for the QLFC, Season 6, Round 8:

prompts:

CAPTAIN: K-drama Special - The End of that Summer. Theme - finding out your loved one/partner/family hid something major from you and left you with that something (debt/a child/a cursed object etc) and what you do about it.

a/n: this is AU in assuming that when Petunia and Vernon meet, Lily has already graduated Hogwarts, and that the sisters have drifted apart since Lily graduated, hence why Petunia is unaware of Lily's husband and child. Lily doesn't go to Petunia's wedding and the like.

a huge thank you to my love adi for betaing!

wc (barred a/n): 1455

. . .

Sometimes Petunia finds herself almost missing Lily, and then she has to catch herself in the nick of time before the thought can solidify.

Petunia's in college now, far away from Lily and in a proper college with everything she can want. She doesn't know where Lily scampered off to after she graduated from that freak school (she does not remember the name, she tells herself), and she doesn't want to.

(She doesn't care where Lily is, she tells herself. Petunia is better than this.)

She distracts herself, instead, with friends and exams and finding a boyfriend. Mary from the dorm across the hall is perfectly nice (even if Sam, her boyfriend, is a little sickening) and Tom from her Chemistry class is certainly very attractive (albeit a little airheaded). She doesn't need a sister, especially a strange, bitter, untrustworthy one like Lily.

Petunia doesn't think about her, most days. But sometimes she sees someone with green eyes or red hair in the hallways, and she can't help wondering if it's Lily.

She grew up with the girl, after all. It's natural to think of her sometimes, she assures herself. There is no reason to miss Lily, since she was the one who abandoned her family to go off and to become a witch. She's the freak.

(And who made her feel like she had to leave? a voice whispers in the back of her mind. Petunia pays it no heed.)

. . .

When she returns home for the holidays, Mum looks at her with soulful green eyes (Lily's eyes) and hands her a letter, saying, "This came for you."

To Petunia Evans, the envelope reads. The envelope looks overly crisp in her hand, and the lettering is far too scripted and slanting to have been written with a pen.

Petunia knows who sent her the letter, recognizes the handwriting, and she doesn't want to read it. Lily abandoned her. Lily's writing does not deserve to meet Petunia's eyes.

(And yet, there's something in her head that implores her to at least keep it. Petunia throws it in the bottom of her closet and forgets about it.)

. . .

Petunia meets Vernon Dursley working a boring office job in central London. Tufts of dark hair sit on his head and his eyebrows, and he has three chins when he laughs. He's a junior executive: suitably rich, suitably dull, suitably predictable.

He takes her on boring dates and talks to her about his worldview and how "big cars mean big personalities!" and that "sometimes you have to hang people, it's the only way." He talks a lot of rubbish, in Petunia's opinion, and is rather unattractive when it comes down to it, but he's boring, which she appreciates. Boring is good. Boring is safe.

After a year or two of dinner dates, Petunia knows that they're going to his mother's house for a very specific reason. When he proposes, he does so in the sitting room. Proper. Boring. Predictable.

Petunia says yes. She's going to be perfectly ordinary now. Completely and utterly conventional. Not a trace of the weirdness that used to follow her around like a bad smell.

(She tells Vernon about her sister eventually. He shakes his head and says he doesn't care, so long as Lily's abnormality doesn't impact their life together. Petunia thinks she might swoon.)

. . .

Mum and Dad are happy for her. "Oh, Petunia! Petunia, you're going to get married! Oh, Petunia Dursley, would you hear the sound of that? We're so proud!"

Petunia smiles at them. She knows she wants them to be at the wedding, but she debates inviting the last member of their family.

In the end, she doesn't. She has no doubt that Lily wouldn't invite her to her wedding; she isn't sure, in fact, that Lily's last name is still Evans. Why would Lily care about her?

(She's too busy, these days, being a freak.)

. . .

The wedding is wonderful and traditional and Petunia is dressed in a beautiful white. When Dad takes her down the aisle, she only sees Vernon, all three of his chins showing, smiling brightly at her.

(She refuses to think of the missing bridesmaid. She wasn't even invited. And if Petunia jumps every time the church doors opened — if she keeps peering around old aunties for a person who shouldn't be there — well, that's nobody's business but her own.)

. . .

When Petunia moves to her new home with Vernon, Mum stops her before she can leave.

"Wait one moment, love," she says, and disappears into Petunia's room for a reason she can't fathom. All her things — the important ones, anyway — are going with her.

She comes back holding a letter. It's unnaturally thick, and the envelope has yellowed with time, but the print is unmistakable.

To Petunia Evans is still written on it. She's not Petunia Evans anymore. She's Petunia Dursley, normal, completely ordinary, and proud of it.

(She takes the letter anyway because part of her mind calls out again, entreating her to keep it. At her new home in Surrey, she shoves the letter into the cupboard under the stairs.)

. . .

Almost three years after they get married, Petunia gives birth to a boy. There are wisps of blond hair on his head and his nose is small and piglike.

She thinks he's beautiful. He's normal, and he completes Petunia's perfect, better family. This is her new family, her better family.

(She names him Dudley at Vernon's behest. Even at his smallest, Dudley Dursley is a large baby.)

. . .

On the morning of November 2nd, 1981, Petunia Dursley opens her door to put out the milk bottles. Instead of the doormat where the milk is supposed to go, she finds a swath of blankets and a small figure wiggling inside, dark black hair visible on its head.

A baby. There's a letter inside the blanket.

(Petunia reads it and screams.)

. . .

Vernon's face purples and pinks and then finally settles on a pale green color when she brings the child back in. Apparently, his name is Harry. Harry Potter.

He's Lily's. She had never told Petunia about him. Petunia had never known there had been a father for the child in the first place.

And now Lily's dead. She's dead, and has, as always, left Petunia with all the chaos she upended in her wake. Her freak of a sister, dead, leaving Petunia with a child.

He's just about Dudley's age. There is a scar on his forehead, shaped like a zigzagging bolt of lightning — it is red and looks to be a bit sore.

How could Lily do this? Petunia wonders irrationally. How dare she have an entire piece of her life — an entire family — hidden from her own sister? Couldn't she have at least written to say that she was married and that she had a child?

Then Petunia remembers. There had only been one letter.

She stomps over to the cupboard under the stairs and wrenches the door open. The letter sits there, undisturbed for all these years, dust having settled itself on the browned envelope.

Petunia tears it open.

Dear Petunia,

I know I haven't been the best sister. Things between us have been distant lately, and I realize that I haven't talked to you in years.

I know you're angry. You have a right to be. But you're my sister. I want to keep knowing you. I want to know what you're doing and how you've been. I miss you. I miss how it was before when we used to talk, when we knew we both loved each other. We're family, Petunia. And I'm learning that family is something you have to cherish.

Please, if you want to know me too, reply to this letter. If you don't, it's alright. I won't bother you again.

— Lily.

(Petunia reads it and then weeps.)

. . .

Petunia cleans out the cupboard under the stairs and then throws the letter away. There's no point in keeping it.

She wipes the tear tracks from her eyes. There is no point in mourning, not anymore. Any sadness Petunia might have felt for her fallen sister has been replaced with bitterness.

She's always known her sister was a taint on her family. She had ruined the old one and now, even in death, she is ruining the new one.

Petunia hopes desperately that Harry Potter will not grow up to be one of them. She hopes that Harry will only have Lily's eyes and not her abilities. Petunia can't raise a freak. Petunia can't let Lily shatter her home and her normality and her whole damn life.

(The baby sleeps in the cupboard under the stairs that night. It's where Lily's things go.)