Petunia and Lily Evans were always the best of friends. They were nigh inseparable. That all changed the fated day that Lily Evans received her invitation to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It didn't go to shit immediately at first – it was the little things that clued Petunia in that something was wrong. She started spending more and more time with that Severus Snape boy and she always had this wistful, far-away look in her eye whenever talking about going to Hogwarts. She was so excited to go to that school. She was so excited to leave boring, plain, mundane Petunia behind.
Lily was a witch now, don't cha know? Upon her broomstick, she was far above the puny mortals from which she came. Mummy and Daddy were delighted to have a witch in the family, so delighted that their little daughter was so special. Mind you, they still had that one older daughter who wanted to go to med school. That was fine with them, but it was nowhere near as exciting and magical as a witch in the family!
It was the most peculiar thing when Petunia discovered she could use magic. It was completely on accident at first, but she learned to hone her skills and craft through years of subtle use. She didn't need Hogwarts and she sure as hell would not end up like her sister.
It was Summer and Lily had just gotten back from her fifth year at Hogwarts. The little girl so giddy at the prospect of the magical world had blossomed into a beautiful young woman. Not at all like her dear old sister. Her sister, though just a year older than her, was unimaginably repulsive. Her neck, though slender, was almost comically long. The incessant teasing from the more distasteful girls at school did not help with the constant comparisons to a giraffe. Her figure was no hourglass, but rather a pencil gave human form. Her face was plain. That was probably the worst part. Her sister's face was smooth, round, and magnificently framed by her flaming red hair. Petunia, on the other hand, had boring brown hair and a face that the boys would not look twice at.
This Summer, there was something about Lily that had changed. She didn't talk much. She usually babbled on and on about how much fun she had at school with her friends (without Petunia). Not this year. She was unmistakably quiet and subdued and Petunia had had just about enough!
"What is with you, Lily? You've barely spoken a word to me!" Petunia's lovely, musical English lilt mixed with her frustration and made her come off as much more emotional than she intended. She was emotional, obviously, but Lily wasn't supposed to know that.
"What does it matter? It's not like you care one way or another." Lily's words are antagonistic, but her tone conveys a deeper sorrow that Petunia is able to pick up on. Must be a magic thing.
"Whatever gave you that idea?! Of course I care, Lily, you're my sister! Sure we haven't been the closest recently, but that doesn't mean you don't matter to me. Please don't shut me out!" Petunia responds passionately, pleading and trying to knock some sense back into her little sister, but Lily just won't budge.
"You wouldn't understand, 'Tuney. They hate me for what I am. Things I can't control." Lily suddenly freezes up as she sees Petunia's blank stare. "Oh I am so sorry, I didn't mean that. Of course you would understand, how could I be so stupid?" Lily's older sister eases up.
"It's all right, Lily, you can talk to me. You can trust me." Petunia puts as much effort into putting her sister at ease as possible. Their personal issues be damned, she would not let her sister cry because of some magical nobodies.
And Lily does ease up and trust her sister. Slowly but surely, she lets out the pains of the past year with tears and sobs. The loss of her friendship with Severus Snape (Good riddance thought Petunia, but she held her tongue in lieu of an upset little sibling), the rise of what sounded suspiciously like Wizarding Nazis (they were called "Death Eaters", which sounded pretty lame if she was being honest), and the increasingly hostile atmosphere from her peers at school due to the previous. All in all, it did not sound like Lily Evans was having the best time at school and Petunia was once more glad she kept her talents to herself. It sounded like the Wizarding World didn't want her and she didn't want any part of that rubbish. Petunia listened patiently, keeping her opinions to herself, and just holding on to Lily, afraid to let her go.
They say it is in times of extreme emotional peril when a young magical is at their most powerful. This is not entirely true. In fact, any strong emotion will do. In the case of one Petunia Evans, the love she felt for her sister, her desire to protect her, and joy at finally reconnecting and repairing a relationship that had been left like an untended garden for far too long was catalyst enough for Petunia Evans' innate magical ability to go wild, having unforeseen consequences. There is a reason that magical children are sent to school from the age of eleven years, for otherwise, their magic can go haywire to much the same effect that Petunia's did just then.
The two sisters let each other out of the heated embrace and looked around them. They, both being magical, sensed immediately that something was very, very wrong. The room they were in, Lily's bedroom where Petunia had initially approached her, was very different. Instead of the tidy room with the flower-themed décor that mother had thought apt for her youngest daughter, there was an unkempt room painted blue and covered with posters for bands they had never heard of. The most startling thing about their location, however, was not its appearance, but its contents. This consisted of one very confused boy playing guitar, distortion turned way up, jamming power chords to a song that neither of the girls recognised.
