Flash Fiction Competition: teddy bear
Inheritance
Frowning, Petunia considered the open box before her. It was a box her mother had given her a few years ago that had just been tossed into the cupboard under the stairs, slowly buried under other odds and ends, forgotten until now. Now that her nephew had outgrown a crib, she needed a place for him. She refused to put him upstairs with Dudley, or even in the second bedroom next to Dudley's. She didn't want Harry's strangeness affecting Dudley.
The box had Petunia's named scrawled across it in her mother's neat handwriting, but the contents were most definitely not hers. Several drawings made by a young child were neatly folded up inside, as well as various little toys, a doll with blond hair and a purple dress, and a teddy bear that appeared as though it had been loved a bit too much. There was a small hole in one of its feet and one eye was dangerously close to falling out. All of these items belonged to her dead sister, Lily.
Petunia was just about to shut the box and take it to the trash when a small hand darted inside and grabbed the teddy bear. "Mine?" Harry's brilliant green eyes, so like her sister's, stared at her questioningly as he hugged the bear close.
Petunia made to snatch the bear out of his grip, but she hesitated. True, she didn't want him knowing anything about his parents in the hopes that his abnormalities might not manifest themselves. The less the boy knew, the better things would be for her family. But was a bear so very bad? There was no clear indication that it had belonged to Lily, aside from Petunia's own memory of Lily dragging the bear around everywhere with her for several years before outgrowing it.
Petunia closed up the box quickly before he had a chance to take anything else. "Fine," she snapped. "But the first time I see it out of your room, I'll throw it away."
Harry's face lit up. "Mine!" He ran off, dragging his inherited bear along by one arm. Despite her deep hatred of the boy's parents, Petunia couldn't help but smile. There had been a time, long ago, when she had loved a child with brilliant green eyes, toting that very teddy bear around. Petunia missed those days, but still pushed the memories away. There was no going back to that.