A/N: This was written simply because I hate Petunia. She was a cruel, spiteful piece of work, and the closest thing Harry got to an apology from her was that she lost a sister when Lily died, and that was only in a deleted scene somewhere if I remember correctly, so it's not even *canon*.
I saw a post once somewhere where someone said (paraphrasing) that it'd be a smackdown when Petunia finally died and ran into Lily. It stuck in my mind and this fic is the result.
I'm a big fan of evil people getting their just desserts, and I haven't actually read any fics where Lily properly punishes Petunia (recommendations are appreciated tho!). So I wrote this for anyone else who got the itch to see Petunia suffer SOMETHING for being a horrible excuse for a human being.
Cross-posted on AO3.
Note: I write using Caribbean English spelling, which is often like British English spelling, so there are u's and s's and c's and doubled letters where some folks may not be accustomed to seeing them. Do not be alarmed.
"Let's talk about Petunia, shall we?" came a voice, bright and cheerful and sounding like it was reading a bedtime story to an eager child.
Petunia Dursley's head swivelled on her awkwardly long neck as she tried vainly to find the source. She knew it instantly but couldn't fathom why she would be hearing it at all since its owner had died more than thirty years ago. No matter where she looked, everything was pitch black. She threw her hands out and met no resistance anywhere, but the darkness was so complete, she felt claustrophobic anyway.
The last thing she remembered was getting into the car with Vernon to head home from the retirement party being held for one of his superiors. With it, Vernon would finally be getting that position that that boy had made him miss out on all those years ago with his freakish behaviour.
Had she fallen asleep on the way home? If she had, she'd rather wake up as soon as possible. She hadn't thought about Lily much since she'd finally been freed of her hellion after he'd finally made himself useful and saved her Dudders. Lily's freakishness got her killed and then it followed her freakish son and tried to come after Petunia's perfectly normal thankyouverymuch family. She didn't need Lily invading her nightmares. (Again.)
"The first and much-beloved daughter of Henry and Margaret Evans," the voice continued, heedless of her desires. "Much awaited after two miscarriages, she was spoiled rotten on her parents' love and attention. For the first five years of her life, everything was perfect."
Suddenly, the voice's tone changed, becoming ominous and foreboding. "And then came the baby."
Then it was back to a conversational, story-time tone. "First, Mummy got big, and her tummy got round, and then she was always 'too tired to play today, Songbird' and Daddy was 'a bit busy at the mo' love because Mummy's not feeling too well right now.' And then one day, Mummy went to hospital and Petunia stayed at Gran's and when they finally came to take her home, there was a little, pink thing sitting in the carrier that Mummy and Daddy had told her not to play with, but that Petunia still snuck around to use for her dolls anyway."
Petunia wanted to wake up. The fact that she could remember that childish annoyance had to be part and parcel of the dream. But it was as vivid as if it had happened just this morning, the annoyance at the realisation that her secret toy would no longer be available.
"And she hated – oh she hated it. So tiny and wrinkled and pink and not at all like her beautiful baby dollies. And it was loud – always crying and at all hours of the night." And Petunia remembered waking up and angrily jamming her pillow over her head to try to block out the noise. "Don't even ask about the stench of dirty diapers! But she also now had to deal with yucky baby spit-up all over Mummy and Daddy whenever she wanted to go sit with them. And everything it did was always 'so exciting, isn't it Song-Bird?'"
Petunia fumbled around for her handbag, suddenly remembering that her cellular phone could give her some light.
"It was all so terrible," and here the voice paused, as though to build suspense in its captive audience. "Until it started walking and talking and thought Petunia was the best thing in the entire world."
And she remembered. She remembered the swell of pride and self-importance when she realised that she had been the centre of tiny Lily's world. She'd been Lily's sun, moon, and stars, and Lily had wanted to do everything Petunia did. Many other children may have only been further annoyed, but if Lily was also with her and following along like a puppy, Petunia had also regained her parents' attention as well, along with an all-new fan club of one. Even if Mummy and Daddy were still splitting their attention, Petunia was again the axis that someone else's world turned on.
