Saturday, 22nd August, 1992

Petunia paced across the kitchen floor. Back and forth. Back and forth. She'd been doing this a lot lately.

Things were not going well. Because of the freak's little stunt three weeks ago, they were having money problems. Dudley didn't seem to have noticed anything yet fortunately. He was spending a lot of time outside and seemed rather happy.

She and Vernon, on the other hand, weren't handling things nearly as well. She could no longer bear to interact with the neighbours for fear that they would discover their dire financial situation. In fact, she couldn't even watch them as she used to. Seeing them going about their perfect lives while her family was struggling was just too painful. Now the curtains were always drawn tightly shut.

Vernon was always angry, and not very good at keeping his temper in check. He was snapping at her and Dudley a lot, and several times even looked like he wanted to hit them. He always seemed to calm down a bit whenever he saw the freak in the mornings. But soon after the rage would begin creeping in once again.

Petunia felt that while locking the boy up permanently had seemed like a good idea at the time, it did have the disadvantage of depriving Vernon of his usual target and outlet. With him now mostly out of sight, Vernon was turning to the only other possible victims in the house. She was rather disturbed by how quickly and easily his attitude towards herself and Dudley had changed.

It wasn't fair, she thought bitterly. It was all the freak's fault. Lily's son's fault. If he'd just behaved that night instead of ruining everything with his freakishness, everything would have been fine. Vernon could have taken his temper out on him as usual, they would have earned enough money from the deal to keep them afloat, and her perfect life that she'd strived so hard for wouldn't be collapsing around her like a house of cards.

She just didn't know what to do. She was scared that other freaks could come looking for the boy as they had before. She was scared of letting the boy out. She was scared of her husband. Most of all, she was scared of the little voices that tormented her at night, whispering to her that she had been the freak all along, and the edifice of success and normality that she'd spent her life building was merely a facade.

Petunia shuddered, a soft whimper coming unbidden from deep within her throat. She was stuck; trapped in a web of her own devising. Whatever action she took to try to extricate herself would inevitably lead to it all unraveling.

Petunia paced across the kitchen floor. Back and forth. Back and forth. That was all she could do.

"Even now, you manage to be better than me," she whispered into the empty room, a tear sliding down her cheek, "from beyond the grave you send your son to torment me, to ruin me. I just wanted to be like you."

Pacing back and forth, back and forth across the kitchen floor, Petunia silently wept. Whether she wept out of anger, grief, sadness, regret, or shame, even she could not say. Perfect Lily was dead, and Petunia, she was the freak. The monster who both loved and hated her own sister, and locked up her nephew. The one who convinced herself that she craved the ordinary, when what she truly desired was the extraordinary.

Well, in a way, she'd got her wish. For how could she possibly be considered normal?

A/N: Hi, sorry it's just an interlude again. I think CrypticSpren's wifi has gone, and I don't have access to the complete version of chapter 4 myself to upload it. I promise that we'll upload chapter 4 as soon as CrypticSpren is back online. I hope you at least liked getting a glimpse into Petunia's mind. I don't plan the interludes, so in a way, this was as much of a discovery to me as it is to the rest of you. It was very fun to write, if quite a bit darker than the previous interlude. I'd be really interested to hear what you all think about Petunia and where you think things might be going with her.

Anyway, have a good weekend everyone, and I hope to be able to upload again soon.