Chapter 17: Shirley Evanston
Lily -
When I saw her, I saw you
I didn't think any of it was true
I wanted to hold her
Trade her
Tell her
Keep her
Pretend she was you
He didn't let me
Her smile was your smile
It faded fast
Her laugh was your laugh
It was silenced quickly
Her eyes were your eyes
But they were dead inside
Her spite was your spite
Her fight was your fight
She wasn't meek
She wasn't weak
But her future was bleak
She feared herself
More than she ever feared Him
He hurt her in ways...
But I'll spare you the pain
She can tell you
Because she'll be with you soon
I'm so sorry for that
It's all I can do
You protected her more than any of us tried
You loved her more than any of us were capable
I admit I hated her
I hurt her
I betrayed her
I betrayed you
Forgive me, please. Because I still love you.
There was no signature, but Lizzie knew who. She closed her eyes and fell asleep with the note from the mailbox clutched close to her chest wondering when and how it had been put there.
"Where's Lizzie?" Petunia asked in a shrill panic as she ran down the stairs. She'd put Dudley to bed and thumbed through the hospital discharge instructions before checking Lizzie's bedroom for signs of life. She'd known as soon as she left the house with her son that Lizzie was doomed, but let the door click shut anyway.
Petunia had been by Dudley's side his entire stay, her usually tight blonde bun had broken into several straggly locks of slightly greasy hair that hung in her eyes and around her long neck. She hadn't showered yet and her dress was sticking relentlessly to the small of her back.
Vernon heard, put down his drink on the kitchen counter, and made his way into the hallway to meet her at the end of the stairs.
Before he could say a word, she stopped in her tracks with a look of bubbling hatred. He'd smelled so strong of brandy the last time he returned to the hospital.
"What did you do?" Petunia hissed. He narrowed his eyes at her in warning. "You let Damien take her? Didn't you?" She demanded and shoved past him into the kitchen before he could stop her. In the sink were two brandy glasses in addition to the one on the counter. She took one in hand and threw it hard at the wall behind him. He lunged to seize a wrist before she took hold of the others.
"I knew you'd beat her, but what did you do, bring him here to follow it up? Let him take her? She has to stay here! She has to! They'll kill her!" Petunia shrieked. The slap that immediately followed made her ears ring.
"I didn't let him take her! She was up there when we left," he hissed back. She glared at him with reproach at the implication.
"Held her down for him? That what you did? That creep of a friend. You'd do anything for him. Still wondering why Marge hasn't called in seven months? Three guesses why she'd be furious you married Lizzie to HIM," Petunia snapped with disdain. He snatched her jaw in one hand and squeezed until she shut up.
"I don't know where the hell Azalea is, Petunia. We gave her enough sedative to knock out a horse. She won't be able to move a muscle for days. Maybe that freak government locked her up for attacking our son, but WHY are you the least bit concerned about her? I mean good bloody riddance," he demanded and let go harshly.
"We're not safe if she doesn't come back here. The man who killed..Lily...is back. If he took her, we could be..." Petunia sobbed and turned to lean over the sink. There was a long pause.
"How long have you been hurting her like that?" Petunia asked quietly. The silence was deafening, air was catching into a heavy ball at the center of chest that she couldn't release.
"Why does that matter to you?" He growled defensively.
"She'll never know I'm sorry," Petunia cried quietly to herself, unable to look at her husband. She felt his eyes bore a hole into the back of her head.
Her dress tore along her back in his sudden grip. "You're sorry, Petunia? You're sorry? You hate that girl as much I do and don't you dare plead otherwise!" She spit in his face and he grabbed her neck just below her jaw. Her body was starting to go rigid in fear.
"If I told you she was pregnant, would she still be?" She whispered as she swallowed back a sob. His eyes went feral, he shoved her backwards, and then kicked back the rest of the brandy in the glass on the counter.
"Probably not," he said dismissively but leaned into the counter putting all his weight on his forearms and grimacing at the thought. "I hadn't touched her, we left her here with him before we left on holiday..." he said mostly to himself.
"She said it wasn't his, it was that boy," Petunia said. He got impossibly angrier.
"Why didn't you tell me sooner?" He asked, walking toward her until she was flush with the counter.
"Because you would have killed her for that," Petunia said with a trembling voice. He raised a hand to her but caught eyes with something on the other side of the kitchen window. The door to the atrium slammed a moment later when he charged out to inspect, but the figure that looked like Lizzie was gone and the air was impossibly cold. He charged back inside, nearly shattering the glass door behind him with how hard he let it slam.
Petunia made her way to the hall when he came toward her, but he pulled back on her dress and arm until she was pinned down and pressed face down into the surface of the counter. She let out a yell that he silenced with a strike to her temple using the side of his fist. She couldn't hear the fumbling of his waistline through the ringing in her ears, but struggled hard in his grip when her knickers came down.
