The Unmagical One

12th June 1966

It begins when Petunia is eight years old.

She is thumping across the coarse asphalt of her school playground, dodging between chattering groups of uniformed children, in pursuit of her younger sister. Lily, meanwhile, is pounding after Bernard Hayes, who she found poking a frog with a stick, and who is now cackling over one shoulder at her as he ducks and weaves.

'Lily, don't!'

Lily is running so fast Petunia can barely keep up, despite her greater age, and she keeps losing sight of her. She cranes her neck and is just able to glimpse a swish of red hair as Lily turns to look back at her. Lily's eyes widen as something catches Petunia's foot and it stops abruptly, as though it had reached the end of an invisible leash. Determination is etched in Lily's small face as she begins, with agonising slowness, to turn back. The asphalt screams up towards her-

And then she is floating, and lands as gently as though she were sinking into a bed.

Lily is at her side in seconds, her crusade in defense of innocent frogs against the sadistic whims of seven-year-old boys forgotten. Bernard Hayes is long gone.

'Tuney! Tuney, are you hurt?'

Petunia shakes her head, dazed. Lily's green eyes swim with tears as she paws at her frantically, searching for any as-yet-unnoticed injury. Petunia lets her fuss over her, smoothing her dress, dabbing at her forehead as though the fall might have given her a fever, even though she knows there will be nothing wrong.

Because I flew.

3rd August 1969

The chains of the swing burn in her hands. Her dress is sticking to her with sweat, and the backs of her legs have glued themselves to the plastic seat, so that angry red blotches will be left when she stands up. She tries her best to ignore all this, to focus on swinging endlessly back and forth, but the truth is she is too old for swings. By her side, Lily swings higher and higher, kicking her legs in time with the movement of the swing to push herself still further, further towards the hot yellow sky. She seems unaffected by the heat, whooping and giggling, her concentration on nothing but the metronome arcs of the swing. Suddenly she seems unnaturally high, so high Petunia has to crane her neck, and she takes far too long to come down. Petunia knows what is coming, and feels a trickle of cold dread.

'Lily, don't do it!'

Lily shoots past once again, and Petunia's stomach swoops with fear and resentment as she reaches the peak of the arc and leaves the swing seat altogether. Petunia watches as her sister tumbles through the air, hair fluttering like wings, laughing. When she lands, the gravel is barely disturbed.

'Mummy told you not to!'

Petunia drags herself to a slow stop and leaps up, slow and heavy by comparison. Lily is flushed and breathless and giggling wildly, her hair floating tousled about her head, and Petunia feels a stab of jealousy that she covers by going into authoritarian mode. She puts her hands on her hips.

'Mummy said you weren't allowed, Lily!'

Lily dabs at her messy hair, seemingly unaffected by the heat. Petunia shifts uncomfortably in her stiff dress and seethes. Her sister is still giggling breathlessly as she bends to pick up a dusty flower from a nearby bush. 'But I'm fine. Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do.'

Petunia doesn't want to watch, but she does, but she's terrified that someone will see. She glances around, unwillingly making herself a conspirator, and edges forward, eyes fixed on the motionless flower. Lily holds out her hand, palm flat, and-

There is movement, movement Petunia tries for a desperate second to convince herself is an illusion, a heatwave maybe. The petals seem to pulsate, gathering together and opening out, and Petunia feels dizzy and ill but she can't look away. When she does, all she sees is Lily glowing with pride, eyes shining, and she can't stand it anymore.

'Stop it!'

Lily looks exasperated, but her eyes betray a twinge of hurt. 'It's not hurting you.' She drops the flower, and Petunia cannot help but watch it as it falls. She shakes herself. 'It's not right.'

Lily says nothing, just digs one toe into the dusty gravel. Petunia bites her lip, but it bursts out anyway.

'How do you do it?'

'It's obvious, isn't it?'

There is a rustle and someone falls out of the bush, a stringy boy with odd clothes and shaggy black hair. Petunia lets out a shriek of alarm and staggers backwards to the swings, but Lily doesn't move. Petunia feels an urge to snatch her away from the batlike boy in the huge coat. Instead, she clings to the hot metal of the swing set and watches.

Petunia is gratified to see Lily look at the boy with suspicion. She tucks her red hair behind one ear.

'What's obvious?'

The boy has turned an ugly shade of puce. He glances over at Petunia, who looks pointedly away. He leans in close to Lily and says, low enough that Petunia can barely make it out, 'I know what you are.'

Petunia's stomach twists with fear. Lily's eyes widen slightly, but she manages to keep her haughty expression.

