Chapter 35: Petunia Continues

Severus was quite pleased. He and Seabiscuit had just finished haggling with a fellow called Monterey Jack. They had ended up with two dozen very nice chupacabra claws in trade for the smeeches that had fed on Harry and Ron (Kat had kept them), and they had sold him a small bag of Chinese fireball scales for a very nice profit.

Biscuit looked at the gold coins and did a quick calculation, converting between the various types of wizard currencies in his head. "We made about 34 of your British Gold Galleons on those transactions," he reported happily, covering his remarks with a discrete Muffliato. If they could keep this up, some day they might be able to buy a boat of their own. Then they could go independent, or work on contract for Knight Lines as owner-operators.

Severus glanced at his reflection in the shop window as they walked out. Work boots, blue work shirt, muggle blue jeans, and a dark blue bandana to hide the scars on his neck. Despite the lack of a ball cap, he looked very much like a working-class muggle. In fact, he looked very much like his father. What had his mother ever seen in that man? For that matter, what could anyone ever see in him?

Perhaps the purebloods were right; perhaps you could never really rise above your origins, no matter how hard you tried. Here he was, working on a boat. There was no denying that it was a working-class job. They even did manual labor sometimes, as it was often easier to simply pick something up and move it rather than going to the trouble of focusing a spell to levitate it.

And the worst part of it was that he rather was enjoying it all. Working on the boat was a lot more interesting than teaching wizard brats at Hogwarts had ever been. He was travelling the world, seeing exotic places and meeting a wide variety of people, most of whom didn't hate or despise him. And then there was the joy of haggling. Yes, it was a great improvement over his life at Hogwarts and Spinners End. He was glad that the Malfoys didn't know about it, though.

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"Snape?" Rita Skeeter had asked innocently.

"Yes, Snape. I'm sure his mother was one of them," Petunia said. "That's why he knew so much about witching. She kept to herself but everybody knew that there was something wrong with her. Whenever anyone got sick or anything bad happened, we knew she must have been behind it. I don't know how they got their groceries and such; you never saw them in the shops, which was just as well, actually. People like them used to be burned at the stake, but now they're allowed to do whatever they want. The police ought to stop them. You are going to stop them, aren't you, Detective?"

"We're doing our best," Rita told her. She crossed her legs and smoothed down her trench coat. Impersonating a muggle police detective was turning out to be fun.

"Well, it's not good enough" Petunia said haughtily. "We've been threatened. Threatened! That Alvin Dumbledown fellow came right here to this house and threatened us, and there's one called Something Black, and what if Snape turns up here – he must be a grown man now – or that Voldywort one?"

"They'll never trouble you again," Rita assured her.

Petunia's eyes lit up. "You mean you got them?"

"Yes, all of them," Rita lied. "We took care of it quietly." This woman is an idiot, she thought. I'd better get her back on topic. It would be so much easier just to take a quick look into her mind, but no one wanted to look into the mind of a muggle, and especially not the mind of a muggle like Petunia Evans Dursley. Rita shuddered at the thought.

"Oh, thank heaven!" Petunia said happily.

"The Potter boy is still on the loose, though," Rita reminded her, "and we're trying to build a case against him. We need to know all about him and his mother. You were telling me how the Snape boy influenced your sister Lily. Could you tell me more about that?"

"That Potter boy!" Petunia's face turned a violent shade of reddish purple. "He was forced on us. We never wanted him, and I guess they didn't want him either because they never lifted a finger to help us. They just threatened us and forced us to keep him. I wish he'd frozen to death before we found him on our doorstep that day in November. That little viper was a constant danger to us all, and especially to my poor Dudders! You can't begin to imagine what it was like." She brought out a handkerchief and started to sob.

That's all true, Rita thought. She'd gone there to learn about Lily and Snape, but more dirt on "Alvin" Dumbledore and the Boy Who Lived would be just as good. Maybe even better. She scribbled furiously in her notebook.

