CHAPTER 28:
AU REVOIR
After a moment of standing in the doorway astonished, Petunia ushered them in. Dudley was not due back from Smeltings until later, and neither was Vernon from Grunnings. In fact, Vernon was picking Dudley up later this very afternoon.
"So…" Petunia said, looking at the two women. "Are you his new family?"
"I'm his adopted sister, Aerith Gainsborough. And this is Jenova, a friend, of sorts," Aerith said.
Jenova gave a bow and a grin that superficially looked friendly, but had the air of a vampire about to go for one's throat.
"And this is Cait Sith," Aerith said, indicating the cat in her arms. "He's a robot rather than a magical construct."
Petunia blinked. Still, compared to magic, a cat robot was, while bizarre, still normal…ish. So she went to the kitchen. "Do you take tea?" she asked, desperately trying to find solace in the act of making tea. Harry remembered the times he was made to make the tea for Petunia and Vernon. It was strange to see Petunia bustle about with the same sort of industry. In a way, he couldn't help but pity her.
"Yes, please. Milk, no sugar for me, please, while Jenova would like it dark with two sugars." Aerith smiled reassuringly.
"And what about you, Harry?" Petunia asked.
The first time that Petunia, his aunt, had ever asked him what he would like to have, Harry realised. Eventually, Harry said, "Just milk and one sugar, please."
Petunia nodded. Harry realised she had a rather resigned, even lugubrious look to her face. She had regrets, he realised with a start. And while he believed that it was too late for that sort of thing, he still felt pity towards his aunt, even regrets of his own, regrets that she had never gotten over the envy she had felt towards her sister and her magic. Regrets that they were never a true family. Regrets that they never would be. Not now.
As the kettle was put on the boil, Petunia asked, "Where did you go to, Harry? Dumbledore didn't say, only that it was far away. I would say America, judging by your sister's accent…but something tells me otherwise."
Aerith, Jenova, and Harry shared a look, before Jenova nodded. Harry then said, "Another world entirely. My magic sent me there that night. It's a long story."
"Another world…" Petunia mused as she bustled around the kitchen. Eventually, she said, "Did you know I very nearly travelled the world? I wanted to take a job with the Foreign Office, see the world from British embassies. But before I could do so, I had to take a job at Grunnings. That's how I met Vernon. Long story short, I wanted to have one thing, one thing before your mother, Harry. So I threw it all away, just to spite your mother." She gave a bleak chuckle. "Even now, it's so damned hard to speak her name. That's how much I hated her." She emitted yet another bleak chuckle, that dissolved into soft sobbing.
Aerith was on her in a moment, trying her best to comfort the older woman. As Petunia wept gently, Jenova rolled her eyes. However, Aerith said, quietly and soothingly, "That's what hate does. It corrodes the links of family, links that shouldn't be broken."
Petunia nodded, before muttering, "Anger is an acid that does more damage to the vessel containing it than anything it is poured on. Mark Twain said that(1)." The kettle whistled, and Petunia went to making the cups of tea. "I didn't truly realise it until after you left Harry, and once my anger at your escaping us faded. I realised what I had thrown away, out of spite, out of the desire to one-up Lily. I could have made up to her, by raising you in her memory…but I hated you, just as much as I did my sister." Another bleak chuckle wormed from her lips as she put the cups on a tray, and brought it to the table. "I hated a child who was incapable of hating me back. A helpless child. But I was glad, you know. Glad that Lily died in that oh-so-great magic world of hers, and I was alive. God, I was a fool. I lost my family, piece by piece. My parents…my sister…and my nephew." As she took her own cup, she said, "You're not coming back, are you? You have your own family now."
Harry nodded, as he sipped from his cup. "I have family, and friends now. Everything that I had wanted here, I have there. The things I've seen, Aunt Petunia…they make what I've seen in Hogwarts and Diagon Alley pale by comparison. Wonders and horrors both."
"Turning into quite the poet, are you?" Petunia said with a rueful chuckle.
"It's probably my influence," Jenova said with a smile. "My flair for the melodramatic is rubbing off on him. On our world, he's been to space, and to deep within the Planet. He's fought, yes, fought, against beings that make Voldemort look like an insect, not least of which is my own magnificent self."
Petunia blinked in bemusement at the blonde-haired woman. Aerith said, "It's a long story. The short version is, Jenova was a foe before she became a friend."
Petunia blinked again, before saying, "I don't know what's more unbelievable: that, or the fact that anyone would refer to themselves as 'magnificent'."
Jenova smirked, while she sipped her tea. "Like I said, I have a flair for the melodramatic."
They caught up during that tea, albeit in a somewhat uncomfortable and awkward manner. Not that there was much in the way of news from Petunia, save for Dudley going to Smeltings, the alma mater of Vernon Dursley. Harry gave an abridged version of his travels and battles on the Planet, deciding not to tell Petunia about Hogwarts. No need to rouse her jealousy more than it already had been. Not that she should be jealous of undergoing more than one near-death experience, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
It was…strange. Despite the awkwardness of coming back here, it also felt almost normal. As if Petunia was trying to be the aunt that she was meant to be, or at least a decent one. Harry couldn't forget her mental abuse, though, nor the occasional whack with a frying pan.
Surprisingly, Petunia seemed quite taken with Cait Sith. Knowing he was a robot, and not a magical thing, seemed to make her more accepting of the cat toy.
She even asked to see the Materia that they had with them. She rolled a Restore Materia around in her hands. "So, anyone can use it, as long as they have some small magical ability?"
Jenova nodded, before suddenly taking a knife and stabbing herself in the hand. Petunia's mouth was open in a silent shriek of understandable alarm. "For Minerva's sake, Jenova, did you have to?!" Aerith demanded, while Harry facepalmed.