'What do you mean?'

He shifts in his bizarre, overlarge clothes. His voice is so low Petunia barely hears what he says next.

But she does hear.

'You're a witch.'

It is nonsense, obviously, except that it isn't, because nonsense wouldn't make the hairs prickle on the back of Petunia's neck. If it were nonsense, this boy would be nothing more than a briefly alarming nuisance. But it isn't, and his too-large overcoat and straggly hair have taken on a malevolence they did not possess before. Lily, thankfully, doesn't seem to have taken it the same way.

'That's not a very nice thing to say to somebody!'

She turns and marches off to stand beside Petunia, who feels a rush of relief. Together they cling to the pole of the swing and stare him down. He looks panicked as he stumbles towards them. 'No!'

He is staring at Lily. Petunia could be invisible, she thinks with irritation. He is familiar, she realises suddenly, a boy she flinches away from in the street, a boy her parents look at with a mixture of apprehension and pity. A name falls into her mind. Snape.

She does not like the way he is looking at Lily. He looks hungry.

'You are. You are a witch. I've been watching you for a while. But there's nothing wrong with that. My mum's one, and I'm a wizard.'

Petunia laughs, coldly, masking her fear. Suddenly she loathes him more than anyone in the world. She wants to fly at him, to get him far away from her sister. Instead she shrieks:

'Wizard! I know who you are. You're that Snape boy!'

He is clearly aware of the ignominy of his name, and flinches. Petunia is spurred on. She turns to Lily, who is trying not to meet his eye.

'They live down Spinner's End by the river', she says. Even trusting Lily cannot fail to be put off by that. Spinner's End is one of the few places their liberal parents do not like them to go. 'Why have you been spying on us?'

He is flushed, cowed, and Petunia feels sure that they are inches from driving him off. 'Haven't been spying.' He narrows his eyes at Petunia. 'Wouldn't spy on you, anyway, you're a Muggle.'

She has never heard the word, and so it must be bad, the kind you're never allowed to say. She purses her lips. Beside her, Lily is looking at him with nearly as much dislike as her. 'Lily, come on, we're leaving!' She stomps away with Lily alongside her, and is gratified to see Lily turn and glare at him. He stands alone in the middle of the playground, and Petunia feels- for the moment- that she has won.

28th July 1971

Lily comes back from getting the post with her eyes shining. Petunia looks up from her toast and sees it clutched in her hand, ink like liquid emeralds, heavy bumpy paper of the kind that screams importance. On the back is a heavy wax seal embossed with a complicated crest, and in the middle is a letter H.

She has heard them talking about this letter, when she gave into her curiosity and followed them. The awful boy had told Lily about it, how they would both get one.

'It's real for us. Not for her.'

Not for her.

Lily is gabbling as she eases it open, her hands trembling. Their parents look apprehensive but excited, leaning in close, her mother gazing at Lily with pride and wonder.

'Mummy, look, a real seal! Look! Severus said they write with quills, all the time, I'll have to get one I think, and lots of other stuff, he said there's a special place you can go, for cauldrons and things.'

'Cauldrons', her mother says faintly. 'Did you hear that, George? Cauldrons.'

'What else do you need, Lil? Aside from the…cauldrons.'

Lily rips a second sheet of heavy paper from the envelope; the letter falls onto the table.

'Um… well, all these textbooks- look, there's a list.'

Her mother leans in closer still, touching the green ink with a shaking finger. 'Look at this! A Beginner's Guide to Transfiguration… Lily, we're so proud. Transfiguration.'

Her father attempts a laugh. 'I suppose you'll be turning the teacups into rats next thing we know, eh Lil?'

Lily giggles, flushed and happy. 'We're not allowed to do magic outside of school, Daddy. Severus says. Besides, they wouldn't let us do stuff that big at first.'

They pore over the letter, exclaiming and pointing, her mother clasping one hand to her heart as though it might burst. Petunia stares down at her plate. She picks up her toast, and finds that it has gone cold.

Her stationery is primly white compared to the earthy yellow stuff of the letter. She hasn't used it in a long while; embarrassingly, it has rabbits in the corners. She thinks it may have been a birthday present. Her fountain pen is old, the ink watery.

Dear Professor Dumbledore,

My name is Petunia Evans. I expect you know my sister, Lily Evans; she got a letter from you this morning, and she's coming to your school in September.

