Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all related characters belong to J.K. Rowling. I am merely borrowing them.
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MUGGLE
Chapter One: An Unexpected Messenger
It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.
-William Shakespeare
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"...And you'll want to stay away from Lydia Hargrove and Amelia Kay, they'll be fifth-years this fall and they're always simply awful to the new girls, but don't worry, I'll point them out to you and you can avoid them. Oh, and that's Madeline Mulberry, she's quite a character, too. She snuck out of school grounds to meet her boyfriend all the time last year—he's nineteen and he has a motorcycle—and once she nearly got caught by the night janitor when she was coming back and had to spend the entire night in the gymnasium under the bleachers."
Lily shook her head in wonder as Petunia paused for breath, looking at the pages of her elder sister's yearbook with the awe of a little girl about to go off to boarding school for the first time. "How do you find all these things out, Pet?" she asked, tracing the letters on the front cover.
"Oh, it's not difficult," said Petunia with a tone that suggested she made it look much easier than it really was. "Keep your eyes and your ears open, that's what I always do, Lil. You'll be perfectly all right, and school's really great fun."
"I'm a little worried," said Lily, staring at the red brick building, all overgrown with ivy, emblazoned on the cover of the yearbook. "Just nerves about going to a new place, I suppose."
Petunia couldn't help a secret swell of pleasure at her little sister's words. Lily was always the more outgoing one of the two; even though Petunia knew everything about everyone and had her fair share of friends, she never managed to match Lily's attitude towards people. It was as if her little sister simply assumed everyone in the world was already her best friend and they merely hadn't caught up with each other in a while.
But Petunia never let her jealousy at Lily's easy way with everyone show, because she, along with the rest of the world, had fallen under the little girl's spell. Lily and Petunia were fast friends, despite the occasional spat (which, as any sister will know, is completely unavoidable no matter how well they might get along). "Don't worry, Lil," Petunia said, patting her sister's red curls, "I've been at St. Mary's for two years already. I know my way around and I'll show you everything. Everyone will say, there goes Petunia's sister, what a cool girl she is!"
"Ha-ha, no, they'll say look, there's Lily's sister, what a cool girl that Lily is!"
"Oh, you brat!" Petunia tossed a pillow at her and ducked as Lily returned fire, giggling madly.
A few minutes later, both gasping for breath between laughs, they collapsed on the carpet. "I can't wait for school this year," said Petunia weakly, holding her sides as she tried to stop giggling. "We'll have so much fun with both of us there! The Evans sisters strike again!"
"Double trouble!" Lily grinned and swatted her with a pillow once more, and of course that started the whole thing over again, until a cough at the door caught both girls' attention. Without warning one of the pillows burst open as Lily, startled, jumped to her feet. Feathers floated down from the ceiling and dusted the sisters in a coating of white fluff.
"Are your pillows ever going to recover, Petunia dear?" said Mrs. Evans, smirking at her daughters' antics. Covered in feathers, they resembled nothing less than a pair of clucking chickens.
"No, Mum, I think they've got to go to hospital," said Lily, shaking the pillow with an anguished expression. "Code blue! Oh no, they're slipping away! Noooo! Live! Live!" She put a hand to her forehead and collapsed dramatically onto the floor.
"I think lots and lots of drama classes for you, Lily," said Mrs. Evans, rolling her eyes. "Here. You got a letter, dear, and you got your forms and booklist from St. Mary's, Petunia."
Petunia gazed curiously at the green-inked letter in Mrs. Evans' hand, with a wax seal holding shut the pale yellow parchment envelope. "Who on earth is that from?" she asked, taking her own mail from her mother.
"It says Hogwarts," said Lily absently, ripping open the seal. She read the letter quickly, her forehead crinkling in confusion. "This has to be a joke, Mum. This says it's from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."
"Witchcraft and Wizardry?" Petunia asked incredulously. "There's no such thing as magic."
Her sister gave her a quick glance, looking oddly perturbed, and Petunia remembered too late that Lily's favorite books tended to be fantasy and nearly always involved some sort of sorcerer or wizard. Petunia herself preferred romance novels, if she read fiction at all (or indeed read anything at all, not being too keen on the subject of books). "How do you know?" snapped Lily. "Maybe it is, even if this school isn't real."
"Oh, I assure you, it's quite real," said a voice. Lily, Petunia, and Mrs. Evans all jerked upright and looked around wildly before they realized the voice was coming, of all things, from the envelope, which had shaped itself into a sort of mouth and was floating in midair. "Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry is one of the finest magical academies in Europe, along with Beauxbatons in France and Durmstrang in Siberia."
The envelope turned and faced Lily, who couldn't have opened her mouth any wider if she'd tried. "You, my dear, are what the wizarding world calls a Muggle-born—that is, a witch born to a non-magic family."
"You mean I'm a witch?" said Lily faintly. "Is my skin going to turn green?"
The envelope laughed. "Oh no, not unless you enchant it to do so. You'll learn to do that, as well as many other somewhat more useful things, and we'll make you into a fine witch at Hogwarts, miss."
Petunia swung her hand over the top of the envelope, looking for strings, wires, anything that could possibly be explaining why a folded up piece of parchment was floating in her room, talking to them in a very calm and logical manner. "Oh, you won't find anything up there, my dear," said the envelope, looking up (if looking was the right word, since it had no eyes). "I'm a first-class Messenger, designed to activate only in the presence of the witch or wizard who receives me through the Muggle post. Specially made for Muggle-borns who don't use owl post yet."
"Owl post?" asked Lily eagerly.
"Normally, magic folk use owls to send mail," said the Messenger. "All kinds, from Great Grays to the tiny little Scops. They deliver much faster than the Muggle post, really, without all the hassle of stamps and postmarks!"
