Chapter 37: The End

The Hogwarts train had left the station three weeks ago. Lily was not on the train, instead, she had sat next to Petunia, in the church, they had grown up in, trying to make sense of the two caskets in front of her. Tobias had insisted they bury the empty caskets, even though there were no bodies for them.

They had gotten comfortable with the idea that they were invincible. Not that the idea acted as a balm. There was a screaming match every day, every conversation with Lily felt like an analysis, micromanagement, and had put every interaction after Eileen's death under a microscope.

"I asked specifically for an Unbreakable." Petunia tried to defend.

Lily scoffed at that. "You asked he-who-must-not-be-named to honour a promise after you working with him for months."

The promise was more than that, it was an oath and there were always severe repercussions for breaking one.

"I don't want to talk to you Petunia. I can't. You flew too close to the sun and you knew it."

That statement didn't help Petunia's anger at all. The last three weeks had been trying to say the least. Neither Petunia nor Lily had a head for money. Numbers, yes, but money was a whole different kind of language that no one in their family spoke well. Their house might have burned down but their postbox still worked. Between creditors, an illegitimate child and trying to tie down the estate, there wasn't much to go between Petunia and Lily.

While both had savings, it wasn't enough to keep them floating. Not if they wanted to pay off everything their father had owed various unsavoury characters. Petunia still had her trunk of potion supplies and Lily set her sights on James Potter. Severus had messed up one too many opportunities and Lily would never love him back the way she had wanted to before.

If they were smart, it would be fine. They would be fine, safe and protected.

"Trust me," Lily said. "You focus on things this side and I'll sort it out in the magical world."

Petunia couldn't trust Lily. It wasn't her pursual of James that worried Petunia. Beauty was just another arsenal in Lily's toolkit of survival. It was that Lily thought the best plan of action was to go back to Hogwarts and begin the process of revenge.

They didn't have enough power between them to have another target on their backs.

"I don't want you getting messed up with whatever Dumbledore has planned. He defeated Grindelwald and that man didn't give me the best impressions."

Lily looked up from her charm homework at that. "He was a mass murderer with a pureblood agenda. He shouldn't have given you the best impressions."

Petunia nodded, he should've, but he didn't and that seemed to be all the difference in her eyes, Gellert was the only one who probably understood what wearing the dementor's cloak had done to her soul. "You know I hate you." Petunia said those words casually. Not caring for the effect or the wince.

Lily, to her credit, didn't look surprised. "So is this where we say goodbye?"

"After this year, I have no legal obligation to look after you. Tobias said that he'd take care of the rest and I'll sort out the debts. But it's doing us no favours to pretend otherwise."

"I don't want this family to break." Lily's voice cracked, but she held it in.

Petunia sighed. "I didn't want it to either, but we are safer like this and I would do anything to keep you safe. You know that."

"Does that still mean you hate me?"

"You know I love you."

Love isn't enough. Both of them could hear Tobias say that. Love was important, but love alone would never be enough. Not when it was that same love that pulled them apart.

"I can't believe you took his word for it."

Petunia couldn't reconcile the fact that she did take his word for it. She was smarter than that. More self-aware than that. "The Magic took, I swear it took."

Lily tried to believe that this was the case. Petunia always knew when Magic took and it was unusual for her to be so very wrong about it.

"Has anyone said anything about that?" Lily asked

Petunia's thoughts took her right back to coming home. The rain had fallen with increased ferocity as she had gotten closer home. Then she saw it. Death Eaters, a dozen of them with black robes on brooms, cackling and aiming spells at the house she grew up in. These were the Death Eaters' she had patched up on Belby's coaches. It was her fault for expecting loyalty from those who were only loyal to themselves.

Lily kept casting spells. Petunia jumped off her bike and began to run towards her home, pushing away the crowd. Mr Abdul was petrified and Tobias seemed to be attempting to control the crowd. They had come out with their guns and Petunia knew it would be useless. Every gun ever made had a rune placed on it, rendering it useless around magic and the air tasted of concentrated magic.

Ross grabbed Petunia's waist before she could run in any further. "Stay, I don't know what your sister is doing but I don't think you're as invincible," he said with a growl.

Petunia wished that punching his ribs to let her go was the worst thing she had done. There was an iciness to Petunia's skin that did not exist before and hunger that could only be satiated by being up there. She was no longer walking on the ground.