"And suddenly, she wasn't so bad. Little Lily-Flower wasn't as good at singing as Petunia was, and she could only call Petunia 'Tuney' instead of Songbird like Mummy and Daddy, but she did everything Petunia said and liked all of Tuney's games. As they grew, Petunia came to be proud of being 'Tuney', which Lily never grew out of, and she learned to love Lily as much as she loved having Lily-Flower's adoration."
Petunia's heart began to pound because she could predict what would come next and she didn't want to hear it. She didn't want to relive that at all.
"Then came the day that Lily-flower did one of her little magic tricks for Petunia, making a flower dance in the park, and that odd little boy who'd moved into the neighbourhood last month saw it and started talking about magic and castles."
She grew frantic as she realised that her handbag hadn't followed her into the dream (more of a nightmare, really, having her long-dead sister narrate her childhood). She didn't like to remember those times when everything was good and perfect and normal (before Lily-Flower became a Freak).
"There was something strange about both him and his parents, and she'd seen the looks some of the other nice neighbour ladies gave them when the new folks weren't looking. But his own strangeness wasn't what put her off the most. It was the fact that she now had to share Lily's attention with him and all his talk of magic. Petunia hated it and hated him for causing it. And she was mad at Lily like she hadn't been since before Lily became her sister instead of 'the baby'."
And oh, didn't she remember it. Looking back on it now, it was the beginning of the end, when she started losing her sister to that freakish, abnormal, unnatural world.
"And eventually Lily went off to her stupid, ridiculous magic castle school where the stupid old headmaster said that Petunia wasn't magical enough to attend. And every holiday, Lily came back just a bit more magical, and Petunia stopped being the centre of her universe. Lily spent more time learning about foul-sounding potions from that horrid little boy and less time learning etiquette and airs from Petunia."
The anger and indignation and resentment welled up in her like it was that first summer holiday all over again, when Lily wouldn't stop rambling about transformation and charms and herbology (which was such a ridiculous make-believe word. 'Botany' was much more normal and respectable).
"But Lily tried to include her," the voice said over her, like it honestly believed that.
Even in the midst of her rising fear of the nightmare, Petunia scoffed. Lily rubbed it all in her face that Lily could do all these fantastical things and Petunia couldn't. And if the awful Snape boy was to be believed, the fact that she had learned to do any of it without a wand just so she could show off to Petunia without the magic police writing her a citation only made her more special.
"She changed a shirt Petunia had gotten from their Gran for Christmas that she hated because it was a glaring orange that didn't compliment her colouring at all to Petunia's favourite shade of blue."
Lily had ruined the last gift she'd gotten from their Gran before she died.
"She reheated Petunia's tea when she let it get cold."
Lily played horrible pranks and heated her tea to scalding when she wasn't looking.
"She made Petunia's old dollies get up and dance around the shelf Petunia had relegated them to."
Lily bewitched her treasured childhood keepsakes and got Petunia in trouble with crocodile tears when she told her it was demonic.
"But Petunia was set on hating her sister and their relationship fell apart. And when Lily came home heartbroken after her fifth year and the ending of her friendship with that awful boy, Petunia never missed a chance to say 'I told you so' and brought it up as often as she could and however she could. Because that was Lily's punishment for taking her attention away."
The vicious, vindictive glee that had welled in her when Lily had come home and told them about how he had called her a 'mudblood' (another ridiculous make-believe word; it was so nonsensical, Petunia didn't see why she should bother to be upset over it) and she had finally ended their friendship filled her once again. It proved that even with all her freakish magic, Petunia was still a much better judge of character – just much better in general – than Lily.
"Lily had told them all about the 'Blood War' that was happening and the people who were being murdered and the fact that there were people who would want to kill Lily just for existing."
