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The baby screamed in her arms begging for the food she’s been putting off giving. The screams have been going on for an hour and she only got the courage to feed it once Dudley started to scream too. That’s the metric of time for which she truly needs to take care of the baby’s needs — when Dudley also starts whining about it.
Petunia shoves a bottle of milk into its mouth and the baby starts to suckle hard on it. She waits until it pushes it away and then starts to feed it the oatmeal Dudley didn’t want. Dudley finds sweeter things more appealing but the baby doesn’t seem to mind the oatmeal; probably because she’s never given it anything else to eat since it’s lived here.
The 2 months since her sister died and got custody of her sister’s son and Petunia still can’t be near it long. Touching the freak makes her skin tingle and itch, looking at the scar on its forehead makes an uneasy bile rise in her throat. The worst is its eyes because everything about the baby is the husband Petunia never cared to know but the eyes are completely her sister’s. Those green eyes that peer into your soul with a power that Petunia will never possess come directly from Lily Evans.
So Petunia shoves the last bit of oatmeal into its mouth and puts it right back into his room or more like the cupboard she shoved the basket it came in. It’s easier this way, no loose baby causing havoc across her house influencing her Dudley. Petunia knows her sister is rolling in her grave at the action but in Petunia's opinion she shouldn’t have died if she wants her son treated ‘right’.
Petunia can only do her best especially when the eyes of death stare at knowing her past misdeeds. The baby knows — it’s eyes know — so why try when all that baby is, is just her sister reborn to haunt her. So Petunia moves back to Dudley ignoring the soft cry’s from the cupboard.
Later that night when Vernon says they can beat it out of him as he grows all Petunia does is nod, it’s not her son why should she care. She never mentions how it wouldn’t work. It takes three years for the boy to actually be properly beaten by Vernon and she realizes how truly isn’t a good person nor sister. It’s too late at that point to stop the pain though all she can really do is look away and pretend it’s fine.
When the baby isn’t a baby anymore and is instead 17 with years of pain under belt alongside his talent for magic, she has another realization; he hates her. The boy she fed, changed, and gave a home to hates her and she can’t blame him. She hit him, locked him away, starved him, and let her husband and child abuse and torment him, of course he hates her. He hates because his eyes didn’t know all those years ago because was 1 years old, not even alive the last time she and Lily spoke.
As she leaves her home leaving behind a boy she never and will never know she comes to terms with the fact of her ugliness. She hurt her sister as a child over jealousy their parents only ever validated but Lily’s son had nothing to do with that. Harry wasn’t there for Petunia's pain and yet he paid for it anyway.
——
Harry remembers his stomach hurting a lot as a kid along with his joints and bladder. The proper relief came from whether his aunt and uncle felt he deserved it. Typically he suffered because being bad was easier than being good in their eyes. He could help out thousands of people and still be deemed the devil.
For a long time he didn't understand why or what was wrong with him and his family. He was jealous of the favoritism of course but to him that was life. Hogwarts changed his understanding of it quickly, coming to the understanding of what abuse was.
Hogwarts changed a lot for him in many ways. He was able to eat three meals a day, drink water whenever and go to the bathroom right away. He grow to enjoy the freedom provided by Hogwarts even as war approached. Now war is on his front door step and he has to leave; they all have to leave.
His aunt and uncle pack away the house pretty quickly, reminding Harry of his 11th birthday. Everything is moved to a new house that Harry will never see so they can escape a war they don’t actually care about. Dudley is the only one truly worried which doesn’t surprise him given the two are finally feeling like cousins after 5th year.
Harry finds his Aunt Petunia standing silently in the empty living room staring into space. She doesn’t look at him but his eyes don’t leave her with the intent to make her uncomfortable, his eyes have alway made her uncomfortable. Harry’s tongue is heavy in his mouth as his hand grows clammy and his face hot.
“I’ve lived in this house for 20 years and they expect me to leave in a single night.” His aunt say’s quickly but quietly, as she looks at his direction but not at him. Moves into the room a little more, making her have to look at him a little.
“They’ll torture you to get any information about my whereabouts.” He answers in the same speed and tone. Truthfully he admits to himself quietly he wouldn’t mind seeing them be tortured. The abuse and pain he went through getting done to them would be cathartic to watch.
“You don’t think I don't know what they're capable of. You didn’t just lose a mother, I lost a sister.” Aunt Petunia says in the scolding way she always speaks to him with. His body grows hot, his mouth opens before he even thinks about it.
“You know for 10 years when I thought of a mom I would think of you?” He says his voice never rises in pitch just staying even and quiet. She tenses further and finally looks at him properly taking in the boy she never loved. “Not because you deserved it but because I couldn't imagine what my own mother looked like because you — her sister — never showed me.”
Aunt Petunia stares at him as her blue eyes become glassy at his words. She looked off to the corner after a second and shook her head. Harry doesn’t know her thoughts or her own pain with losing her sister but he will acknowledge the elephant in the room; she never cared before.
“You know you look so much like someone I’ve never met besides once you're so much of your father that at times I wonder if we’re even related.” Petunia is still cold and hard, never breaking to sound mornfull of his dead father. “Your eyes though are so your mother that it made me scared.”
“My eyes scared you?”
“Your mother scared me.” This time she spook while looking directly into his eyes. They stared at each other for a minute before uncle Vernon honked the horn for Aunt Petunia.
“Aunt Petunia.” Harry says as she leaves the room and his life. She pauses and looks back at him again, her body incredibly tense. “I just want you to know I hate you.”