A/N: For the Decisions, Decisions Competition, Round Two: Family, Harry and Petunia, Prompts: hesitate, "I just need some air", and "If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton you may as well make it dance." -George Bernard Shaw. Word Count: 278
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
Lily was dead.
For a moment, Petunia could not breathe, couldn't think. All she could do was stare at the baby swaddled in the checkered blanket. Her heart plummeted to her stomach, as if it were made of lead. She felt the grief sprout in her chest and she winced as imaginary thorns pricked her heart.
The baby gurgled suddenly, and Petunia hesitated to pick the boy up—the child opened his eyes, so unaware that in the space of a single night, his life had changed so immensely. Petunia looked down at Harry Potter and was met with the patient gaze of her sister. Lily's eyes. Harry's eyes. Green, beautiful, beautiful green eyes that Petunia had so desperately envied once upon a time.
Vernon sat with her, to his credit, his eyes flickering between her and the letter she held in her hands. Her fist clenched suddenly, and the paper crumpled in her firm grasp.
"I just need some air." Her voice was like steel, and Vernon could only nod as she stepped outside into the cool autumn morning, shutting the door behind her with a slam.
Gasping, she let a cry of despair and crumpled to the ground. Lily, her sister, Lily, her little flower, Lily was gone and Petunia was left with her child. She had a responsibility, she supposed. To protect the boy from the evils that killed her sister, to protect him any way she could. To protect him from magic. And she would do just that. It was the only way to make that she wouldn't lose the only thing she had left of her sister.
She had to protect Harry Potter.
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