"Wow," breathed Lily, her eyes lighting up with wonder.
"I must say, you are an extraordinarily convincing puppet," said Mrs. Evans faintly, but she was smiling too. Only Petunia remained skeptical, glowering at the Messenger so fiercely she was somewhat surprised that it didn't burst into flames at once.
Of course, she thought bitterly, she wasn't a witch, so what would the dratted thing have to fear from her?
"I'll bet that strange things have happened to you all your life," said the Messenger to Lily, "things that you couldn't explain if you tried."
And this was true, too, Petunia mused, thinking about all the times she had found her sister up in trees or on rooftops, with Lily protesting that she'd been playing at being a bird or a plane or a dragon and suddenly she really had been flying, just for a moment. Or the fact that things seemed to explode rather more around her sister than they really should—proof positive was her now defunct pillow, the feathers from which still clung in both girls' hair. She caught herself in this line of thinking and was immediately furious, because Lily simply couldn't be a witch—such things weren't real.
But one glance at Lily's face told her that her sister was remembering all those strange occurrences, too, and Petunia's heart sank. "It has to be real, Mum, it just has to," Lily said, green eyes bright with excitement. "Can I go, please please please? It's just a like a fairy-tale."
"Well, naturally we'll want to speak with someone from the school and find out about it, I suppose," said Mrs. Evans, still looking faintly bemused. "Someone real, if you don't mind," she added to the envelope, which somehow managed to look insulted. "I mean no offense, dear, but you must admit, the word of a piece of parchment is nothing to base a choice like this on."
"Of course," said the Messenger. "You can use the Muggle telephone to contact a liaison from the Ministry of Magic to show you some of the wizarding world and tell you about Hogwarts." It rolled into a little ball, and then puffed outward again, this time with a phone number displayed where the address had been a moment before. Mrs. Evans scribbled it down and went downstairs with Lily bouncing after her.
Petunia watched the Messenger float down to the ground, slowly coming to rest on top of a pile of feathers. It fluttered once and said softly, "Don't be so jealous, my dear Muggle," and then went dead once more. Petunia glared at it and stomped her stocking foot down onto the yellow parchment, clenching her fists as she ground it into the carpet.
She heard Mrs. Evans' voice from downstairs saying something about Friday and London, and sat down on her bed. The red brick building on her yearbook caught her eye, and Petunia picked it up sadly. She found her own picture among the second years, between Harriet Engleside and Jill Ezerby and wondered if Lily realized what she'd just done.
"At noon, then, meet for lunch at the Leaky Cauldron Pub in London," floated her mother's voice up the stairs. "Could you give me directions, please?"
Petunia sighed and slammed the pages closed. "So much for double trouble," she whispered, and if the Messenger, still faintly fluttering on the floor, had anything to say about that, it wisely kept quiet.
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At precisely noon on Friday, the whole Evans family found themselves standing outside a grubby little bookstore in London, wondering where exactly the Leaky Cauldron pub was supposed to be. Lily kept staring at something next to the bookstore, as if she expected it to appear out of thin air, while Mr. and Mrs. Evans debated whether they had gotten the address correct. Petunia remained stubbornly silent, staring at the same spot as her sister and wondering why she kept thinking there was something there when she saw it from the corner of her eye but when she looked straight on there was only a blank brick wall.
"Are you the Evans family?" said a cheerful voice from behind them. Petunia turned around and saw a plump young man with curly black hair and brown skin waving jovially at them. "I'm Bernie Puckle, your Ministry of Magic liaison. Shall we go inside? I've gotten Tom to hold us a table."
He pointed at the empty brick wall next to the bookshop, and they all gasped as a grungy sign bearing the legend 'The Leaky Cauldron' and a door beneath it materialized from thin air. Petunia stared unabashedly at their guide, wondering exactly how he'd done that. "It's enchanted, you see, so that unless you know to look for it you won't see it," he told them as they followed him inside.
The Evans parents exclaimed over the sudden appearance of the pub's entrance while Lily and Petunia gazed around at the curious people inside. They sat down in a quiet corner and the bartender brought them a pile of dusty menus. Most, if not all, the people in the Leaky Cauldron were dressed in funny clothing: instead of trousers and skirts, they wore long, flowing robes in a variety of bright colors; instead of bowlers, their hats were tall and pointed; and many of them had high boots that laced up to their knees rather than proper shoes. Petunia wondered if she'd suddenly fallen back in time a few centuries.
Bernie, speaking in high, excited tones, was showing her parents and Lily a series of brochures about Hogwarts, but Petunia did not bother to listen. She hardly touched her pork chop and mashed potatoes, and did not join in with her family as they eagerly questioned the Muggle liaison about all aspects of life at Hogwarts.
He showed them around Diagon Alley after lunch, and though Lily pressed her face against every shop window with mounting enthusiasm, Petunia could not muster up anything more than a small smile when her sister shouted, "Look at this, Pet!" at every turn. Flourish and Blotts, Magical Menagerie, Ollivander's, Eeylop's Owl Emporium, Quality Quidditch Supplies, Gringotts—nothing stirred Petunia's interest, while Lily couldn't get enough of it all.
At the end of the tour, it was firmly decided that Lily would be attending Hogwarts rather than St. Mary's, and Bernie helped them send off an owl with the news from the post office. He promised to meet them in another week to shop for Lily's school supplies, and they went off home, everyone but Petunia unable to stop talking about all the marvels they had seen that day. She sank into the corner of the backseat and tried not to think about it, wishing desperately that Lily would get this ridiculous notion out of her head and come to St. Mary's with her.
Not Hogwarts, where neither of them should be. St. Mary's. Where, Petunia thought bitterly, they both truly belonged.
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