And Petunia remembered the feeling of serves her right, even though she hadn't actually wanted Lily to be murdered. She still loved her, but she was so happy that perfect Lily-Flower finally saw what it was like to be looked down on like Petunia had been at school, because she wasn't pretty enough – and even better, it was because of her freaky magic too! If all the magic people got rid of each other, well the world could only be better off, couldn't it? And then Lily could go back to being Lily-Flower and not a freak. The reality of murder and the war hadn't been tangible to her, and it still didn't really become so even when she got that ridiculous excuse for a letter when Lily's little spawn had shown up on her doorstep. Sure, Lily was now dead, and Petunia stuck with the boy, but she hadn't even been informed about the funeral and no one ever came to explain what had happened.
"But Lily eventually bounced back and made friends with a boy she'd been feuding with for years over a misunderstanding and loyalty to the Snape boy, and then eventually brought him home. Lily claimed he was the heir of some old British magical family, but Petunia refused to believe it because he was obviously foreign, with his brown skin and unkempt hair. And he had the unmitigated gall to claim that his family was rich to try to embarrass Petunia's very respectable fiancé, Vernon Dursley, who had recently earned himself a very decent job in an established drilling company."
She remembered that disaster of a dinner, and how Vernon had fumed at the foreigner trying to claim he was something more than he was. They'd both agreed that he was a freak, though for differing reasons, and had eventually managed to sever ties after the horror show Lily had called a wedding. Floating lights and colour-changing flowers, and the annoying headmaster's animated clothing, drinks that made her hair change colour, and people waving their silly little sticks to make freakish things happen.
"After their parents had died, there was no one to force her and Lily to interact, and Petunia very happily cut Lily out of her life, even as she fumed that Lily had made the ridiculous claim that she had to go into 'hiding' because of their 'Blood War' and would no longer be able to contact Petunia for fear of making her a target. Of course, Petunia didn't believe a word of it because surely a war between freaks couldn't possibly be completely hidden from normal folks, and there was nothing about it in the news or gossip. She was insulted that Lily thought Petunia would believe such drivel, but if it would remove all the freakishness from Petunia's life, then it was all to the good."
Petunia's face twisted in remembered disdain. Had Lily really expected Petunia to believe that the real government wouldn't notice an entire war occurring in the country?
"And then, two years later, Lily's child with that foreigner is dumped on her doorstep with a note about Lily and her husband's deaths and the fact that taking in the child will give her protection from their murderers. And Petunia was furious. How dare Lily go and die and leave Petunia to raise her no doubt freakish child alongside Petunia's perfect little Dudley? And how dare that headmaster who picked Lily over Petunia all those years ago force Petunia to take a demon into her respectable home?"
Even now, years later, Petunia still felt her blood pressure rise when she thinks of the injustice of it all. She hadn't spoken to Lily in two years and suddenly that meddling old headmaster is blackmailing her into taking in Lily's hell spawn with that foreigner. There was some nonsense in the insultingly short letter about love and wards and protection and Petunia had wanted to toss the letter, the basket, and the baby all in his stupid, long-nosed face, if he'd only showed up for her to do it.
"And instead of seeing a child who'd just been orphaned – and violently so, given the fresh wound on his face – Petunia took all her anger and hatred and every ugly feeling that she'd never dared to throw at Lily for fear the freakish things Lily could do to her," the voice said, a terrifying fury building in it, "and you put it all on MY SON!"
Suddenly, Lily was standing right in front of her. Green eyes fairly flashed with her ire, and despite the fact that Petunia was the taller of the two, she felt uncomfortably like Lily was staring down at her. There was no extra light that Petunia could tell, but Lily's red hair seemed to glow, almost like fire.
Gasping in shock, Petunia took a step backwards. She knew she shouldn't be surprised that Lily herself had finally shown up in the nightmare, but it was her expression. For all they'd argued and fought towards the end of Lily's life, Petunia had never seen such raw hatred on Lily's face. Ever.
"You hateful, shrewish, absolute freak of a woman!" The accusation thundered around them, sounding like it came from everywhere all at once. For every step Petunia took backwards, Lily advanced forwards, hair sparking and floating around her, clothes fluttering angrily in a wind that was picking up from nowhere, and wand held in a white-knuckled grip at her side.
