November Flowers

July 1971

A sticklike blond girl of about twelve watched as her younger sister launched herself off a swing at the height of its arc. Her bright red hair flew like a banner behind her. Like a sheaf of red poppies. Like blood.

In an instant, Petunia Evans imagined her sister with limbs bent the wrong way, sprawled on the dirt and no one around to witness it but her. She'd race to find help but of course she wouldn't find anyone in time, and then her sister would be dead and it would be her fault for not stopping her. What would Mummy say? Her Dad? She bit her lip, head full of unpleasant images as her sister hurtled through the sky.

At the apex of the jump, her sister seemed to hang in the air for a split second. Then, as Petunia watched, heart in her throat, her sister didn't fall so much as drift straight down. She fell like a snowflake, or a leaf, not like the five stone girl she was. Her toes lit on the playground asphalt with the easy grace of a ballerina.

Petunia breathed. Her sister was safe.

That, however, was entirely beside the point.

"Lily!" she shouted. "Mummy said not to do that! It's dangerous!"

Lily grinned. "But I'm fine! Look, Tuney, look at what else I can do!"

She scurried to the edge of the playground, where a great old bush covered in huge red flowers grew. She picked one of the flowers off the ground and held it up to her sister. In her hand, the petals opened and closed again and again, giving the flower the undulating appearance of a strange sea creature.

Petunia pressed her lips together so hard they almost disappeared into her face. Seeing the expression on her sister's face, Lily dropped the flower. It fell limply onto the dirt.

"That's not the point," said Petunia. "What if you'd lost control and fallen? You don't even have your wand yet!"

"You have a wand," said Lily, and there was a hint of longing in her voice.

Petunia stood a bit straighter. Yes, she did have a wand. Hawthorn, 10 ¾ inches, light and whippy. She'd bought it from a man called Ollivander, in a strange place called Diagon Alley that her parents could neither find nor quite understand. It chose her. She still remembered the warmth that traveled up her arm the first time she touched it, the pride in her parents' eyes, and the adoration in Lily's.

"You know I can't use it outside-" she began, only to be interrupted by what appeared to be the bush.

"You have a wand?" It said, leaves shaking.

Petunia let out a small squeak of surprise and ran backwards towards the swings. Lily, though her shoulders twitched in shock, didn't move.

A skinny, reedy boy in an overlarge coat and too short jeans appeared from behind the flower bush. Limp black hair with leaves stuck in it hung in his eyes. He started in Petunia's direction with undisguised incredulity.

"It's not nice to scare people like that!" snapped Petunia from the safety of the swings. Her heart was still hopping in her chest like a Chocolate Frog.

Lily looked uncertainly from the boy to her.

"You?" he said, apparently choosing to ignore her. "You're a witch?"

Petunia felt her cheeks go hot. The fluttering in her chest tightened. "I don't know what you're talking about. Come on, Lily."

Lily jumped like she'd been startled out of a trance, then trotted after her sister, though not without looking curiously over her shoulder at the strange boy.

"No, wait!" he called.

He ran after them, his huge coat flapping in the wind behind them. He looked a little like the man who hosted the monster movies that she and Lily would stay up to watch sometimes, sallow skin and all. His teeth could use a good brushing, too, Petunia decided.

Petunia and Lily paused to consider him. Lily pulled her hand free from her sister's and hugged the leg of the swingset, her eyes wide and curious. Petunia's remained narrow.

"What's your name?" asked Lily.

"Severus," said the boy. "I'm a Wizard, and you... you're Witches. Both of you. I've been watching you for a while. I was sure you were," he said, looking at Lily, and then his eyes shifted to Petunia. "But I never thought that you..."

He trailed off, and Petunia's chest tightened again.

"Well. I'm sorry I'm not magical enough to impress someone who lives down in Spinner's End."

Severus flinched, as if recoiling from an invisible blow. A flash of something like guilt went off in her head. It was that, she supposed, that kept her from turning on her heels and marching straight back home. She clicked her tongue and folded her arms across her chest.

"Why've you been spying on us?" she demanded.

Severus colored.

"Haven't been spying," he shot back. He glared at her. "Wouldn't spy on you, anyway. You're no better than a Squib."