Dumbledore simply dumped the helpless baby on these stupid muggles and then vanished for 11 years, she wrote. What was wrong with that man? I wouldn't let this muggle cow look after a potted palm, let alone a wizard child! Didn't Dumbledore care about the welfare of his precious Chosen One? What if the boy had survived the Dark Lord only to succumb to neglect or abuse here? (I know I asked that question in my Dumbledore exposé, but I'm going to put it in the Snape book, too. People need to be reminded!)

"Magic is pure evil!" Petunia said, wiping her eyes. "It destroyed my sister. First it built a wall between the two of us, and then it took her away from me, and finally it killed her. I thought it was over then, but I was so wrong. Then magic started to destroy us. My poor Dudley was almost killed several times, and look at us now, our life is in ruins." She paused and looked at Rita with teary eyes. "Why us? Why couldn't Lily just have been normal, like the rest of us?"

"Can you tell me more about your sister?" Rita interjected. "What happened to her?"

Petunia snorted. "My sister had a thing for bad boys, that's the truth of it. She thought they were exciting. It was bad enough when she was intrigued by that Snape brat, but then there was that one she married, the rich one; he was her downfall. If she had chosen a good man like my Vernon, I'm sure she'd still be alive today."

Unless she died of boredom, Rita thought.

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"So Albus gave him the bird?" Minerva asked.

"He must have," Harry said. "Fawkes was there when we saw Professor Snape in that infirmary."

"Well, I'm relieved to hear it," the Headmistress said. "I'd hate to think that Albus had left Severus in such a dangerous position without any sort of help." She looked over at the portrait of Albus Dumbledore. "You did give Fawkes to him, didn't you, Albus?"

In the portrait, Albus looked rather uncomfortable. "Yes, I must have," he said. "I don't really remember. As I'm sure you know, I was quite ill from that curse in those days."

"It was certainly a brilliant plan!" Minerva said happily. "We all thought that Fawkes had abandoned us, but it was really just a clever ruse and Fawkes was actually standing by until he was needed. Severus must have felt so much better knowing that Fawkes would be able to help him, even in the most desperate situation, just like he helped Harry in the Chamber of Secrets. I'm so glad you thought of it."

"Yes, I'm glad, too," the portrait said, looking a bit confused. "I just wish I could remember doing it."

"Thank you for telling me, Harry," Minerva said, turning back to the young wizard, "but I want you to promise me that you won't tell anyone else about Professor Snape. He deserves his privacy, if that's what he wants. And you must make the others promise, too."

"I thought you ought to know, professor, but don't worry," Harry said as she walked him to the door, "we won't tell anyone else. You can count on us."

She watched Harry as he disappeared down the staircase. What a fine young man he's become, she thought. Then she returned to her desk where she poured herself a wee glass of Scotch.

"Albus," she said to the portrait, "I don't know what to do. Voldemort is gone for good, but somehow things don't seem to be very much better. We're not really happy any more, like we were in the old days. Yes, there were some serious challenges after Harry first arrived, like the troll in the castle, and the Philosopher's Stone, and that awful basilisk, but somehow we were happier then, weren't we? Where did it all go wrong?"

The portrait of Albus watched quietly as she took a sip of the Scotch.

"Remember when House rivalry used to be fun?" she asked. "Maybe I didn't enjoy Gryffindor's losing streak, but it felt so good when we started winning again, even if you did have to tweak things a bit to make it happen. It was such a pleasure to take the House Cup away from Professor Snape in Harry's first year. Severus certainly did scowl when he handed it over." She chuckled at the memory. "It was always fun to wind him up a bit, but he always gave as good as he got, and it was a friendly rivalry back then, or at least I like to think so. I like to think that we both enjoyed our competition.

"But things took a turn for the worse after poor Cedric was killed and Voldemort reappeared. All those deaths! Students, former students, friends and colleagues; I knew them all, including the ones who became Death Eaters. I taught almost all of them at one time or another. And I started to hate poor Severus. I didn't know that he did more than most of us – certainly more than I did – to stop Voldemort. None of us knew. I just wish you'd told us, Albus. And I wish we'd been nicer to him when he was a student. Maybe he wouldn't have turned to Voldemort if we had been."

"His association with Voldemort turned out to be very useful to us; essential, in fact. And he was a Slytherin, after all," the portrait said, "although eventually I came to realize that his sorting might have been mistaken."

