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Lily Potter wrinkled her nose as she stepped off the Knight Bus. What a... mundane neighborhood. She hadn't set foot in a Muggle neighborhood since the boys were born, and felt as alienated from her surroundings as any Pureblood. How did people live like this, honestly? Their copycat mundane little houses, suited only to contain copycat mundane little lives...
Well, she needed to have a talk with one of the mundane little people who lived in these mundane little houses, and so there was no use dwelling on it. Squaring her shoulders, she walked forward, noting with faint contempt the neatness of the front yard of the house which she approached. Honestly, only someone with nothing better to do would spend so much time tending plants. None of them were even the sort that could be used in Potions.
She thumped on the door once, then hit it several more times impatiently when no one came running to meet her. Honestly, her mind complained, didn't the resident realize who she was? She was the mother of the Chosen One!
Admittedly not the one she'd thought she was, but -
The door opened enough for the occupant to get a look at her, then began to shut. Before Lily could let out a squawk of protest, the person behind the door seemed to regret it and slowly reversed its course. Lily's lips flattened into a thin line. She should regret it. That was no way to treat Lily Potter.
A tall, thin woman, rather horse-faced and pursed-lipped, glared at her from the doorway. Lily blinked at her, wondering if she was a maid, before the features triggered a spark of memory and she realized who this had to be. Tune- Petunia. (Mrs. Potter did not use nicknames. Such things were for undignified, lesser people.) Her own sister.
Well, she hadn't seen her in fifteen years. She could be forgiven for not instantly recognizing her.
"So the great Mrs. Potter graces us with her presence at last," Petunia sneered, and Lily thought that, for all their childhood animosity, she and Se- Snape would get along quite well. They both had that horrible expressiveness that would give them the most terrible wrinkles when they were past their prime. Petunia was already showing them. "Well! I must say, I'm quite surprised. I thought you discarded family members who were unworthy of you."
"I need to talk to you about something," Lily said coldly. Stepping into the doorway, she gave Petunia a wordless choice: move or be pushed aside. Petunia chose the latter, though her glare only sharpened.
"Of course. It's all about when you want it, isn't it, Lily?" Petunia gave a short jerk of her head. It almost seemed she didn't want to waste a full head-shaking on her. "Dudley used to be like that about his toys. We trained him out of it by the time he was ten. Goodness knows how he might have grown up if we hadn't."
Dudley? Lily supposed that was the name of Petunia's son. She really didn't keep track of these things.
"It's about Henry," she said, choosing to ignore her sister's pettiness. Muggles just couldn't help it. As for herself, she helped herself to Petunia's overstuffed couch. Her sister's glare bounced right off of her. "He -"
"Harry. He prefers to be called Harry."
Lily sighed and ignored her sister's blathering. "Henry," she emphasized, "has been behaving quite badly, and I need to know where he picked up that sense of entitlement. And if it wasn't from you, surely you'd be glad to demonstrate your sincerity by reminding him of his duties."
Petunia stared at her, mouth hanging open, and took the better part of a minute to remember to shut the door. "Entitlement," she breathed. "You dare speak to me of entitlement." She gave a short, shaky laugh and walked over to stand directly across the coffee table from Petunia. "Entitlement. When that horrible brat of yours at your magic school - don't think that just because I'm a - what do you call it, a Muggle - that I don't have ears - Harry brings home stories -"
"I don't know what Henry says about John," Lily said curtly. "I've noticed that he's an envious little troublemaker. My boy has always been a perfect, well-behaved -"
"He's spoiled," Petunia cut her off. "Spoiled rotten. I should know. My Dudley nearly turned out that way. We let him have far too much free rein early on. But we realized what we had done wrong when we saw how he treated other children, and we corrected his behavior before he turned out - monstrously. A horrible bully who thought he would receive the same adoration and leniency from the world as he had always received from his doting parents. A -"
"What are you suggesting about my son?" asked Lily coldly.
Petunia gave her a nasty smile that could have easily been peeled off S- Snape's face. "Why, nothing at all, Lily. I was merely speculating how Dudley might have turned out without intervention. Whyever did your mind jump to your own boy?"
Lily gritted her teeth. She would not descend to her sister's level. She had always been better than her. She had always known that. Always. And so had Petunia. "This isn't about John, of course," she said, "it's about Henry."
"Harry."
She had better things to do than play along with her sister's little games. "Henry's behavior has been appalling recently," she stated. "He doesn't seem to realize that we are owed -"
"Owed?" broke in Petunia. "Owed what? You haven't sent a single child support payment the entire time he's lived here. We've paid for all his expenses out of our own pockets, Vernon and I. The equipment for his wizard school, too. The last thing you did for the boy was carry him. After that, you've been as much a mother to him as - as to Dudley!"