A ringing noise went off in Petunia's ears. The ground seemed to tilt underneath her. She'd heard the term once or twice from her classmates. It had taken some cajoling to get the meaning out of one of the older students in her house. There was no shame in being one, the Prefect had insisted, his smile screwed on and his voice very high. Petunia was skeptical. So he went on to explain some other words that she would rather have forgotten. And now, this boy who stood before her in shoes that were very large and dirty underneath him in the bright sunlight, was calling her something that even the kind Ravenclaw Prefect couldn't pretend to respect.

"Come on, Lily!" she declared. "We're leaving!"

Lily followed her sister at once, and the two girls marched out of the playground gates, leaving Severus standing alone behind them, twigs in his hair. Petunia didn't spare him a second glance. She turned the corner towards her street with her fists so tightly balled that she was beginning to lose feeling in her fingers.

Don't know were he gets off..." she seethed. "A Squib! How dare he even... can't even afford a decent jacket... greasy little worm..."

"Tuney, wait!" said Lily, running to keep up.

"Can you believe him!" Petunia stopped at the street corner and began impatiently tapping her foot as she waited for Lily to catch up to her. "He attacks us, unprovoked, and then lies about spying on us?" She stuck up her nose in a fair imitation of their austere grandmother. "I ought to call his parents."

Lily leaned against the pole of the bus stop, her face red. She panted for a few moments before tentatively looking up at her sister. Her lower lip caught between her teeth, just as it always did when she was steeling herself up to say something she knew their mother didn't want to hear.

Petunia clicked her tongue. "Spit it out," she snapped.

"Well... You weren't very nice to him..."

"Nice!" exclaimed Petunia. "I 'wasn't very nice to him', she says! He scares me within an inch of my life, says I'm not magical enough, calls me... calls me... that word, and I'm not nice enough to him? He can go rot for all I care. You can both rot."

Petunia turned and stomped across the road before Lily could say anything else. Her house was soon in sight. Multicolored flowers grew in neat rows on either side of the modest driveway. The lawn was a little overgrown, but the paint on the house was bright and fresh. A pot of flowers sat on either side of the front door. Petunia could feel her wand in her pocket, digging into her thigh. She wanted to use it to blast the flowers apart. She took it out of her pocket and aimed it at the begonias, imagining each flower was his sneering face.

"Not a Witch... I'll show him a Witch..." she seethed. To her surprise, she felt tears spilling down her face. She sniffed and wiped them away with the back of her hand. "I hope I never see his stupid face again."

She stomped her foot, acutely aware of how childish she was being, but utterly beyond care. She sobbed into the crook of her arm. Her wand stuck stiffly out from her other hand, unused.

It was bad enough being Muggle-born. She'd found that out early enough in school. She hadn't even been there a whole term before one of the Ravenclaw fifth years had called her that word for losing twenty points in Transfiguration. She couldn't even think it, it was so vile. Unclean blood, it meant. Not magical enough, it meant. And Severus had called her worse than that. She wished she could tear his shabby little head off.

She felt a light tug at her sleeve. Petunia looked down to see Lily standing there, a smudge of dirt on her face.

"He was wrong, you know," said Lily. "About your magic. I think you're really magical."

Petunia hiccuped. The tight band that had been wrapped around her heart snapped and fell free. She sniffed, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

"Sorry," she sniffed. "I didn't... I didn't mean it. I don't want you to rot."

Lily shook her head, grabbed her sister's hand, and squeezed. Petunia squeezed back.

"Well," said Petunia, after a few moments of silence passed. "Come on, then. Let's go inside. I bet Mummy'll have tea ready by now."

Petunia tugged the door open and Lily followed.

September 1971

Petunia tapped her wand against her thigh, annoyed. The train shook, and her shoulder bumped into the wall, causing her frown to deepen. She told Lily that she'd find her in the first compartment in an hour, as soon as she changed into her robes and met a few friends in the Ravenclaw compartment. Now that she was done, her sister appeared to have vanished.

It was just like Lily to wander off when she'd explicitly been told not to do so. She thought back to the week before, when Lily had gotten so thoroughly lost that she'd ended up on the wrong side of Knockturn Alley with only a shopping bag full of school robes to defend her. She hadn't run into any real danger thanks to the kindness of one Mr. Burke, but Petunia remembered those fifteen minutes as some of the worst of her life. She couldn't bear to imagine a world without her sister in it.

