HP ficlet: Normal, Petunia-centric
Jan. 10th, 2007 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunabee34This is a little gen ficlet (377 words, unbeta'ed and hopefully not too terribly factually inaccurate) in which Petunia thinks about her sister.
Normal
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.
Normal
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.
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Date: 2007-01-11 04:55 am (UTC)This was beautiful.
This line was magnificent, and provides a (terrible) adult insight to the (terrible) perversity of Harry's youth. :
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.
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Date: 2007-01-11 03:39 pm (UTC):)
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Date: 2007-01-11 06:45 pm (UTC)I'm new to the HP verse (as in, I haven't even read the books yet) but I found Petunia totally recognisable in your piece even from the brief snatches of her in the movie; and if someone had told me that what you wrote was actually canon and / or detailed in the books, I would have found it far more plausible and poignant than no explanation for her awfulness at all.
Some beautiful moments of darkness in there, pretty much all of which have already been quoted, so I'll add my heartfelt praises for those and also for that last sentence.
I'd be interested to see what you do with Molly Weasley, who strikes me as a real fist-of-steel within wooly handknitted mitten type, well capable of taking down Voldemort with a well-placed rolling pin should the need arise.
All best wishes to you! xxx Tiger
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Date: 2007-01-14 03:14 am (UTC)I agree with your assessment of Molly Weasley. She and Joyce would have a lot to talk about.
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Date: 2007-01-14 08:47 am (UTC)I love giving feedback. It's the least I can do when I enjoy fanfic so very much and I don't write any, so you're very welcome!