Case FIle 5: Ashes Ashes We All Fall Down.

Friday, 1969, January the 31st

Evan's Residence

Perhaps there really was something broken inside of Petunia Evans.

Still sprawled on the ugly threadbare rug of the bedroom floor Sasha stared and stared and stared at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes as if waiting for the rising sun would reveal answers on its water stained surface. Perhaps Sasha really wasn't Sasha at all. Maybe Just like Gregory and Carol said she was instead this terrible, awful, non-magical, horse faced wreck of a child.

Maybe up was now really down and the world belonged inside out. She could slit her bruised aching belly and the blood would float instead of fall to the floorboards.

It no longer mattered. Nothing mattered.

She was Petunia.

Just Petunia. Boring, plain, MUGGLE-

At the break of dawn, the sun dying her bedroom red, Sasha found that she could cry more after all.

Friday, 1969, January the 31st

Continued

Petunia's sparse bedroom was flooded with sunlight. Still limp on the floor where she had sprawled herself the night before Sasha tried to work up the energy to move. Would anyone care if she sank through the floorboards and disappeared? Carol might. The woman was drowning but steadfast in holding onto her breaking child. Gregory… the days passed and he seemed to weather each sighting of her as if preparing for a battle already lost but that he couldn't give up completely.

Her pale fingers dragged across her still arching middle and relished in the deep throbbing pain. It silenced the demons rattling around inside her overtired brain.

And then there was Lily.

A knot formed inside Sasha's stomach and she had to grit her teeth against the sudden urge to scream until the window shattered. Rolling to her side, she focused on the pattern of the rug under her cheek and began to count. It was the latest therapist's advice.

Breathe in 4.

Part anger, mostly resentment, and a smidgen of guilt. It wiggled and writhed until she felt like vomiting. Little Lily Evans who tried to smile through her tears and came into Sasha's stratosphere time after time no matter the abuse hurled at her.

Hold 7.

Sasha resented her most of all. While Petunia's parents seemed desperate to fix her Lily just did her best to love her. That hurt more than it helped. It was like looking into a mirror and seeing everything that you lack. Every ugly broken piece glittering under her light.

It was so easy to see how Petunia Dursley came to hate her sister.

And yet… and yet.

Breath out 8.

It wasn't disappointing Carol or Gregory Evans that finally dragged Sasha off the floor but the thought of Lilly's tears that urged Sasha's bruised and sore body up. Once standing the world spun a little and her head throbbed. Such was the perils of an hours-long crying jag. Steadfastly avoiding looking at her reflection in the mirror she crossed the cramped old bedroom to the scuffed dresser to dig out a change of clothes. Though Sasha had washed Petunia's body just the night before her skin was crawling again. Turning with tangled hair to make for the door, Sasha paused when she caught movement in the corner of her eye. Her chin tilted and Petunia looked back. Petunia Evans wasn't a pretty crier. Her eyes swollen, cheeks mottled red and purple. It was the first thing that she had come across that was even remotely familiar. Sasha Fitzgerald wasn't a pretty crier either. Ripping her attention away from the face in the mirror she looked at something lower. Staring fixedly she again, unable to stop herself, traced the lurid purple and black mark banded across her middle with one nail eye twitching and lips pulling down into a harsh frown as pain flared up behind it. It felt so real… flexing her hand she took one last swipe with shaking fingers before she turned away.

It couldn't be real… it just couldn't.

And yet.

The door shut quietly behind her.

Friday, 1969, January the 31st

Continued

The family seemed determined not to speak of yesterday's incident. In fact just that morning when Sasha stumbled out of the bedroom with tangled hair and bumped into Lily in front of the bathroom not a single word was exchanged. The girls, who were not sisters but appeared sisters, had merely met eyes and stared for the longest moment. On Sasha's side she'd felt completely out of her depth. Generally as the earliest riser in the family she was undisturbed in the mornings. She hadn't realized she'd lingered so long in her room that someone else would be awake far before her. Silently the blonde had agonized while waiting for the inevitable too cheerful redhead to bubble up and flutter off into an incessant string of chatter. Perhaps she would demand answers from Sasha, wanting to know how she knew that it was Lily that saved her. How she could have possibly guessed what was going on.