"John needed our undivided attention!" Lily snapped, driven to anger by the indignation in Petunia's voice. Who did she think she was to judge her? How dare she? What did this - this Muggle know of wizards' wars? "The power that will defeat the Dark Lord is love, and we couldn't risk John feeling as though he had to compete for that with a sibling! He had to be utterly, unconditionally -"
"Don't preach to me about competing for love, Lily Evans!" Petunia's scream drove Lily cringing back into the unforgiving cushions of the couch, and she could have sworn it rattled the pictures on the mantlepiece. Had Petunia been a witch, that would have been the sort of scream that shattered all the windows in a house.
Petunia looked down at her with a sort of maddened satisfaction, breathing in and out through her teeth. Lily could hear every whistle of air. "You dare," Petunia said simply. "You dare."
She shook her head, her face stretched into a caricature of a grin. "You dare."
"You wouldn't understand," Lily said righteously. "You don't understand the power of love in magic. Dumbledore would explain it all to you, if -" You weren't a Muggle sounded too crude even in Lily's mental ears, so she let the end of the sentence slip. "Dumbledore knows. He understands the crucial position of love, as the Dark Lord does not -"
"We Muggles merely know love is important because we feel it," Petunia said. "We don't have to make some grand ceremony of it. We don't find it as rare as wizards do."
Lily sniffed, despite herself. What an ignoramus. "At any rate - if Henry were a good, loving boy, he would understand the sacrifices we had to make."
"What a grand sacrifice, to unload your unwanted child upon your equally unwanted family," Petunia said, her voice dripping with sardonic contempt. Merlin, she was like Snape. Perhaps, in some better-ordered universe, they were the ones who were siblings. "Such a grand sacrifice, it's made by every good-for-nothing who doesn't care to support his child and whose lover doesn't care to get an abortion."
"You just can't understand," Lily said, dismissing her petty-souled sister with a wave of her hand. Goodness, how tedious it was to deal with people too small-minded to understand. She thought she grasped the most miniscule fraction of how a great man like Dumbledore had to feel, dealing with such people day-in and day-out, and felt a great swelling of sympathy for the man. "It was for the greater good," she said, wondering why she bothered to justify herself to someone who couldn't possibly understand. "We made our sacrifices. A boy who loved his mother would understand. I would think any well-brought-up boy would understand - it's just the most basic of filial piety."
"Harry is very grateful to the people who actually brought him up," Petunia said coldly. "But I would think an intelligent, well-brought-up woman would understand if he doesn't feel much towards a woman he sees less often than the proprietor of the local candy shop. What is it called, again? Honeyducks?"
"Honeydukes," Lily said, briefly disconcerted at Petunia knowing the name of any Wizarding store. Then she shook it off. She had to get back to business. "Don't make excuses for Henry's behavior. It's absolutely terrible. We've tried to speak to him regarding his responsibilities, and he just laughs us off. Laughs!" She leaned forward, glaring at her sister. Petunia returned the favor with an icy stare. She didn't have the eyes for it, Lily thought contemptuously. Those watery-blue eyes could never intimidate as Dumbledore's did. Those pierced to your soul. Petunia - Petunia was a mere Muggle. Who did she think she was? "I don't think you realize how serious this is," she said. "He laughs at Dumbledore, even. His own Headmaster. How dare he?"
"I would laugh at Dumbledore, too," Petunia said with sudden frankness. "I had the misfortune to see his outfit at your wedding. I thought perhaps that was your world's idea of formalwear, but Harry assures me that he considers that everyday clothing. I can't fathom why more people don't laugh at him."
Lily drew herself up, almost hissing. Not actually hissing, of course - that was for Slytherins. "He is the Headmaster!'
"So?"
Lily took a few deep breaths. Muggle, she reminded herself. She had to remember. Muggles didn't understand such things. They had such a small little world. "Such disrespect is inexcusable," she snapped. "When the greatest man in the world appeals to you, you listen. You don't tell him you'll - that you'll get a restraining order on him if he doesn't leave you alone soon!"
To Lily's shock, Petunia burst out laughing. Actually laughed! "Did he now," Petunia mused with a warm affection that took Lily even further aback. She didn't think she'd ever heard her sister sound so... so... No. Not even when Petunia had been a child. Except, possibly, when they had been very young. "I'm proud of the boy. I raised him with a spine, and he shows it."
