Petunia leaned into the masher, observing as the cooked potatoes squeezed into strings of pulped white and yellow under her ministrations. It felt strangely satisfying, watching them squish and change form beneath her strength - and it worked as a distraction from the other occupant of the kitchen.
Lily was back. She was leaning on the counter, leisurely stirring a pot of not-yet boiling water for no apparent reason and prattling on.
She claimed she had 'missed Petunia'.
Petunia thought she simply missed bragging about her stupid school. But her words didn't have their usual impact. Whenever Lily complained about having Astronomy lessons at midnight or almost being strangled by some magical plant, Petunia simply thought of the suitcase. Newton Scamander's suitcase. A magical suitcase, containing a whole other world, with exotic forests and floating planets and magical creatures straight out of her book.
Her strength on the masher eased but Petunia's eyes stayed downcast. The potatoes had lost their form, their only remnant a chunky, unappetizing paste.
The downside to thinking about the suitcase was that Petunia automatically also thought about Ivy. And then she felt a dull ache somewhere in her tummy, as if she had a bruise on the inside, hidden and invisible.
Only Petunia knew what she had lost.
Whenever you want to see your Occamy, just do it.
Petunia wanted to. But she wasn't quite sure if she dared.
"Oh, and Sev found a friend, I think. Whenever I ask him he denies it and calls him 'an annoyance' but they follow each other around."
"Hmm." Petunia scraped the mash free and put the pot aside to start on the green beans. Sadly they wouldnt prove as therapeutic, she thought, while she washed them under the sink, the cool water a relief on her heated hands. She must have clenched the masher too hard.
"What are you doing now?" Lily leaned on the counter, watching Petunia.
"Can't you see?"
"I want to learn cooking as well," Lily declared, not reacting to Petunia's scathing tone. "It makes you look really grown up. Did you know that most witches use magic in the kitchen? They sadly don't teach it at school, because it's considered something you learn from your parents, but maybe I should talk to Professor McGonagall to make it an after-lesson elective? It would surely come in handy, and I can't be the only muggleborn who would like to know how to do it. Once I'm seventeen, you won't have to cook ever again, Tuney! I'll make a feast in just a few seconds whenever we want ..."
Petunia fought against a surge of annoyance with gritted teeth, but her voice still held a certain bite when she interrupted her sister. "When you're seventeen, we won't be living together anymore."
Lily blinked her emerald eyes. "What do you mean?"
"I'm moving out once I've finished school."
Petunia faltered for a second, surprised at the conviction echoing in her own words. Moving out was something she had never really decided on, the idea had just been ghosting through her mind whenever she felt especially uncomfortable in her own home. But now that she had voiced it, the words tasted true.
She would move out, together with Aspen, somewhere where she wouldn't have to be blinded by Lily's brilliant light so often, where she could escape her mother's nagging and wouldn't feel so invisible. Somewhere they could be safe, somewhere she could be herself and not 'Lily's muggle sister'.
Somewhere she could live her own life.
"But ... Tuney, why would you move out?"
Because of you. But no matter the ire of her thoughts, in the end Petunia didn't speak those words. Seeing Lily's crumbling face might have given her a moment of spiteful satisfaction, but she knew it would only come back to haunt her.
"I want to live my own life."
"But that's too soon! You'll finish in two years and by then I'll still be at Hogwarts ..."
Petunia didn't know what to say to that. So she simply ignored it and lined the beans up in front of her in an orderly row to cut off the small piece at the ends. The only sound in the kitchen was the quiet thunk of her knife hitting the wooden cutting board in a steady rhythm. She focussed all her attention on the thin green stalks despite feeling Lily's gaze bore into the side of her head.
"Tuney ... do you hate me?"
Her knife paused. Petunia looked up and for the first time since she had entered the kitchen, really faced Lily.
With a strange kind of detachment she discovered a few small changes that had slipped her notice before. Her little sister's cheeks were a bit slimmer, her lips wider, her eyebrows darker. Her hair wasn't as free-flying as before, but held a shine and smooth wave that spoke of care-products and a brush.
And her green eyes ... they weren't swimming in childish tears or red with accusation. They were steady and gleaming with some deep emotion Petunia couldn't decipher.
Her little sister had grown since Petunia last saw her.
"No," she finally answered. "I don't hate you. You're my sister."
For a second it looked like Lily wanted to ask something else, her lips already parting, but then she pressed them together into a tight line and nodded.
Petunia didn't want to talk about any of this. It was too heavy. It pressed all the air out of the kitchen until Petunia was quietly suffocating. She quickly faced her beans again, her mind sorting through possible topics to deflect Lily's attention until she stumbled onto something useful. "You said Severus made a friend?"
"What?"
Silence hovered above Petunia's head for a few seconds before Lily continued: "Oh ... yes, a Slytherin in the year below us. I always see them dancing around each other like a pair of hissing alley cats, but I think he likes him, in a strange way."
Petunia made a non-committal sound to get Lily to continue talking. When she started chopping her beans again the knife was lighter in her hands.
"It's funny. I always wanted Sev to make more friends because he looked so lost in his House. But now that he did, I feel kind of strange. Is that a horrible thing to say? It's just ... before it was always us. But now the one hanging out with him is so vastly different from me and well, anyone I know. He's mean and conceited and I'm just not sure if he's a good influence ..."
Mean and conceited sounds like a perfect fit, Petunia thought.
"Maybe I'm just overthinking it. But there are his beliefs and I've heard some really nasty things about him from my friends. I'm just a bit worried that, I don't know, Sev might get pulled into something ... bad."
"Beliefs?"
Lily looked uncomfortable. "It's stupid. Blood-prejudice, really old-fashioned."
Petunia faintly recalled a few insults she'd overheard directed at Severus. What had they called him again? Half-Blood, echoed a young boy's voice in her memories, a hazy image of uncombed dark hair accompanying it.
Another realisation followed swiftly. If Severus, who had a witch for a mother, was insulted as a Half-Blood, then what about Lily, who had no 'special' parent?
Petunia directed a sharp glare at her sister, who was poking at the potato mash. "Are you being bullied?"
Lily looked up and blinked. "What? No! No, of course not! It's not a Gryffindor thing, this purity stuff."
Petunia took in Lily's scrunched brows and lifted chin before turning back to the beans.
"It's not that bad," Lily muttered. "I'm just worrying uselessly."
Something told Petunia that the person Lily wanted to convince wasn't Petunia, but herself. But Petunia simply stayed quiet and continued preparing the family dinner.
If Lily was looking for reassurance about the wretched boy, she wouldn't find any from her.
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Thanks for all the nice comments ! Hope you continue to enjoy