With a sigh, Petunia began to search the train, car by car. Chattering students squeezed by her in the narrow hallway as she peeked into windows without shades and knocked on ones with them. Most people said they hadn't seen her sister, and the ones who did remember a red-haired first year girl said that she'd been with a friend.

One pair of first year boys gave her considerable trouble. They laughed at her question as if she'd told the funniest joke in the world. Petunia couldn't get a yes or no out of them. The scrawny one with glasses even tried to trip her as she walked out the door. She wished they were sorted already so she could report them to their Prefect, but, as she often thought to herself, it wasn't a perfect world.

She made it as far as the luggage compartment near the end of the train before she made any progress. The charms that kept the lights lit there were dim, and some even flickered on and off whenever there was a bump on the tracks. Near the back of the car, behind a pile of vacant animal cages, empty carts, and forgotten trunks, Petunia could hear her someone that sounded suspiciously like her sister.

"Ignore them," she said. "They're just a couple of bullying toerags."

Yes. It was definitely Lily. Petunia put on her best disapproving scowl and carefully picked her way closer.

"I didn't even do anything to him," said someone who sounded even more suspiciously like that Snape boy.

Petunia's scowl deepened.

"People like that don't need a reason to be bullies. They just are, Sev. You've got to ignore them or they'll never leave you alone."

Severus snorted. "Did you learn that from your sister?"

There was a pause as Petunia stopped in her tracks. Her stomach turned to ice. They were talking about her behind her back! Her own sister! Her eyes began to prickle as her fingers tightened around her wand.

"Yes," said Lily, and her voice was noticeably colder. "I did."

There was another beat of silence. Petunia's anger subsided some. At least it seemed like Lily was defending her. She stood stock still, craning her neck even though it was impossible to see the pair of them behind their pile of empty trunks without casting a spell. What else was he going to say, thinking that she wasn't around?

She hated it. Even after that disastrous first meeting in which Petunia made her feelings about that awful boy perfectly clear, Lily and Severus had become friends. Fast friends. Petunia honestly had no idea how it had happened. One day Lily was defaming his name along with her sister, and the next she was insisting that he wasn't such a bad person after all. She didn't know how Lily found the time to even come to this conclusion, what with the commotion of her Hogwarts letter arriving and the mad dash of her family to get not one, but two young witches ready for school. Petunia herself was too disgusted to ask.

Just then, the train lurched, and Petunia lost her footing. She squeaked involuntarily as she tripped over a discarded owl cage and went tumbling across the floor, landing hard on her side right in front of Lily and Severus.

"Tuney!" cried Lily. She reached for her sister. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," snapped Petunia. She made use of a nearby trunk and pushed herself to her feet. "Where have you been? I've been looking for you for ages! I told you to stay where I could find you!"

Lily opened her mouth to answer, but Severus cut her off.

"Leave her alone! She hasn't done anything wrong."

"I'm not speaking to you, you foul little worm," said Petunia.

Severus narrowed his eyes. There was a crack, and a trunk that had been sitting open atop a nearby shelf split in half, the top flying down towards Petunia and hitting her soundly on the head. She let out a yell as multicolored pinpricks of light danced across her field of vision. She heard Lily cry her name, felt her small, warm hand on her arm as she sank to the floor, clutching the top of her head.

Lily rounded on her Severus, eyes blazing. "You did that!"

Severus looked dumbfounded. He wasn't even clutching his wand. "I... I didn't..."

"I can't believe you!" Bright tears were forming in Lily's eyes. "I've told you a hundred times she's my sister, so leave her alone!"

"Lily, please, I don't- I didn't mean-" Severus stepped forward, one hand awkwardly outstretched, the other stiff at his side.

"Go away!" shouted Petunia, and she pulled out her wand.

A poorly-cast curse hit the floor at Severus' feet. The old carpet there singed where it was struck. Severus jumped backwards, his back hitting the wall of the train.

"Tuney!" gasped Lily.

"I'm warning you," said Petunia, one hand on the floor, the other aimed at his head.

Severus' hand went to his pocket. Petunia breathed hard and imagined his head covered with boils.

A small, dark form threw itself between Petunia and Severus. It took a few seconds for Petunia to realize that Lily had forced herself between her sister and her friend, arms outstretched.

"Lily, move," said Petunia, refusing to lower her wand.

"No," she said. "If you want to hurt each other, you'll have to go through me. I won't let you."

"Lily, I swear I wasn't going to-" began Severus.