"So you are to blame for his sense of entitlement!" Lily shrieked. Petunia looked down at her - as though she was still her little baby sister, loud and high-pitched and wailing over having skinned her knee, and Lily felt the color flaming into her cheeks.
"No, Lily," Petunia said in a chilly voice. "Let me tell you a little story about entitlement."
She began to pace back and forth before her, hands behind her back, and Lily was suddenly and shockingly reminded of Dumbledore when he wanted to make a sharp point to a slow student.
"Once upon a time, there was a girl who wanted to be loved more than anything in the world. But she wasn't. Her parents never spared love on her. They were far, far more interested in her little sister. Her bright little sister, with her flaming red hair and her sparkling green eyes, her charming smile and her roguish ways, her sharpness in school and her -" Here Petunia paused delicately - "special talents -"
"Freakish, say freakish, Tuney," Lily spat, too wound-up to remember herself. "We both know that's what you mean."
"I would have said freakish once," Petunia said sharply. "I won't now. Because I grew up, and I learned that not all wizards were as I'd thought.
"But let's go back to the tale. No matter what the girl did, her parents only loved her sister. She was a stranger in her own house. She tried to be the daughter they wanted, but they only loved her little sister the more for all that she broke their rules. She tried to keep the house neat and orderly, but they only tut-tutted at her and smiled at her sister when she tracked mud into their home. She tried to be pretty, but they only praised her sister's natural beauty -"
"It's not my fault you always looked like a horse," Lily said, and took a petty pleasure in seeing her words strike home for the first time in this entire wretched meeting.
Petunia's eyes watered as she blinked away tears. "You always were cruel, Lily," she whispered, swallowing hard. Then, she recovered herself - to Lily's disappointment. "But I grew up, and I learned that there was more to life than appearances.
"And when she worked hard in school, and tried to make something of herself? Why, her little sister went off to a special school, one for whom she could never have qualified no matter how hard she worked, and she lost the will even to fight. Because her parents would never love her, no matter what she did."
Lily shrugged. Cry her a river.
"And that sister grew up into a woman, and married a man much like her, and they had two little boys. And do you know what they did with those two little boys?" Petunia's eyes narrowed to slits. "Of course you do. When they discovered that one of the little boys was special and the other wasn't, they lavished love upon one of them, and decided the other wasn't worthy of their attention - just as the woman's parents had done with her own sister -"
"Oh, Tuney, get over it," Lily said in a bored voice. "Hanging onto grudges all this time, honestly. It's freakish."
"And," Petunia said through clenched teeth, "they wouldn't even have the decency to keep their unloved child under their own roof, as the woman's parents had. Instead, they sent the child off to the woman's sister - put all the rubbish in one bin, I suppose you thought -"
"We didn't think much about it," Lily said in a moment of unguarded frankness. "You were his blood, and we figured that would be enough. Dumbledore has a lot to say about the importance of blood and family. If you had ever heard any of it, you'd understa-"
"You didn't know anything about our family," Petunia said incredulously. "You never even wrote back to answer letters. I don't know if you even read them. We could have been child-beating monsters, for all you know."
"Oh, I'm sure that wouldn't have happened," Lily said with a wave of her hand. "Family is family, after all."
Petunia's eyes rolled back in her head before she shook it to bring her back to the present. "A normal family would have done more research into a kennel.
"And the boy was not happy with his lot. He was soon old enough to understand that his parents had thrown him away like so much garbage. 'Why didn't they love me?' he pleaded. 'Why wasn't I good enough for them?' It would have broken a heart of stone." Petunia made a sound of absolute disgust in response to Lily's exasperated sigh. "Yes, Lily, I know yours is more like a diamond."
It wasn't that. When would her whining sister get to the bloody point? Really, she'd come here to discuss Henry's behavioral problems, not to bother with her sister's hurt feelings. No wonder Henry was so selfish, with an example like Petunia. What an utterly self-centered woman -
"Now, under... different circumstances, less fortunate ones, shall we say, his aunt might have let some of her resentment of her sister carry over to the son. She wasn't perfect. She knew that. Her parents rubbed it into her face every day that she lived under their roof - no, that description was reserved for her faultless sister. She was well aware that, sometimes, each and every one of her actions was a mistake.
"But life was kind to the boy and his aunt, and instead they met under circumstances where they understood each other. How could she resent the boy, when they were both victims of the same heartless expediency? They had no worth - therefore, why bother with them? Why, in ancient times, they might both have been left out on a hillside soon after birth, there to die a long, lingering death of exposure. I understand they did that in antiquity."
