Chapter 3
The Fight Home
Slamming the car door shut, Petunia crossed her arms in front of her and waited for more leisurely-paced parents. The vinyl seats were hot against her bare legs. The seatbelt buckle burned like a white-hot piece of coal and the early afternoon sun seemed magnified through the car windows. Petunia told herself that this was the reason her face felt so hot. And although it made no sense, she also told herself it was the reason her eyes were burning and she found her breath catching.
Finally, her parents stepped into the car with her. Petunia was able to ignore her own discomfort enough to force a straight face for their presence. But while no one in the family flat-out said anything was wrong, Petunia couldn’t help but feel something was off. From the time her father put the car into drive, no one inside the cab said a word. Her father stared out the windshield, a grim expression on his face, while her mother kept her gaze forward, but almost didn’t seem to be seeing anything in front of her. Neither of them had even bothered to turn on the radio.
Desperate to distracted herself from what was accruing inside the car, Petunia turned her attention to outside the window. Her eyes darted back and forth as they drove through villages, fields, over rivers, more fields, and still more fields.
“STOP!”
Petunia flew forward, the seatbelt cutting across her, as her father slammed on the brakes.
“Lydia!” he turned to her mother, anxious to learn what was wrong. “What is it?”
“The stationary!” Petunia’s mother gasped. “The stationary I bought for Lily. I never gave it to her!”
It was clear that Petunia’s father did not believe this warranted the emergency stop, but he tried to humor his wife. “Well, you can just give it to her when she comes home for Christmas. It can be a ‘Welcome Home’ present’.”
“She can’t go that long without it!”
“It’s paper, Lydia. It’s not going to go bad.”
Petunia, strapped to her seat, could not believe what she was seeing. Her mother had always been a calm, even-tempered woman. Certainly not the type to go into a panic over a set of paper. What was happening?
“But what is she going to write letters home on?”
“I’m sure that that the school will have plenty of paper for her to use.”
“But I already wrote our home address on the envelopes-”
“Lily knows her own address, Lydia!”
“Oh, Lord! Why did we ever agree to this?” Petunia watched as her mother teetered on the verge of tears. “We’ve never been to this school, we don’t know where it is! We don’t know who Lily’s teachers are or what they’ll be teaching her for that matter. She only eleven for God’s sake, and we just left here there with no-”
“SHUT UP!” Petunia screeched at the top of her lungs.
Both her parents stared back at her, flabbergasted. Normally, one of the girls talking back to their parents like that would have been met with the harshest of consequences, but today Petunia didn’t care. She was sick of hearing her parents go on and on about Lily. Wasn’t it enough that Lily’s school, Lily’s books, and Lily, Lily, Lily was all the family had been talking about all summer? Did they really need to still be talking about her now that she was gone?
Petunia glared back at her parents, holding herself much like a snake ready to strike. It didn’t matter what her parents said to chastise her, she just couldn’t stand all this fussing over her little sister.
“Lily’s going to have a half dozen teachers watching her every move, every day,” Petunia ranted on. “She’s had her nose in those witch books ever since she got them and she has that Snape boy to tell her anything she doesn’t already know. And Lily is not the first person that school has ever had who came from a normal family. Nothing’s going to happen to her!”
The car was dead silent, save for Petunia’s gasping breath. It was almost like the calm that occurred before every storm. But whatever Petunia had been expecting to happen, it was nothing close to what actually happened.
“Lily will be fine,” her father assured her mother as he shifted the car back into drive and continued forward.
Then Petunia heard her mother sigh, sounding almost content. “Yes, she will. I suppose I’m just starting to get some of those empty-nest feelings.”
Petunia was shocked. Empty nest? She was still here, wasn’t she? Even when Lily was gone, she still commanded the majority of the parental attention.
But what her mother said next shocked, and angered, Petunia the most.
“Thank you, Petunia, for putting things in perspective.”
Petunia shut off the vacuum cleaner and rolled it out into the hallway for her mother to use. With the door shut, she set to work on straighten the stuffed animals that she had throw from the floor up onto the freshly-made bed. It was so typical that Lily would leave home for a year and leave a giant mess of their room that Petunia would have to clean up all by herself. But maybe now that Petunia would be the only one living in the room, it would stay clean for more than a day.