But it didn't happen and the silence became more and more awkward.

Then Lily gave a strained nervous little smile, gently reached forward to squeeze Sasha's hand for a short moment, tucked her chin, and headed around Sasha's stiff form and towards the stairs without a word. Down to where surely Carol would be waiting with piping hot, and probably questionable tasting, breakfast. For if Lily was already awake, then so was the rest of the household. Worn out and feeling strangely defeated Sasha just sighed and scrubbed a pale hand across her red rimmed eyes. Her stomach was still sore with bruising and her back was now aching just as fiercely. So she closed herself into the shower room, hoping to soak away the ache in her spine from spending the night on the hard floor and perhaps help her throbbing middle as well.

The rest of the morning continued just as awkwardly.

When Sasha appeared in the dining room doorway in a dingy yellow long sleeved day dress and still damp hair, Carol leapt to her feet as if the seat was suddenly on fire and bustled around the table refilling juice. Lily fidgeted in the seat next to where Sasha hesitantly joined, and Gregory Evans became very interested in burying himself behind the morning paper at the head of the old but serviceable table that took up seventy-five percent of the tiny dining room.

The front page drew Sasha's attention, it wasn't often colored photos were used in the paper and so she took a moment away from her musings to examine it thoughtfully. It was plastered with a headline about the Beatles having a controversial concert atop a London building roof. The colored photo showed the band huddled but determined to play despite the fierce chilling winds. Sasha was pretty sure at least one of the band members' fur coat was supposed to be for a female. It fit him rather poorly. The paper rustled as Mr Evans moved to turn his page and the picture moved out of view. Dropping her eyes back to her plate Sasha forked a bite of soggy eggs to her mouth and tried not to wince when she crunched down on the shell that had mixed in. It was an unpleasant return to this so-called reality.

Stay at home wife she may be but master chef Carol Evans was not. Her talents lay more in cleaning and other household management. Give the woman a stained sweater and she'll have it looking brand new. Dust bunnies? Quailed before her ancient hoover vacuum. Clothing with holes never stood a chance under her expert needles. But give the woman a frying pan and the Evans family would suffer.

It was not exactly inedible. Mostly it would just taste slightly burnt or unseasoned. It rarely made any of them sick but on the rare occasions that the food was completely unpalatable Gregory would later sneak the girls down stairs with a wink and feed them pizza once Carol tucked off to bed or went out to run errands. Sasha lived for those days. Messy pizza was the closest she ever got to american food. Stabbing another bite of eggs, shell and all, the blonde child brought it to her mouth grimly. Sasha hated British cuisine with a passion. It wasn't bad per say but dear god was it plain compared to what she was used to. Even the junk food sucked. Not that much of it was allowed in the house. The Evans family was not dirt poor, but they were just skimming the line.

Sitting the pitcher of orange juice down in the middle of the table Carol carefully tucked her starched skirt against her legs and sat across from her husband.

"School is out again today. Mrs Morfin called 'round early this morning to let us know. The heating is still not working to city standards."

Sasha made a disgruntled face sour enough that the wilted center piece seemed to darken on the spot in its glass vase.

Mrs Morfin was the school's gargoyle-like headmistress. Sasha was more familiar with that woman's office than she'd like. When people think you are crazy you either get bullied or ignored and that was enough to mark you as a troublemaker in Euphesta Morfin's book. She'd taken one look at Sasha and wrote her off as something to be pitied true but at a distance and preferably through thick asylum thick viewing glass. Sasha very much wanted to set the woman's ugly curled wig on fire. The dislike was entirely mutual. In hindsight saying so to the Headmistress's face was not her most brilliant move, but in face of unfair judgment or not asked for condescending pity Sasha found that with her tiny and powerless child's body that sarcasm and biting wit were often her only weapons.

