Written for Round 8 of the IWSC
School and Theme: Mahoutokoro, Little Whinging
Main Prompt: Muggle Playground
Additional Prompts: Unlikely Friendship
Year: Exchange Student standing in for Year 2
Wordcount: 2091
a/n: I'm quite out of practice, so bear with me! I've also never written Snape (or Petunia) before, so this was a nice challenge. I chose to develop Petunia's future fear of wizardkind through some past experiences, and took the more subtle buzzwords such as unfounded assumptions as inspiration for this story.
Petunia Evans was not always scared of her younger sister. Lily was just her little sister, a little reckless and odd sometimes, but Petunia wasn't supposed to be scared of her. Then the redhead started to exhibit the peculiar tendencies that her mother warned her were just coincidences. She soared too high when she jumped from the swingset in their favorite playground, left blades of grass braided far too finely to be the work of her clumsy child fingers. She'd cry "look, Tuney! Look what I can do!" and Petunia would swat her before she could show her another one of her little "crafts". It was her responsibility to keep her sister from getting into trouble or danger, after all.
But as Lily grew older, the strange things just kept happening. In fact, they became more frequent, so frequent that their parents couldn't write them off as accidents. Then greasy, snivelling Severus Snape fell out of a bush and told her she was a witch, of all things. A witch! And he called Petunia a Muggle, whatever that was supposed to mean. So of course, she marched her sister right home, away from the dirty, rude boy who called them names. She assumed Lily wouldn't want anything else to do with him, but then she found the younger girl sneaking into the woods to meet Severus, who nearly gave her a concussion with a tree branch.
Still, she was curious. Envious, even, though she couldn't explain it. Maybe that's what prompted her to write Dumbledore in a moment of weakness, asking if she could come to school with her sister. The kind yet stern and vague reply he sent her told her what she would experience if she were to come to Hogwarts, scaring her into defeat. Maybe that's why she called her sister a freak. Perhaps she believed it. Perhaps she was scared of her sister now.
It wasn't like Lily was scared of Petunia, or what lay ahead at the wizarding school. She ran to it like a moth into a flame, throwing herself into her studies and making new friends. The stolen glances she gleaned from the letters her parents received (she herself was not forgiven yet) didn't mention the Snape boy at all, instead raving about Marlene McKinnon and their other friends. In April, she discovered Marlene had invited Lily and a girl named Dorcas to summer with her in France and Spain, meaning she'd be alone for months without her little sister.
Petunia didn't have any friends in their neighborhood on the less populated (and seemingly childless) side of the river, and none of them wanted to walk over and come to the local playground with her, especially now that Lily had mysteriously been sent away to boarding school. She could scare them with the truth, intimidate them into shutting their mouths regarding her dangerous sister. But she wasn't brave enough to do that; she never had been. The playground was her and Lily's place, untouched by anyone (but that filthy Snape). Summer had begun two days before when she finally erased her bitterness and strolled to the familiar swingset, climbing aboard and slowly pumping her legs to climb even higher.
"Hi," a voice sounded suddenly, prompting Petunia to cry out in shock and nearly lose her grip on the chains of the swing.
"What on Earth-" she gasped, whirling to her left to lay eyes on a greasy, skinny boy whose clothes were still too big and mismatched to be intentional. "Get away from me, you weirdo!" But Severus wouldn't budge. "I said, get awa-"
"Oh, I heard you. Where's your sister?"
"She's in the 'South of France'", Petunia gestured extravagantly, slowing her swing to a slow rock. "Won't be back all summer, so bug off." He continued to stand by the structure, staring at something past her head with baleful eyes. "Do you ever listen?"
"She told me she'd meet me in the thicket, on the last day of school. Did she know she was going away?" His tone was surprisingly sorrowful, not pointed and harsh like their last interaction. He didn't sound scary, just...sad.
"Yes, she's known since April, and obviously didn't tell you. Are you going to keep standing there? Are you going to put a spell on me?" she asked, trying to muffle the panic slowly creeping into her voice.
"Why would I do that?"
"You're a w-wizard! Isn't that what you do with magic? Put spells on people?"
"What, are you scared? Are you scared I'll turn you into a mouse or make you dance until your feet fall off?" Yes, yes she was.
"Just get away from me, you freak!" She moved to shove him, but he leveled her with such a glare that she thought better of it. "Fine, if you absolutely insist, you can stay over there. But don't touch me or even think of casting a spell on me."
"I wouldn't anyway, 'm not allowed," the boy muttered, shuffling to the empty swing beside her.
"Oh." She continued to swing higher in silence, determinedly looking out into the sky but never to the figure beside her.
She went back to the park the next day, having ignored Severus for another hour or so the day before. He was creepy but didn't attempt to make contact again, and she assumed he wouldn't dare to return.
"Hi, Tuney," he singsonged derisively, already halfway to the sky. She was wrong.
"Why are you here?" she murmured, not sure whether to sit in the swing or run in the opposite direction. "And don't call me Tuney!"
"Well, I don't have anything better to do, and it doesn't seem like you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't be in this dump, would you?" He waved a hand at the unkempt bushes, the rusty equipment, the lack of life in the small plot. Petunia couldn't find the words to combat him. "Thought so." The boy returned to his ascent, eyes fixated on something in the distance yet again.