She'd told him to stop in bed before when it became uncomfortable but he usually ignored her, speeding up his thrusts and calling it a favor after. This however, completely took the air from her lungs.
"You - took - her - in - REMEMBER!" He roared through his motions. "You - want - to - know - how - long?" He laughed a little crazed. "What - do - you - think - SILENCED - her?!"
She'd let her body go limp at that. No fight left in her bones. She closed her eyes and saw a little girl who never wanted to speak. She saw her sister at that age who never stopped talking. Her knees hit the tile floor a few minutes later when he released his hold and pushed his way through the door to the hallway in a rage. He opened the cupboard and saw Lizzie's trunk was gone. In its place was the body of a decayed little girl and he slammed his eyes shut along with the door. She was gone when he opened them.
His face softened when Petunia pushed the door to the kitchen open timidly. Her face was purple, her dress torn, her hands and body shook uncontrollably, her gait was off. She took a step back and he approached cautiously. His eyes weren't mean anymore and she conceded to an embrace he offered and sobbed into his chest with his arms wrapped protectively around her head. He didn't tell her to stop nor did he begin to apologize.
Petunia sat on the edge of Lizzie's bed as she remembered sneaking out of her bedroom the night her husband raped her in the kitchen just the year prior, and slept in the small, poorly furnished and decorated spare room that belonged to her niece for less than half the girl's life with them. Perhaps she would have crammed herself into the cupboard had she fit. A man in dark robes stood in the corner, she knew another was on the other side of the wall with her son. A woman cackled from downstairs as her husband shrieked in an immeasurable amount of pain. Tears rolled steadily down her cheeks.
"You ought to tell us where she is, you'll live longer," Dolohov warned in a threatening voice. She was bound in place by something invisible. Her heart hammered violently, uncertain if any of them would leave the house alive. The deranged looking woman entered moments later and taunted her with a wand close to her face.
"Your husband isn't cooperating," Bellatrix hissed. "Maybe your son -" she said with sinister amusement.
"No," Petunia croaked.
Bellatrix lowered herself to eye level and gazed into Petunia's face, "Do you know where she is, dearie?" She asked.
"N-no, D-Dudley doesn't either..." she stammered. "Only- o-nly Vernon... he drove her somewhere earlier t-today," she lied through rattling teeth and sobbing breaths.
Bellatrix smirked and vanished with a crack and the torturous noises ensued downstairs. It bought time, but she didn't know for what. Everything happened in a blur, but other wizards came to her and her family's aid. Vernon was unconscious and looked dead in his skin by the time they collected him off the kitchen floor. There was a sliver of her that was sickly satisfied, while the rest of her wanted to crumble. She'd stopped loving him completely a year ago, although her trepidations had only grown wild over the years, tamed only by long stretches of living in the complete absence of her niece. She thought maybe her love for him died in that kitchen fourteen years ago when he beat her for taking the little girl in the first place, but he forever buried that love in the same place last summer when he bored himself into her and stuffed every ounce of her dignity so deep into her wounded spirit it'd never resurface again.
When she'd been told he'd died, and already knew who and why, she didn't cry. Jaded shock washed over her as a silence she never recovered from. Fourteen wasted years, the girl she took in ruined her family. But he let it.
Dudley panicked and unraveled, but no real tears pooled that weren't a response to anxiety. The grief hit him like a fast train, but his mind only focused on the countless nights he'd hear him on the other side of the wall and drown out the belt strikes and the whining of the bed with the television or headphones on a mixed tape player. It wasn't long before he didn't remember his father's better natures, before he didn't recall any of the good memories, before he felt himself saddled only with Lizzie's.
Lizzie thought about Petunia often, Dudley too, in a way anyone would wonder if they ever realized how sick of a life they were living in a distorted view of the world. Like with Draco, it wasn't hard to tell when someone knew in their bones something was wrong, but couldn't admit, was too scared to admit, or the cost was too steep to leave it entirely. That's where she had some gratitude for the years of abuse, it gave her resolve early to leave, well before she ever knew about Hogwarts. There was never an option in her mind to stay.
Then she thought of Nagini, that same resolve, and to go so far as to kill and eat the men who hurt her. Like Lizzie, she must have been able to tell a girl with those innate fears from a mile away. It hadn't dawned on Lizzie that her worst fear wasn't any of these evil men, but a culmination of the three and the powerlessness and control they embodied.
Images flashed through her mind of the meladictus inflicted girl engaging with men many times her own age. It was the only façade of control she was allowed despite knowing she was sold to them by the ringmaster. If Lizzie didn't know better, she'd think the poor girl enjoyed it, but like an insect biting the head off of their mate, she'd bite, strangle, or devour them out of spite and relish in the revenge.