Lily blinked. She hadn't realized Petunia knew anything of history. She didn't - know any of Petunia's hobbies, really. She realized, to her astonished perplexity, that she'd never bothered to learn.
"But they lived in more civilized times - if barely - and so they were only disposed of in the metaphorical sense. And so the aunt gave him the love of which his parents had deprived him, and which her own parents had denied her, and found to her delight that he grew into a modest, thoughtful, obedient boy who knew his own intelligence but did not brag of it, who appreciated his own talents but did not flaunt them, and who understood his charm but did not abuse it."
"Well, there you're wrong," Lily said smugly. "He's always showing off. Always trying to prove he's better than John. It's quite pathetic."
Petunia tsked. "I'm sorry you have to hear this from me," she said in a voice that wasn't sorry at all, "but Harry hardly thinks of John at all. He outdoes John simply because he is better. And, from what I've heard of the boy, because John has always expected the title of the Boy-Who-Lived to buy his grades for him, and never understood that throwing tantrums when his precious title fails him only earns him further demerits -"
"How dare you!"
"You never realized that you had to finish the fights you started, Lily," Petunia said quietly. "As I was saying..."
"The boy's uncle may not have been much-concerned with him, but he certainly appreciated that the boy was a tribute to his family. And the boy's ability to get along with his own son, keep him from going astray, and watch over him only made his uncle like him better. They were never close, but they at least had a mutual respect.
"The boy could have lived amongst ordinary people - he did well in his studies, he helped around the house, and, though naturally shy, he learned to interact with others and present himself well. But the boy, in his turn, received a letter from the special school, and he decided he'd give it a try.
"And what did he find there? A teeming mass of sycophants, a -"
"Oh, get to the point, Petunia," Lily moaned. "You must have one somewhere in there."
Petunia was very still. "You really haven't heard anything of what I've been saying, have you," she said at last. "To you, it really is just a load of irrelevant rubbish. You wouldn't have even cared if we had mistreated him, would you?"
"Of course we would have," Lily said with the same level of interest that she might have had in tossing off a remark about the poor House-Elves' plight or the terrible way some foreign country's wizards treated some kind of magical creature or other. "Don't be silly, Petunia. What do you take me for?"
Petunia looked as though she was holding back a very rude word. Or seven.
"Well!" she said when she regained control of herself. "I'll get to the end, then. After all of that, the boy found out - after nearly dying a few times, and I don't think you ever showed much concern about him over that, did you? No, you don't even attempt to deny it - that he was far more important than anyone had thought. Rather more important than his special brother, I might add. In fact, they'd misjudged which brother was the special one all along. I rather wonder how such a brilliant lot of wizards and witches mucked up that - wouldn't you?"
Lily's lips pressed together into a thin line, and she clenched her fists on her lap until her flawlessly-manicured nails bit into her silky-smooth palms to keep from shaking. That - that alone - was a humiliation she could not deny.
And Petunia saw that, and smirked. "Yes, I do wonder," she said in a smooth voice positively dripping with smugness. Sev would be proud indeed. Snape, Lily reminded herself, and a few shakes began to slip through her control. "After all, such a wise wizard as Dumbledore shouldn't have made such a fundamental mistake, should he?"
"He had his reasons," Lily snarled.
"Incompetents always do. Vernon tells me that. He runs into men like Dumbledore all the time at his job - but then, you wouldn't know that, Lily, seeing as how neither you nor your husband have ever had to hold down an actual job."
"We've worked! We -"
"Never when your livelihoods depended upon it," Petunia said with utter contempt. "And, sister dear, it shows.
"But, as I was saying, it turned out the boy was special after all. And oh, the family which had previously rejected him, the world which had noticed him only in passing, only as that family's refuse - they just fell over themselves to rush to his side. Not by way of apology, however. No, they realized they'd picked the wrong one - and they demanded his servitude. After all, it was only a trifling mistake that had caused them to lavish all that adoration upon his brother! Now they wanted out of him repayment for all those years of adulation - it was the least they deserved for their slobbering, after all."
"Henry has a duty to the Wizarding World," Lily stated. "In the war against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named-"
"Yes," Petunia said loudly, not heeding a word she said, "the people tried to order him to be their little tin soldier. They thought he owed them - though for what, I couldn't fathom. Their neglect? Their contempt? The spectacle they'd made of themselves, worshiping a boy who turned out not to be even all that special after all? I must say, a well-brought-up woman like myself - well, I simply can't fathom that sense of entitlement."
