Disclaimer: I own nothing. Harry Potter belongs to J.K Rowling.
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chapter 3: same blankness

The divorce is amicable, there is no yelling, no hard feelings between them. No feelings at all anymore. They lay still beside each other at night, still and silent.

But even that is not to be any more. She looks into the Vernon's eyes as she hands the signed form back and sees the same blankness she sees every morning in the mirror. She wonders how she missed it the past few months - or if she had seen it and it just hadn't really registered.

She doesn't know if either of them will ever have life back - this has hit them both hard, so hard and it is difficult to find footing again – but Petunia wishes nothing but good for her ex-husband and he obviously feels the same, knowing her without a job and place to stay, leaves her the house in the settlement.

As he leaves and the door closes though she wonders the wisdom of that choice. She has little use of a house big enough for an entire family – feels like a ghost now within this place that was meant to be a home – a place that she herself decorated but now seems utterly alien to her.

She finds herself spending her days moving from room to room aimlessly. Picking up nick knacks absentmindedly, just staring at things. Leaving only to go to the corner store to pick up enough food for herself – just her now (she has never lived alone).

She loses herself in this. Loses time, days, weeks.

Months perhaps. (How is one to tell?)

She is in what was meant to be His nursery when she comes to herself with a start – a bodily wrench that is as much physical as it is mental as she realizes what damage she is doing to herself. Petunia looks, as if for the first time, around her at the house she had so happily kept clean (once upon a time) is now covered in a thick layer of dust – there are food wrappers everywhere – and she doesn't want to think about how dirty she is.

Firmly she gets to work. Petunia cleans herself first, even though she knows she will get dirty later, it makes her feel better. Free of grime she feels more like herself than she has since….

She stubbornly stops that thought before it starts, refuses to go back into the downward spiral she had been trapped within.

She cleans steadily over the next days a frenetic energy about herself where before there was only such lethargy. She washes all of her sheets, all of her clothes. She dusts the ceilings and walls, sweeps and scrubs the floors – and any other surface. She washes the dishes.

Biting her lip and swallowing hard - with a great effort and inner steel she never realized she had she…she packs up His room.

When that is done. She looks about her clean house and goes to the store for more boxes.

There is no reason for her to stop there.

No reason for her to stay.