LycorisRadiata

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Title: Lycoris Radiata

Summary: The red spider lily was the last bit of magic in Petunia's life, and will fill her life again.

Petunia Dursley found out about her sister's death on All Soul's Day, when she found her nephew on the stoop of her home. The letter didn't tell her much, only that Lily and James Potter were dead and had left her to take care of their son Harry. They were magical. Harry was magical. Magic scared Petunia. It hadn't always been that way.

Once Petunia had wanted to attend Hogwarts. Magic had seemed to be something that brightened her life and added color to her life. Now without Lily, there was no color. She would never see her sister's red hair. She would never see her sister's bright emerald eyes, only having the pale barely colored at all eyes to see in the mirror.

At times though her teens, Petunia had felt that her parents felt that Lily was more special than she was because she was magical. In her heart, she knew that was not the case. It did not mean she didn't think they did. Sometimes she thought that Lily actually was better that she was. After all, when Petunia called a weirdo for being a witch, Lily just smiled, and then a few hours later the two sisters would be giggling over the latest teen heart throb, wizard or mundane.

Magic had been a pure thing to Petunia for quite some time. It was something she could not do, but it was still in her life. It was something that made her little sister special, and to be honest, Petunia had always thought that her little sister was special. All little sisters were, after all. They were pure little girls, sometimes a bit bratty, and quite often annoying, but that was a little sister, and that was magic too.

That was until one day when she was accompanying Lily to Diagon Alley. She'd already married Vernon, a couple months before, and she was just entering her second trimester with Dudley. She was enjoying being over her morning sickness, and people were starting to notice her condition. The Death Eaters had attacked her and Lily while they were eating ice cream. Petunia had been told that the curse that she'd been held under was an unforgivable one, and she was lucky that she hadn't lost Dudley.

It had scared her. It had scared Vernon too. She blamed the curse on her not having another child, though she professed that her Dudleykins was enough for her. Still, there were days that she'd wished to have a little baby girl, maybe one that would have the same red hair and green eyes as Lily. Even one that might just have magic so she could live through the eyes of that daughter and find magic again.

Lily was dead though, and her orphan boy reminded her only of what she'd lost because of magic. She was too afraid to bring Harry into her heart. She was too afraid of magic now, too. It had killed her sister, and its mark was still gracing the brow of the boy. Maybe Vernon was right that magic shouldn't be. Maybe if it was pushed away, she wouldn't be hurt again.

Petunia had to arrange for the burial of Lily and her Husband James, in far off Godric's Hallow. It was so far off that she felt like Lily was pushed away in death from her. There was no magic, not really, left in Petunia's life.

Still, on All Saint's Day, just a year later, Petunia bundled up Dudley, secured him in the car seat, and strapped Harry in the seat next to him, for they only had one car seat, and headed off to the Welsh borderlands and the small town of Godric's Hollow. She had to see her sister's grave, at least once, even if it was never again. Vernon didn't come with her, he had to work on that Tuesday.

It took two and a half hours to travel the hundred and twenty-six miles from Little Whining to Godric's Hollow, a vase full of lilium longiflorum, obtained out of season at some cost, was carefully wedged upright on the floor boards of the passenger side of the new Jaguar XJ12 that Vernon had bought just two weeks before, trading in the Vauxhall from his days at the U.

To Petunia's great surprise, neither child troubled her during the drive, both of them being asleep by the time she pulled into the space next to the cemetery next to Saint Jerome's Parish Church. Freed from the car, both of them were eager to follow her into the graveyard. It was there, in the sheltered corner of the graveyard that she'd chosen in those harried days after her sister's death that she first encountered it.

Between the Vicarage wall that marked the back of the grave yard and the graves of her sister and brother-in-law was a patch of flowers, apparently grown wild. Not just any flower though. These were bright red, clumps of them growing right up to the grave. With a sister named Lily, there was little chance that Petunia would not know this particular flower. They were red spider lilies, not something that was known to grow in England outside of container, though Lily had told her that under particular sheltered conditions they could still grow outside.

Lily had tried, and failed. Spider Lily had been one of Lily's childhood nicknames, and her sister's fascination with her namesake flower, one thing that Petunia hadn't shared, had been lifelong. It looked like in death, Lily had finally succeeded.

Petunia put her own vase of flowers on her sister's grave, handing one each to Harry and Dudley. She watched as nephew and son carefully laid their flowers, stems crossed, on the top of the grave, letting herself cry as she kneeled before her sister's grave. As she knelt trying to find piece and remember the prayers of the fitful attendance of Mass during her childhood, the bright red spidery blooms, so aptly named filled her vision.

She knew not how long she knelt there, nor did she quite remember getting back in the car home. It wasn't until she looked in the mirror as she got off the M4, that she noticed that Harry had picked a bundle of the red spider lilies. She let him keep them, and they lasted much longer in the tin watering can that served as her nephew's vase than any such flower had a right to.

Petunia might have found the red flowers in its metal container's survival to be magical. She would never admit it. The next autumn, after the first really solid rain, their was more magic, this time at Number Four, Petunia's home. It was not the accidental magic that still scared her. No this magic grew in the flower bed in the center of the back garden, not having been planted there, but appearing on one suddenly bright autumn day in the full sunlight.

They were not supposed to be there, but the bright red spider lilies grew, in full clumps. She allowed her son and nephew to pick them, the four-year-olds delighting in arranging them in various containers, including the old tin watering can again.

The appearance of those flowers, they were the resumption of a bit of magic in Petunia's life, a small bulb, a clump that stuck to her, no matter what she did, no matter how much she attempted to push it away.

Years later, after her nephew had left to fight against the wizard who had killed Petunia's sister, and after her son had left for his own apartment, a few mornings after a strong heavy rain, Petunia looked out to her back garden. It had never been quite as well maintained after Harry had left for Hogwarts, but this morning, Petunia would not trade the disorderly, ragged, uncut garden for that orderly prize winning one of a decade ago.

No, as she sipped her morning tea, the sun rose over the horizon, casting its rays over the clumps of the red lilies. The patches of sunlight and the slight breeze making them move much like her sister's hair, and almost in the same shades. A sense of peace fell upon Petunia, as magic once again settle into her world. Only hand sheared paths would be cut among the wild magical garden, Petunia could not bear to do any more to those magical lilies.

It was lucky that the mower was kept in the garage instead of in a shed, because she allowed nothing to disturb the wild magical garden that every autumn would be filled with those flowers. They were magical to Petunia, the return of her often pushed away and denied magic in her life.

One day, to her great surprise, a visitor arrived at the door to Number Four, the daughter the nephew that she shunned, abused, and tried to crush the magic from. Only five, she was accompanied by Harry, having been promised to see the aunt she had never seen before. When Petunia asked the child's name, she heard no further than Lily.

She took the hands of the little girl with hair that was so close to that of her grandmother. Petunia gently led the tiny spunky girl that even with just a few words and moments so reminded her of her little sister to the back garden.

The back garden full, as it was now ever autumn, the magical flower, Lycoris radiata. Holding the hand of her great niece, just like she'd once held the hand of her sister, another Lily, Petunia began to tell of that Lily, and magic that had once been brought into her life by her little sister. Tales that had not been told for decades spilled out as they sat in the lilies.

With Lily, magic was back for Petunia, in the midst of the Resurrection Lilies. It did not go away again until Easter Lilies were placed on her own grave.