Sasha was pulled out of her ruminations as Carol continued to speak.

"As such you girls can help me with chores around the house this morning."

Gross. Sasha debated locking herself away up in Petunia's bedroom for all of a few seconds. Then she remembered that none of the doors in the house had locks anymore. Ah well. Cleaning was better than school anyway. Besides that maybe the physical labor would help distract her from the downward spiral her brain was attempting again today. Like a flower picking petals in a field. Petunia, not Petunia, Petunia…

Sasha doubled down and tried to drown her woes in badly prepared scrambled eggs.

Friday, 1969, January the 31st

Continued

The cleaning did help. At least at first. Gregory kissed his wife and left for work shortly after breakfast and the women of the Evans household started from the top down. Bedroom floors swept, dust bunnies and lost socks chased then fetched out from under beds. Mopped within an inch of their lives, the floors almost gleamed like new. Beds were stripped down and the linese shoved into the washing room in the back corner of the downstairs hall where Carol began vigil with her knitting needles as sometimes the washer tried to leak. The two sisters were sent into separate rooms to work. Lily was assigned the cramped living room with duster in hand while Sasha was sternly directed to the kitchen.

Alone after a good few hours of actual busy work, doing the dishes was not conducive to keeping her distracted.

Resignation, despair, a lingering denial that clung so very hard to every cracked inch of her. Magic. Lily was magic and Sasha was a foible in a tragic coming of age storybook. The evil terrible aunt who shriveled into a bitter old woman, who married a walrus of a man, had a pig with marbles as brains for a son and was hated across the entire world. No one in Sasha's old life who read the stories liked Petunia Dursley. The only woman more hated in the entire series was Dolores Umbridge…which really brought to light how very bleak her standards had gotten.

Not thank god I'm alive, or thank goodness I wasn't thrown into the body of a pigeon! No, it was, Thank fuck I'm not Dolores UMBRIDGE.

Was it wrong of her that it wasn't a comfort? Was it selfish that she still wished she could be anyone else? Was it awful that Sasha would rather be Dolores Umbridge? Ugly, simpering, and evil, yes…But she had magic.

And Sasha wasn't sure what to do with the fact that magic existed but would remain always out of her reach. She wanted to be anyone but Petunia Evans. She wanted to be herself again. She was beginning to believe that might be an impossible wish.

Continuing to hold onto Sasha Fitzgerald, to the plain but passably pretty when polished, almost 30 year old American woman with her brown hair more frizz than wave and wide hazel flecked green eyes…was breaking her.

Every time she clung, the cracks inside crumbled and fell away into a dark yawning pit. Everytime she clung Sasha could feel herself slip just a bit further toward a sheer drop into madness.

Yes. The issue was…how much could she allow herself to crack. Crack after crack until nothing else remained but an empty doll.

Something had to give.

Sasha was terrified that it would be her very self.

The radio turned over a new song and Lily began to sing loudly in a slight wobbly but in tune pretty soprano.

Sashas hands slowed as they scrubbed the dishes until the plate slipped from her numb soapy fingers and she thought of Lily. The plate landed back in the sink with a wet flop and Sasha stared long and hard at the soap bubbles clinging to her damp hands. Bright and happy bubbles that popped and slid off her skin to land in the murky water.

Like Lily the bubbly little girl singing in the room next door.

Stop it

Lily who would die begging for not herself but her son.

Dont think about it!

Her son. Little orphan Harry Potter. Whom Petunia Dursely neglected so horribly he had trouble learning a patronus. Not simply because he had limited happy memories. But because he was so starved for love in his Aunt and Uncle's house that hearing Lily and James Potter's voices on the night they were murdered was all he had of them besides a small little scrapbook of pictures.

Was any of this real or was it all a story book?

Would she have to play the part of that Petunia? Marry Dursley and pop out his disgusting pig of a son and sneer at the neighbors?