The grass underneath her iced over and Petunia hovered for a minute before just letting everything go.

Eat

Eat

EAT

Oh, the glorious taste of despair and souls. She could taste it. Normal spells seemed to have no effect on her or if they did, she didn't feel them. The Fiendfyre that was eating through her childhood home should have made her stop her actions. But she was so hungry. So very hungry and there were souls up there to feast on.

It was Lily who pulled Petunia down before she could devour the second soul. She had tied Petunia's soul with hers and Petunia's arm was bloody with hastily carved out runes to keep her aware. Lily had stabilized the body, someone had set a Killing Curse on. Petunia looked back and their childhood home was no more.

Petunia had been spending every spare moment that she had with the Goblin's and without he-who-must-not-be-named, she no longer had access to Gellert to ask him any questions about what was going on with her.

Wearing silver stopped the need to devour and Lily had tattooed runes in the spaces of the vase tattoo on Petunia ribs to try and contain the hunger. Normal food tasted like ash to Petunia and every sense she ever had felt like something grating against her. Living felt like a chore, a part of her ached for her Brotherhood even when the stone of the Snape ring kept her aware of her responsibility.

"No one else can know Lily." That's what Tobias had said. He had firmly done the adult thing he should have done long ago and neither girl complained. They were drained financially and emotionally. They needed an adult and were more than willing to let Tobias take the need. For all his flaws, Tobias was probably the best parent Lily and Petunia had.

For a year it went on like this. Petunia furthering herself from her sister to try and figure out what the darkness in her meant while Lily joined the Order the moment she graduated. Somehow, they decided that the best way to deal with everything was not talking about it.

They didn't talk about it when Petunia married Vernon. They never said anything when Lily wrote a short note telling her that they were in hiding and Lily was pregnant with her son.

Petunia thought she knew loneliness. No one told her how much worse it felt when the only person you ever loved was hiding because of a mass murderer you helped create. She tried so hard to be small but sometimes the hunger got too much. Especially in the early days with Dudley. Petunia knew she wasn't cut out for motherhood and the child she had birthed proved it.

Dudley was like Lily when Lily was a baby. Loud, demanding and so obsessively had become her whole world. Petunia had felt terrible. Vernon's family had too many opinions and his made sure that the people Petunia cared about had no access to her. She was too tired and hungry to see the signals. Instead, she dreamed of devouring the souls of people.

Their normal suburban house was infested with Dark Magic. It leached of Petunia in swarms and even those who weren't sensitive to Magic felt the difference. Number 4 was the house that gave off bad feelings, a clinical house with a couple and a child that reeked selfishness.

Still, that was the exact reason why the runes around her house were the strongest and that Halloween, Petunia felt the he-who-must-not-be-named fall. Simultaneously her soul was ripped and she knew that he had gotten a hold of Lily. That evening as Dudley kicked her demanding sweets, she tried to find a copy of the Prophet, hoping that what she was reading wasn't true.

She should have prayed harder and prepared better with her sister. The sound of a motorcycle, her motorcycle and the cry of a child in the morning. Harry Potter had come to her and his magic smelled of molasses and mint. The man she had loved and the sister she loved more than herself.

The Magic around the house flared and Petunia knew she wouldn't be able to protect Harry from her own evilness but hoped he would find enough hope to survive. Petunia made sure that the Gringotts account she had given Lily was transferred to Harry's name. He would at least have an easier financial start than her sister did in the world of magic.

Survive, the boy did and when he had conquered Death, Petunia told him the story of two girls and the naively reckless choices that had brought them all here and forever changed the course of Wizarding Britain.


A/N: People, we have reached the end and I definitely would not have been able to do this without the support of you, the readers. "The Apprentice" was an attempt to give Petunia a backstory that went beyond bitter sister. While this is by no means a perfect story, it was my most ambitious and longest story to date, and it shows.

A special thank you to griffin blackwood (for reviewing almost every chapter, those reviews really keep me motivated these last five chapters), Arwengeld (for the detailed reviews and being a sounding board, especially in the early days) and the many people who helped me understand how healthcare, education and geography in the UK works (I promise to do better with the next story).

We went through a lot these last six months, our world has fundamentally changed and this story would not exist without those changes. I hope you all love harder, take the time to learn about the world and if you are from the USA (and are able to) please vote (the rest of the world is affected more than you know by who you elect and your political decisions as a nation).

All my love

gingerdream xx