1997

Without hesitation, Petunia could name her son's favorite foods. She could write grocery lists in her head for shepherd's pie and mince pie, for treacle tart and homemade blackberry ice cream. She could picture herself in her small, tidy kitchen on Privet Drive, up before dawn every year on Dudley's birthday to make beef wellington. She knew that her son loved takeaway curry and knickerbocker glories, and that he liked to put salt in his chocolate milk. It made it taste better, he said.

Petunia didn't know what her nephew liked. She didn't know whether he preferred cake or ice cream on his birthday; she had never slipped a snack into his bag for him to find at school. Her chest tightened as she laid her head against the cool glass of the car window and tried to remember something, anything, that Harry liked to eat, something he might have asked her for—but he had stopped asking her for things a long time ago, hadn't he? She didn't know if Harry liked salt in his chocolate milk, because she couldn't remember ever having given him any. She didn't know how he preferred his bacon, because she left him the burnt, broken pieces after giving Dudley and Vernon the choice ones. For a moment, Petunia teetered on the verge of feeling something like regret.

She was snapped back into the reality of the car instantly as Vernon, swearing loudly, swerved to avoid a squirrel that had darted out into the street. Petunia was jolted out of her seat and slammed against her door; she looked at Vernon reproachfully as Dudley exclaimed angrily and Mr. Diggle emitted a nervous titter from the backseat. Vernon muttered something about damned rodents sabotaging their escape attempt, and Petunia settled back into her seat to rest her forehead once again on the window. She did not want to look at her family, she realized. Nor did she want to acknowledge the two strangers sitting in the backseat of Vernon's car, so cheerfully uprooting their life. She did not want to think about her nephew, now alone in the house that Petunia would never set foot in again; she did not want to look out the window at Little Whinging as she left it for the last time. And so she closed her eyes, and began, unwillingly, to remember.

1971

In the first months after Lily left, everything reminded Petunia of her sister.

She stopped having grapefruit marmalade on her toast for breakfast; that had been her sister's favorite. When her second year classmates asked her, in the blunt way of children, why her prettier, funnier sister Lily had stopped coming to school, she snapped at them to mind their own business. She tried very hard not to think about what Lily was learning instead of Maths and Geography. The worst part was their father's insistence on hanging Lily's weekly letters up around the halls with Sellotape, letters that made Petunia feel raw and cold with jealousy. Letters written on strange parchment paper in smudged ink, that enthusiastically told of flying broomsticks and classrooms in dungeons and lecturing ghosts. It was all nonsense, Petunia decided viciously, and she made a game of taking roundabout routes through the house that avoided these shrines to her freak sister.

Lily wrote to Petunia, too, for a while. Long letters once a week telling her sister about her new friends and fascinating classes, about how much she loved her housemates and the strange, magical castle she lived in. A castle. Like a princess, Petunia thought, bitterness blooming inside her. Always, Lily ended her letters with, I can't wait until I see you at Christmas. I want to hear all about second year. Please write me soon. Love, your sister Lily. Petunia could hardly hold the letters for more than a few seconds without being gripped by a wave of nausea. She never wrote back.

As December neared, Petunia felt a rising panic at the thought of seeing her sister. She began to beg her parents to send her to her great-aunt's for Christmas; they refused. School ended, and Petunia spent her days in her cold room, dreading Lily's blinding smile and kind questions, crying quietly into quilt.

Two days before Christmas, her mother came in a cup of tea and told her she was sending her to Aunt Gilda's house in Brighton for the holidays.

Petunia sat up and stared at her mother's tired, lined mouth, at her soft grey eyes. "Thank you." She took the cup of tea.

"Lily will be very disappointed. Your father certainly is," her mother said flatly.

But her eyes didn't leave Petunia's face, and after a while, she took her daughter's hand in an uncharacteristic display of affection. "I had a sister too, you know." She sighed. "You don't always end up best friends."