Her chest was too tight.

Forced to raise and abuse an innocent child.

Sashas hands shook hard as she tried to scrape the bubbles off her hands.

Lily's 13 year old broken little boy that fainted to his mothers screams and longed for her.

She was that ugly and bitter Petunia Evans.

Sasha heaved with a loud wretch into the sink. As her body convulsed, contaminating the dishwater, Carol cried out from her vigil, came darting through the few feet in the hall to the right of the kitchen doorway and tried to pull the gangly blonde away from the sink and support her collapsing weight before the child could accidentally bash her head into the sink. Panicked Sasha clung desperately to the edge and refused to be moved. Not because she was worried about ruining the fresh scrubbed floor but because she was scared. If her hands let go she felt like she would fall. Fall fall fall down into a deep well of despair just waiting for Sasha to give up and accept her fate.

Bile sharp on her tongue, and her frail body trembling as she continued to throw up the remainder of her breakfast, Sasha listened to Carol's frantic questions of what was wrong and Lily's worried cries coming closer to see what had happened.

Yes. Sasha Fitzgerald was slipping away, there was no place in the Harry Potter universe for someone like her… and it was terrifying.

Saturday, 1969, February the 1st
Evans Residence

"Lily… I'm sorry. Will you please come out?"

So far it was only a few hours into a new day and already Sasha was done. Laying on the floor outside Lily's closed bedroom with her feet propped up on the wall because fuck it was narrow, the blonde child tried once more to coax the redhead hiding inside to come out.

Her entreaty to the depressed child on the other side was summarily ignored. The only reason Sasha knew the kid was awake and ignoring her was that the wooden door isn't thick enough to hide the sound of her badly muffled crying. There wasn't a lock on the door so just barging in was an idea the now blonde briefly flirted with but only fleetingly. After all it was her fault this whole debacle started. If the kid wanted privacy for her misery, who was Sasha to deny her?

Brightside to the downward spiral she'd had on Friday was… hm… there wasn't one. Moving on. The downslide snowball effect that was her life continued. In throwing up all over the kitchen she had vomited all over her dress. Which was then stripped from her in the bathroom and revealed her bruised stomach to Carol. Who then flipped a lid and yelled at... Lily?

It happened downstairs while she was sitting in the bottom of the shower debating if she really was okay with drinking the kool aid and being Petunia or if possibly living in denial the rest of a human lifespan would come out with her intact on the other side, so it was all pretty muffled, but the general gist of the matter was something along the lines of how Carol had known something was wrong the other day when they came home from the park and "How could you not say something if your sister got hurt, Lily?"

Which led to a lot of tears and guilt from the redhead and the child got grounded for lying that everything was fine. Thus Lily who, despite all reservations and identity crisis issues aside, was the only one she could really stand in the house wasn't talking to her now. Whoopie.

Sighing softly, Sasha settled her folded hands behind her head and began walking her feet up and down the wall out of sheer boredom. She could just abandon her vigil and go do something else but felt that might be adding insult to injury.

Speaking of inquiry and insults. Since neither girl had come clean with what really happened to Gregory or Carols satisfaction there was also another doctor's appointment in her future now to make sure the bruising wasn't anything serious and or possibly related to side effects of her medicine. Which… Sasha knew it wasn't because not only was she aware of what caused it but because she hadn't been taking the medicine for months now. Neither of which were things that she could admit to without blowing things even farther into drama land than they already were. Why not may you ask? Well… the truth so far in this totally screwed up dream world, possibly reality, had gotten her diagnosed with a mental disorder and labeled as a crazy person. Not exactly a glowing review of using honesty. Granted, saying you weren't someone's daughter while you are in said daughter's body did sound pretty crazy. Which Sasha- maybe Petunia but if she was fuck because its Petunia - wasn't even sure was the truth anymore. Maybe she was cracked and actually eleven years old.

…gross.

