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Petunia first learnt how to scold from her mother, the echoes of “How could you let your sister get into such a mess” “How could you lose Lily” “stop making up lies Petunia, of course Lily couldn’t do that” ringing in her ears as she told Lily to “stop that, Mother won’t like it”, only to be blithely dismissed as the nagging unfun older sister.
Even from a young age Petunia felt hard done to, although she wasn’t able to recognise or name the emotion until much later. It wasn’t as though she didn’t give Lily advice or instruction but she never listened and Petunia never learnt how to make her.
Petunia learnt how to drip venom and spew insults when that dirty, poor boy from Spinners End stole whatever chance Petunia ever had to befriend Lily, to be more than a cumberance to be endured.
She learnt jealousy when Lily got the new uniform and new school supplies to go to her special school, whilst Petunia had the hand-me-downs from the charity shop that marked her out for easy teasing in the playground. There she honed and sharpened her skill for cutting remarks and recognising people's weakness. There she learnt if you go for the throat people will leave you alone, you’ll never be bullied again.
Petunia learnt about summer love during the holidays in Wales where they stayed in a leaky caravan. She learnt that love makes the sting of unhappiness bearable and that hope was a wonderful thing to be cherished. She never saw the boy with the gelled hair and safety pins holding the rips in his clothes together again, not that she had expected to, but the memory of stolen kisses and more stayed with her for life. Her parents had disapproved which had added to the thrill. A delightful frisson running through her body whenever they brushed against one another and she thought how ‘naughty’ they were being, still very innocent and naive.
Shame was a new lesson. One that came at her Wedding to Vernon. Not because she had married him but because at the behest of her parents she had invited Lily who of course had brought her boyfriend and his friends. They had cheerfully defied every convention and didn’t even have the respect to be discrete or quiet. The Obliviators had come then. Her parents dismissing her feelings with a “what ever will they get up to next, no harm done attitude”. Veron of course was exempt from Obliviation, being married for 5 minutes apparently being all it took, and sometimes Petunia wondered if she would have had an easier time of it if he’d been memory wiped with everyone else.
Pleasure came with her married life, carving out their own way, not needing to heed her parents' opinions, especially when they moved over 200 miles away. Joy came with the birth of her son. His squashed face bellowing his displeasure at leaving the cozy safe womb.
She felt nothing when she learnt of her parents death at the hands of Deatheaters and wondered if that made her a monster. Lily didn’t attend the funeral, not that Petunia knew how to contact her, but she had put a notice in the paper as was the norm. She sold their parent’s house and put half in a bank account with Lily’s name on it, still unable to contact her sister to let her know. If Lily did write them letters and wondered why they didn’t answer she never contacted Petunia to find out.
When Dudley developed a fever and had to be taken to hospital in the back of an ambulance convulsing she learnt about a mothers fear. Dread that she would have to bury her child. Elation when she was told about febrile convulsions and taught how to keep him cool. The fever broke of course, within a few hours, the Doctors and Nurses smiling at a new mother’s relief. She learnt empathy through tea and biscuits and comforting hands to her shoulder from the staff.
She never noticed the cat judging her from the driveway as she wrestled a toddler, full of tantrums and tears, still not quite well from the measles he caught from a friend at Toddler Group. In her desperation to get just a few hours rest, ‘please don’t cry’, she handed sweets to the toddler. Anything to get just a bit of respite until Vernon came home and could take over and let her have a nap, just a small one. Dudley still wasn’t sleeping though and woke at 4 am which made it such a long day.
The baby on the doorstep with a letter that explained nothing but gave so much pain made so many emotions course through her she couldn’t identify any of them. They rang 999 as anyone would, having found a child outside for who-knew-how-long in November. The ambulance came and declared him well, they stitched the scar but it wouldn’t close, so they taped it with gauze and gave them dressings until it stopped bleeding.
When the child screamed at the sight of a cot that night, scaring Dudley so much that the whole household was in uproar for an hour or so, they sat rocking the child downstairs wondering where they could place him so he was safe and could rest, when the sight of any sort of pen made him cry. They cleared out the downstairs cupboard, put down a freshly made cot-bed mattress surrounded by pillows and foam, the door left ajar and the monitor transferred from Dndley’s bedroom to the hall so they could hear him better. The child made no sounds and slept through the night.
If Petunia could have chosen she would have waited until Dudley was sleeping through the night and was toilet trained to have another child. Dudley welcomed the other child as another playmate, not fully realizing that his Mum’s attention would now be split, until its eyes glowed red in anger when Dudley wouldn’t share the toy he was playing with because it was his comforter, and Dudley came away with scratches from tiny fingernails.
Petunia, horrified, was unable to think of anything to do and placed it in the cupboard because that surely was not a child. Was it possessed like something out of The Exorcist? The letter gave no contact details and Petunia did not have the skills necessary to cope with that. When Vernon came home he tentatively peered into the cupboard whilst Petunia waited with Dudley in her arms at the front door ready to run, run, run if it came flying at Vernon, because as much as she loved him, she loved Dudley more. Vernon found nothing more sinister than a sleeping child.
The journey to Cokeworth to find that grubby youth Lily knew and Petunia had so despised was fruitless. Petunia had never known where he had lived in the town and roaming the poorer end of the district hadn’t yielded any results.
So Petunia did what she had to do to make sure that the red eyes never appeared again. Through trial and error she and Vernon learnt what worked and with no other framework to guide them they made the poor child so exhausted he had no energy to be angry. On days when Vernon was home and could play with Dudley, giving him the undivided attention an inquisitive toddler needs it was easy, with her toiling away with Harry trying to make the chores fun. On days when she was alone it was so difficult to manage that she often locked her and Dudley in the bathroom, hiding her face in a towel, pretending to play hidy-boo but secretly drying her tears. Petunia had many lessons in futility and suffering and depression. She learnt them well and took them to heart.