Legendary Gods & Goddesses Competition: Hera, goddess of marriage, women, and childbirth
Random Quotes Challenge prompt:
"It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again once that cold, sanctifying tough has been laid upon it."
- L. M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
She steps out of the cab and pulls her shawl more tightly around herself. "Wait for me," she instructs the driver. "I won't be long." She adjusts her wrap again. It isn't cold - far from it - but it won't do to be recognized, not now, not here.
The sound of the taxi's engine blurs into the background as she marches down the long street, sharp eyes straining to find that house. She can't remember the exact address. It doesn't matter. This house is impossible to miss, with its deep crimson paint and bright golden door (a terrible choice, in her opinion; houses ought to be white) and its modest one-story frame that actually contains three stories, but you can only tell once you're inside. She doesn't know how that's possible, and it makes her head hurt to think about it, so she acts like there's only one floor and refuses to venture up the stairs.
She's never told her husband about these trips to Godric's Hollow. Why would she? He doesn't know the truth about Lily, doesn't know anything about that other world sitting right under his nose, and it would be unkind - cruel, even - to fill him in. It's better this way. He's blissfully ignorant, and she's a little lonely but not miserable, and their son will never know that his mother was almost born with magic in her veins instead of blood.
(A part of her still wishes she'd been born that way, but she keeps that secret locked away, and nobody knows but Lily.)
"Tuney?"
She jumps. Pauses. Turns.
"Lily."
There she is, all red hair and smiles, a baby swaddled in cloth and wrapped in her slender arms. "Come inside," she says, gesturing at a light-blue cottage behind her.
Petunia doesn't move. "That's not your house."
"It is. It's been charmed. He's after us."
"So you've moved, then."
"No," Lily says patiently. "It's the same house. It just appears to be different to anyone who doesn't know the address. It's called the Fidelius Charm, it's quite complicated magic - "
"You've moved," Petunia says firmly, and Lily falls silent.
"Yes, Tuney," she says quietly. "We've moved."
"You couldn't have chosen a white house?"
"Oh, is it not white?" Lily squints at the cottage. "I still see red and gold."
"It's blue." Petunia steps off the sidewalk and onto the tiny walkway leading into the cottage. "Is he home?"
Lily's right behind her. "James is home, yes. He'll stay upstairs, out of our way."
"And the other one?"
"Sirius isn't here. I know you don't like him, I made sure he'd be gone."
"Good." Petunia pulls open the door and steps inside. The entryway looks exactly the same as it did last year when she visited, but she knows it isn't, it can't be, it's a different entryway because it's a different house because they've moved. She inhales deeply and takes a seat at Lily's kitchen table.
"I'm so glad you came," Lily says, setting the baby in a crib and fetching a cup of tea for her sister. "I was worried you wouldn't be able to, what with Dudley - "
She slams down her cup. Tea splatters everywhere. "Don't say my son's name."
Lily looks startled, then sad. Her hand twitches for her wand, but in the end she reaches for a dishrag instead to mop up the spilled drink.
Petunia watches wordlessly.
She knows she should apologize for overreacting. She doesn't.
"How are things with Vernon?" Lily tries.
Vernon doesn't know I'm here, and if he did he would never speak to me again. "Fine."
"And with your job?"
Petunia almost reveals that she doesn't have one anymore, that she left when Dudley was born and simply never went back. "Fine."
Lily hands her a new teacup. "And with your son?"
She shrugs as her teeth clench together. "Fine."
Lily sighs. "Tuney, if you don't want to do this - "
"Do what? Have a bloody conversation with my sister?"
Lily's green eyes are flashing, and Petunia finds herself transported back to her childhood, when those eyes belonged to her dearest friend instead of a freakish stranger who had to hide from the world. "It's not a conversation, though, Petunia."
Behind them, the baby in the crib has started to cry. Lily lets her piercing eyes bore into her sister's for a moment longer, and then turns to pick up her child. "What's the matter, sweet baby?" she coos, a soft, motherly smile on her face, and Petunia hates it, because she can't figure out how to smile like that, she's too sharp and angular and stiff and she's not a good mother, she knows it, and that's why she came tonight, to escape any kind of mothering environment, and now Lily's throwing it back in her face, and before she knows it she's standing and screaming, "Alohamora!" because it's the only spell she knows, it's the only one she's ever heard Lily use, and she hopes to God it's a threatening one.
"Alohamora?" Lily repeats, and she sounds confused. "Tuney, what - ?"