For a minute, the two factions stare at each other in silence. The last chord that the boy had picked died out as he looked between the two and shrugged, then holding out his hand.
"Oi, hello! I'm Silas. Might I ask what you two lovely ladies are doing in my room?" He waits expectantly, waiting for one of the two sisters to grab his hand and shake it. Eventually, Lily puts out her hand in hesitation and he shakes it in his own firm hand.
"Brilliant!" He exclaims, then a serious look comes upon his face. "Oh, how rude of me. Does either of you want any tea? We've also got coffee if either of you is into that sort of thing." Lily and Petunia take a moment to gather their bearings before deciding to roll with whatever seems to be happening. It probably wouldn't help much to cause a ruckus with the boy who seemed so clearly to be treating them with great hospitality.
"I think we'll both take tea, thank you very much." Petunia is the first of the two to speak, taking charge out of a sense of duty, being the eldest and all that.
"Wonderful, wonderful. Come, follow me and tell me about what circumstances led to you two witches appearing in my room." He pauses, "You are witches, right?" Petunia hesitates, before answering.
"Umm, yes we are." In an attempt to prove her point, she makes a small ball of light appear in her palm and dance in and around her fingers. Lily stares at her in shock before recovering and sending her a murderous glare. We are definitely talking about this later, it seemed to say. Petunia sends her a half-arsed smile and she begins to trail behind Silas for some tea that she so desperately needs.
They find themselves seated on chairs across from the oddly bubbly teenage boy, each holding a glass of tea in their hands. Some chocolate chip cookies are in the centre of the table. Petunia eyes them lustily, she never could resist quality baked goods. Silas seems to notice this.
"I baked 'em myself." He seems very proud of his handiwork, giving her an offer to take as many as she wants. Petunia, not wanting to appear rude, takes only one despite what her stomach tells her. "Anyway, are you two going to explain now? I am patient, but I've not got all day."
"I think we're just as confused as you are, if not more so. We just kind of… appeared." Lily's tone expresses her utter confusion for the situation, as reasonable a response as any to appearing in the middle of a boy's room. Petunia, however, gets more to the point.
"How did you know that we were magical?" Silas takes this question in stride, probably having expected it since the moment he had pointed out that they were witches.
"Why, that's probably the most simple thing in this entire conundrum, innit?! My mum's a squib. She married a muggle that she met at university and then they got married and had me." Silas explains it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Looking back at the situation, Petunia thinks that he may be right: it likely is the simplest thing about this whole conundrum.
Petunia, however, did not have the benefit of hindsight nor the advantages of the Wizarding education her sister was afforded. Sometimes, we all fail to grasp even the most mundane of things without adequate prior knowledge. While Lily shrugged and nodded in understanding, Petunia had a question: "What's a squib?"
The other two teenagers start speaking at once, making a cacophony of their two voices. They both realise what they're doing and zip up, blushing all the while. Their next attempt proves more fruitful, with Lily giving her elder sister a crash course on squibs and magical genetics. Petunia loses track of her her about halfway through the explanation. Lily Evans was always one for long-winded explanations that did more to satisfy her own intellectual ego than the curiosities of those around her. Noticing that Silas and Petunia don't seem to be much interested in her impromptu lecture, she slows to silence as her cheeks redden to a colour only slightly less brilliant a red than her hair. Petunia breaks the silence, being ever so pragmatic.
"So where are we? I want to know how far we've travelled from home?" This takes a minute for Silas to process, him not being one to bother remembering what his address is.
"Oh, right! Let's see… Number Nine Cedar Lane, Winchester." Each word is like an arrow into the hearts of the sisters.
"W-what?! Is this some sort of joke?" Silas is, understandably, quite confused at Petunia's reaction. It did not seem at all proportional to the information he had just imparted upon them.
"Is there something wrong with that? It's just an address."
"Just and address- just an address?! That's our house! This is our house!" Petunia panics. What is this supposed to mean What is going on? Lily, on the other hand, is almost eerily calm. Her gaze is fixated upon the newspaper on the coffee table in the centre of the three. The paper is for August 31, 1994. Everything clicks into place.
"Petunia? What year is it?" Petunia rolls her eyes at the question, then answers.
"Why, 197- oh. No. No, no, no. No, no, no, no, no. I did not sign up for this crazy, magical, time-travelling nonsense! Why couldn't this be a sensible magical journey?" It's difficult for them all to come to terms with what is now their new reality almost two decades away from where they had left the world behind. Silas seems to have picked up on what's going on as well, but taking much more in stride than his female counterpart.
"Time travel, eh? So I suppose this used to be your house after all. Now, I'm no expert, but I think you should check what's happened to your future selves. Some weird hunch tells me that whether you return to your own time or not depends entirely upon whether time is looped so that you're meant to travel into the future and then return to the past, you've split into two versions of yourselves that exist independently of each other, or you disappeared a while ago and have been declared missing." That did not sound promising. Only two of those options would result in Lily and Petunia Evans returning home to 1976.