"You'd need to go," said Lily. Her mouth in a hard line.

Severus' gaze dropped to the floor. He seemed to wilt, like a sheaf of parchment doused with water.

"I'll talk to you later," promised Lily. "Go on."

"Yeah," said Severus, though it didn't sound like he believed her. "Okay. See you."

He slunk away, shoulders hunched, fists clenched, and eyes narrowed at the floor. He didn't look at Petunia as he passed. She, however, made sure to watch him until he shoved the door to the next car shut behind him, rattling the glass in his wake. She hoped he could feel it.

"Are you okay?" said Lily.

Petunia spun to face her. "Why are you still talking to him?"

Lily looked taken aback. "I... Because he's actually really nice! He just says things without thinking sometimes. He doesn't mean it. And he always feels really awful about it after! You shouldn't get so angry with him for it!"

"Heaven forbid I take your precious Sev at his word."

Lily glared at her sister and put her hands on her hips. "Don't be like that. Why'd you try and curse him?"

Petunia flushed and shoved her wand into her pocket. "Did you already forget about the trunk he threw at me?"

"You know he can't control that!"

"So? That didn't stop you from shouting at him!"

"So you're my sister! It doesn't mean I was right to do it!"

Petunia looked away, her lips twisting a little. She wished she hadn't come across Lily and Snape at all. Then she could have waited in her carriage for Lily to appear. She could have scolded Lily in peace at the end of the train ride for disappearing and Lily would have laughed it off, like she always did.

There was a bitter taste in her mouth. Her head ached.

"I hate him."

Lily lowered her gaze to the floor. "I know." She shuffled her feet and looked up at Petunia through her eyelashes. "I'm not going to stop being his friend, though, Tuney."

Petunia clenched her jaw. "Fine. Just... don't expect me to tolerate him. I can't do it. Not even for you."

Lily sucked in a quick breath through her teeth, as if she'd touched something very hot. Then, slowly, she nodded.

"I'm sorry I made you worry," she said, quietly.

"That's okay," said Petunia.

She stuck out her hand, stiffly. Lily looked at it for a moment, then took it.

"Let's go find the witch with the pumpkin pasties," she continued. "I'll introduce you to some of my friends and we can all have lunch. I suspect we'll both feel much better after we get a bit of lunch."

Petunia tugged on her sister's hand and the two girls began to walk back to the front of the train.

"Are all your friends Ravenclaws?" asked Lily.

"Most of them. I know a few people in Hufflepuff and Gryffindor."

"What about Slytherin?" asked Lily.

Petunia scoffed. "Slytherins aren't friends with anyone."

Lily lapsed into silence after that. Petunia filled it with chatter about her friend Rowan in Hufflepuff or her description of the Ravenclaw common room, but she somehow felt that in doing so, she'd missed something important.

May 1972

Petunia knew that when she watched Lily get sorted to Gryffindor that she and her sister would see little of each other during the year. Outside the forced mixing of classes, students of different houses didn't often volunteer to spend time with one another. Petunia liked it that way. It kept things neat and orderly. She thought it scandalous how some of her classmates in Ravenclaw would go out of their way to spend time with students of other houses. Carl Perkins was especially bold, as he had a girlfriend in Slytherin at the beginning of term. Petunia and the other girls in her year decided that as long as he was dating a Slytherin, he wasn't going to find any friends in Ravenclaw. No one was surprised when the relationship ended a few months later.

She had hoped that Lily would remember what she, Petunia, had said about Slytherins, but nothing, it seemed, could stop Lily from being friends with that awful Snape boy. Petunia had finally gotten used to spotting the two of them sneaking around the corridors together, but the sight of that boy with her sister always put her in a bad mood. Didn't Lily know that she was committing social suicide, associating herself with him? It was all Petunia could do to cast off the insinuations made by Poinsettia Smith and her select clique for being related to someone who would stoop so low.

Petunia was careful to distance herself from Lily. She was so careful, in fact, that the two of them found little time to get together at during the school year. Aside from a few brief conversations on the grounds or in the Great Hall, they might as well have been strangers to one another. Petunia felt a stirring of guilt as she considered this one night during her exam revisions, but shrugged the feeling off as a necessary consequence of preserving one's reputation. It wouldn't do for the wrong people to catch them together when her status was so tenuous to begin with.

