Chapter 4- The storm after the lull

Mr. Snape and Mrs. Dursley seemed to reach an agreement: Harry Potter would go to Hogwarts, but nobody else besides them should know it was a Wizarding School, even the other Dursleys shouldn't know; the fewer people involved with this, the better.

They finished the rest of their tea and Snape stated:

"Well, when is Mr. Potter coming back? Another task I was given is to take him to the Diagon Alley and help him to buy his school materials. I would like to make it clear that I'm not doing it because I'm sympathetic to him; I'm a member of the school staff..."

Petunia answered throwing her teacup in the direction of his face. Severus was caught off guard; the china clashed against his forehead and produced a cut. Quickly, he stood up, pulled his wand out of his suit and put his left arm in front of his eyes; a thin stream of blood was running from the wound.

"What was that?" he snapped, furiously. "I was perfectly civil, Mrs. Dursley, I didn't give a single reason for you to assault me like that. If you make the slightest movement suggesting you're going to attack me again, I'm going to defend myself and strike back!"

Now Petunia was standing up, too; she didn't move, but her reply wasn't exactly civilized: she yelled at the top of her lungs, with all her strength, it was the closest imitation of a Mandrake's scream human chords could ever do. After she screamed so much she barely had enough energy to keep herself on her feet, she rested her back on a wall and started shouting a single sentence.

"WE WERE HAPPY! WE WERE HAPPY! WE WERE HAPPY!"

"We who?!" Snape interrogated, trying to figure out the reason for her explosion.

"Lily and I…" she muttered, as she slowly slid down against the wall and ended up sitting on the floor while embracing her folded legs.

Snape kept silent, waiting for her to develop that affirmation.

"Everyone openly said she was prettier and smarter than me, from a very young age, since as far I can remember. It made me really sad, but I could deal with that. She was my sister, we played together and we had tea parties with our dolls in the nearby park, we were happy. But then she started to make those freakish things, you appeared out of nowhere and told her she was a witch! Since then she'd rather hang out with you and hear your weird stories about wizards than playing with me! Suddenly, I was alone, mum and dad just had eyes for their supernatural daughter and Lily herself ignored me most of the time, in the rare moments she interacted with me she was painfully condescending, like I was stupid or something; any dirty little witch or wizard seemed a more interesting company to her than me. So I decided I should just move on and forget I had a sister at all, but then you wizards made me remember I had a sister, you gave my sister back to me…"

Her face was pink and completely wet from the tears that had run along it.

"…DEAD! YOU GAVE MY SISTER BACK TO ME DEAD! YOU GAVE HER CORPSE TO ME AND THE ONLY THING LEFT FOR ME TO DO WAS TO BURY IT LIKE A PIECE OF CAT SHIT! SHE WAS TWENTY-ONE YEARS OLD; SHE WAS LITTLE MORE THAN A CHILD! YOU KILLED MY SISTER! YOU KILLED MY SISTER!"

By "you", Petunia meant "you wizards". But her phrasing was quite ambiguous, and in her mindless emotional outburst she managed to achieve something very few people in the world were able to: she made Snape nervous. He wanted to look away from her, but he was afraid she would try to throw another thing at him. He had to hold on.

"…And then, you gave me her son, for whom she died for, to raise. I really hoped this madness could have an end, I hoped if we trimmed him enough he could be just ordinary and have a regular life. But then he started doing freakish things like his mother used to do, despite all our efforts; and now you, exactly you, the bringer of bad news, are before me again, telling me he's a wizard…"

She made a pause and sobbed a little.

"… Are you sure you're human? Are you sure you're not a demon whose sole purpose is to torment people and break their families apart by turning one of their members into a freak?"

She blew her nose loudly in a handkerchief.

"I hate you, Snape. I hate you."