Chapter Text
Chapter 1: A Turn in the Story
Volume One: Desire and Redemption
A Note Before We Begin
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The protagonists are Petunia and Snape, both written as their canonical selves, not as power-fantasy or saccharine romance versions. The author has a great fondness for this ship as they exist in canon, but with so little content out there, there was nothing left to do but create it personally.
So what makes this pairing worth shipping?
It comes down to this: Snape is arrogant because of his identity as a wizard, while Petunia is prejudiced against magic because she was born without the gift for it. Is that not a perfect fit for Pride and Prejudice?! The author very much wanted to see these two forced into each other's lives for some reason, coming to understand one another through mutual dislike, gradually setting aside their own pride and prejudice, and falling headlong into love.
This story, then, is simply about two people — both insecure and yet arrogant — whose lives intersect because of the author's mischief, and who go from hating each other to falling in love. Each volume's title marks a shift in the emotional arc between them. The journey will have its sweet moments and its turbulent ones, but it is absolutely a Happy Ending. The thoughts and words of characters in the story do not necessarily reflect those characters' true inner convictions — both leads have a strong tendency toward self-deception, and they do not represent the author's own views.
Their love is a match between equals. Neither one occupies a position of submission. Intellectually they are on equal footing; emotionally, Petunia is the more mature of the two and will hold the leading role.
Snape is the first to develop feelings. Interested readers are welcome to guess exactly when that moment arrives.
One more thing: it is fair to say that Snape is an arrogant piece of work, not a good person, and quite contemptible as a human being.
But emotionally, he is not a faithless man. Even in the early stages, when his prejudice toward Petunia runs deep, even during the two or three moments when he fleetingly thinks of Lily, he sees Petunia as her own person. He perceives her flaws and her strengths. Not a substitute for Lily.
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Petunia Evans was a very ordinary woman.
Her life followed the same unhurried course as most ordinary people's. She grew up in the small town of Cokeworth, a place that held the laughter of her childhood and the footprints of her growing years.
At five, she walked through the doors of primary school and began her education.
At eleven, she entered secondary school and was introduced to a broader world of knowledge.
At sixteen, she gathered her hopes of university and submitted an application. But, as with most ordinary people, it disappeared without a trace and raised not a single ripple.
Her friend Yvonne Cote encouraged her to try a few more times, though Petunia had never had much real interest in academic study. She had applied in the first place only because Yvonne had gotten into university. What she had always truly wanted was simply to attend school alongside her friend.
Yvonne was an exceptionally clever girl whose academic results were consistently at the top of her class.
Her personality, however, was a little unusual. In a society that widely considered marriage and children to be the inevitable path of every life, Yvonne had no interest in romance and no intention of marrying or having children.
Petunia suspected it was because Yvonne had been abandoned by her parents at the orphanage as a young child, that experience of being cast off by family had left a deep mark, filling her with a sense of distance toward the very concept of home.
Whatever the reason, Yvonne's steadiness and independence filled Petunia with no small amount of envy. She admired Yvonne's courage: the willingness to pursue the life she wanted without being bound by what the world expected.
And Yvonne, for her part, never minded Petunia's ordinariness or her faults, meeting her always with patience and understanding.
So it was that two people of quite different temperaments became close friends and walked through ten years of life together.
After the failed university application, Mr. Evans made arrangements for Petunia to go to London to learn typing.
Typing was, in the society of that time, a key that could unlock a path to a real career.
Mr. Evans understood this perfectly. Once Petunia had mastered the skill, he knew, she would have no trouble finding a respectable job, something along the lines of office clerk or secretary.
For Petunia herself, though, there was a small dream she carried quietly: to one day open a bakery or cake shop of her own. She loved the busy hours spent in a kitchen. The sweetness that came from mixing flour, eggs, and sugar was far more enticing to her than any document in any office.
But she knew that in those days, a girl laboring away in a kitchen held far less respectability than one working behind a desk.
And so she went along with Mr. Evans's suggestion.
She began to learn typing. She had never been strong with book learning, but typing was a skill that required nothing more than repeated practice to master, and she took to it quite well.
After a period of diligent study, Petunia was rewarded for her efforts. She found a clerical position.
At that company, she encountered a junior manager named Vernon Dursley.
Mr. Dursley was a somewhat heavyset man. He did not possess Yvonne's intelligence, but he was fair enough in his treatment of subordinates and colleagues, offering each person their due respect with an even hand, with the exception, of course, of those he considered too eccentric or difficult to read.
Through their working interactions, a few encounters were enough for Petunia to notice the particular way Mr. Dursley looked at her. That gaze was full of admiration and attention, like a warm breeze passing over her, and it stirred an inexplicable pleasure in her heart.
So when Mr. Dursley invited her to spend an evening at the cinema, she felt no surprise at all. She accepted with a thread of anticipation and delight.
After a few dates, the warmth between them grew steadily. Petunia brought Mr. Dursley through the door of her family home in Cokeworth, and the Evanses' eyes moved back and forth between the two of them before settling into smiles of quiet satisfaction.
Mr. Dursley quietly began making plans of his own, he prepared an elegant engagement ring, looking forward to spending the rest of his life at her side.
Had things continued on that path, the two of them would have been like so many ordinary couples: a warm, simple wedding, one or two lovely children, and a modest, happy life lived together.
But Petunia Evans had a sister who was anything but ordinary. Lily was a witch, and her fiancé was a wizard as well.
After Mr. Dursley saw Petunia's sister and future brother-in-law with his own eyes, the forward motion toward a proposal came to a halt. His gaze filled with hesitation and conflict, as though he were struggling painfully between love and reality.
Petunia could understand his hesitation. It still hurt.
Readers who have read Harry Potter will know that Vernon Dursley, for Petunia's sake, was willing to tolerate Lily and James, both wizards. But a story with no unexpected turns is a dull one, for author and reader alike.
And so the unexpected happened.