Both the sisters stare at him, a mix of shock and awe present on their faces. On Petunia though… is that excitement? Petunia, you see, had her own escapist fantasies as opposed to the magical realism of her sister's schooling. Ever since Lily had left her for greener pastures, Petunia had immersed herself in all things science-fiction to get away from the cards life had dealt her.
"Bloody hell... Is Doctor Who still running?" Silas' eyes lighten up in recognition.
"Why yes, it is! In fact, Star Trek also recently wrapped up if that might interest you." Petunia takes a minute to realise what Star Trek is.
"You mean that serial back from when I was a kid? Tell me more." And so begins the saga of Petunia and Silas geeking out over their newfound, shared obsessions with sci-fi television and other assorted media. Lily, one of the uninitiated, stands there dumbfounded as her sister and a boy they'd just met ramble on and on about Muggle media. How they were able to bridge a gap spanning 18 years was beyond her, but part of her was just happy to see Petunia in her element. This was a side of her big sister she had seldom seen since going off to Hogwarts, and she was all the gladder to witness it now.
Luna Lovegood was having a lovely time with her father Xenophilius Lovegood in Sweden. There was, of course, the approaching matter of the anniversary of her mother's death. That always puts her and daddy in the worst of moods. Luna, being the dear, loving daughter she is, had her heart set on finding a real Crumple-Horned Snorcack to help cheer her father up. The matter, of course, was how on earth to find one.
Luna knew that Crumple-Horned Snorcacks were real. Mum was a contemporary of the renowned Magizoologist Newt Scamander and had inherited his field journals in his will. The entry on Crumple-Horned Snorcacks was sparse, the only concrete information being that they lived somewhere "up North". The description of what they really looked like was vague; there was not much to go on, but Luna Lovegood is a determined lass who would stop at nothing to have her way.
The only signifier that you had found a CHS (a Crumple-Horned Snorcack to those uninitiated in the ways of Magizoology) was the feeling of abject terror and despair that you would feel whenever one was nearby. Newt had posited in his notes that the CHS was actually a distant relative of the Dementor or had developed the ability to mimic a facsimile of its aura as a defence mechanism against potential predators.
Luckily for Luna, she had had the pleasurable experience of being close to a Dementor a little over two years back, making her job at least that much easier.
The blonde wears long, warm robes to defend against the elements and any manner of poisonous plants. Sure poison ivy was a nuisance, but venomous unicorn buds were her real concern. Just a scratch and you would lose your memory of the every single Friday you had ever experienced. Luna shudders at the thought.
She is careful to not make a sound, even wearing her Sneakers (specially enchanted shoes with a permanent silencing charm – they cost a near-fortune to craft and buy) for the occasion. She stalks the earth of the Kilsbergen with nimble feet, occasionally stopping to marvel at the elk the region is known for. They truly are magnificent creatures, despite not having a lick of magic about them. Some of the more elite in the Magizoology community might scoff at her admiration of the mundane beasts, but some opinions were just wrong sometimes.
The Lovegood girl eventually happens upon a tree that shimmers curiously. She almost wouldn't have noticed it were she not wearing her prized Spectrespecs. Nargles swarmed around the tree and gave it a multicoloured sheen, giving the scientifically astute Luna pause. Nargles, you see, are especially known to be present around places and people where emotions and behaviours were drastically addled. If that didn't sound like the Crumple-Horned Snorcack, she didn't know what did!
Walking up to the tree, she places both her palms on it to get a feel for it. The Nargles part way to not be crushed by this wayward human's hands, then titter about her curiously to see what might happen with this unforeseen variable.
All of a sudden, Luna feels cold. Very cold. Colder than it was supposed to be. Her mind does somersaults – fight or flight instincts kick in. Every cell in her body tells her that this tree is bad news. That is to say, this tree was exactly what she was looking for. She palms about the tree in search of some nook or cranny….
"Eureka!" Her proclaimed triumph is not for naught for in her gloved fingers she holds what looks to be a very small Tasmanian devil with one, crumpled horn. The creature, seeing hat it has been discovered, changes tactics from exerting an aura of fear to gently nuzzling and licking her hands with like an excited puppy.
"Oh you're just the sweetest thing, aren't you?" More a rhetorical question than anything else as she continues, "Daddy will be ever so happy that I've found a real, living, Crumple-Horned Snorcack! Actually, why don't you pose for the camera." With that, she pulls out a Wizarding camera and snaps the scene of an inquisitive and precocious miniature animal licking her. The moving-picture (not to be confused with Muggle "motion pictures") immortalises this for the rest of time.