Petunia hastily glanced around to make sure that the hall was empty. She then carefully cracked open the door and slipped though, cautiously closing it once she was inside. The room was cluttered, even though Lily hadn’t been in it for over a month, and there were several piles of rubbish and old outgrown clothing scattered all across the rug.

The bookshelf was emptier than Petunia had ever seen it, and only a handful of books sat on the shelves. Petunia wiped the dust off a book’s spine with her finger and stared at the gold embossed title: The Standard Book of Spells: Grade One. She remembered this one. Lily had got it when she had first learned about magic. Petunia remembered stealing it and reading the whole thing from cover to cover, trying to make herself learn magic. She had even laboriously crafted her own wand out of a tree branch and had spent every hour when she was certainly alone pointing it at objects, trying to make them fly. After the headmaster had refused to let her attend Hogwarts, she had given it up as stupid.

Also on the shelf were several framed photographs. Petunia examined them. Last time she had seen them, all of them had been of her and Lily. Now there was only one of them, and it was so far back that she had to shift the others to see it. All the photographs in the front now moved, like videos without sound. Half of them contained the same boy with scruffy black hair. Petunia pretended not to know his name, but it kept poking to the surface. Lily hadn’t stopped talking about him while she was visiting over the Christmas holidays. In one picture, he had his arm around Lily, and both were waving at the camera. In another, they were both sitting with their feet in a lake. Lily was giggling as he tried to put a daisy in her hair.

Petunia wiggled the desk drawer open, revealing a broken quill, a bottle of dried up ink, and a small pile of papers. The top one was, unsurprisingly, a letter from James--- No, the scruffy-haired boy, she reminded herself. The letter was short, only a few sentences, asking if Lily would meet him in Diagon Alley. Underneath the letter were two paper aeroplanes. On one, the creases were perfectly pressed, and Petunia’s name was neatly printed in purple and underlined with yellow stars. Petunia looked at them, surprised, and then picked up the second aeroplane and ran her fingers over the crumpled wing, on which Lily’s name was messily scrawled in crayon and underlined with sloppy imitations of Petunia’s stars. Petunia’s lips began to move into a grin, but a moment later the smile left her face and she closed the aeroplanes into the desk drawer.

The bed looked the same as it had looked for as long as she could remember. The patchwork quilt covering it was carelessly pulled up over the pillows. Petunia ran her hand over the bright cotton patches that she had cautiously put together during the quilting classes her mother had signed her up for. Her eyes picked out the pink patches printed with strawberries next to the squares covered in sunshine yellow butterflies. She remembered carefully wrapping it and proudly presenting it to Lily for her tenth birthday. Lily had been thrilled and had immediately replaced her old bedspread with the quilt.

The doorbell rang, bringing Petunia’s mind back to the present. She moved the photograph of herself and Lily to the front of the shelf, and then left the room after slipping the door shut behind her.

“Petunia,� her mother called up the stairs. “Lily’s arrived. Why don’t you come down to greet her?� Petunia blushed at being ordered around like a child and crept down the stairs as slowly and as quietly as possible. Her mother was putting a bouquet of flowers that Lily had brought in a vase, and her father was shaking hands with the boy that Lily was clearly infatuated with. He wasn’t any better looking than he’d appeared to be in the photographs in Lily’s room, and he certainly didn’t seem as wonderful as Lily had said. He didn’t even look like he knew what a comb was, Petunia observed scornfully. Nobody else seemed to care, though. But she’d known that her parents were delusional when it came to magic, and Lily had never cared much about hygiene; after all, she’d been attached at the hip to that Snape boy for entire summers. The boy, who had been eying her curiously for about a minute, quickly turned his attention back to Lily once he noticed Petunia glaring at him.

“Petunia.� Lily smiled once she noticed her sister’s presence. Petunia noted that her name wasn’t said with the same excitement as it had been before. This upset her, although she wasn’t certain why. She didn’t want the admiration of a weirdo.

“Hello,� Petunia acknowledged Lily’s greeting coolly. The smile that had lingered on Lily’s face disappeared momentarily. Every time Petunia had ended Lily’s attempts conversation, there was always a trace of sadness in Lily’s face. But now, Lily didn’t seem upset at all. This confused and somehow disappointed Petunia. Now the look of adoration, which had been directed at Petunia for most of her life, was directed at James Potter. It didn’t seem fair at all. She’d known Lily for her entire life, and now a boy who Lily had been able to stand for a matter of months had taken her place.

All through dinner, Petunia felt upset every time Lily or the untidy boy spoke. Their parents were delighted with him, and ignored the fact that he was taking Petunia’s place both in the dinner table conversation and in Lily’s eyes. Not that she cared, of course.