Ever since the family got home, Petunia had been working on the bedroom that she and Lily had once shared. Petunia didn’t know what her parents had been doing since they got back to the house, but they hadn’t been bothering her, and that was all that mattered to her. She wanted a steady stream of work for what she was doing: making the beds, lining Lily’s animals in a straight row under her bed, taking the dirty white socks and other assorted clothing down to the laundry room, and moving all the pens, papers, and everything else on Lily’s desk that she hadn’t taken with her into the drawers. It was almost as if in cleaning the bedroom so thoroughly, she was removing every trace that Lily had ever lived there.
Petunia sprayed move wood polished and scrubbed at the surface of the desk, trying to get rid of the daisy Lily had drawn into the wood. The black ink smeared into the grain until it blended to the point where at a quick glance, anyone else would have even noticed it. She might have considered her work on the desk done if it hadn’t been for the piece of yellowed paper sticking out from between two books on the shelf, crumpled and wrinkled.
Even before Petunia pulled it from the shelf, she knew exactly what it was. It was the letter she had received little more than a week ago. The one that had explained exactly why she wouldn’t be able to attend school with Lily, in vivid detail.
On an intellectual level, Petunia knew she should just throw the letter away. Despite the fact that it was written by a wizard, it wouldn’t say anything different than it had the first time she had read it, and by opening it again, it would only be a form of self-inflicted punishment for something that was purely not her fault. Still, all these thoughts did not stop Petunia from unfolding the letter and once again scanned over the neatly written script and allowing the razor-thin paper to slice through her.
Dear Petunia Evans,
Thank you for writing to me. I do, in fact, remember you. You slammed the door in my face when I asked to speak to your sister. But don’t worry, I harbor no ill will. I also remember how protective you were of Lily and Professor McGonagall has told me that on the trip to Diagon Alley, it was Lily who first suggested that you may be a witch who simply hasn’t show her powers yet. It is clear that you two are very close and I understand why you have such an insistent desire to attend Hogwarts.
Unfortunately, however, I am afraid I cannot offer you a spot at Hogwarts. While it is true that a Muggle family with one magical child born to them is all the more likely to have a second child with magic, you are not the case. The reason we are able to find our Muggleborn students is because of a magical quill in our school’s possession that detects and records the births of all British-born magical children. Once a year, our deputy headmistress checks the list of recorded names and sends letters of acceptance to all those names she finds. I have rechecked the list of names for your age group myself and your name was not among them. And as compelling as your evidence and well thought-out as your letter and your diary were, I trust that if you were indeed a witch, you would have received a letter when you were eleven, just like all young witches and wizard.
But although you yourself may not be a witch, the fact that your sister is one does by extension make you more special than most Muggles are. Many Muggles go through their lives never knowing that magic exists. They reside in a shadow of ignorance for all of their days, never knowing of the second world residing right beside them. You, however, are different. You have the unique opportunity of having one foot in the Muggle world and the other in the wizarding one. This could help to provide you with many opportunities in the future to act as a liaison, both officially and unofficially, between the two worlds. Who knows? Maybe one day you will come to Diagon Alley with your children or even your grandchildren to buy school supplies for their first year. And those children will be incredibly lucky, because they will have you to guide them through it.
The magical world will have a lot of opportunities to offer you, Petunia Evans. But I’m sorry that being a student at Hogwarts will simply not be one of them.
Best Wishes,
Albus Dumbledore
By the time Petunia had finished reading the letter for a second time, her eyes were not only burning, they were filling with tears that were beginning to plop onto the paper. In a flood of emotions that Petunia couldn’t even distinguish, she tore the letter into ragged pieces. The tears continued to pour down her face as she clenched the fragments in her fists. She didn’t want to throw them into the waste basket; she didn’t want them anywhere near her house. Finally, she rushed to the window, fingers fumbling with the lock, and she thrust her hands out into the open air, shaking them to get every last fragment away from her. The pieces of the letter rested still on the thick, humid air for just a moment, before the not wind carried them off to the North, effectively removing any trace that a girl named Lily Evans or her newfound world ever existed.
