Vetoed

When Lily walked into the bedroom she shared with her sister, Petunia was sitting on the window seat pretending to play with a cloth doll.

"What," Petunia asked without looking up from her game.

"It's eleven o'clock," Lily said, squinting against the midmorning sunlight.

"I know what time it is." The doll's pink dress was wrinkled from her grip.

"I'm just letting you know."

"Don't."

"Okay." Lily licked her lips. "Tuney?"

Petunia threw the doll across the room. It collided with a lamp, which teetered but did not fall. "What?"

Lily bit her lip. "Nothing." She came all the way into the room and retrieved the doll. "Here."

"Don't touch my things."

"Sorry." She climbed up to sit next to Petunia on the window seat. "Tuney?"

"Shut up, Lily, or I swear I'll never speak to you again as long as I - "

"I'm not going."

Petunia closed her mouth.

"I vetoed. We sent the letter to Dumbledore an hour ago. I told Mum I want to stay here with you."

Petunia swallowed. "But you packed. I helped you."

Lily smiled nervously. "And now you're going to help me unpack, because the train to Hogwarts left at eleven and I'm clearly not on board."

Petunia blinked one - twice. "But why?"

Lily shrugged. "I didn't want you to be sad anymore."

Petunia stood up, and for a moment Lily wasn't certain whether her sister was going to embrace her or scream at her.

(It was the former, and Lily held on as tightly as she could.)

"Do you ever regret it?" Petunia asked her years later, in that same room. She was lying on her bed, flopped down on her stomach with several bottles of nail varnish spread out before her. "Vetoing, I mean? Not going to that school with the Snape boy?"

Lily shrugged. She was hunched over on the window seat, one foot tucked under her skirt while she doodled in the margins of a letter she was writing. The sun was setting, but she had enough light to see, so she drew loops and spirals and she let words come out of her without thinking about them first. "Not really," she said. "Not now that I've met Vernon."

"Is it serious?" Tuney selected the bright red nail varnish and began to roll the bottle in her hands.

Lily shrugged again. "It might be."

"Is that letter you're scribbling all over for him?"

"No." She began a small sketch of a boy with messy dark hair.

"Who, then?"

She shook her head. "It's not for anyone."

"So it's like a diary, then?" and there was something in the tone of Petunia's voice that made Lily flush.

"Yeah." She crumpled the letter in her fist and dropped it in the bin next to the window seat. "Stream of consciousness, and all that." She stood up and smoothed down her skirt. "Are you hungry?"

"Starved." Petunia dropped the still-unopened nail varnish on the comforter and jumped to the floor. She swept out of the room and clomped down the stairs.

Lily took half a second to glance at the crunched up letter in the bin before she followed her sister; and as the sun set, the paper slowly relaxed and unfurled itself just a bit.

"Lily Dursley," Petunia said dreamily, and they were back in that same room again (even though neither of them lived in that house anymore) with the lights on (because it was midnight, and the window was dark) surrounded by Lily's bridesmaids. "Lilian Evans Dursley."

"Not until tomorrow," Lily insisted as she took a sip of her champagne, but she couldn't help grinning at the name.

"How many babies are you going to have?" her friend Allison asked.

Lily laughed. "Two or three, I hope!"

"And what are you going to name them?"

"Depends what Vernon wants, I suppose."

"I know exactly what name Vernon wants," Petunia announced, "and it's disgusting."

"What is it?" asked Allison excitedly. "Thomas?" (That was an ex-lover of hers.) "Dolores?" (A cousin she wasn't fond of.) "James?"

"Oh, I like James," Lily protested, but Petunia waved everyone into silence.

"Vernon Dursley," she said in a low voice, as if she were beginning a ghost story, "wants to name his child . . . Dudley."

"Dudley?" Lily repeated with a shudder. She was almost out of champagne. "I would never."

"There are worse names than Dudley," another bridesmaid chimed in. "Timothy, for instance. Or Peter!"

"Or Harry," Petunia offered, and Lily swatted her.

"I like Harry, too." She lowered herself onto the window seat. "I'm going to name my firstborn son 'Harry James,' just to spite all of you!"

"And if it's a daughter?" Allison asked.

"Still Harry James!"

A knock on the door, and then: "Will you lot come downstairs?" called Lily's mother. "Rehearsal dinners become increasingly awkward when the bride goes missing!"

"Coming, Mum!" Lily called, and she and the rest of the bridesmaids filed out, leaving the room alone in the darkness.

Lily Dursley watched the sun rise from a new window seat in a new house in a place called Godric's Hollow, which Vernon hated but Lily loved. It was part of their compromise: Lily could pick the location to raise her new family, if Vernon got to choose the names of the family in question.

"Little Dudley," she whispered to the bulge of her stomach. "You kept me up all night, wiggling around in there."

Part of her wondered whether he'd be born with magic in his blood.

(Part of her desperately hoped that he wouldn't be.)

"Lily?" Vernon called from the bathroom. "I'll be out late tonight. Dinner with a client."

"Okay."

He came out into the kitchen and grabbed his hat and coat. "Make sure you lock the doors before bed."

"I will."

He opened the door and stepped outside. "Lily?"

"Yes?"

He poked his head back inside and smiled at her. "I love you."

She tore her eyes away from the rising sun. "I love you, too."

"Call me if anything changes," and she knew he meant with Dudley, so she promised she would.

She went on a walk after he was gone, wandering up and down the streets of Godric's Hollow, and once or twice she thought she saw an owl fly overhead, but second glances proved they were only crows. None of the shops had opened yet; everything was calm and pleasant, and Lily had even started humming to herself when a man hurtled around a corner and knocked her to the ground.

"I'm sorry!" he cried, stooping to help her up. "I didn't - are you okay?"

Lily's hand fluttered to Dudley. "We're okay."

The man's eyes flicked down to her stomach, and he swore. "I'm so sorry. I should be more careful."

"You should," but she smiled to let him know there was no ill will.

He swept his hand through his mop of black hair. "Are you certain you're all right?"

"Yes!" She laughed, as if that would prove something. "Where were you off to in such a hurry?"

"My wife is in labor." He looked quite pleased with himself. "No big deal, I suppose."

"It's a very big deal," Lily said. "I'm due any day." As if he knew they were talking about him, Dudley wriggled around.

"Congratulations. Girl or boy?"

"Boy. Dudley." She wrinkled her nose. "The name was my husband's choice." The man gave her a sympathetic groan. "And yours?"

"Boy, as well. Harry."

"I wanted to name my son Harry!"

"Did you really?" The man looked quite excited.

"I did. But it was vetoed."

The man laughed and pushed his round spectacles a little farther up the bridge of his nose. "My wife wanted to veto it. She was pushing for Neville."

"Neville. It's . . . unique?"

The man laughed. "It's idiotic. Neville Potter? He'd be made fun of at Hog - at school. Don't know what my wife was thinking. Harry has a much better ring." He glanced at his watch. "I should go, speaking of that - if you're sure you're okay?"

"I'm fine." Lily gave him a little push. "Go!"

"Thank you. And good luck with Dudley!" He sent her one more grin, and then he took off running.

Lily watched him go with an inexplicable longing in the pit of her stomach.

Dudley was born the next evening, and he was healthy and happy and perfect.

(And Lily, for reasons she didn't fully understand, found herself drawn to the window seat of her third-floor hospital room, where she stared at the street below and prayed for the dark-haired stranger to walk by.)

[Last Man Standing: Fanon only]

[One of Every Letter: V]

[Disney Character Competition: Cobra Bubbles - write about Vernon Dursley]