Moving on. So how would any person react if said crazy child then told you "Hey the redhead saved me from cracking my fool head open with her super secret magic powers so that's why my stomach is all bruised and by the way yes I am off my meds so it can't be those either"?

It really did check out for Sasha's- Petunia's? Fuck it - HER luck that the moment she finally started possibly coming to terms with 'Shit this all might all be real' that she'd already shot herself in the foot. Being saddled as mentally ill wasn't exactly a hole she could crawl out of. It's not something that can be cured. It's managed.

Which okay she could deal with. The part that really sucked now is that pretty much ANYTHING she said now would be tallied up to being crazy. "I can see the future so maybe don't marry the schools top hot sports star Lily you'll birth the chosen one and be murdered by his crib"

Or

"Hi James my names Petunia, you dont know me but, that kid over there will grow up to be a psychopath who sells you out to an evil dark lord and frames your best friend so maybe don't trust the rat bastard."

Or her personal favorite

"Just…You suck Dumbles, do better because holy shit."

Because that would go over so well.

Maybe if she'd been born magical she could somehow fake being a seer of some kind but nooo… actually that might be kind of funny to do anyway.

It was as she was fantasizing about trolling everyone of the magical world with dazzling bullshit that the door finally opened. Lily let out a little squeak of surprise when she saw the messy blonde sprawled across her doorway. Lolling her head to one side Sasha peered back up at the red head and tried not to feel too pissy at what she found.

Lily Evans was a pretty crier.

Cosmic justice 3478 Sasha: 0

"...you suck" Lily's voice honked out funny around her stuffy nose so perhaps a bit of karma still loved Sasha somewhere.

"I suck." the blonde agreed dryly.

Lily's lips wobbled. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

Sasha shrugged awkwardly from her still prone position on the floor at her maybe but maybe not sister's feet. "I didn't mean to get you grounded either."

Lily shifted from foot to foot. Before speaking again slowly.

"We both suck?"

Sasha considered the ceiling as well as the redheads question thoughtfully before nodding

"We both definitely suck"

A hesitant smile broke out across Lily Evan's face.

"Okay." She sniffed delicately and batted her prettily dewy eyelashes and Sasha despaired of growing up not only a second time but as the ugly sister. "I have to pee and you're in the way."

Sasha scrunched and winced when it pinched her bruise but managed to shuffle until her child body was perpendicular to the door instead of parallel so Lily could slip past to the bathroom but the other girl dithered a moment longer in the doorway.

"What are you doing on the floor?"

Sasha grunted and tried to shift so that the floor would perhaps stop trying to masticate her spine

"Contemplating the meaning of life and existence itself."

"Oh. Okay." Another short silence "When I get back, wanna do that in my room on the bed instead?"

Fucking gods yes she did.

"Sure," her bones actually creaked as she tried to roll into a situp to stand. Lily snickered at Sasha's contorted face as she finally moved out of the doorway to go to the toilet. "Don't forget to wash your damn hands brat!"

"Kay!"

They spent the rest of the day laying side by side on Lily's bed pointing out funny shapes in the stained ceiling.

And for once the hold in Sasha's chest that always seemed to try and swallow her whole…ached just a little less.

TBC...

Authors Note: Know who else sucks? Me. At updating. HAHaHahahaa... my apologies. I'm trash and this chapter was rewritten and scrapped like 16 times. I finally just started typing got tired of the angsty and tried my hand at a realistic turn around. So shes dealing finally. Kinda. Shes not okay and will back slide probably as most with mental health issues do. But more funny morbid stuff ahead. Hopefully...

For those curious ffn wont let us link anything but if you all wanna see a beautiful piece I commissioned from a good friend of an adult Petunia head over to Archive of out Own and look at the bottom of chapter five. Same story title and user name over there. I also set it as the cover photo for this story but sometimes that doesnt show lol
Here's to hoping my writers muse doesnt get pissed at me for over a year all over again... until next time.

As always reviews fuel a writers love for writing!;)

TTFN