Disclaimer: I'm not making any money off this story. I wish I was, but I'm not.
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I know what people say about me: Petunia Dursley, the horrible aunt of the Boy Who Lived. If it weren't for the fact that Harry Potter needed to live in her house to be safe, she'd deny his relation to her. She thinks magic is a disgusting abnormality and tries to ignore the existence of it. But most people don't know the true story. The truth is, I'm jealous. I'm jealous that my sister and nephew have powers that I can only dream of having. Confused? Let me start at the beginning…
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When Lily and I were little, we knew nothing about the wizarding world, and magic was only the stuff of fairytales. Lily and I were best friends, closer than sisters usually are. We would often pretend, as young children do, that we had magical powers. We loved the idea of casting spells, brewing potions, and flying on brooms.
Since, as far as we knew, magic was not real, it was surprising when Lily started doing accidental magic. It was just little things, moving marbles a few inches without touching them or levitating a pen as it rolled off a desk. I was so happy for Lily; it was as if she were a superhero.
Naturally I was envious of her, but I thought she was one of the only people in the world who could do magic. I figured if magic was so rare, then I would be happy that I was the sister of someone so special.
Then she got her Hogwarts letter.
By owl post.
Mother and Father were overjoyed by the fact that we had a witch in the family.
I was . . . well . . .
I was excited, furious, jealous, and extremely disappointed all at the same time.
I was excited because the letter meant that wizardry actually existed and there were hundreds of thousands of magical people all over the world. All these years I had thought magic was only in the imaginations of authors and movie writers, when it was actually real.
That was why I was furious. Would you like to have been lied to for your entire life? Not that I was blaming my parents or even the Ministry. It was those wizards I was blaming. They hid themselves from the rest of the world like we un-magical people would go into shock if we found out that magic existed.
If I thought I had been jealous when I thought my sister was the only magical person in the country, if not the whole world, I was mistaken. It was nothing like the jealousy I felt upon learning that there was a whole world of magic that I could not be a part of.
That caused me to be really disappointed. I mean, I grew up pretending to be magic with my sister, thinking how cool it would be to actually have special powers. Then I find out that not only does my sister have these powers that I don't, but she got to go to a special school with other witches and wizards to learn more magic. There wasn't even a chance that I could suddenly develop powers and go to Hogwarts with her because she was younger than me. If I were magical at all, I would have gotten a letter in a previous year.
My one wish in life was to be magical. For Lily it became reality. I know she didn't do it on purpose, but I felt like she betrayed me. Lily knew that I longed to be a part of her world, yet she excluded me from everything. She never invited her school friends to our house, and often spent her vacations and summers away from her family. It seemed to me that Lily was ashamed of her muggle family. After she finished school, she remained in the wizarding world. Evidently she wrote letters to our parents to let them know how her life was, but she never once tried to contact me.
The last time I saw my sister was when she came home to move all her possessions into an apartment she was sharing with a witch friend of hers. For years after that I had no idea whether she was alive or dead (apparently she was alive since my parents didn't mention a death). I didn't know what she did for a living or who she lived with. I didn't even know she had a child until that morning I found little Harry on my front steps.
For over three years I hear nothing from my sister, then the next thing I know, I find out that she has been killed and I now need to care for her son or he will be in grave danger. Needless to say, I was furious. I had my own family, a husband and a baby. I didn't want to have to take care of a child who more than likely had the powers of his parents, the same powers I wanted so badly.
Vernon and I never told Harry the truth about his parents. I guess you could say it was my revenge on Lily. Vernon had to know about the wizarding world because of Harry, and he was similarly disgusted by it. As Harry grew, it was mainly Vernon who was opposed to magic.
I guess I got tired of taking out my revenge on my nephew, but I never let it show. Over the years I realized that all my anger was pointless. I was just jealous. Jealous that I would never and could never have magical powers. Jealous that my sister and nephew could do things that were impossible to me. It was all jealousy.
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Jealousy . . .
I was Jealous of the wizarding world.