What goes on through Petunia Dursley's mind as she looks at Harry Potter?
My name is Petunia Dursley and I have no regrets.
I have a wonderful husband by the name of Vernon and I have a wonderful son called Dudley. And yet my life seems incomplete and unfulfilled.
I have a nephew by my freak of a sister and her even more freakish husband. His name is Harry, God I ask you, why couldn't they have chosen a less freakish name like my Dudder's name? He's a freak just like they were before they went and got themselves blown up.
And yet, I can't hate him for what he's done. He's always seemed so old and so careworn and when that freak Pumbledor or something wrote to us telling us that Voldemort had returned, I had looked at him and I saw how badly I had treated him because it didn't want to see the truth.
The truth was that I didn't want to look at him because it was like Lily staring at me from beyond the grave. Looking at how I was treating her son: pretending he didn't exist. Those eyes were always so expressive when I saw them on Lily but on Harry they're very different. They seem so old and pain filled as though he's seen more pain and death than he lets on.
I always thought that Lily's eyes were the one piece about her that I hated. In truth, they were the one piece that made her my true sister and the piece I always wanted for my own.
Vernon always said those eyes scared him because it was like Harry could see into his soul and that's another piece of the freakishness that is my nephew. I think they're the one piece of Lily still around.
My Dudder's a fine boy with everything he could want and he looks strong and manly just like his father but i sometimes think that I'm missing out on something because over the past four or five years my feelings have changed. I know my Dudley is perfect but it doesn't make me proud anymore. Now I look at my home and think, my sister had the right kind of life. She was married to someone handsome and rich and she made the best out of life. I look around my home and think it defines me; a woman without a life beyond gossip and spitefulness towards a woman dead and buried for nearly seventeen years.
I am ashamed of how I acted towards Harry because I cause him pain and emotional agony because I couldn't let the memories of a childhood die.
My sister always stood up for me and stood behind me even when Vernon called her a freak. I was frightened because I couldn't comprehend the fact there was a world hidden away from people like me. I couldn't understand that I was not destined for that world but my sister was. I was insanely jealous because she had the dream life, which I thought as my dream and she wasn't allowed to have it. I was foolish and vindictive and spiteful and I wish I hadn't been because she died knowing I hated her and her son.
Most people say how unique Harry's eyes are butIknow of one other person who bore those eyes: my beloved sister Lily.
My name is Petunia Dursley and I have many, many regrets.