Disclaimer: I do not own anything Harry Potter
Chapter three: The Price, part 2
Petunia stood over the trashcan and contemplated the leftovers in her hand,
"It is a waste of perfectly good food." Said the fae crouched on the counter next to her. "Dudley and Vernon won't eat it if it's not fresh so why not give it to the boy?"
The horse-faced woman narrowed her eyes and the fae sighed.
He's like a mongrel anyway." She said. "What's more normal than tossing scraps to a dog?"
That convinced her and the fae closed her eyes against the now familiar oily feeling that dark magic left her with. Petunia scraped the food into a bowl and put it in front of the cupboard door before banging on it.
It opened a crack and a small hand slipped out and grabbed the bowl as she walked away.
"Poisonous bitch." Said the fae loudly and the boy in the cupboard snorted in amusement as he thought of his new favorite nickname for his aunt.
The fae sat against the door of the cupboard where the ten year-old slept. Her hair had once been the purest white. She had once spent her nights in the company of unicorns and danced under the sparkling light of the full moon who smiled and called her its daughter.
Not a single white hair was left to her. Even the red was barely visible among the strands that were now as black as pitch.
They had turned dark one hair at a time. If she held them up one by one, she could have described just how she had absorbed or deflected the cruelty of her boy's relatives in each instance.
Evil always left a stain.
She did not dare go outside in the full moon now.
The boy began to shift in his cupboard and she quickly opened the door.
"Shh." She said leaning in as close as she dared. Her hand hovering over his forehead as if to caress it. She had not touched the child since she had noticed her fingernails beginning to blacken.
Softly, she began to sing a lullaby she learned from a she-wolf spirit when she had spent a winter in her cave with her cubs.
It was low and had no words, but it was his favorite and the only song that comforted him these days.
As his eyes continued to grow far older than his body, she knew that even this song would soon cease to do that for him.
Evil always left a stain.
No matter how hard she tried to protect him from it.