Then, Petunia feel to her own bed and cried. She could not be sure if she was crying out of anger, disappointment, embarrassment, or purely out of sadness that her sister was gone. Not only gone, but had made sure that before she left, she had risen Petunia’s hopes only to leave it to a stranger to bring them crashing down. Maybe it was some combination of them all, some brand new emotion too complicated to be named.
“Hold on, Petunia,” her mother stopped, setting the camera down. “Your hair is sticking up in the back.”
Petunia humphed under her breath and recoiled in disgust when her mother tried to slick her hair back with her spit. This was a yearly ritual that Petunia could never force herself to enjoy. Every year, her mother would stand the girls, side by side, in the entryway, right in front of the door in their brand new school clothes and take their picture at least a dozen times, until she finally became satisfied with at least one.
“Oh, I don’t believe it,” her mother fretted as she prepared the camera. “Lily’s starting at her brand new school, and I won’t even be able to get a picture of her.”
“Well, next year the girls will just have to put on their new school clothes and take the picture before school starts,” her father replied, looking over the newspaper.
Petunia rolled her eyes. She could hardly believe that even though Lily had been gone for days, she was still the center of every conversation in the house. For as much as Lily had been spoken of, she might as well have never left at all.
“Alright, Petunia,” her mother’s face hid partially behind the large, black camera, “look at me, dear. Now, smile!”
Once again, Petunia’s forced smile appeared on her face and spots danced over her eyes as the camera flashed brightly. Several more times this was repeated until Petunia was fairly sure she was blind and would be able to tell if her picture was being taken anyway.
But even through her lack of perfect vision, Petunia could still see the shape of her father glanced down at his wrist watch with a start. “Oops, I’m going to be late for work!” he said, gulping down the last of his coffee and living his wife and daughter each with a kiss on the cheek before leaping out the front door.
“Mum, and I’m going to be late for school,” Petunia told her mother in a nagging tone. “I’m sure you have more than enough photos.”
Her mother sighed and set the camera on a nearby table. “Oh, alright. But next year, when we take the picture with your sister, you’re going to humor me for as long as need be!”
Petunia gave a noncommittal nod before opened the front door and rushing down the steps to the paved path. The sun, despite its still low position in the sky, was blocked by a heavy concrete slab of clouds covering the sky for as far as she could see. A mist lingered in the air, dampening Petunia’s clothes and her book bag and the new rubber soles of her shoes scraped irritatingly against the sidewalk.
The sky, the landscape, even the air itself seemed so much dingier than it had ever been before. Knowing that there was another world out there, one that here sister would grow up in now, made the ordinary world around her seem so gray and dull.
As Petunia came closer to the school, clusters of children began to walk beside her, although she did not stop to speak to any of them. Growing up, Petunia had never had very many of what she would consider close friends. There were people she would sit with in and class and at lunch, people she would talk to in the hallway, but never invite them to her house or go to the park or the movies. Normally, she would have Lily to do all those things with. There were so close in age, there were times they felt more like friends than sisters.
This year, Petunia knew she was going to have to be a little more social. Which might have been a tad easier if the crowds didn’t scatter as soon as she approached.
“Petunia,” an overly enthusiastic voice called out to her. “Petunia Evans!”
Petunia cringed and stepped up her pace, hoping that if she just ignored the shrill voice behind her, the owner of it would simply go away. Once she felt that boney-fingered hand on her shoulder, however, all that hope shriveled and died.
No longer able to avoid the inevitable, Petunia spun on her heels and prepared mentally for her performance. “Hello, Miss. Marcus,” Petunia greeted her former teacher through her clenched-teeth smile.
Miss. Marcus was an older teacher, Petunia’s former sixth grade teacher, who was the type to take to much interest in the personal lives of her students. As a sixth grader, when Petunia had fallen onto the sidewalk and fractured her arm bad enough to require a cast, Miss. Marcus had asked Petunia to stay after school nearly every day for a month to try and find any holes in the story she had been telling, trying to see if the fall had really been more of a push. And it wasn’t just Petunia; any student who came into class with a note in their hand, tears in their eyes, or rage in their voice, Miss. Marcus would swoop down on that student like a vulture. She seemed to be the type of person that fed on the emotional turmoil of teenage students; what allowed her to continue teaching for year after year.
