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Last year, Petunia Dursley’s husband, Vernon Dursley, passed away from a sudden heart attack.
Petunia had been out grocery shopping and when she came back home and opened the door, she saw the body of her portly husband lying prostrate on the living room floor.
She immediately dropped all of her grocery bags and screamed so loud that she was sure all the other housewives on Privet Drive must have heard her and started speculating on what had occurred.
The somewhat frail, now older Petunia leaned over her husband’s body and cried. She always had a feeling that she would be the last one. Ever since her sister and her husband had died such an untimely death, Petunia felt it in her bones that she would live and live miserably.
She brought it upon herself.
Petunia was too practical to believe in soulmates but if she did believe in them, she definitely wouldn’t have considered Vernon Dursley to be that person.
Oh sure, he was a good husband. Petunia really felt that he went above and beyond what she could have asked for. He provided her with money, a roof over her head, a nice home, and a son she adored.
He tolerated her unconventional family, including the sacrifice that taking in and raising their nephew had been.
Throughout all the years of chaos, he remained faithful, when many other men might have walked out on her. How could one not appreciate that?
But Petunia had wanted more. She had always wanted more. She felt like a well that ran so deep that it could never be filled. From birth, she had been cursed with desire.
“I will never be satisfied.” She remembered writing in her diary as a teenager.
She had married Vernon for the material comforts and stability, not for any kind of spiritual or physical fulfillment. Petunia had no illusions about that.
So, although she was genuinely horrified and sad and mournful over Vernon’s death, and lonely in her now widowed state, the weight of pretending, of playing the dutiful, loving wife had finally been lifted and she would be lying if she said she didn’t feel a little bit lighter, a little bit more free.
Petunia’s son, Dudley, was married now and had children. Of course, Petunia was happy and grateful to be a grandmother and she was relieved that Dudley grew up to have a good life and that he had become a better person, no thanks to her but still.
Even if Petunia hadn’t played a role in Dudley and Harry becoming friends in their adult years, she was happy that she could experience a positive relationship with her nephew vicariously through her son.
Alone in her floral-themed living room, Petunia sipped a cup of Lady Grey tea and then placed it back down on the saucer.
Old, alone, and still not satisfied, had never been satisfied.
Petunia didn’t believe in romantic notions like soulmates or astrology, but she did believe that everyone had people in their lives, anywhere from two to five people maybe, who made such an indelible impression that they would guide or perhaps haunt them for the rest of their lives. People who were etched into one’s soul.
Petunia had three people like this: her sister, Lily Evans Potter, her sister’s childhood friend, Severus Snape, and her nephew, Harry Potter.
These were the people who creeped into her thoughts and memories, when she was waiting in line at the grocery store, when she was lying in bed plagued by insomnia, when she was sitting by herself drinking tea.
They were also the people who kept her from true freedom. She would never be free in this lifetime because she had never been redeemed. Two of the people she needed to apologize to and forgive were dead, and the third, well, she had already squandered that opportunity.
The memory of that moment was so fresh in her mind that she could have sworn she was a witch holding a memory vial.
Petunia stopped and looked back. She wanted to say something to him, “good luck,” “I don’t know exactly what you’re up against but I hope it’s okay,” “I treated you terribly but I don’t want you to die,” “You didn’t just lose a mother that night in Godric’s Hollow, I lost a sister, although really, I had lost her a much longer time ago” “I love you, please be careful” anything. She wished she had said anything. Instead, she gave him an odd, tremulous look and found herself teetering on the edge of speech. But ultimately, she said nothing and with a little jerk of her head, she bustled out of the room after her husband and son.
She never saw Harry again after that, just heard about him through Dudley. She didn’t deserve to see him. Petunia knew that at this point, she must be beyond redeemable in his eyes.
Then there was Severus Snape. Wistfully, she remembered this one time in her angsty adolescence, during the winter, when she had gone for a walk while Lily and her parents ate breakfast together.
Feeling invisible as usual, she had slipped out the door in her green coat with the silver buttons and ended up at the park that acted as a buffer zone between her respectable neighborhood and the not so respectable neighborhood of Spinner’s End.
She and Lily used to play there all the time, before the Snape boy had come along and stolen Lily from her, taught her about magic and turned the sisters against each other. That’s what Petunia had told herself for many, many years.
She blamed Snape, then Hogwarts, then her parents. She never blamed herself.
In the park, she had noticed that the tree swing that she and Lily used to push each other on was still there. She sat on it and started crying. It was so cathartic, to be alone in a desolated, nostalgic place and just weep.