"That was the problem, really – our assumption that all Slytherins are going to go bad," Minerva said. "And I'm afraid that I was as guilty of that as anyone." She took another sip of her drink and sighed as she remembered how she'd driven the all Slytherins out before the battle.

"When did we start feeling that way about them?" she asked. "They were always a bit snooty, of course, but so were the Ravenclaws. And they were ambitious; it was one of their signature traits. We always thought they were annoying, and we didn't particularly like them, but we didn't really think of them as evil."

"Tom Riddle corrupted them," the portrait told her solemnly. "You mustn't blame yourself."

Minerva glanced over at the portrait of Headmaster Snape. It remained unchanged, although for a moment she thought its eyes had grown more intense. It was probably just her imagination, though.

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"Hi, Melody," Clayton Urquhart said, appearing at Melody Nowak's side as they left Charms class. "Remember that conversation we had in the infirmary?"

"Um, not really," the former Hufflepuff said, "but I think you're going to remind me."

"Right you are! We were talking about working together to get our Houses back. You want to get Hufflepuff restored, don't you?"

"Yes, of course I do." She stopped walking and gave him a quizzical look. "What are you suggesting? That we go on strike or something? Everyone wants the Houses back, after all. The new system of 'house roulette' is a joke."

"A strike would make things worse," he said. "It would make McGonagall mad, and then she'd dig in. You know what she's like. A strike might succeed in the end, but it would take too long. It would be too much work, too. No, we have to give her what she wants." Then he smiled a sly smile and said, "Or we have to pretend to."

Melody thought for a moment and then asked, "So, what does she want?"

"She wants us to stop fighting among ourselves," he said. Even though it's partly her fault for the way she treated us, he thought, but he decided against saying that out loud.

"So you're going to start getting along with the Gryffies?" Melody said, laughing at the thought.

"No, we're going to pretend. But we'll have to get the Gryffies to go along with it, and we'll need your help with that.

Uh oh, Melody thought. Here it comes.

"The Gryffs won't do it if they think it's a Slytherin idea. But if they think it's their own idea, they'll embrace it. They want their House back as much as we want ours."

Melody was incredulous. "And you think I can convince them that it's their own idea?"

"Absolutely. We have complete faith in you. Just go to Bentley Ballard and tell him that you want to talk about the great idea that he mentioned while we were all in the infirmary. And when he says, 'What great idea?' you just 'remind' him. He'll fall for it, no problem. And when he says, 'But those stinking, treacherous Slytherins won't go along with it,' you tell him that you'll get us to think it's our own idea. Then you go do something similar with the Ravenclaws. After that, you tell everyone that you'll be the go-between and set up a meeting of House reps. It'll work out just fine. You'll see."

Melody smiled. "You know, I think you just might be right about that."

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"Lily was a thrill-seeker," Petunia continued. "That's why she took up with that horrible Snape brat. He taught her witchy things, and she thought he was cool. He was always showing off for her. He was crazy about her, everyone could see that, and she loved the attention. I knew it wouldn't last, though. He was really just an ugly, unkempt street brat from a bad family, not worthy of her at all, but he kept her entertained until she found someone more exciting."

Rita wrote, Thrill-seeker who liked bad boys – that explains a lot! in her notebook and said, "It must have been a trial for you."

A look of sadness came over Petunia and she said, "Well, Lily and I were still close in those days, despite the Snape boy. We fought sometimes, of course, and I tried to get her to stay away from Snape, but we were sisters and we loved each other. That all came to an end when she got the letter from that witch school, though. By the time she got on that train she was so snooty that I just couldn't stand it. She said I was jealous – and that's a nasty lie! – and I called her names. And when she got back from that school the next summer, she didn't care about me anymore. I could hardly even get her to talk to me after that."

"So the school changed her?" Rita asked. Then for a moment she accidently made eye-contact with Petunia, and even though she tried not to, she could hear the muggle thinking, I loved my sister so much. Why I couldn't I have been magical, too, like her, and gone away with her?

Rita quickly looked away as Petunia started crying again.

To be continued.