walk with me (grab my hand and i’ll lead the way.)
characters: petunia dursley, lily evans
word count: 831
summary: petunia dursley has regrets. too many, it seems.
her name was petunia dursley.
she was proud of it—dursley: what a proper, english name—and she was proud with what she had come to in that life. but many do not remember that, in another life, long ago, she was once petunia evans.
the ironed skirts, primed sleeves, collared necks, and sensible shoes petunia dursley was once related to a bright eyed, brilliantly red-haired lily evans.
in another life, long ago, in a life filled with joy, pain, and heartbreak, two sisters sat side by side on a set of swings, wasting the days away. in a different world, in a better world, petunia’s regrets would’ve been her future.
with flowers blooming from their palms, laughter stemming from their hearts, and happiness coursing through their veins, the two sisters would have spent their lives together.
they would’ve spent afternoon teas bickering over idle gossip, as they watched their children grow up in the backyard. they would’ve gone to another when in need, asking for advice and knowing it would be given, and they would’ve loved each other.
in another world, lily evans would not have died.
in a better world, petunia dursley would have stayed petunia evans.
but this was not a better world, and lily potter remained six feet under the ground, and petunia dursley stayed with vernon, with dudley. she treated her sister’s only son with bitterness, jealousy, and hatred.
when petunia looked in the eyes of harry potter, she did not see his mother’s intelligence, nor his father’s humour. she saw the regrets of her life, the happiness she could’ve had, the sorrows of the life she did have, and the constant, constant reminder of the world that took lily evans. (it would always be lily evans. never potter. never the world that killed her.)
she did not see the bravery of her nephew, nor the kindness in his heart, and she did not see that he could’ve been her key to forgiveness.
and so when she found the baby that was her nephew on her doorstep with the letter (how insensitive could these people be?) informing her of her sister’s death, petunia did not cry.
she did not think of the infant before her. she did not think of the ways her sister could’ve died, but she did think of the reason.
lily evans would not have died if she had not been a witch.
she would not have died, and they would’ve lived their lives out together, at peace, and with joy.
she resisted the urge to kick the child, the urge to curl her lip at the wizard boy—the boy her sister had died for, the reason her sister was dead.
she picked him up, and the first thing she noticed was that he had lily’s eyes.
it was not the bleeding scar, or the small tuft of black hair, but his eyes.
they were never his eyes, she knew. they were lily’s. those eyes would always belong to lily.
the years passed, and harry grew older, and petunia never loved him.
and she never looked him in the eye.
she never knew of his potential, of his power, of his bravery, of his selflessness. she never saw him as anything more than the thing that brought the end of sister, never even thought of him as anything other than the reminder that this world, this world that took lily evans and slaughtered her, stayed progressing. moving on. without lily evans.
when harry was long gone from four privet drive, and dudley was with a family of his own, petunia was left alone.
vernon had been dead ten years, and harry gone twenty.
but he had visited once. and it was the last.
“why don’t you ever look me in the eye?” she remembered him asking, once, when they had met up, breaking their silence with another. “why can’t you let go?”
she could only stare at her cup of tea, the liquid trembling with her hand.
harry continued. “it’s been years petunia. nearly forty years since my mother has been dead.”
forty years, she thought, and she lifted her head to meet his face.
green, so brilliantly green.
“let go, petunia. because i know i have.”
and it was then, that she saw everything that she had missed—the kindness, the passion, the bravery, the goodness of the man that was harry potter, lily and james potter’s son, her nephew.
his eye’s were his mother’s.
he was a man who had been through hell, and he was a much better person than she had ever been, for he forgave. harry potter forgave.
she hoped that she was worthy of that forgiveness. (she wasn’t, and she knew it.)
but when petunia dursley died, she died as petunia evans, and when harry attended her funeral, he left a beautiful bouquet of lilies.
(petunia was buried beside her husband, but her ashes were left, scattered where they would stay, at her sister’s grave.)
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