was so riveted on the pair that stood facing each other at the other end of the room that she forgot to worry that they would turn and see her reflection in the armchair.
"So that's final, then? It's an engagement now, not just bouts of snogging between the times he's busy boasting about finally landing Lily Evans?"
"You know it's not like that. You saw the ring, Severus. That niffler almost had it off my hand. And you can't not have seen it coming."
"The niffler?" The boy's voice was sharper now, sardonic.
"No," Lily's voice had softened. "The - I mean, our - engagement."
"Well, I can't say I expected an announcement. I daresay I'll not be welcome at the wedding either."
"You have to understand -"
"I expect I won't be available anyway. Probably won't see any of you lot at all anymore, at that. And good riddance to them."
"You're not doing it. You can't do it."
"I am. I can."
"I will hate you then." Lily took a deep breath. The boy was silent. "You know that I stopped loving you after you wouldn't step in to save that girl from Malfoy. But I've always still cared for you. If you do this I won't care anymore. I'll start hating you, and you'll be pretending you've done it because you love me. Can you live with that?"
"I don't love you. I never loved you."
"You said you did."
"I lied. Fancy that."
Lily's reflection stared wordlessly at the reflection of a dark-haired boy. The light outside was now completely gone, and Petunia could clearly make out his hooked nose between sunken, sallow cheeks, and the limpness of his greasy hair. He looked odious, and Petunia shuddered at the idea that her sister had ever loved a boy who was capable of a look of such complete loathing. Lily choked on a sob as she turned sharply and left the boy glaring at empty air.
Petunia was so surprised her sister's sudden disappearance that she didn't notice the trembling of the boy's hands or the tear streaking slowly down his cheek. She only saw him push his sleeve up slowly, scowl at his forearm, and twist his body into thin air, as Lily had.
In the silence that filled the room, Petunia shook off a feeling of foreboding. She didn't find it hard to file this conversation away under Proof That Lily And Her Freak Friends Will Come To No Good End. That awful boy was the worst of the lot, probably, Petunia decided. He certainly looked it. Although Lily's no-good boyfriend wasn't much better. And now Lily planned to marry him, and before her older sister had found herself a husband? Petunia switched off the sitting room light and sipped her cold tea as she watched the boy across the street sit down between his parents in front of a flickering television set. Twenty-three was not too old for her, thought Petunia. And he did look so distinguished with that new mustache.