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Petunia Evans Dursley has known fear before.

She'd perhaps first known it - truly known it - as a little girl, watching her younger sister, Lily, launch off the swings and soar far too high, as if to touch the very heavens. It had terrified her, that unnaturalness, the odd occurrences that didn't quite fit, didn't make sense. Petunia had been type of little girl to line all her dolls up by height and by dress-color. Lily, with the freakish power her family would later call magic, didn't fit in Petunia's structured world.

So she had been afraid.

Lily, angry with Petunia and delighted with a chance to show off her 'special powers', had fed that fear. Making a flower move, as if to eat her up. Jumping off swings and flying when Petunia was there to watch. Later, when she'd gotten her Hogwarts letter, chattering incessantly about magic where Petunia could hear.

All Petunia wanted was to be able to resent Lily. Perfect Lily. Pretty Lily, with her red curls and green eyes, so beautiful is comparison to her elder sister - and Petunia wasn't stupid, she knew that was what people thought when they saw them together. And then, later, Lily with her magic, there to be even more special than she already was.

Yes. She tried to resent her sister - still does, in fact. But still, as her parents fawned over her little sister and Lily beamed up at them with innocent joy, she wasn't quite able to.

So she sent a letter to the magic school's Headmaster, begging to be admitted, so she could be special too. Petunia had been twelve years old then, silly and foolish and oh-so-stupid.

She'd been rejected. Everyone special seemed to reject her. Plain, brown-haired Petunia with her unremarkable face, a dying lamp next to the bright star that was her sister.

Even the Snape boy - that hooligan from the wrong side of town - had the audacity to laugh at her. Terrible child, dropping tree branches on her and then calling her "just a muggle" as if she was less, as if she didn't matter. Petunia had just wanted to say hello, to join in. She'd lost her courage halfway through, instead settling behind a bush to watch the both of them. Her sister, especially. Petunia had wished Lily would smile at her like that.

Instead, Snape had dropped a tree branch on her and called her a spy. As if he had the right! Did he forget how he's first met Lily?

Lily had been angry with him, of course. It had given Petunia a moment of vicinitive sadisfaction - even if it gave her a large bruise, it was almost worth it to have Lily choose her side over his. Only a moment, though. Lily had been back with Snape jyst three days later.

Even so, Petunia Evans had loved her sister just as she had hated her. She still does - love Lily, that is. She sends her vases for Christmas and cards for her birthday and pretends it doesn't hurt her that she hasn't gotten anything in return this past year.

Perfect Lily, who doesn't need her anymore, now that she has her rich, wizard husband and her baby, who Petunia barely got an announcement of - just a quick scribble on that odd, old-fashioned parchment her lot use, delivered by one of their freakish owls. Looking down at the We had a baby boy! His name is Harry. Love, Lily, she'd felt that jealousy stir within her heart.

Love, Lily.

Lily hadn't sent any response when Petunia had tried to send her a letter about her own child via muggle post. She'd even conceded to letters rather than phone calls, as Lily and her lot couldn't use phones without breaking them.

Dudley. Sweet, spoilt Dudders, nearly three now.

Was Petunia not special enough for her sister to bother with?