After she left, Petunia sipped her tea, certain, for the first time in her life, that she and Lily wouldn't.

1977

"Did you really think you could go all day without saying one word to me?"

Lily's voice was uncharacteristically cold. Petunia froze in front of the mirror, fumbling with the cotton ball she was using to blot her makeup.

Her sister stalked into the room, her face nearly as red as her hair. "Did you think," she said, her green eyes bright with tears, "that by refusing to put me in your wedding"—Petunia began clearing her things off the bathroom counter with shaking hands, readying herself for a quick escape—"you would keep me from coming? You're my sister!" Lily was almost screaming now, and Petunia spun slowly around to face her. "Why, Tuney?" Her lip was trembling now, almost comically, but her eyes were so open, so familiar, that Petunia could not quite meet them without feeling her heart wrench.

"I invited you, didn't I?" she said in a low, tight voice, fussily zipping up her makeup bag and avoiding Lily's steady gaze. "Though why you had to bring that boy I simply don't understand, he's practically a vagabond; unemployed, some magician—!"

"Magician?" Now Lily's voice sounded low and dangerous. Shaking with rage, she looked straight at Petunia's face. "So you—you really don't understand, do you? You don't even truly know what I am? All this time I've thought you were just jealous of me, but now I see you're too stupid to actually know anything about my life, you and your idiot of a husband, whose ridiculous, pompous ideas you've clearly been—"

"Don't you dare!" shrieked Petunia suddenly, color draining from her face as Lily's grew redder still. Her outburst shocked Lily into silence, and Petunia felt brave enough to meet her sister's eyes for the first time.

Even lined in red and dampened by tears, Lily's almond-shaped eyes were a stunning shade of green. They were the last thing Petunia saw of her sister as Lily swallowed, shook her head, and stumbled out of the room. Petunia stood frozen for a moment, torn between compassion and spite, between running after her sister and holding her head high to greet the rest of her wedding guests. Trembling, she sat down slowly, and faced the mirror once again.

1980

Proud Parents Mr and Mrs James & Lily Potter are Overjoyed to Announce the Birth of their Son, Harry James Potter, weighing 7 pounds and 4 ounces, 18 inches long, on 31 July 1980, 11:38 pm

Petunia took one contemptuous look at the birth announcement before stuffing it back in its envelope and throwing it in the bin. There was no point in showing Vernon.

Harry. Nasty, common name.

1981

It had been nearly two days, and Petunia still had not looked at her nephew's face.

She had read Dumbledore's letter; she knew about the scar. She had glimpsed the boy's tiny mouth as she numbly fed him formula from one of Dudley's old bottles to quiet him, and she had brushed her fingers over the tiny tuft of black hair, thinking queasily of his father. But then she would remember what had happened, and her stomach would clench as she thought of Lily. Cruel, derisive thoughts—for all her special 'powers', she couldn't save herself or her family, could she?—were washed away by despair every time she thought of her sister's face. Petunia was having trouble being as callous as she wanted to be, and she was afraid that looking into the face of her sister's son might trigger something that she did not want to feel.

She could hear Harry stirring from the other room, but she stayed in her armchair. She felt exhausted, drained, exceptionally cold. Scenes from her life played like a tense, disjointed film in her mind: making scotch eggs with her mother to surprise Lily on her tenth birthday; Petunia's confusing mix of excitement and dread when Lily showed her how she could make flower petals open and close in her palm, both of them knowing it was something significant; Lily's face at the wedding, open and hurt, the last time Petunia ever saw her . . .

Harry began to gurgle in earnest, and Petunia rose dully to quiet him. Vernon would be home in less than an hour, and he wouldn't tolerate the boy's crying. She looked down at him in his crib, tinier and sallower than Dudley, and somehow sad, as if he knew that he was not wanted there. He was still half asleep, eyes shut but squirming, and he reached a small, searching hand in the air.