One could have heard a beetle skitter across the floorboards in the silence that followed. "It's not entitlement," Lily said finally. "Henry is prophesied to defeat He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, or die himself in the effort. He must be trained, he must obey Dumbledore in his role as the champion of the few, the good, and the brave in England, and he must, he must, recognize that the sole purpose of his existence is the struggle against-"
"You know, Lily," Petunia said in the same tone of voice one might use on a mentally-touched relative, "I read the horoscopes in the papers for a bit of a laugh, but I don't seriously believe in fortune-tellers. You ought to watch the programs they have on the telly, exposing fake psychics, every once in a while. I learned a lot. Perhaps Dumbledore could stand to watch a few of those specials, too. Then you'd know better to gamble all -"
"It's not a gamble, it's magic -"
"To gamble all your hopes," Petunia said loudly, "on the rubbish poetry of a third-rate charlatan." She paused for a moment, giving Lily a strange look - Lily couldn't quite recognize the emotion, but something told her it was beneath even contempt. "Placing the hopes for your world on the shoulders of a child," she said. "A child who wouldn't even have been out of diapers when the events occurred that, according to all of you, marked him as the Chosen One." She turned away, shaking her head.
"Cowards."
Lily leapt to her feet, her hand instinctively going to the wand in her pocket. "Say that again!" she demanded. "Say that again!"
Petunia gave her a weary look, and now she recognized the emotion -
Pity.
"What are you going to do to me, Lily?" she asked. "I know enough about your wizards' ways to know that your government has marked out this place as the residence of an underage wizard. Any magic done here will send them running, and then I'll imagine even they'll look dimly on your assaulting your own sister in a fit of rage. You're not the mother of the Chosen One any more, Lily. You're the woman who abandoned him to be raised by his aunt and uncle, as though you and that husband of yours were dead - and you are dead to him, I'll tell you that much. How will they look upon you assaulting the woman who raised the Chosen One? Ask yourself that. I'm sure you know. I'm sure you came to appreciate that quite well while you were the mother of the Chosen One. How often did you shout at someone that they couldn't treat John Potter's mother like that? Quite often, wasn't it? Don't lie to me, Lily. Harry didn't see you often, but he didn't need to in order to know your reputation. And what he did see of you only confirmed that."
Lily took her shaking hand off of her wand.
"I am sorry for you, Lily," Petunia said in a tired voice. "I remember you when you were a very little girl, before favoritism spoiled your natural sweetness. You could have been a fine woman, if only our parents showed you a little less indulgence and a little more discipline. I think about it, at times, late at night. I weep for the woman you could have been."
"Don't pity me," Lily said through clenched teeth.
Petunia gave her a tight-lipped smile. "And then I remember how you treated your son, and I don't," she said. She looked away, shrugging, and began to walk towards the kitchen.
"Don't just walk away from me!" Lily demanded, pointing a finger at her as though it was the wand she didn't d- she didn't want to use. "Don't you walk away from me, Petunia Evans! Don't you act as though you're better than me!"
"It's Dursley now," her sister commented, not bothering to look behind her. "Not that I really expected you to know.
"But what are you going to do to me, Lily? Vernon might not be at home - he has to work for a living, I'll remind you - but that doesn't mean we're on anything but even ground. Remember - you can't use magic."
In a sudden fit of spite, Lily kicked the coffee table. Even that didn't make Petunia turn around.
"I hate you, Petunia Dursley!" Lily spat. "You and the horrible, spoiled boy you raised!"
"I never had any illusions that you didn't," Petunia said in the same mild tone in which someone might have commented upon the weather. She finally deigned to turn around. "Oh, speaking of him? He and Dudley are at the market, but they should be home soon. I would advise you to leave before then. If they come home and find a woman threatening me - sister of mine or not - they won't hesitate to throw her out. In deference to the bond we - once - shared, I say it really would be best for you to leave under your own power. For the sake of whatever remains of your dignity."
"And how do they intend to throw me out?" Lily shrieked. A certain mad shrillness reached her ears, but she refused to take responsibility for it. It was her stupid sister's fault! Her stupid, Muggle, utterly self-centered sister! It wasn't her fault, it wasn't her fault, and she wouldn't be blamed for it! "How? You're the one who reminded me, after all, that, here, Henry can't use magic!"
Petunia blinked at her innocently. "Magic? Whenever did I mention magic? They're both quite strapping young men - and neither of us are terribly heavy women, I think you should know. It's the family build and all that. Blood will out - as you wizards might say.
"No, sister mine, I meant that quite literally. They will throw you out."