Author's note: Enjoy!

Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the canon, world, and characters portrayed below and you can tell I'm not J.K. Rowling because #transrights

Hogwarts: Assignment 3, Magical Law Task #3 Write about someone forced to do something they don't want to

Content Warnings: Family drama


Respond, If You Please

Petunia gave a little shriek when she recognized the man standing on her steps and dropped the apron she'd been wiping her hands on.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded.

James Potter crossed his arms and she saw him frown behind his glasses, as if he were offended that she hadn't drawn the connection herself. Mercifully, he was wearing a pair of jeans and a plain green sweater that would be passable if the neighbours saw him—he looked just as put-together and effortlessly handsome as he had the first time Lily had brought him home to meet their parents. Still, Petunia did not like the sight of him on her front steps. In broad daylight.

"You really don't know?" he asked.

"Of course not," Petunia said, blushing furiously.

"The wedding invitation," James said. The patience drained from his tone as he spoke. "You never mailed it back to us."

"And?" Petunia asked, trying to match the snap of her voice to his displeased tone.

"You have to RSVP," James said bluntly, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "We need to get chairs and food and cutlery and things. I'm learning lots about event planning. It's getting complicated and we need a finalized guest list—hence why you need to send in your RSVP.."

"Only if one is planning to attend," Petunia said.

James Potter arched an eyebrow over his hazel eye.

"So you don't think you're coming to my wedding?"

"I don't see why that—"

"Because it's not just my wedding, it's more importantly Lily's wedding," James said. "Remember Lily? The softest and kindest woman in the world? Your little sister? The one you abandoned the second your parents weren't around to look over their shoulders and force you to play nice with a witch, but who still sends you cards at every possible occasion and really tries hard because she always tries really hard? That one?"

"I'm very aware that I have a sister," Petunia said, blushing wildly. Dear goodness, if only Vernon was home.

"Well, you have a funny way of showing it," James Potter said, crossing his arms. "Look, you and I don't know each other and that can be that. You've already decided you don't like me, and I don't particularly feel like I'm missing out either. But I do love Lily more than I know how to explain or measure or quantify. I love her so much I almost fall apart every time she breathes the same air as me."

For a second, envy stirred in the pit of Petunia's stomach. She and Vernon had been married for a few years now and they were a perfect couple, a respectable and amicable and well-matched couple, but they had gotten used to breathing the same air—not that Vernon had ever been a man of many words, and beautiful words at that. Why was it that Lily always had something that Petunia did not, and why was it that she always made Petunia so aware, and so sensitive, about what she had and had not? Even when she wasn't around.

"I hardly see what this has to do with me," Petunia said, trying to close the door. James Potter stuck out his foot to catch the door on his sneaker as it shut. The horrifying idea that he might pull out his wand and charm the door open came to mind, so she decided to reopen it before he made the situation worse—though she did shoot him one of her most annoyed and unpleasant looks, the sort she usually reserved for mothers who couldn't control their children in the grocery store.

"It means that if Lily wants you at the wedding because she keeps expecting the best out of her big sister and hoping for a scrap of love or friendship from you, I will turn up at your door and get that RSVP from you whether you like it not," James said, his patience gone now.

"Is that a threat or a promise?" she challenged.

"I would never threaten my soon to be sister-in-law, so let's go with a promise although I'm rather ambivalent at this point. So turn around, go inside, get your invitation, check the right box, tell us what you and Vernon are going to eat, and then all you need to do is show up, sit quietly, maybe take a photo, and sign the guestbook so Lily and I can look at it in fifty years and she can say 'I'm so glad my sister was there' and I can say 'I know sweetheart, what a beautiful day.' As you can see, the bar is so low for you. Please stretch to reach it. Or else I'm coming back with a friend and without getting into too many details, I can promise that he'll piss on your lawn about it."

Petunia didn't know what this meant but she did know enough about the wizarding world not to ask. So she turned around, rummaged in the basket of spam mail for the opened invitation she had ignored for a few weeks now. Muttering under her breath the whole time, she fetched a pen, wrote in her and Vernon's names on the RSVP card, picked two food options, and returned it to the door.

She handed it to him in one swift motion that conveyed her displeasure, but James smiled brightly.

"Thank you," James said as he accepted the card, perfectly gentleman once more. "Oh and by the way, I was never here as far as Lily was concerned."

"Fine by me," Petunia said.

James nodded, waved goodbye, and Disapparated right in front of her. Petunia shut the door before he or his pissy friend could return—plotting all the while what ugly vase she could regift to that damned Potter boy as a wedding present.


WC: 976