A/n: this is going to be a short story so I'll try to update it soon. Please Review!
Petunia Evans was in her middle age was plain-faced and uptight. She hadn't always been; once upon a time she had been carefree and happy, a little girl with a smattering of freckles and smiling eyes. In her teens and twenties… well, she certainly wasn't ugly, and she wasn't unpleasant to be around, but she wasn't her sister. Boys liked Petunia. She had lots of friends, was smart, got good grades. She wasn't disliked. She was the silver sister. She was wonderful, but she wasn't quite Lily Evans. Petunia was charming. Lily was enchanting. Petunia was pretty. Lily was beautiful. Petunia was smart. Lily was brilliant. And every time that the golden sister came around, she was overlooked and forgotten.
This left her very, very bitter. She didn't hate her little sister. She resented her, avoided her, layers of malice covering up for the unhealed wounds of her lack of magical ability. But she and Lily had a wildly changing relationship, ranging from the best friends they had been as little children to pure, unadulterated hatred. Most of the time it was cordial, like the friend you'll talk to if you see them around, but would never go out of your way to find.
That winter, she returned home from her little apartment for Christmas, and Lily came from her awful school.
She went to answer the door, and was struck with a brilliant sight. It was a boy, taller than she was in heels, wearing wiry glasses and with a small smirk playing on his lips. She didn't know where this boy came from, or how he had ended up on her front steps, but she was sure glad he had. Her boyfriend, Vernon, was lovely. Plain, vanilla, boring, but lovely, and normal. Sure, he was a bit large and he had this godawful moustache, but she liked him, liked his company. He loved her, he had told her so, and she could see it in his eyes when he looked at her. She told him just the same, but it wasn't quite love. She loved the time that they spent together, but she wouldn't die for this man like she pretended that she would.
Upon locking eyes with this messy-haired boy, she was prepared to call up Vernon and tell him that it just wasn't working out.
"Hi…" She found herself saying.
"Hi" He responded. "Is this the Evans'?"
"Ya. I'm Petunia."
"Petunia" He said, and her name had never sounded so good. Was it just her, or did she detect a bit of recognition in his voice, like she was someone he knew? Excited, she stepped a bit closer to him. He smelled very good. His eyes widened in excitement. Or was it alarm? She couldn't quite tell. Suddenly, Lily appeared from down the hallway. Damnit! Perfect, beautiful, irresistible Lily Evans coming to snatch the boy away. It wasn't fair! She had seen him first!
"Lily" the boy said, and he sounded relieved. She gave him a small smile. Wait a second! How did he know her name? Lily hugged the boy, and she was full of a surge of anger. What right did she have? Lily and the mysterious stranger piped up in animated conversation heading further into the house, and she found herself cutting in.
"I-who are you? How do you know each other?"
"What?-oh" Lily said, turning around. "He goes to the madhouse too" she waggled her fingers and gave a tinkling laugh. The way she laughed, Petunia noticed was very pretty, and she couldn't help but focus on his hand, resting on her lower back. She saw something she hadn't noticed before, what she knew to be a wand stuffed into his back pocket. James Potter, he later said his name was. It was a lovely name.
Her parents absolutely fell in love with Potter, and insisted he stay for dinner. He had them charmed within a few sentences. Lily was enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible, and so was this boy,this awful, awful boy who came into her house seemingly only to remind her that she was the silver sister. That she was charming and smart and pretty and tempting, and so was her boyfriend, but they would never, ever be on the same level as the enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible. It hurt. Vernon had met Petunia's parents four times, and he still called them Mr. and Mrs. Evans. Within minutes, they were just Sarah and Lawrence, and it made Petunia fuming
Why did Lily get this perfect, perfect boy, who wanted to catch the bad guys when he graduated, was the captain of his wizard football team, was tall, and handsome and charming and loved by their parents! Why did he get special treatment, acting all chummy with their dad, when Vernon, perfectly respectable, hardworking Vernon got no such treatment? They sat down to dinner, and she felt bile rising in her mouth as he looked at her. Like she was the centre of his whole world, like she had hung all the stars in the sky. Vernon never looked at her like that. He was in love with her, but his world wouldn't stop turning if she wasn't in it. He would be sad, but it wouldn't destroy him to have her taken from him. She wondered what it would feel like to be on the receiving end of such a love, or to give it yourself. She didn't know what it felt like to be in love at all.