"Fine. But I'm not going to talk to you, f-"
"Don't call me freak again or I'll hex you," he sharply uttered as he spun to face her below him, halfway between serious and teasing. But then he smirked and let out a rough chuckle, supposedly indicating a joke.
"That was not funny."
"Yes, it was, and you have to admit it."
"I'm not admitting anything, least of all to you," she replied haughtily, but she walked to the other side of the swingset and clambered into the seat.
"Is Lily with Marlene this summer?"
"Why do you care so much, Snape?" She pointedly asked, the blue sky approaching rapidly. If she had turned her head ever so slightly, she would have seen his cheeks flush bright red.
"B-because we're friends, and I'm just curious!"
"Yes, she is, and maybe she just forgot to tell you. Why do you keep bothering me?"
"I came here to find Lily yesterday, I told you!"
"Why are you here now?" Petunia tore her gaze away from the fluffy clouds, resting it on the flushed Snape.
"I don't have anything better to do, and I don't think you do either."
"Fine, hang around then. Don't expect me to be your friend, you creep."
"But you're scared of me. You won't talk to me and you're just insulting me because you're scared of what I am, what I can do, aren't you? Maybe you want to do it too. I think you're jealous of your sister, Tuney." He was scarily near the truth, this strange boy.
"Please don't call me Tuney. I'll talk to you if you act normal...Severus." She choked out the last word in attempted sympathy, brow softening as his eyes warmed.
"I can't be normal, but I guess I can act like it for a bit." He responded, biting a pale lip and beginning to swing once more.
Petunia kept returning to her playground, her hesitation diminishing each day. At the start of the month, she wished Severus would cease to appear in the swing next to her, but he never did. Sometimes, she clammed up, refusing to speak even when spoken to, but he'd be persistently annoying until she broke. Most of the time, he didn't even want to talk about magic or wizardry like he always had with her sister. He just needed someone to be his friend, and slowly, she could forget his powers and pretend he was a normal boy.
"Did you know that the first swing set was invented in Ancient Greece?" He asked one sunny afternoon, his overcoat falling off his shoulders to expose a surprisingly clean shirt.
"Did you know you seem to have a limitless supply of annoying facts?" Petunia laughed, no trace of said annoyance in her voice.
"Did you know that you're laughing with me and not at me?" They'd developed a sort of banter over the past few weeks, Petunia no longer terrified, Severus no longer a pest. She wasn't having a terrible summer, to say the least. She might even let herself say they'd become a queer sort of friends. And he kept his word- he never did any sort of magic around her. But a strange part of her wanted him to. Whether it was to remind her of the danger, or subconsciously fuel her jealousy of Lily, she wanted to see something magic again. She wanted to be magic, because no matter how angry she was at her sister, or how bothersome Severus could be, or how scary it was, she liked the people they were and wanted to be with them, be like them.
"Hey, can I ask you something?" She suddenly piped up, swingset creaking as she weighed her words carefully.
"If you want, I suppose."
"Does Hogwarts ever get, you know, new students? Like, older than first years?"
"I mean, I'm a first year, I wouldn't know. But if you've got magic, you usually know by first year, and you're meant to go to Hogwarts when you go to Hogwarts. Why are we talking about Hogwarts? The 'freak school'?"
"Teach me," she murmured, eyes growing bright with a dangerous hope and anticipation. "Teach me, and I can come to Hogwarts, or I don't even have to come to Hogwarts, I can just be a witch, and I can be like you and Lily." Every syllable grew stronger, her voice ceasing to waver by the sentence's end. "I know it's a strange request but I don't want to be scared of you, I want to be like you."
"But you're a Muggle. You can't do magic! It's not possible! You'd get hurt if I tried to make you magic!" He cried, his hair beginning to pick up in a sudden breeze.
"But it's hurting me not being like Lily. I'm hurting her because I don't understand. I love her too much to not be like her, to not be there with her! I can't be terrified of my sister!"
"Well I love her too much to hurt you!"
"You what?" His face turned crimson and his eyes darkened, the sky turning grey and the chain of the swing twisting over Petunia's right hand, causing her to cry out in pain. It only crumpled her hand for a split second, but she was already tearing up and in shock.
"Merlin, I am so sorry I didn't mean to that was a complete accident you can't tell anybody-"
"Get away from me!" The girl shrieked, trying to slow the swing and favor her bright red fingers. "I'm leaving. You're such a freak; I can't believe I ever wanted to be like you."
"Petunia, you can't tell anyone about this. I could be put in prison! I could be expelled!" Severus' face was deathly pale, the abandoned playground seeming far too small to hold her rage.
"Oh, believe me," she snarled, her eyes narrowed but her words taut with intense terror. "I want nothing to do with you, not now or ever. And to think I thought we could be friends, you awful- you freak- you-" Her sputtering ended as hot tears boiled over her eyelids, half for her physical pain but the other half for her foolishness. As if she could ever think wizards weren't dangerous, as if she shouldn't be scared of them, as if she could ever want to be one.
She'd never tell Lily about this summer, and she knew Severus wouldn't dare. But she also knew she was done with this playground, and with wizards, forever.