Petunia Dursley was crying. Hiding under her duvet and crying; big, shuddering sobs. She clutched to her chest a large brown parchment envelope, which she now sat up and looked at for about the one hundredth time. Her eyes welled up and blurred out of sight the address written upon it:
Miss Lily Evans
The Second Biggest Bedroom
23 George Street
Surrey.
Petunia sighed and pulled the crumpled letter out once more, reading the words: "Dear Miss Evans. We are pleased to announce you have been enrolled into Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry…" Petunia choked up with fresh sobs, tears of self-pity, tears of sadness, tears of jealousy, and tears of rage…
Her blasted sister. The witch.
Her parents had been so proud that Lily was a witch. They had taken her to that stupid Diagon Alley, bought her a stupid wand, and an owl, and stupid, stupid robes and stupid spell books and telescopes and stupid cauldrons…and…and…and…IT WASN'T FAIR!
It wasn't stupid, it wasn't stupid at all…it had been wonderful, magical, brilliant, and Petunia had ached with all her thirteen year old heart that she could be a part of it. She had even written to the headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, and begged him to allow her to attend. But she couldn't, because she did not have magical blood coursing through her veins. She was a muggle. She wouldn't even be able to see Hogwarts, Professor Dumbledore had explained to her. He had been very kind, but it had made Petunia angrier and more jealous than ever. That ridiculous Snape boy had got a Hogwarts letter too, and he and Lily had found Petunia's letter to Dumbledore. And they had read it. That had made Petunia so blazingly angry, she wanted to destroy everything to do with her sister.
She had taken Lily's wand, in the idea of burning it, but that did not work. Her mother and father had found her building the pyre for the wand, and they had been so angry with her, so angry that she had been trying to hurt her sister, to ruin her sister's chances of succeeding in the wizarding world.
She had been sent to her bedroom, where she had cried and cried.
And she was crying now, clutching that letter of Lily's to her chest because a part of her was still jealous, all those years on. She was saddled with looking after her nephew, because Lily just had to go and get herself killed. Such an irritating boy he was too, she thought, and if he proved to be a wizard as well…
Petunia knew that she couldn't bear to have more than one magical person in the family. She had married a nice, sensible man who had no tolerance for magic, and they had had a fine son, her precious Dudley, worth so much more than that wretched Harry Potter. She had wondered, 11 years ago, if she could manage to stamp that disgusting magic out of him.
She had tried and tried, keeping him as uncomfortable as possible, without going as far as genuine abuse. She and her husband, Vernon, decided to keep Harry in the cupboard under the stairs, and try to make him feel less than her little Dudders in every way.
But she had not succeeded. Alright, so Harry Potter felt unloved and unwanted, but the Dursley family could not stamp out the magic that Harry Potter had.
Harry had just gone to Hogwarts. She was pleased that he was out of her way, but the old emotion was back; jealousy.
She hated magic now, but she craved it too, she was jealous of her dead sister, she was jealous of her eleven year old nephew, she hated them both and the powers that they had. She hated magic now, yet a part of her was still writing letters to Albus Dumbledore, begging to be let into Hogwarts.
She could never let magic go.
And that was why Petunia was crying.