"Practical demonstrations work best. Petunia, you may stop gaping and try healing that. I can heal it myself, but you can try."
Petunia calmed herself with a monumental effort, before she touched the Materia and concentrated. With a strange musical noise, green energy suffused Jenova's self-inflicted wound, closing it. "I did magic," she murmured, almost in wonder.
"Indeed." Smoke seemed to waft off the knife and tablecloth, and the bloodstains were gone. "Sorry, just getting rid of my cells. Now all your knife needs is a clean in the sink or dishwasher."
Petunia blinked at the blonde-haired woman, before gingerly handing the Restore Materia back to Aerith. "You are a freak," she said to Jenova. The tone wasn't a vicious one, like she would use when using the same term on Harry, but rather, a bleak, even scared tone.
Jenova merely grinned. "Thank you. I am also a bitch, a monster, and, for want of a better term, a goddess. Plenty of adjectives could apply to me." Her eyes narrowed. "Just as many could be applied to you. I saw Harry's memories. I…"
"Jenova," Harry said quietly. His gaze then flickered over to Petunia.
"You must despise me," Petunia said.
"Yes. But not as much as you must've despised me," Harry said. "I came here to bury the hatchet, and with it, the past. I'm not here to wreak revenge. I'm not sure I can forgive you, at least not yet. But I'm not going to hang onto my anger and hate, not if I can help it. I have everything I ever wanted: family, and friends. Maybe not by blood, but they're family."
Petunia nodded, before taking the now-empty teacups, and taking them back to the kitchen. As she began cleaning them, Aerith then spoke.
"You don't have to stay here, you know. Back home, on the Planet, you can use magic, with Materia. We can take you and your family."
Harry knew this was coming. Aerith had discussed it with him, and while not happy, he also knew that Aerith pitied Petunia, and had a more forgiving nature than he did. And to be fair, he pitied his aunt as well.
Petunia turned and stared at Aerith. Eventually, she asked, "Why would you do such a thing?"
"You wanted wonder in your life. I'm offering it. Your husband manages a drill company. Back home, there's an entire city being demolished and rebuilt. And we have many schools for your son."
Petunia considered it, for a few seconds, before she shook her head with a resigned, sad expression. "No, thank you. Your offer is…kind, and more than what I…deserve. But…my husband…he's very set in his ways. Obssessed with normality, with mundanity. Or what he thinks it is. He wouldn't understand. He wouldn't care. No, Miss Gainsborough, I have to decline your generous offer."
From there, little was said, save for inanities and banalities. They made small talk, before they finally decided to depart for the Burrow once more. Before he left, Harry, slightly reluctantly, hugged his aunt, knowing it would probably be the last time he would talk to her. And she knew this as well. She returned the embrace. Probably the first, last, and only time the two had any physical sign of affection.
He also thanked her for the photo she had sent over Christmas. The two exchanged niceties, and parted, Harry, Aerith, Jenova, and Cait Sith preparing to use the Knight Bus to head back to Ottery St Catchpole. Petunia watched them, wondering if she had made the right decision.
Not that that mattered anymore.
Rufus stared at the report in his hand, before he looked up at Reeve. "Are you sure this is correct?"
Reeve nodded. "You asked me to search for Scarlet and Heidegger's old files. Thankfully, Lucrezia was a big help, as Hojo also had some old files, and she remembered some of his old passwords. Given the handover in leadership between you and your father being so sudden, that's probably why you weren't briefed. And I'd also bet, given that Scarlet tried to topple you, she was keeping this card close to her chest. Had things gone differently, she might have decided to use them, but I'd say between Sephiroth and the Weapons…"
Rufus scoffed quietly. "Well, it's a good thing she didn't get to use them. What's the status of the excavation in the relevant areas?"
"Slow, but the area is relatively safe. I've taken the liberty of moving an excavation team to that area. They only await your order to begin."
Rufus nodded. "We'll wait until Aerith, Jenova, and Harry are back from Earth. As much as I hate to admit it, they're amongst our heaviest hitters. We may need them. If we're unlucky, we have a threat that will be a pain to deal with. But if we are lucky, we may just have what we need, if Sephiroth comes back. We badly need people who could go up against Sephiroth, Reeve."
Reeve gave a brief nod. "Very well. By the way, Lucrezia has given her agreement to be your chief scientific officer. And she's agreed to her new assistant, Doctor Rui."
Rufus smiled. It had taken some time, but they managed to track down the elusive Shalua Rui. A brilliant prosthetics engineer, she had once joined AVALANCHE, the very same version Rufus himself had funded, until she had enough of their extremism (this being the version Fuhito had led). She had also created Barrett's distinctive gun-arm(2). She was reluctant to work for Shinra, considering that they were the very same organisation who had conscripted her sister, Shelke, but Rufus had managed to persuade her that his intentions for Shinra were now very different. He also offered what resources he could spare (admittedly few) to finding any trace of her sister.
Speaking of which… "By the way, does Dr Rui know of our discovery?"
"I thought it prudent to notify you first, sir."
"A wise decision. I will tell her myself, Reeve. If we are very fortunate, then I think we will be seeing a little family reunion…"
CHAPTER 28 ANNOTATIONS:
So, Harry and Petunia 'reconcile', so to speak, and Rufus and Reeve are up to something. And I'm sure many of you can guess what that something is. For those of you who can't guess, never fear, all will be revealed in the next chapter.
1. A quote I mentioned in Harry Potter and the Cetra Heritage as well.
2. According to the Final Fantasy Wiki, anyway.
CHAPTER 28 SOUNDTRACK:
A Bittersweet Parting: The Heady Feeling of Freedom, from Neon Genesis Evangelion, composed by Shirou Sagisu