Right away, the pin-curled woman began rattling on with some mundane nonsense that Petunia couldn’t have cared less about. Going through every conversation Petunia had ever had with this teacher was torture, but it had allowed Petunia to develop the finely howned skill of being able to make someone believe that she could remember every word they said verbatim, when in truth she couldn’t even have guessed what the conversation had been about.
Possibly another skill worthy of a Slytherin…
It really wasn’t as hard as so many people thought it sounded. A nod here, a non-comitial sound there, remember to keep eye contact, and always pay half attention to the facial expressions and react accordingly.
“-but where’s your little sister?” Miss Marcus asked Petunia, sparking the reflex to start paying attention to the conversation again. “Wasn’t she supposed to start secondary school this year?”
Petunia felt in lip curl into an almost-sneer against her will. Already, the vulture had swooped down on the scent of new meat. Miss Marcus didn’t need any incentive to pry into Petunia’s family life. To make things worse, this year Lily was supposed to have been in her history class. And to have her simply vanish off the class list mere weeks before the school year was supposed to start, that was certainly enough to perk the teacher’s curiosity.
“Lily’s going to a special school for gifted children,” said Petunia, reciting the story that the family had concocted and had been practicing for days. “It was a last minute acceptance, so we were surprised, but we were very excited to have her go.”
The teacher nodded, but the look in her eyes showed that this information in and of itself was not enough to satisfy her hunger. Almost immediately, she swooped down for more. “Is it a school in another town, or does she have to take the train to London everyday. Maybe I’ll still be able to see her when your family comes to conference night-”
“It’s a boarding school.”
Miss Marcus raised an eyebrow, her hunched figure leaning in further, prompting Petunia to take a few steps backwards to maintain her personal space. As good as this woman was at sniffing out potential for a scandal, she was even better at sensing where there actually was one. And it was becoming more and more clear that she was not about to let Petunia out of her site until she had gained every scrap of information there was to offer.
“Well, what is this school called?” she asked in a sugar-sweet voice, masking the true nature behind the investigation.
“I forget,” Petunia lied with an acquired ease.
“You forget?” Miss Marcus repeated skeptically. “What do you mean you forget? How could possibly not be able to name the place where your little sister will be living for over half of the year.”
Then, as though answering for her, Petunia heard the first bell ring, signally the two minute warning before the beginning of the day. There was a time Petunia might have thought that this too had been caused by magic; before she had written proof that though like that were really all that was: wishful thinking.
“I’m going to be late for math,” Petunia stated matter-of-factly, clutching her school bag to her chest, however, as though it were a shield. “Excuse me, please.”
Miss Marcus made no effort to move, eyes still boring into Petunia, so it was Petunia who had to sidestep her to be able to make her way down the hall. But no matter how far she walked, how many times she heard her shoes clap against the cheap tile floor, Petunia could still feel the eyes on the back of her head; eyes that only helped to serve as a reminder that Lily was now attending school in a castle while Petunia remained in a cheap state school in a dingy, sooty industry town.
The first several days of eighth grade passed much like every other first week of school had. In short, the left Petunia exhausted with little more energy than it took to finish her assignments and fall into bed. It fell into a routine that Petunia repeated day after day, broken abruptly by a sharp yank from the path up to her bedroom.
“Petunia!” her mother exclaimed, stopping her the moment she stepped through the door. “Where have you been?”
“School, Mum,” Petunia answered flatly.
“Well, get into the living room! We just got our first letter from Lily!”
Petunia shook her head, as though trying to shake of the remainder of her daze. On the couch, Petunia show her father was already starting reading the piece of yellowed parchment, absorbed in the written words. Running ahead of her, Petunia’s mother rushed to the couch to read over her husband’s shoulders. And finally, after a few stern glances from her mother, Petunia joined the on the couch, taking a perch on the arm and the furthest possible place to sit while still seeming interested in the latest piece of family news.
“Came by owl,” her father remarked, bemused. “Imagine that.”
