The bricks side shut behind them as the Evans' trail hesitantly after the stern-faced professor, each gasp of awe tinged with bewilderment. Diagon Alley is bustling with people; noise, color and wonder pouring out of the shops and onto the cobbled streets. Mr. and Mrs. Evans clutch their children close, instinctively trying to shield them from the unknown, even as their mouths gape and their eyes wander. Lily has none of it, tugging this way and that, pulling with a wide grin towards anything and everything that catches her eye.
When their guide speaks, prim, cultured voice explaining their surrounding with just the barest hint of amused warmth, the girl listens with an intensity typical of her audacious nature. Her parents nod carefully, clearly lost.
Her sister is nowhere to be found.
The goblin bank held no wonder for her, not in its oddity, nor the Shoppe's, with their brightly changing signs advertising sales and goods alike.
Instead, she drifts.
She lets the magic hum uncomfortably over her skin, stewing on bitter thoughts and half remembered shadows. She sees the decay behind the shining lights, in dark streets and twisted buildings just one corner turn away. She flinches from the abnormal screeches of the pet shops, ducks from a queer window displaying a velvet cushion supporting a plain, short length of lacquered wood, and stumbles back the way she came when a tall, pug-faced man nearly runs her into an inconveniently placed wall. Her lips purse as she steadies herself, patting at her plain dress, and fidgeting at her scratchy collar. Somehow, Petunia finds herself at familiar marble steps, the dull white of them glaring into her eyes just as the midday sun glares overhead.
So she sits, leaning on her knobby knees and gazing disparagingly at everything she never had. Part of her fights the irrationality of this place, -perfectly aware of every perfectly freakish aspect- but another, newer, part of her takes it all in with a keenness not unlike her younger sister, if a bit colder.
Her attention drifts towards that unturned corner, all dark edges and shadowed eves. The girl thinks it strange that the entrance to such an obviously foreboding place is right there, smack dab in the middle of everything. When compared with the loudness of its surroundings, it seems almost…normal. Mundane. Common. An unassuming lie.
It is not bravery that makes her stand; nor courage that prompts her thin legs to carry her across the busy thoroughfare. Such things are impractical in the face of fear and experience.
Curiosity beckons her forward, ambition silences her doubt, and shrewd determination discards the rest.
Smoky darkness envelops her like a cold hand, and she shivers, even as her Mary Jane's continue to click against the cobbles. She goes deeper, unhesitating in her commitment to find something with in this foreign space.
Cloaked and hidden personages pass her by, shifty characters stop their hushed conversations, and glinting, cat-like eyes peer from shrouded doorways. She continues still, though a distant voice with in her mind screams that this is indecent, that she is a housewife, an upstanding woman, a thirteen-year-old girl who is untouched byanythingbutgreengreenlight-
The girl turns left with unfaltering steps and ducks her blond head into a grungy shop entrance two doors down.
The door shuts behind her gangly frame, a little bell ringing despondently overhead. It is dark and cool here, and Petunia squints her once-dull eyes, the blue of her irises brightened by adrenaline. Shelves cover the dank space, filled to the brim with bottles and boxes. The air tastes tangy, the smell unpleasant with things she cannot name. Strange pants hang in tied clumps from the ceiling, dry and withered.
Moving from where she had stopped is no easy task, not when her limbs shake and her breath hisses quickly from between her teeth. But move she does, jaw clenched and eyes searching beyond the chipped, black countertop of the reception for any signs of life. No one comes to greet her, no one calls out, and yet…she can hear humming. Soft and deep and just beyond a cracked door behind the counter.
The girl hesitates, weighing options, blinking though plans. But the sound comes again and violet sparks across her wringing fingers, as if to shock her into action. Slipping around the uncluttered island, Petunia peers carefully though the lit crack of the partially open door, squinting against the light.
A man moves in the lamplight, nether old nor young; simply grey. He hums over a boiling cauldron, blue steam rising from the simmering liquid. Beakers and vials line a cornered workbench, strange apparatus spinning and wheezing. A silver knife lays ready for use nearby, a wooden stool pushed out of the way.
Long fingered hands reach for something from the table, the man twirling a long stick, -a wand, she reminds herself- and Petunia leans forward in anticipation, straining to see. The weight of her shoulder shifts and she bumps wood, causing the door to swing open with a loud creak.
The humming stops.
Petunia freezes, caught and unable to breathe.
"You're late." The man gripes, rasping voice carrying despite his turned back. She opens her mouth to correct him, but stops when he carries on.
"Dice the willow root. And I do mean dice. Morgana knows how often you apprentices confuse the two."
Petunia swallows to speak, but is interrupted, once again, before she can start.
"Quick, you fool! Before the potion ruins!" He barks, attention intent on the strange concoction.
Suddenly feeling cowed, the slight girl rushes over to the stool and, dragging it to the workbench, proceeds to search frantically for said root. Luckily, ingredients seemed to be carefully laid out in a neat row before hand, probably in preparation for solitary work.
And work she does.
The man orders her to squeeze, grind, and split all sorts of unknown substances, and for the next hour and a half, Petunia hurries to do as she's told, handing off the finished product to many an impatiently waiting hand. His wrist curves and slides through the air with each gesture of his wand, harsh voice rising and falling with each mumbled and indecipherable word. Petunia is not stupid enough not to understand how dangerous it is for her to be doing this.
She doesn't even know what half of these things are, let alone what they do. But every time she moves to stop, to run out of the shop and never look back, violet sparks across her hands and trails up her arms, stirring up goose bumps and making the tiny hairs on her skin stand on end. No. Leaving now would be a bad idea, no matter the reprimands she would receive later.
She sighed. Her parents were going to be such a chore when she finally got back to them.
Finished with the last ingredient on the table, Petunia sat stiffly on the old wooden stool, brushing a bead of sweat from her brow with a wrist and watching as the man stirred once, twice, then three times before, with a poof! The liquid turned a deep yellow and the man stepped back.
She was examining her tired and sore hands when he finally turned to her, trying to hide a wince as she awaited judgment.
"A bit young for an apprentice, aren't you?"
She raised her head, looking from one yellow eye to the next, then down to the blue-veined paleness of his skin. His hair was more silvery than grey now that she was really looking, long and tied back from a face almost too smooth to be natural. Her mouth opened and then closed silently. Her already pounding heart rate skyrocketed. She swallowed. Her eyes kept flicking away and back to his slightly amused face, before dipping to his chest. Whatever he was…
He wasn't human.
She slipped off her seat, ready to run for the door.
"I'm sorry, I just-"
"You did well. For a novice."
She paused, startled. He was turned away from her again, leaving her to stare incredulously at his robed back as he carefully began storing the still useable ingredients. His wand flicked casually towards her former work area, cleaning and rearranging and vanishing. Even the stool slid into place under the table.
"Yes, a bit young…" He hummed to himself.
Petunia shifts on the balls of her feet, nervously inching towards the door. She doesn't say anything, because clearly, she misjudged the situation and she needs to leave. Now.
The blond-haired girl is almost through the threshold of the shop before he speaks again, rugged voice drifting from the back of the gloomy store.
"But should you be interested...you need only ask."
The melancholy ring of a bell is her only reply.
Out in the sunlight, surrounded by noise and bright advertisements and worried, scolding parents, Petunia ponders. She calculates and contrives and schemes a scheme to come back at a later date, when her sister stops fussing and the old straitlaced witch is occupied with other little boys and girls, rather that the oddity that is becoming herself.
Her parents she can handle.
It's the magic ones she's got to worry about.