As she made notes for her Potions essay, she promised herself that she'd make it up to Lily in the summer. They'd get ice cream or visit the shops. Maybe she'd take her to the roller disco and watch her go around the rink. Things would be easy between them and they'd laugh just like they did before that Snape boy slithered his way into their life.

Aconite is also known as Wolfsbane, she wrote. Lily would understand.

July 1972

"Ooh, Tuney, look at this one!"

Lily held up a fashion plate of a perfectly still Muggle model in a navy pinafore dress with a starched white collar. She sported long, perfectly straight hair and looked utterly glamorous. Petunia rested her chin on her hand and sighed.

"I wish I had hair like yours. It's so fashionable right now. Mine's all coarse and curly."

Lily pulled the magazine back to her chest and flipped through the pages. "Don't you start on that. I've wished I'd had your hair for years. Remember how Mummy used to tie mine up in rags to get it to set, but it'd always fall out by evening? You never had to do anything to yours."

Petunia pursed her lips. "It's not popular now. I look so outdated. You have no idea what it's like."

Lily rolled her eyes, but she did it with a smile on her face. "I expect it'll be curls again soon and then I'll have to start looking up Charms in Witch Weekly to get them to stick. Look, she still curls her hair."

Lily held up another photo, this one of a woman in a trouser suit sporting wispy, fluffy curls. Petunia wrinkled her nose. She thought the girl looked rather like a dandelion clock, if the dandelion clock were made of thin yellow candyfloss.

"She looks like she's been through a hurricane."

Lily giggled. "She does, doesn't she? Don't know why it's such a popular style."

"I'm never doing that to myself," sniffed Petunia.

Lily settled back down on the couch, her feet on the wall and her hair dangling off the cushions. The clock on the mantel ticked away the minutes. It was half one already. Their mother would be home from the grocer's soon, probably with a bushel of potatoes and carrots. They had them on special that day, and their mother could never resist a bargain. Petunia wondered if it would be roast again for supper. She carefully took the corner of the page between her freshly-manicured fingers and turned it.

Beside her, Lily lay her magazine down on her stomach. After a few moments, Petunia realized that her sister was staring at her. She crossed her legs uncomfortably. When Lily didn't stop, Petunia regarded her over her own magazine, eyebrows quirked in suspicion.

"What?"

"Nothing," said Lily. She smiled. Her hands were folded across her chest. "I missed this."

"Missed what?"

Lily made an expansive gesture with her arm. "This. Looking at magazines and nattering on about fashion. Real fashion."

"Witches are fashionable," said Petunia. "Poinsettia Smith swears by Sylph's Secret. Their robes are all the rage in Hogsmeade right now."

Lily rolled her eyes again. "Poinsettia Smith is a vapid weasel."

Petunia frowned, but decided to let it go. She didn't understand why Lily didn't like Poinsettia. From Petunia's point of view, the girl was chic incarnate.

"Besides," Lily went on. "There's nothing interesting about robes."

"Well. Certainly not school robes," sniffed Petunia. "Dreadful color, black. Makes us all look like we're trying to scare children at Hallowe'en."

Lily laughed. "Exactly! See, I knew you'd get it. None of the other girls in Gryffindor understand. They're all purebloods or halfbloods, or they pretend they are even if they really aren't. You're the only other girl at Hogwarts who knows what it's like."

Petunia remembered all the effort she'd put into avoiding her sister during the school year and felt a knot begin in her throat. She cleared it, as if the act would banish her guilt. It didn't.

She closed her magazine. "Surely I can't be the only one. There are Muggleborns in your year in Hufflepuff. I know I've seen Barbara Hambly and Violet Perkins trying to get a pile of 45s to play on Flitwick's phonograph. I'm sure they'd be interested in fashion. Why don't you go and talk to them when term starts?"

Lily sighed. "They're Hufflepuffs. They've got enough problems without some mad Gryffindor girl coming at them with the latest issue of Look. Hufflepuffs, Tuney? Honestly."

Petunia tried to keep her dignity about her. Truly, she did. Hufflepuff was no laughing matter. Once that thought crossed her mind, however, a wayward snort pushed its way free, leaving the pieces of said dignity trampled behind it. At this, Lily collapsed into a fit of giggles, and soon Petunia was laughing with her. The two girls held their sides and let their mirth wash over everything that they both left unsaid about distance and prejudice and disappointing friends. Right then, they were together. That, as far as they were concerned, was how it would always be.