“Where on earth did Lily get an owl?” gasped her mother.
“She says she borrowed one from a friend. Also hints that they make wonderful birthday gifts.”
Her parents both laughed at the amusing remark, but Petunia kept her lips pursed tight, knowing that once Lily’s birthday did come around, the would more than likely be a wrapped, moving birdcage waiting for her when she first woke up in the morning.
“Here.” Petunia’s father handed a second envelope to her. “It looks as though this letter is just for you.
Petunia snatched the letter from her father’s grasp and, taking advantage of her parents captivated attention, she snuck up the stairs and into her room. Once again, the logical part of her brain told her to just throw the letter away, yet she found herself tearing the envelope open and unfolding the letter. Maybe witches put some kind of charm over their mail so somehow, whoever they sent a letter to would have to read it.
Dear Tuney,
School has only been in session for a few days, but already so much has happened. Severus was Sorted into Slytherin, just like he thought he would, but I’m a Gryffindor. You did always say I was loud and brash, so I suppose the Sorting Hat saw all that right away.
Sev and I only have two classes together: Defense Against the Dark Arts and Potions. But we are partners in Potions, which is lucky for me since Sev is really good. I’m still learning everything, but our teacher, Professor Slughorn, seems to think I’m a natural at the art. I’m not quite sure how this made Sev feel. Charms is another class I really like. On the first day, Professor Flitwick charmed my chair to dance across the room with me still in it! What fun! Transfiguration is okay, but it’s really complicated. I have to study hard, though, because the teacher, Professor McGonagall, is the Head of my house.
Speaking of houses, I’m not sad about not being a Slytherin because Gryffindor is wonderful. I’ve made friends with most of the girls in my dormitory, and the older students are really helpful. The only thing about it I don’t like are the boys in my years, especially this one named James Potter. He’s always teasing Severus, and then he teases me for being friends with him. The Prefects say I should just ignore him or talk to Professor McGonagall if it’s really that bad. Natalie, one of my housemates, says I should learn the Engrogio Charm so I can give James Potter a REAL big head! And you know, I just might!
Of course, Sev wasn’t really completely honest with me about the houses. Remember what I said about wizards once not liking other wizards who came from Muggle families? A lot of them STILL don’t, and almost all of them live in Slytherin. And according to the older Gryffindors, there has never been a Muggleborn Sorted into Slytherin that anyone can remember. So even if either of us HAD been Sorted into Slytherin, we wouldn’t have been welcomed there. The other day, Sev and I were walking to Defense Against the Dark Arts together, and we passed one of the Slytherin Prefects, Lucius Malfoy. When we said hello to him, he called me a Mudblood and Sev turned completely white; whiter than usual. Once he was gone, I asked Sev what a Mudblood was, and he told me it was a really horrid, horrid name for someone from a Muggle family. When I reminded him that he told me that nobody cared about that kind of thing anymore, he told me he didn’t want to say anything that wouldn’t make me want to go to Hogwarts. I don’t know. I guess I understand. I’m still a little mad that he lied to me.
Other than that, I absolutely love school!
Love always,
Lily
P.S. In Mum and Dad’s letter, I didn’t tell them the Mudblood story because I don’t want them to worry. Please don’t tell them.
There may have once been a time when Petunia Evans might have felt some compassion for her younger sister’s plight, possibly to the point where she would have boarded the next possible train to Hogwarts and dealt with that Lucius Malfoy herself. Now, however, Lily’s words just made her furious. Poor, poor, pathetic Lily! Suddenly, her wondrous new school wasn’t so perfect and now she was crying to Petunia in an attempt to garner sympathy, going as far as to include an ‘us’ when she said Slytherin wouldn’t have welcomed them at Hogwarts.
But I’m not AT Hogwarts, am I, Lily? Petunia thought angily to herself. No matter how many self-pitying words Lily wrote, Petunia was not a witch, and there was nothing she could do to save her little sister from so far away.
Even if she wanted to.
But Esau Have I Hated... by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Lily has gone away and Petunia and their parents are left to pick up the pieces she has left behind.
Thank you, Thank you, Kate! Summers are more brutal than the school year now, huh?