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Petunia Dursley had never told her only nephew that she loved him. She had never given him any indication that she cared for his well being. If anything, she had always done the opposite; she had gone out of her way to belittle his every accomplishment, to hurl threats and condemnations his way, to make sure he knew that he was inferior in every way to her own son.
She should have been a better aunt. A better person. She knew that. But every time her nephew would look up at her, all she could see were those brilliant green eyes. His mother's eyes. Her sister's eyes.
Petunia did not hate her sister. She hated what her sister had become. The once brilliant and playful Lily, who had been twisted and transformed by magic.
Petunia blamed the magical world for what her sister had become.
There was once a time when Lily had cared little for beauty or fashion, when she had been more interested in a trip to the bookstore than showing off her newest outfit. When her thoughts had been filled with university and travel, not marriage and children. Even in the early days, she had wondered aloud to her older sister how she could use her newfound magic to make the world a better place- the places she could travel to, the people she could meet and the good she could do with the magic at her fingertips.
But the longer she had been trained in the use of her magic, the more she had scoffed at those early ideas. By the time she had turned fourteen her favorite spells had been the ones to straighten her hair, to do her housework and chores for her, to clear her skin and clean her teeth without the slightest work on her part. She had spent hours researching how to automate and combine several spells, all in an effort to save her time and work in the future - how to cast a single spell that did all of her cleaning for her, to wash, dry and straighten her hair with a minimum of effort.
Lily had become a vain creature interested only in her own betterment, oftentimes at the expense of others. Even her childhood friend Severus - who had gone on to attend Hogwarts with her - had been left behind as she moved on to "better things", as she had put it once. Severus was "old", Lily insisted; part of her past now. She had moved on to better friends, she insisted. As though her friendship with Severus had meant nothing, as though the people in her life could be so easily replaced.
Petunia herself had been replaced, as well, with a cousin of the man who would later become her husband. She's like the sister I always wanted to have, Lily had proclaimed to her boyfriend one evening when she thought Petunia was out of earshot. And those words had stung more than they should have. By that point Petunia had known that the sister she had laughed with and encouraged in school - as all older sisters should - was gone. But to know that another girl could so easily replace her in her sister's heart … it had still hurt.
James, on the other hand, had been nice. So nice that it hurt. Lily hadn't deserved him, and yet he had doted on her, had loved her with every breath he took. And he had been kind to Petunia - far kinder than any of Lily's other friends she brought home from that cursed school.
Harry looked like James, and she had seen some of his kindness in the boy. But every time those brilliant green eyes looked up at her, she remembered how magic had changed her sister. She remembered the pain and the humiliation her sister had put her through, all because she could. Because Petunia couldn't fight back, couldn't stop her.
She should have been able to move past that, to see her nephew as he was - not as his mother had become. But she couldn't. And the fear that magic would warp him as it had his mother was ever present, in the back of her mind.
But Petunia did care. She worried for him at that school of his - though this in turn added to the old anger simmering inside of her, making it that much worse. There were times when it seemed he was doomed to repeat his mother's mistakes. But then she would get those damnable letters from his Headmaster, telling her of Harry's latest feat of heroics, and her anger would turn once again to fear. Fear of what was made possible through the use of magic, fear that the magical world was going to kill him, too. Just like it had killed his mother and father.
Her fear, her anger - they consumed her. And Harry had always taken the brunt of it. But to say that Petunia Dursley did not care for her nephew at all would have been a lie. He was, after all, her blood. Her family. The only remnant left of the Evans line - the only remnant left of her sister, aside from scattered pictures of the young girl who had adored her older sister, who had been convinced that Petunia held the answers to everything.
And now he was missing. With no way to contact Albus Dumbledore, Petunia had been left with the hard decision as to whether or not she would contact the "muggle" authorities. Ones she trusted far more than the magical ones, truth be told.
Oh, Petunia had met an Auror or two in her time. Lily had gone through Auror training, after all, as had her husband. But in all the Aurors that Petunia had met, she had found the same self righteous attitude that existed in Lily; the belief that they were always in the right, that as wizards they held within them the right to remove memories from individuals like Petunia in order to protect their own secrets. What gave them that right? Because they were wizards, they would insist whenever she asked, and then quickly dismiss her questions as childish, or argumentative. Somehow, she always came out as the bad guy in these situations; attempting to taunt and argue with wizards simply because she was not one of them. The angry sister, the jealous sister, the sister doomed to a life of remedial muggle education. That was what her sister had called it once - remedial muggle education. This, from the girl who had once been so fascinated with science and art, history and learning - who had wanted to travel the world and understand things from different culture's points of view.
But there was one other person that Petunia could contact. She still had his address; he had never moved from his parents home, according to Lily all those years ago, and it wasn't that far from her own home in Surrey. She didn't know what he did for a living, only that it was very complicated and close to chemistry, from what Lily had been willing to divulge. "You don't have to worry about it, Petunia; it's all very complicated. You're not a witch, after all - you wouldn't understand." Those words, spoken by her sister, still stung to this day.
But he was a wizard - and one whom Petunia had known since she was a child. She didn't like magic, didn't trust it, didn't want anything to do with it. But Harry was a wizard, and another wizard would know how to find him when she could not. She didn't have to like it, but she wasn't going to let her nephew die on her watch, either.