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Petunia’s Fit


Lily was sitting in the Evans’ dining room looking over James’s letter, eating her breakfast across from a sullen-looking Petunia. Mrs. Evans was carrying about a pitcher full of juice and Mr. Evans was reading at the head of the table. It was the third time Lily had read through James’s letter since she’d gotten it. She’d already replied, of course, but there was something about the messy scrawl of his writing across the parchment paper and rambled on and on and on that made her keep re-reading it. She didn’t know why. She could nearly see the cheeky grin he’d probably had on his stupid face when he’d signed it Potter, too. She imagined the way his lip would hang up on his tooth whenever he smiled at her and she rolled her eyes and folded the parchment up, slipping it into the pocket of her holiday jumper.

“Mum,” Lily announced, turning to Mrs. Evans as she waved about a fork with a bit of fruit cocktail speared on the end, “There’s a Doctor Who special tonight on the telly, do you reckon we could all watch it together?”

“That sounds lovely, dear,” said Mrs. Evans, smiling as she poured a glass of orange juice.

“It’s supposed to be brilliant - new Doctor regeneration and all…”

Petunia made a face into her porridge and blueberries. “I don’t like Doctor Who,” she said sourly.

Lily rounded on her, “Of course you don’t - you’re boring. Why would you like anything that’s the least bit fantastical?”

“Now girls,” intoned Mr. Evans, looking up from his daily paper. “Let’s not fight.”

Petunia had been particularly nasty to Lily since she’d come home - antagonizing her constantly and acting as though she knew so much more about everything than Lily did. Just because Lily didn’t know a whole lot about muggle current events or the newest pop culture didn’t mean she was stupid anymore than Petunia not knowing about wizarding current events or pop culture didn’t particularly make her stupid, either. But Petunia continuously went out of her way to make Lily feel as though that was exactly what it meant. She also had made a point to try and keep Mr. and Mrs. Evans from paying Lily quite as much attention as usual - going so far as to feign illness the first night Lily was back, pretending to be dizzy and faint so that Mrs. Evans was terribly concerned and missed half the dinner she’d prepared while taking care of her supposedly ill daughter.

Petunia sneered now, too, “I’m not fighting. And I’m not boring. I just don’t understand why everything has to be about magic in this house! Aren’t regular people good enough for you anymore?”

Lily rolled her eyes violently, “First of all, Tuney, Doctor Who isn’t magic - he’s a space alien, a Time Lord from another planet who travels through space and time in his TARDIS and --”

“Time travel doesn’t exist,” said Petunia.

“It does, actually, but you wouldn’t know that, being a mug--”

“SHUT UP!” Petunia shrieked, interrupting Lily. She threw her spoon down with a clatter into her bowl.

“You shut up!” Lily cried back, “You used to love Doctor Who! We watched it all the time together before --”

“Well I wish the Daleks would exterminate you, you little Freak!!!” Petunia shouted, and she stormed from the room.

Mr. and Mrs. Evans looked at one another, unsure how to react to this latest blow up - just another in a long parade of them that had been happening more and more every year ever since Lily had received her letter from Hogwarts.

“What was the meaning of that little fit?” murmured Mr. Evans.

“I don’t know. What should we do?” asked Mrs. Evans uneasily.

Lily, unfortunately, knew exactly how she wanted to react. She wanted to cry. She wanted to run upstairs and draw her wand and hit Petunia with a bag-bogey hex so hard her nose would have bogeys flapping out of it for a week. She wanted to tell Petunia what a horrible person she was, what a rude, inconsiderate, awful, disrespectful, terrible person!

She wanted to run from the house, across the whole country, all the way to the grounds of Hogwarts, into the Forbidden Forest and find the stag… her stag. She wanted to wrap her arms around that great, sinewy neck, and bury her face into his fur and cry, just knowing that somehow her stag not only understood every word she spoke but truly cared and loved her. Her stag who hadn't ever once called her a freak, she thought

Why did it seem as though she’d heard those very words somewhere before?

She put her fork down and pushed away her bowl of cut fruit. She took a deep breath, “May I be excused?” she requested.

Mrs. Evans nodded; both of the Evans parents were still numb from the explosion of Petunia’s anger.

“Thank you.” Lily got up and fled from the room, upstairs, past Petunia’s bedroom, from which a loud and obnoxious music was coming and she went to her own room and closed the door. She threw herself over her bed and hugged her pillow in frustration. She didn’t know why she cared so bloody much whether Petunia cared about her anymore, but she did. It ached deep inside her to picture Tuney just on the other side of the wall at her head there, and that she probably wouldn’t give a damn, even if she knew she’d made Lily cry. Might even relish the thought of it, if she knew, seeing has that had obviously been her goal.

After she’d cried herself a bit dizzy, Lily got up and wrote out a quick note to Ali Prewitt and to Frank Longbottom, inviting each of them to come along on 4 January with her and Potter to the cinema to see Monty Python’s Holy Grail, which was to begin playing on the first of the year. She added a bit of a paragraph in Ail’s note about how annoying Petunia had been and how much she wished they were back at Hogwarts already.

She stared out the window, thinking that one day, when she was older and had finished school and met a boy she fancied, she’d be married and live out there in that wide ol’ world with that boy and they’d be happy and she would never have to see Petunia Evans again as long as she lived. That, she thought, would be a rather lovely life.

She felt guilty the moment she thought it.

She loved Tuney, really. She just didn’t understand how Tuney could be so terrible to her. It wasn’t her fault she was magic and Tuney was not. She wanted to be friends with Petunia so very, very much, and to have back the sort of relationship they’d had before - what seemed like a hundred years ago. She could remember long nights laying in their twin beds across the room from each other and giggling or else being afraid of the dark during a thunderstorm and cuddling together to ward against the lightening under the blankets. She remembered building blanket forts and snowmen and going swimming at the lake and how wonderful it had been when they’d gone to the cinema together.

In a moment of insanity, Lily got up, determination in her eyes, and went out ot the hallway, right to Petunia’s bedroom door, and she knocked and waited and a moment later, Tuney opened it. She’d clearly expected their mother, not Lily, and the moment she realized her mistake, she tried to shove the door shut again.

“Tuney, wait!” Lily cried, shoving her foot in to keep the door from closing. They grappled for a moment with the door, one pushing in, the other pushing out, until finally Lily won and the door shoved open with a thump as Petunia turned on her heel back to her bed. Lily turned the record player down and looked at Petunia imploringly. “Come to the cinema with me next week,” she suggested.

Petunia made a face, “I don’t want to do anything with a freak like you.”

“We’re going to see the new King Arthur movie. It’s a comedy, supposed to be very funny…” Lily said, forcing herself to ignore the word freak as best she could.

“Who’s we? More of your people?” Petunia asked rudely. “More freaks like you?”

“If you mean other witches and wizards, then yes,” Lily replied, “But they’re very nice people and I think you’d enjoy their company. You can even bring one of your friends if you like. I’ll even buy your ticket and your popcorn if you’ll come. I really miss you Tuney and I want to spend time with you.”

Petunia’s eyes softened slightly at this. “You do?”

Yes,” Lily said, “Do you miss me, too?”

Petunia looked like she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit how she felt.

“I know you didn’t mean the Dalek thing,” Lily said, then, her confidence waning, she asked in a hopeful voice, “Right?”

Petunia whispered, “I didn’t mean it at all.”

“So you’ll come?”

Petunia considered it.

“Please, Tuney.”

“Alright.” Petunia sighed heavily, “But you’re buying the ticket. And the popcorn.”

Lily smiled.