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[personal profile] lunabee34
This is a little gen ficlet (377 words, unbeta'ed and hopefully not too terribly factually inaccurate) in which Petunia thinks about her sister.

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Petunia Dursley looked down at her nephew tucked sleeping inside the large bottom drawer of a Victorian highboy. It’s a funny thing, a mother’s love she thought, glancing over at Dudley in his cradle, his cheeks round to bursting, his baby mouth wide in a yawn. It gobbles one up and sweeps the crumbs tidily into the bin.

She wondered what Lily would say about the direction her life had taken. Petunia had chosen to marry the most odious and close minded man, particularly because he was so. Because he was normal, disgustingly and nauseatingly, normal. She had married him under the severely arched windows of an almost empty church in a dress so blindingly white and starched that the cuffs scratched her wrists until she bled into her bouquet. She kept her house clean, perfectly and obsessively clean, because that, too, was normal as was doting on her child, even if his pudgy hands squished around a zwieback vaguely sickened her.

She thought she knew what Lily would say, the same thing she’d said years ago when they were children, when a kindly man with a white beard and glasses and long flowing robes had popped down their chimney. “Well, come on then, Petunia. What are you waiting for? You can’t polish silver forever; there’s more to life than that. More to us than that.”

Two days ago, when this baby, this Harry, had appeared on her doorstep, Petunia had finally felt that she’d decided wisely when she’d continued rubbing Mother’s olive forks up and down, up and down on the cloth instead of stepping with Lily into the fire, when she’d irrevocably chosen the role of Martha over Mary.

But she couldn’t help remembering being Lily’s sister—making tea for their dolls in Mother’s finest Wedgwood and how Lily took the blame when the sugar bowl shattered; braiding each other’s hair with thick, grosgrain ribbons; and the sweet, secret ache that started in her fingers and shot down her arm to her elbow when she sneaked into Lily’s room one summer to hold her wand—and so she would put Harry where she kept those memories, in the cold and the dark under the stairs of her mind, with just enough bread to live on.

Date: 2007-01-10 08:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] trekgirl55.livejournal.com
She had married him under the severely arched windows of an almost empty church in a dress so blindingly white and starched that the cuffs scratched her wrists until she bled into her bouquet

*hearts this image* I think you captured the character very well my dear. This is so achingly sadly. It almost makes me feel sorry for Petunia. The "normal" life she sacrificed so much to attain is sterile cold and painfully devoid of happiness. No wonder she is so bitter.

I especially like the implication that Petunia could have went to Hogwarts too, but instead chose to stay in the muggle world. Such a defining moment seems well within the realm of canon and would go a long way in explaining Petunia's attitude towards the magical world.

A great insight into the character. :)

Date: 2007-01-11 03:34 pm (UTC)
ext_2351: (Default)
From: [identity profile] lunabee34.livejournal.com
Thanks, Trekgirl. I kept wondering as I was reading the books what made Petunia such an awful, awful woman and what made her not realize very obvoius things--such as Dudley is a disgusting nitwit. And in the last books there are hints that there's more to Petunia that meets the eye. so I wondered, what if she does know how horrible she and her family are, and then all that came from this. I think JKR has said that Petunia will not be magical, but who knows if she's telling the truth.

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