Without thinking, Petunia grasped his fingers gently between her bony forefinger and thumb. The second their hands touched, Harry opened his eyes.

It was as painful and as beautiful as if her sister had been there in the room with them; as if Lily had suddenly appeared, smiling at Petunia. She was looking into her sister's eyes, unveiled, undiluted, and she almost cried out with fresh hurt and a renewed feeling of loss. She could not seem to break Harry's gaze; Lily's son stared at her with his mother's eyes, and Petunia felt as vulnerable as she ever had. It was as if this infant knew everything about what she was, and what she wished she could be. Petunia stumbled away, her heart thudding, and the pain was instantly rescinded.

After a moment, Harry began to cry again; she picked him up stiffly, wondering whether anything could make her look the boy in the eyes ever again.

2019

The mail carrier came to their house once a year, leaving jagged tire tracks from his motorbike in their snowy front yard. The rest of their mail, of course, arrived by owl.

He usually carried one letter, postmarked from Surrey, where Harry's cousin had returned years after the war ended. Inside there would be a Christmas card, usually unsigned, though including pictures of Dudley's timid-looking blond wife and their son and daughter. This December, however, the mailman had handed two envelopes to Harry.

It took him a couple days to open the second envelope. He thought he knew what it was, based on the familiar thin, careful script, but every time he picked it up he put it down again almost immediately, as if it had burned him. He was afraid of why they would possibly be contacting him, after twenty-some years.

He and his cousin were on Christmas card terms, at least. Every few years they would sit in uncomfortable silence in Dudley's living room for a few hours as their children greeted each other warmly and exchanged gifts. Perhaps Dudley had asked his parents to write Harry. Or perhaps just Petunia, Harry thought, as he had trouble reconciling the image of his uncle Vernon signing a nice Christmas card for the nephew he had hated so much.

Finally, pacing distractedly around the kitchen, he willed his fingers to open the envelope and shake out the card inside. Small, neat letters read:

Happy Christmas

Love, Vernon & Petunia

The card was simple, a painting of a green wreath on a white background. The first "H" was blotted, making it look forced, as if Petunia had had to will herself to write anything at all. Harry stared at it for a moment, unsure of what he felt, before picking up the envelope and attempting to place the card back inside.

It caught on something.

Frowning, Harry ripped the envelope open and scrambled to catch the photograph that fluttered out. Picking it up gingerly, he read the inscription on the back.

Dudley and Harry, Dec. 1981

Harry turned the photograph over, not knowing quite what to expect.

His own small face stared up at him solemnly, his green eyes wide and unmistakable. It was a Muggle photograph, of course, so the subjects of the photo sat frozen, unable to move. He was perched in a high chair next to his cousin, who was caught in a laugh (or perhaps a scream), his mouth wide and his face red. Young, swarthy Harry, sad and serious, looked out of place amidst the Christmas decorations and his cousin's raucous blond merriment.

He had never seen a photograph of himself at Number 4, Privet Drive growing up, nor could he ever remember having been photographed. He had been shoved out of the way by a snarling Uncle Vernon or a taunting Dudley every time the opportunity for a family photograph arose. Yet in his hand was evidence that once, his aunt had cared enough to want to preserve his face; that on this one day, perhaps, he had lived unwittingly as a member of their happy family.

Harry stared at the photograph for a moment, willing his younger self to move, to tell him something else about his childhood. For a moment he searched the kitchen absently for a pen, as if to write back to Petunia, then remembered that she had not included a return address on the envelope. Instead, he set the photograph down carefully and rummaged in the cabinet under the sink for some Sellotape—it would feel too odd, he knew, to use magic on this.

Straightening up, the Sellotape in hand, Harry tore off a small piece and affixed it carefully to the back of the photo. He turned it over, smiling vaguely. "Happy Christmas," he said aloud to the kitchen.

Carefully, he stuck the photo to the window above the mantel. Next to all the others.