"Did you really think you'd gotten away with it? That I wouldn't find a way to punish you for trying to destroy the child I died for?" Lily demanded. "I saw it, Petunia. Every punch and kick, every insult, every missed meal, every accusation – every moment of the years he spent under your roof and under your stairs, Petunia, I saw it all." The last sentence was just barely shy of a hiss, and Petunia shivered as she was reminded of the one time they'd found a snake in the back garden and Lily had claimed it had spoken to her.
Fear crawled up Petunia's spine, and she wished fervently to wake up. Whatever it was she'd had at that dinner party, she vowed to never eat it again.
Lily straightened, and the look on her face was vicious and triumphant. "I couldn't do anything but watch and wish all that time, but I've had thirty whole years to plan what I would do to you when you finally died."
Petunia stumbled at that, eyes wide. She barely even noticed the terrifying smile that took over Lily's face at her reaction. She couldn't be dead. It was a lie.
(Deep down, she knew it wasn't.)
"Oh yes, Petunia. You are now as dead as I am," Lily told her conversationally. "Vernon enjoyed the wine rather too much at that boring little party you'd gone to. Ran a red light going over the speed limit – terribly irresponsible – and hurtled into the side of a lorry that had been crossing on its green light. You were both killed on impact. Luckily, although the lorry tipped over, the driver was relatively uninjured."
Petunia sank to her knees with another pained gasp, the shock of it too much to remain standing.
"Drunk driving," Lily said conversationally, a little smile on her face as she circled Petunia. "The irony of it all – and I didn't even have to do anything! Not that I could from here, but the point stands. That was all his own doing. You'd think, after everything you told my son, he'd have known better than to be such an 'irresponsible waste of space'. Isn't that what you called it? Petunia?" Lily huffed as she realised Petunia had gone unresponsive, staring blankly into the nothingness around them.
A sharp, burning pain on the side of her face brought Petunia back to the present. She reached up to touch it and flinched at the fire that raced along her cheek. It took her a moment to realise that Lily had struck her.
"You-" she began when she finally found her voice. "How dare-"
"Oh, I dare plenty, Petunia Olivia Evans-Dursley!" Lily roared. "Over thirty years I've waited to get my hands on you, and that is the absolute least of what you deserve. In this in-between place, our parents will not step in to calm things down. There are no aurors to lock me up for underaged magic. There is no one to save you, Petunia," Lily said vindictively. "Just like no one saved my son."
Terror and horror like nothing she'd ever known rose up in Petunia as the realisation sank in. Her eyes darted around, but only confirmed that there was no way out and no one else around.
Lily gave her a moment to truly take in her situation and said lowly: "If our places were reversed, I would have loved your son Petunia. I would have taken him in in a heartbeat and raised him like he was my own. As horrible as you became to me towards the end, he was a child who'd had nothing to do with it, and I would never have done him any harm." There were furious tears in her eyes, and she scrubbed at her cheeks when they overflowed.
Petunia opened her mouth again to argue, to plead. The thing is, as much as she'd grown to hate her sister, she'd feared Lily as well. Petunia had snuck glimpses at some of Lily's books and the one on something about 'Dark Arts' had told her enough that she knew there were terrible things that could be done with magic. Lily had stuck to useful or harmless parlour tricks, but Petunia knew there was so much worse that Lily could do if she'd had a mind to. She never had before, but that had apparently changed.
Lily swiped a hand through the air to cut her off and Petunia flinched. Lily leaned into her space, green eyes as hard and cold as emeralds, the previous fire banking into something that could freeze hell itself. "There was a time I'd have wanted to hear what you might say for yourself, Petunia, but it's long gone."
She straightened up and stepped back from Petunia, with a look that said Petunia was something unpleasant she'd stepped in.
She began to circle Petunia again, speaking as she went. Petunia's head swivelled to follow the little circle she made, feeling like a mouse cornered by a cat. "I spent so long wondering what I would do when you were finally in front of me. I could rant and scream at you until Harry eventually died of old age and I could see my son again. I could return every single moment of abuse that you visited on him. But none of it felt right." Lily came to a stop in front of her, a wicked gleam in her eye. "And it finally came to me."