Well, that was lying. There was Alex Nosktrole, the summer when she was eighteen. She had really loved him. Maybe not quite in the way that James and Lily did each other, but it had been love all the same, and that December, when he had… when he had…, well she didn't like to think of it any more. For one, simple moment, she let herself wish. She wished, for the seventeen thousandth time, that she was Lily. But when Lily had come back from her first summer at… that school, she had suppressed her emotions. She almost convinced herself that she wanted nothing to with Lily's amazing, spectacular, magical world. Lily was a mutant and if science fiction had taught her anything, it was that nobody like mutants. But she stopped, for just one second, and imagined herself as Lily.
She was on a train, and then she was in this huge castle. She knew next to nothing about...alright, she'd say it, just for now, about...Hogwarts. Lily had tried to tell her, but she hadn't listened. She was holding a magic wand, performing all these crazy types of magic. She wasn't quite sure what her spells were doing, but they were very colourful, making a grew up, and she was the witch prefect, she was Head Girl at a school for magic. And then there was James… Head Boy, sports star, wanted by all but solely hers. She saw his arms around her waist, her hands in his hair. She saw his playful smile and him playing pranks on her and teasing her, but also holding doors open and telling her that she was more beautiful than all of the stars in the sky. She saw them in a dark corridor, wrapped around each other. He was in love with her, so, so in love with her, and he would never hurt her. She was the witch, she was the golden sister, and James Potter was in love with her. She looked over to where James and Lily sat, laughing with each other, leaning into each other, and was angry. How could Lily do this to her? And the boy destined to love her? What of him?
"Could you not?" She asked, slamming her hand down violently. "It's disrespectful, for one, and it's been going on all night!" She screamed.
"Petunia, get a hold of yourself!" Her mother reprimanded. "There's nothing wrong going on here!" She sat back in shock. This was why she didn't allow herself to dream. Lily just rolled her eyes and continued eating, but James was watching Petunia carefully. Oh God, he knew! She got the feeling he always knew. He would have to be used to it. They both would. After all, they were enchanting and brilliant and beautiful and irresistible and of course, wherever they went, people would be falling at their feet.
The next time James Potter came around for dinner was next summer, right after he and Lily graduated. She had the misfortune of being there, instead of where she lived with her best friend in Little Whinging. This time, he brought gifts, and if they hadn't already been completely taken with him they would've been then. The earrings he'd bought for her mother were expensive, Petunia noted. The boy must be rich. As if he'd needed something to add to the list. She'd later asked Lily about it. Lily, who had no idea of her sister's infatuation with her boyfriend, who, for his part, took it gracefully. Pureblood. She'd said, as if that would make things any clearer, how this seventeen year old had a spare thousand pounds to spend on his girlfriend's parents.
"He's a pureblood. An ancient wizarding family. Not a drop of Muggle blood in him."
"What does that mean?"
"Well, Muggles are non-magical people. I'm Muggleborn, you see, because Mom and Dad aren't magical. Witches and wizards almost always have magical kids, even if they have kids with muggles-those people are called halfbloods, if you have a mix of wizarding and muggle heritage. Almost everyone in the wizarding world is a halfblo-"
"I asked why the guy is so bloody rich, not for wizarding 101"
"I'm getting there! So then there's the people who only have witches and wizards in their ancestry. Not a single non-magical person or muggleborn anywhere in their family tree. They're pureblood. That's what James is. Obviously, there's very few purebloods left in the world. Because if just one person had a kid with a muggleborn or a halfblood at some point down the line, the entire bloodline is ruined. And they're all very, very rich. James is an only child, so the entire Potter family fortune will one day be his"
Damnnit! Vernon was a successful businessman, but not that successful. He was well-off, but that didn't exactly compare to being the sole heir to an ancient family fortune. She had been hoping that he was really, really irresponsible with money. That at least would be a fault in perfect James Potter.