Lily's been able to do magic for a while, and I haven't, but it isn't surprising really because she's always got better marks than me in school. I'm not stupid though, Sir, I don't think, I do get good marks if I try and I really would try very hard. I'm asking you to let me come to Hogwarts, too. I know that I'm too old, but you could start me in the first year, I wouldn't mind. I'm her sister, and if she can do magic I'm sure I'll be able to too, even if I'm not as good. I haven't been able to when I tried on my own, but you and your school could teach me. I'd pay attention and I'd work as hard as I can. I really do want to come to your school, very much, and I'll do anything I can to make it worth your while to accept me. Really, I will.

Yours sincerely, Petunia Evans.

A day later, in an office full of beautiful things in a castle full of magic, an old man will lay down the letter, put his head in his hands and wish futilely that the world were not quite so unfair.

1st September 1971

The train is the biggest she's ever seen, and the reddest. It towers over her. Like everything magical she's seen- the letter, the cauldron, the wand, even the pointed hat she secretly tried on- it seems to burst with promise, with secrets. Secrets she isn't a part of.

Petunia is red in the face with trying not to cry. Lily is tugging desperately at her sleeve.

'Tuney, please, I'm sorry, Tuney, I'm sorry! Listen-' Lily's hand grasps hers, she ducks around trying to look Petunia in the face but she turns the other way and tries, forcefully, to pull away her hand. 'Maybe once I'm there-' Petunia makes a small noise that was meant to be disparaging but comes out more like a sob, and hides her face. 'No, listen, Tuney! Maybe once I'm there, I'll be able to go to Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!'

Petunia knows full well that there is nothing Lily can do. Nothing anyone can do. She is completely, resolutely unmagical, everything about her is unmagical, and Lily, sparkling wonderful Lily, is a witch to her fingertips. She wrenches her hand from Lily's grasp. 'I don't- want- to- go!' she says with furious venom. 'You think I want to go to some stupid castle and learn to be a- a-'

She looks around. The platform is busy, loud, full of cats and owls and people, each of whom seems to have twice as much life as she does. She has never felt so insignificant, so easy to forget.

'-you think I want to be a- a freak?'

Lily's eyes are full of tears. She looks at Petunia as though she has never seen her before. 'I'm not a freak.' She has stopped trying to catch Petunia's hand. 'That's a horrible thing to say.'

Petunia knows she is losing Lily, possibly forever, but she is made reckless by her jealousy. 'That's where you're going,' she spits. 'A special school for freaks. You and that Snape boy… weirdos, that's what you two are. It's good you're being separated from normal people. It's for our safety.'

Lily glances back at their parents and leans in close to Petunia. 'You didn't think it was such a freak's school when you wrote to the Headmaster and begged him to take you.'

The blood rushes to Petunia's face. 'Beg? I didn't beg!' Lily is triumphant. 'I saw his reply. It was very kind.'

She can barely speak with humiliation. 'You shouldn't have read-' she whispers. 'That was my private- how could you-?'

Lily glances guiltily at the boy, the awful Snape boy, standing with his family along the platform. He knows too, thinks Petunia. She fights off an urge to run away. 'That boy found it! You and that boy have been sneaking in my room!'

'No- not sneaking- Severus saw the envelope, and he couldn't believe a Muggle could have contacted Hogwarts, that's all! He says there must be wizards working undercover in the postal service who take care of-' 'Apparently wizards poke their noses in everywhere!' says Petunia, biting down tears. 'Freak!' she spits, and turns her back on her sister.

1st November 1981

Petunia Dursley fumbles one-handed with the doorknob, clutching the milk bottles in the other. It is early still, one of the few moments she has to herself. Upstairs, Vernon and Dudley are both still asleep. A cold draft hits her as she opens the door and she presses her dressing gown to her with her elbows, shivering.

Then she sees the bundle. Then she sees the small face peeking out from within it, and recognises with a jolt the familiar green eyes.

It is then that she screams.

The milk bottles fall to the ground with a cacophony of crashes and tinkling. The face in the blanket screws up and lets out a yell of fright that turns into a hiccupping series of sobs. As her nephew squirms within the folds of his confinement, a crumpled envelope comes into view. She reaches down and picks it up. It takes her less than a second to recognise the heavy paper, the green ink. For an insane second she thinks that this is it, that her letter has finally come. But Petunia Dursley is twenty-three, and she doesn't think about that letter anymore.

She opens the envelope. From inside the house come Dudley's roars as he wakes up alone and hungry. Vernon's footsteps begin on the landing and get louder as he thunders down the stairs. The bundle continues to scream.

As Vernon crashes into view and bellows at her to feed their son, Petunia learns that Lily Potter is dead.