"Your son is not special!" Petunia shrieks. "He is no better than my son, and you are no better than I am, and I don't - I can't - I don't want to - "
She's crying as she sinks back into her chair and buries her face in her arms, the way she used to, the way she hasn't done in years. Lily sets a hiccuping Harry back in his crib and puts a light hand on her sister's shoulder. "You don't want to what?" she asks, and Petunia wants to punch her almost as much as she wants to tell her everything.
"I'm a terrible mum," she chokes, and then it's all spilling out of her: how Dudley won't let her hold him, how he cries when she tries to get him to eat, how his first word is "Shan't!" and he only says it when she asks him to give her a kiss.
"Tuney," Lily says, stroking her sister's shoulder with her thumb. "You're not a bad mother." She sits in the chair next to Petunia and shifts her sobbing form into her arms. "Shh," she tells her, rocking the two of them back and forth. "Do you want to hold Harry?" she asks when Petunia's crying has faded into a whimper. "He won't reject you. He loves new people. Just try."
Petunia starts to protest, but Lily's already up, and when Sweet Baby Harry is lowered into her arms, Petunia takes a deep breath and tries to mimic the perfect motherly smile that jumps so eagerly to Lily's lips. "Hi," she says softly, peering into the boy's tiny face. Sweet Baby Harry blinks up at her, a dopey toothless grin on his face, and reaches up to wind a fist in her hair.
"No, Harry," Lily says, gently unwrapping his fingers. Petunia barely even notices. She's mesmerized by those eyes. They're carbon copies of Lily's, and yet - there's something deeper there, some level of understanding that doesn't exist in her own son, and for the first time Petunia wonders if there's something wrong with Dudley, not her, because she isn't doing anything differently and yet Sweet Baby Harry isn't squirming or screaming or telling her, "Shan't!"
"Hi, baby," Petunia says, bouncing her nephew up and down a little. The doorbell rings then, and Lily jumps up, looking worried, and goes to the door. Petunia just holds the baby. "Dudley would be jealous if he saw how much I love you," she whispers. She's never told this baby she loves him. She knows she'll never be able to say it again. It won't do to let Vernon find out, or Lily, or anyone other than this tiny bundle that can't understand her anyway.
Lily returns, weary relief on her face. "Trick-or-treaters," she explains. "I forgot it was Halloween. I thought - I don't know what I thought." She takes Harry from Petunia and begins to stroke at his hair. "It's nearly bedtime for you," she says with that motherly smile.
Petunia thinks about the child waiting for her at home, and her heart breaks.
"I should go anyway," Petunia says, moving toward the door. "The cabbie is waiting."
"Oh, let me pay," Lily insists. "I can't believe you come all this way every time, it'd be much easier for me to come to you."
Petunia shakes her head. "No," she says. "It wouldn't."
Lily has one foot on the first step of the staircase that Petunia won't acknowledge. "Just let me put him down and I'll get my Muggle money," she says over her shoulder. "And Tuney?"
"What?"
Lily smiles. "You're a wonderful mother."
Petunia doesn't wait for her sister to come back. She's out the door and marching toward her taxi, a subtle smile playing at her lips. "Thank you," she says, sliding into her cab. "I'm finished here."
"To the train station?" the cabbie asks, setting down his newspaper and reaching for his key.
"Please. Hurry."
Petunia doesn't look back as they speed away from Godric's Hollow. She never does, after all, not in all the four years she's been coming here, and she's not about to start tonight. She settles for the memory, for Harry's eyes and Lily's faint smile and the comforting hand of her sister on her shoulder, and it is enough, she knows, to get her through to next year's visit.
She doesn't know it, of course, but it's the last night before sorrow touches her life; and no life is ever quite the same again once that cold, sanctifying tough has been laid upon it.
She wakes up the next morning to find Sweet Baby Harry lying on her doorstep with a letter tucked among his blankets. Vernon wants to throw him away. Petunia won't allow it. He asks for an explanation. She licks her lips. What can she say? She's supposed to hate him. She's supposed to hate all of them. She's Petunia Dursley, after all, she's supposed to be normal, and just because she's been touched by sorrow doesn't mean she's allowed to change her mind.
So she feeds her husband excuses about magical contracts (she doesn't say magical) and enchanted wills (she doesn't say enchanted), and he's so afraid of that world that he drops the subject.
And late at night, when nobody else is around to hear, she cradles Harry close to her chest and looks into his sleepy eyes - Lily's eyes - and tells them both she loves them.