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“Petunia, I know you hate me, and that is my biggest regret. I am writing this letter to tell you I’ll stay out of your life from now on. But there is something important I need to tell you, to warn you about, something much more dangerous than the Dark Lord who hunts me, my husband and my child could ever be.
Have you ever encountered the situation where, in a bar, or a restaurant someone enters the room and all conversations stop and all heads turn to look at the person? In real life, not in the movies. They’ll look normal at first, but beautiful oh God they’ll be beautiful. When the conversation starts up again, everyone will be speaking quieter, leaning in trying to catch that person’s conversation, if they’re having one at all.
Then, days later, you’ll find that you know when this person is simply on the same street as you, without needing to be seen or heard. You will simply feel their presence, and the lack of it once they’ve left the area. Pray they stay gone, even as you find yourself wishing they would stay.
If they come back, and you find people going missing. People stop attending church, or going to work, when the gossip mill turns entirely towards this one person and cults form. Pray it is simply a mundane human, a wizard, or even a vampire. If when you see this person, they smell of the sea, you see a flash of scales, gills or claws, and your dreams turn towards the Tempest. Stop praying. Take your family, get in your car and drive like your life depends on it.
This person will turn perfectly sane, reasonable people into madmen, who will happily sacrifice you to their new God, or they will offer themselves up to be devoured and the worst part is, they won’t have even intended to cause any of it. A young one, just coming into their heritage might not even realise they are the cause of the cult’s formation, or the madness infecting those close to you, or the blood shed in their name. But it will happen no matter how much they wish it wouldn’t. They are Leviathans. The Earth’s Most Wicked Tribe. The Old Gods.
I know I don’t need to ask you to follow my instructions should a Leviathan ever show in London, or anywhere else you may live in the future. You’ll just do it and for that I am glad. I can only hope that this never becomes a necessity for you and that one day, when this war is over you and I can overcome our differences and reconnect. If you ever wish, you know how to contact me. I wish you luck, with Vernon and Dudley.
Love, Lilly Evans-Potter”
Three days after Petunia received this letter, her little sister had died, and her Freakish son had been left on Petunia’s doorstep, a letter from that old man Albus Dumbledore telling her she had to raise Harry, and stay in that house and under no circumstances was she to be able to move out until Harry was seventeen, citing blood wards that meant nothing to her.
She had not wanted to imagine what the man might do if she were to just take her family and leave Little Whinging. She knew that the man was prone to manipulation, but even the worst he could do would likely be nothing compared to the Leviathans Lilly had written about. Lilly was an unapologetic Freak, just like her Freakish husband, but she had never lied to her. One thing that she could say she was grateful for, but there were times, as with the Leviathans, that she wished for blissful ignorance instead.
The pressures that an additional child, one whom she had no desire to care for was initially a burden. But once Vernon got promoted -she was ever so proud of him- things became easier. But she still felt that additional pressure. She would have spent as little money on the little Freak as possible, but Dudley for some inexplicable reason adored him like a little brother. He seemed ever so generous with him, letting him play with his toys and giving him half his food.
On one hand, she despised that her efforts to make sure the Freak knew he was unwanted was being ruined, but on the other, her heart melted at the sight of her precious Dudykins generosity. He was such a good role model, a good influence. When he was four, he even insisted that they get rid of the old, broken toys that littered his second bedroom, that she and Vernon stored, precisely so they would have an excuse to not give the Freak his own room. There was only so long that she and Vernon could make excuses to not do it, before they knew they had no choice but to relent.
And so, the Freak got his room, and a mattress. Oh she gave him plenty of chores to do. Do the dishes, help cook the food, polish every surface in the house, hoover, do the garden and Dudley insisted on doing most of it, or even all of it!
The Freak, fortunately, with a glare from her and Vernon, still ended out doing most of the work, but Dudley still took on some of it regardless. Perhaps it was not a terrible thing, that Dudley knew some responsibility, even if she thought he could be without for a few more years at least. He was such a good boy, but Petunia worried. Worried that her precious Dudykins would be infected with her nephew’s freakishness. But then, she had not seen any of his mother’s freakishness. Lilly was displaying signs by the time she could walk. Perhaps, she and her husband had failed to pass on their freakishness, their magic and her nephew might not have needed to be Freak, just Harry?
It was the boys first day of school, that that pressure was, to an extent absent. Oh she still had to make sure the house was tidy for when her husband got home, but with how she and the boys all worked, the place was near perpetually spotless. Instead, she spent the day with the other mothers in the neighbourhood. She was not even embarrassed that she brought Dudley’s first pair of baby boots. Tiny things, oh he was growing up so fast! She bragged of course, about how he was practically like Harry’s big brother, and despite his own youth, an astounding influence on the poor boy.
They praised her, of course for taking in her late sister’s baby boy after the way she walked out on their family like a delinquent and hooked up with that hooligan James Potter! Oh they all talked about their little ones, just starting school for the first time, and when it was time to pick up their little ones from school, the mothers all decided to walk together to pick up the children. Oh those hours they talked just went in so fast.
It was only as she approached the school, that she felt the resounding pressure settling back upon her, and as the children left, the first child her eyes fell upon, despite being smaller, and not quite as chubby in that way that was still absolutely adorable was not her son, but Harry. The boy looked at her, like he knew everything there was to know about her. A chill ran down her spine, and for the first time in years, Petunia’s mind ran back to Lilly’s final note. The other mothers seemed to notice him first as well, before even their own children, and her hands shook behind her back.