The ringmaster would lock her away in a cage so tight she could only survive in a serpent form. The fear in her eyes when he entered the room was unmistakable. The abuse ran deeper than any perverted man purchasing a night with her. She didn't speak, didn't breathe, the paralysis was too familiar and the self pity in her eyes for thinking herself pathetic was heartbreaking.
Then there was Tom. He didn't want to sleep with her, maybe he did, but he knew it wouldn't cultivate her trust. He promised her an out and Lizzie remembered the handsome boy in the Chamber offering her the same if she let him suck Ginny void of life to return with that first horcrux. The conversation echoed in her mind as he said much of the same to Adrianna. He called her by her name. He pretended to sympathize. "You let him do it," he said, and Lizzie's skin froze over. Adrianna blinked back tears.
Then Tom tortured the ringmaster when he'd admitted he sold her permanently to a fellow. He tortured him not unlike Bella must have tortured Vernon. Lizzie thought he'd killed him, but he brought Adrianna back to do the honors. His last favor before entrapping her in a hellish prison she didn't see coming, where he no longer called her by name. The same fate he intended for Lizzie.
Before her decent into a permanent serpent form, he used her to find Herpo's horcrux, and sold it to Borgin for the profound amount of gold he needed to further his first rise to power.
Lizzie had not spoken much since they narrowly escaped Godric's Hollow. Her mind flooded with images and recourse she wasn't prepared to grapple with. Her mind raced too fast to put any words to it and Hermione seemed to understand. She was crippled, not just by that, but by the wand she'd lost in the rebounded curse. There was no protection from the cores and despite being grateful to have Mathilda's on hand, it was not the same.
"At least it was just the wand," Hermione said a handful of times, they both knew that curse could have been fatal to either of them and Lizzie felt foolish for using it. "It was the shot at destroying another one of the horcruxes," she'd said in her own defense. Hermione nodded in dismay.
Hermione developed the pictures taken at the graveyard to reevaluate them for clues. Lizzie meanwhile started reading a copy of Rita's book, but couldn't get far before her gag reflexes kicked in at the thought of the woman.
"Um... Lizzie," Hermione said with a concerned and apprehensive undertone. "Come look at these."
"What am I looking at?" Lizzie asked after making her way over to the table. It still hurt to walk and the potions were working much slower than they should thanks to the venom lingering in her bloodstream.
Hermione set down a photo. "I took this of you," she said. Lizzie stared down at a dark photo where she could make out the back outline of the girl she impersonated. Hermione set down another. "And this one was of you," she said. Lizzie looked down at a much smaller figure walking away from the camera. When she turned around Lizzie recognized Emily, her eyes bright white, with a sinister smile. Lizzie dropped the photo. She looked at the others and noticed the outline of the same girl walking alongside herself. It was faint, like a ghost, except for the last which was crystal clear and Lizzie was not anywhere in the picture.
"The horcrux," Lizzie whispered. Hermione nodded and looked down at the pouch the horcrux was in with intense trepidation.
Lizzie fingered the radio one morning a couple of days later. She was sleep deprived not only from the mental onslaught, but from staying awake to listen for sounds just outside their barriers. They'd agreed they'd heard someone or something but did not know how to gauge the danger.
"Breaking news on the hunt for Azalea Potter..." a spokesperson said and Lizzie froze in anticipation. Hermione's attention was seized as well.
"Late yesterday evening it was confirmed by muggle police in Whales that a Shirley Evanston was found deceased in her home from an apparent consumption of ample amounts of poison used to kill household rodents..." Lizzie flashed a horrified look at Hermione who seemed confused.
"Sources report that Shirley Evanston was in fact an alias for Petunia Dursley, Azalea Potter's maternal aunt who, along with her husband, also deceased, raised the evasive Miss Potter after the deaths of Lily and James Potter in 1983... her son, Dudley Dursley has not been located. We expect Azalea to be in or near Whales and responsible for the poisoning. Muggle authorities, however, have deemed the death a suicide."
Lizzie flicked the volume off on the radio and sunk back on her knees in a shock. Dudley, orphaned. Petunia, poisoned. Nobody would know the true significance of rat poison except for Petunia. In her heart she knew it a suicide, but her suspicions were raised. Nonetheless, she felt dread at the loss. The last piece of her mother was gone from the world and it felt much like losing Sirius in that sense... a cruel, pathetic, and masochistic version of Sirius who'd only seen Lily in Lizzie, but unlike James and Sirius, hated her for it.
Lizzie's hands trembled violently for a moment as it all closed in rapidly. Dudley... But Hermione was now eye level with her, hands on either side of Lizzie's face, making words that had no sound to them in Lizzie's ears.
"Liz, you should lie down," she heard finally, but it seemed faint and far away.
"Lizzie, c'mon," she said tapping her face gently. Lizzie exhaled shakily and leaned forward until her forehead touched her friend's collar bone. Hermione hugged her protectively and kissed the top of her head.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. Lizzie curled up where she was and her brain turned itself off completely.