Petunia and the Little Monster

July 1973

Bunty didn't wait for Petunia to come over, but gave an encouraging smile before taking her close-lidded bucket and continuing down the round walkway, before descending a set of stairs and disappearing from sight into the gloom.

Only the faint echo of her fading steps broke the sudden silence and Petunia fervently tried to remember what she'd been about to say to Eugene. Had it even been anything? Or had she just wanted to address him, with nothing to say at all?

"You're here to see my father?" Eugene interrupted her thoughts.

Petunia turned back to him, expecting to see the same image as a second ago - only for her breath to stall in shock.

His eyes were dark, not like the molten chocolate she used to compare them to in her most ridiculous flights of fancy, but bitter and hard. Suddenly it clicked into place, the voice and his face, this face he was showing her right now, and the memories crystallised without her consent.

I must not give a damn, then.

He scoffed slightly when Petunia took too long to answer. "I should have known."

"Known what?" Petunia was secretly glad to hear the venomous bite in her own words, skillfully concealing her hurt and confusion. Falling back into old mannerisms she wrapped herself tightly in derision, like bristling armour. Same instinct told her she would need it.

"That you're the same after all." His eyes were still dark. Something in his tone must have alerted the slumbering monster behind him, because it got up on long horse-like legs and brushed its beak against his shoulder. Eugene ignored it. "I guess congratulations are in order. You didn't need me after all."

"What are you talking about?"

"My father, of course." The monster nudged him again and Eugene raised a hand to lay against its long neck. It looked more like a reprimand than a calming gesture. "You're not the first and you won't be the last, but I have to admit that you were the only one who had me fooled for so long."

Petunia really was growing angry now. "I have no idea what you're on about!"

"No?" He sighed. "I thought it was strange when you suddenly stopped replying. I knew something was up, but I just couldn't figure out what. To think that I ..."

But he didn't continue and Petunia just got angrier when she felt the guilt bubbling up in her stomach.

You have nothing to feel guilty about, she reminded herself furiously. You were not the one to cut it off, he was, when he was sitting in that blasted garden shed and ...

"Your approach was fresh," he continued, as if Petunia had any idea what he was getting at. "In that bookstore, when you ordered me around while looking so lost ... And you never asked after my father. When you needed help, you asked me. It made me think ..."

But Petunia would never learn what it made him think, because he switched tack mid-sentence.

"People are not that difficult to understand. To them, it's important whose son I am. They smile and flatter, but they don't really look at me. They don't care about me."

You don't care at all, Gene, and it's your 'penpal' we're talking about.

"You're the one who doesn't care!" Petunia burst out, fed up with the confusing accusations, fed up with the voices haunting her whenever her attention slipped, fed up with everything about this situation - the nauseating mixture of dread and happiness at the first sight of him, the guilt and the anger, the helplessness and fury, simply everything about this one-sided fight.

Because they were fighting, for lack of a better term.

Fights, in Petunia's experience, were always accompanied by raised voices, wildly gesticulating hands, flying spittle and flushed, tightly screwed faces. So seeing that Eugene was so calm and collected instead of loud and animated was bewildering and slightly annoying. Petunia felt like she was traipsing in unknown territory, like she was the childish one.

So when there was finally a spark of fire in his dark eyes, a furrow between his brows, Petunia was strangely elated, even though it really wasn't logical. She shouldn't be happy that he was angry with her, but she was. At least now it showed.

"Obviously I cared just a little too much," he said, his voice still quiet but strained as if he had to force it out between his teeth.

"Liar," Petunia threw in his face. "Don't try to fool me, I heard you! I heard every word you said that night at the Weasley's, when you couldn't wait to tell your friends how little I mattered -"

"What are you talking about? I never said anything like that -"

"I must not give a damn, then!" Petunia quoted him, her triumph quickly swallowed by the raw pain that followed the words. It was the first time she had spoken them out loud herself.

Eugene was frowning. "Yeah, I don't give a damn whether you're a witch or a squib or a muggle."

Petunia froze when the forbidden word passed his lips. Muggle.

And then her mind picked up on the rest of what he said, and his voice was almost like a needle piercing her chest, through which her rage leaked out, as if Petunia had turned into a deflating balloon. "What?"

"Isn't that what you're getting at? Billy was going on and on with his wild theories of why you're not attending Hogwarts and I just got sick of it. It was ridiculous. Why should I care? I don't. You're you, witch or not."

"No ... but you ..."

And then Petunia felt something other than anger or confusion - she felt a hot flash of panic. It blistered down her spine like a bolt of lightning, her breaths coming short in its wake.

You misunderstood, she realised. You misunderstood and then you messed everything up! And now he knows, he must know!

But Eugene obviously didn't know. His own assumptions overshadowed any realisation Petunia's words might have brought. "Of course I hadn't yet realised that you were only ever in contact to find a way to my father -"

Petunia was overwhelmed by a white wave of anger that almost blinded her, fueled by her panic and remorse. "Oh, stop with your father! I don't care about him! I never even heard of him, before you gave me his book!"

"Why else would you write so often, then?"

"Because I care about you, you idiot!"

And then everything froze. Petunia, Eugene, even the eagle-horse and the warm air all around her. For a few heartbeats she just stared at him, at his widening eyes, and then mortification burst through her like a shot of pure adrenaline. And in that moment Petunia mindlessly switched from fight to flight, turned around and simply ran. Ran away from this pocket of sunshine, ran through the wizards maze, ran away to escape from Eugene's eyes which hadn't looked all that hard at the end.

Ran away from her own unspoken words, that seemed to hover on every hasty breath she took.

Because I like you.

❀