Chapter Text
Petunia frowned at the third column between platforms 9 and 10 in King's Cross Station.
She'd been paying attention. Petunia was good at paying attention. Most people in Petunia's life did not like telling her important things. She was too young, too muggle, and too irrelevant.
But she listened, when she could, and spied, and puzzled things out. When Severus stole off with Lilly and refused to let her join, she watched from afar (until he put a stop to that too.) (Severus was good at listening as well it seemed.) And when Lilly teased her and refused to tell what they'd been talking about, she learned that it was easier to not ask directly, easier to be a blank wall for Lilly to vent her joy and frustrations. She learned that she could trace Lilly and Severus' route if she followed their footsteps through the dirt path, and watch which of the plants around her had been uprooted, plucked, or otherwise harvested recently. (She looked the plants up in a reference book at the library.) She knew Lilly and Severus brewed potions in the woods. She'd seen and she'd found ashes and mashed frog guts on rocks.
She kept a journal and filled it bit by bit. She filled it with the secrets she puzzled out about the universe--the universe that people kept telling her did not belong to her. (As if she was not a part of it.)
She'd filled a volume by the time she and Lilly turned eleven and Professor McGonagall arrived to inform Lilly and their parents (but not Petunia, not really) about Lilly's magic and Lilly's school.
And Petunia filled another volume just from that visit. She'd been clever about it. She asked questions to the professor as if she did not really believe her, as if the professor needed to prove it still. Petunia found it was one of the easier ways to provoke more information.
And then there'd been the Diagon Alley trip and Lilly's school books. Lilly would never have let her borrow them, not with Severus telling her how much more special Lilly was to have that knowledge, how much it did not belong to Petunia. But Petunia had a polaroid camera and she only needed a few moments at a time alone with Lilly's textbooks and pamphlets.
There was a glut of knowledge waiting to be unraveled there but still so much to learn at all hours. The past several weeks were dizzying, and Petunia had filled two more notebooks.
In all this discovery, Petunia knew many things and one of those things was that Platform 9 3/4 was an entrance charmed to let through anyone with magic or anyone who believed wholeheartedly that it would let them pass through.
She also knew their parents had been discussing the problem of not being able to pass through themselves. Somewhere along the way, they had not been very good listeners. McGonagall had clearly stated that little witches and wizards and their families could see off the Hogwarts express from the platform, which they were not yet on said platform. Certainly they believed wholeheartedly that Lilly could pass through the barrier (which one was it again Dad asked Mom), but they did not believe they could (We'll have to say goodbye from this side Lils) and Lilly was not correcting them.
Lilly pointed out the entrance excitedly. (Petunia did not volunteer answers; It interfered with listening.)
Severus was here too. Petunia did not resent him as much as she wished she could. That was the problem with too much listening, and too much watching. She learned things and she could not take it back--not that she would. Petunia had decided one night beneath the stars that she'd never take back knowledge of anything. There was a whole universe of secrets out there and she wanted to learn them all, or at least the big ones, the magical ones.
Still. It was hard to hate him for stealing Lilly and making Lilly feel like she was better than Petunia when his every hypervigilant glance whispered directly into her ear the truths she slowly uncovered about his homelife. She had not been looking for those truths. She'd been looking for more information on the nature of magic.
She'd found some of those truths from his home, but mostly she had learned about broken marriages and broken trust and dehumanizing disdain and human people things that Petunia did not think she liked very much.
So fine, Severus had stolen her sister, but at least he had the decency to need her terribly. Maybe, one day Petunia would forgive him enough to like him, that is if he outgrew all his defensive disdain and superiority. (Inferiority complex whispered the set of Severus' shoulders, whispered the notes Petunia had left behind in volumes of notebooks beneath her floorboards.--She could not risk Lilly finding them.)
Severus did not correct them either. He was stiff and awkward around adults (terrified) and could not seem to relax (around anyone but Lilly).
Mom had started to cry. She was so proud, she said, but she'd miss Lilly terribly, and oh but how was she meant to know how her daughter was doing via owl post?! (The storekeeper refused to sell Mom an owl when she went to buy, claiming that none of their stock were properly trained yet. He sold an owl not 5 minutes later to a blond wizard. Petunia had seen. She'd been watching from the window of the ice cream shop, suspicious.)
Dad hugged Lilly fiercely, and told her he knew she'd do well (he meant he was not scared, but he was lying). And told her, she was his little warrior and she'd take the whole witching world by storm. He said it just like that, "witching world." Dad was a feminist at least when it came to his daughter leaving to go to join the wizarding world, but mostly he'd been convinced for a solid few weeks that only girls were magic, and at this point he was committed--why should not it be witching instead of wizarding?
He turned to Severus, whose gender Dad was privately skeptical of but nonetheless supportive (he had not really considered Severus an exception to only girls get to be magic rule, and had slyly pretended it had just slipped his mind when pressed).
He gently rested a hand on Severus' and Lilly's shoulders (Severus flinched anyway), and told him, "Now, take care of each other! And have fun!"
Mom hugged them both goodbye. "Study hard and tell us all about it when you come home!"
Lilly smiled but Severus looked away. (No one would ask him to tell them about it when he came home. Lilly was his only confidant.)
And after a final kiss to Lilly's forehead for luck, Lilly grabbed Severus' hand (Sev's, Lilly said) and Lilly took the wary boy(?) and skipped straight through the (not so solid) brick wall.
Their parents stood transfixed in silence for a breath, completely lost to the moment, to the fact that their little girl was gone to a world in which they could not follow.
And then Petunia Evans sprinted (beyond the range of her mother's fingers, past the other muggles, and straight through a not so solid brick wall.)