Then the Snape boy had to come along and ruin her moment, or so she thought at the time. He had been standing there, with a book under his arm, wearing a green coat, that to her dismay looked almost like the male version of her own outerwear.
They made awkward, painful eye contact and then Petunia, out of embarrassment, fear, because she was still scared of him after he had almost dropped a tree branch on her in their childhood, and annoyance that he had spoiled her moment, started running back home.
She remembered that Severus had chased after her and asked her if she was alright. She thought he was just being nice to her for Lily’s sake. She felt offended and snubbed him. He bit back and then let her go. It was just like their back and forth caustic bantering as kids.
Petunia would never forget arriving back home and not being able to stop wondering, to her petulance, what would have happened if she hadn’t run away, if she had opened up to him? There was a part of her that day, and she felt so disgusted with herself about it at that time, that saw something alluring in Severus, something potent and raw. Burying that attraction had been just as difficult as burying her fascination with magic.
The incident in the park that day was actually her last encounter with Severus. The day before he had actually been hanging out with Lily. They had been two peas in a pod since childhood, since before Hogwarts.
Petunia was shocked when Lily came back from school the summer after 5th year and tearfully told her parents that Severus had called her a “mudblood,” a vicious slur used against muggle-born witches and wizards. She said he had fallen in with the wrong crowd and they were no longer friends.
Before the park incident, Petunia would have been so happy to hear that. But after that incident, she just felt doleful, realizing the boy she had hated but had grown to be curious about, would no longer be hanging around and seemed to be going down a dark path in life.
She knew everything that happened after her nephew defeated Voldemort. She may have not spoken with her nephew, but there was more to Petunia Evans Dursley than met the eye, there always had been. She was good at putting on a facade and playing dumb about the wizarding world but there was no way that in actuality, someone as nosy as Petunia would ignore the vital news that come out of that world.
Ever the resourceful one, Petunia had managed to get her hands on copies of every Wizarding newspaper that she could find and followed them religiously after the fall of Lord Voldemort.
Through those news sources, she had come to learn that the Snape boy had grown up to be a professor at Hogwarts. All that time her nephew attended the school and she never knew and probably would have pretended not to care anyway.
What was even more enlightening, was that her nephew had been quoted saying that Severus Snape was “the bravest man I ever knew.” When Petunia first read that, she swore she could feel her heart stop.
Ever since that day in the park, she had crafted an image of Severus Snape. Secretly, she wanted to believe that, like her, there was more to him than met the eye, that he was good in some way.
Her nephew’s quote confirmed that and the fact that, to her shock, he had given his second son the middle name “Severus.” Petunia found that out from Dudley.
Of course, Petunia also knew now that Severus Snape had truly been a Death Eater and most likely was partially responsible for her sister’s death. But he had switched to the other side and did everything in his power to protect Harry, much more than Petunia ever did and in the end he suffered the same fate as Lily, dying at the hands of Lord Voldemort. So, in Petunia’s older, wiser and kinder eyes, he had redeemed himself.
Petunia took another sip of tea as she wiped away tears from her eyes, thinking about the tragedy that Harry’s life had been, that Severus’s life had been and the hand she played in it all. So many regrets… That “what ifs” would never stop plaguing her.
Then there was Lily, the most heartbreaking of all, her dear little sister. The little sister she pushed away and couldn’t protect.
The first two truths that Petunia Evans Dursley buried deep within herself, thinking that denial would protect her from the pain of rejection, were:
1. She loved her little sister more than anyone and felt lonely without her.
2. She loved magic more than anything but in a cruel twist of fate, magic had chosen her sister only, leaving her in the dust.
Petunia had some sympathy for her childhood self. A child cannot be expected to know how to cope with loneliness, jealousy and rejection. There was some blame she could rightfully place on her parents. Many times they could have been more attentive to her and her needs.
Vernon and his ignorance and closed-mindedness certainly didn’t contribute to Petunia improving her attitude towards her sister and the magical world either.
Still, at some point Petunia had to take responsibility for how her life had turned out. At some point, she had accepted a life of resentment and had become complacent about it.
Spending so many years pretending to hate Lily and magic had started to make her actually hate Lily and magic and it wasn’t until it was too late that she realized the error of her ways.
The three looming figures in Petunia’s life had all faced Voldemort and two of them died and yet here she sat, at a ripe old age, sipping tea and all of her wounds were self-inflicted.
Petunia, in a sorrowful rage, had once described her sister as “a girl who made all the wrong choices.”
Finally, near the end of her life, Petunia found the courage to admit that she was actually the girl who had made all the wrong choices....