She drew out the moment, an uncounted eternity as Petunia waited to hear what her fate would be.
"You are going to put yourself through all of your own tender care."
Her confusion must have shown on her face because Lily elaborated.
"You, dear Petunia, are going to live Harry's life, from the moment he watched me murdered in front of him in cold blood, to when he was finally free of you, and every single moment in-between. You will feel his helplessness and terror and pain, his hunger, his sadness, his depression, his desperation, his longing to be loved, his helpless anger, his hatred – because he did learn to hate you all at some point. You will live his life, not just as a bystander along for the ride. You will be the Freak, the unwanted brat, the incurable little criminal. And best of all, it will be a life of your own creation."
The blood drained from her face so quickly, if she were still alive, she'd have gone lightheaded. Lily smiled viciously, but she wasn't done.
"And then, when you're finished, you can watch your son – your precious little Diddyums – live through it all, and be completely helpless as I was to do anything at all about it."
Petunia scrambled up reaching for Lily.
"No!" she cried. "You can't do that to Dudley! He's got nothing to do with this! You leave him out of it!" Not her baby. Not her precious Dudders. Lily had no right.
Lily reared back and shot her an incredulous look. "Do you hear yourself? 'He's got nothing to do with this'?! And where the hell was that humanity when my child was injured and traumatised and left on your doorstep?!" she thundered.
It, of course, wouldn't actually be Dudley. He was a grown man, still among the living and out of Lily's reach. He'd even made up (in the mildest, loosest sense of the term) with Harry. But her son had been so damaged by his life, especially at the Dursley's hands, that he didn't really know what he deserved as a person. She'd wait to see if Dudley ever sought to properly rectify the damage he'd done to Harry as a child before he died. She had literally all eternity to enjoy her afterlife; spending a few decades to exact her own vengeance on those who'd wronged her defenceless child were nothing in comparison. Dudley was a product of his upbringing, but he had known enough to realise that they had wronged Harry to give him a paltry excuse of an apology.
Albus Bloody Dumbledore and Severus Bloody Snape had learned well when they finally, finally died that just because Lily had chosen to be the decent person her parents had raised her to be, it didn't mean she wasn't just as capable of vindictive vengeance as her thoroughly unpleasant sister. She was, after all, the woman who had created what amounted to a protection/assassination ritual intended to completely destroy the man who had been hunting her child. His stupid little horcruxes interfered with that, but it doesn't change the fact that Lily, not Petunia (and certainly not Harry), was the one who'd vaporised a man for daring to come after her son. Dumbledore thought there was no body because he wasn't actually dead. The truth was that Lily had disintegrated it with her ritual protection spell. Otherwise, they'd have had something to bury and could have just used some bastardised necromancy to bring him back.
So, while she couldn't use the real Dudley, Petunia would never know that. And she'd watch her child live the life she'd condemned Lily's to. As horrible as Petunia was, she'd loved Dudley completely. It was a smothering and ultimately harmful love because she'd never trained him up correctly, but it was a true though misguided sort of love all the same. But she'd rubbed that love in Harry's face and done everything she could, short of actually killing Harry herself, to break his spirit and destroy her bouncy, happy little baby, and Lily would never forgive her for it.
As Lily walked away, she mused out loud: "I hope you haven't gotten over your claustrophobia. It would only make it more poetic for you to spend ten years locked in a dusty, musty boot closet."
Petunia scrambled to her feet, running after the fading form of her sister. "No wait! You can't!" she cried as Lily faded completely. Petunia spun, the darkness around her so complete as to almost be a solid thing.
"I think you'll find I can," Lily's voice echoed.
And then, she was standing in a giant room – no, that wasn't right. The room wasn't enormous; she was tiny. Those bars were for her cot, where she slept every night. Her throat was raw as she screamed and screamed because Mama wasn't getting up to come to her.
The bald stranger in the dark clothes looked down at her and raised his wand (different to Mama's and Dada's) high and said with malicious glee: "Avada Kedavra!" and pain like nothing she'd ever experienced in her year of life overtook her.