Turning Tables

Chapter 1 - Broken

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Lily Evans sat on her bed and stared out of the window, her legs tucked under her and her purple bedspread half hanging off onto the floor; the rest of her room was neat and tidy like always, except for the broken picture frame lying forlornly on the carpet, its glass shattered and frame crumpled. The shouts from downstairs echoed up to her ears as her mother raged at her sister, but Lily didn't hear them. Her mind kept replaying the argument that had led to this, the insults Petunia had flung at her, which – even though she'd heard them all before – seemed to have extra venom behind them today.

'Freak!'

'It's a good thing that Hogwarts place keeps weirdos like you away from normal people!'

'I tell my friends you go to a boarding school for troubled teens! That's if I have to admit I have a sister at all!'

The sound of the front door slamming brought Lily back to reality. She stretched out her stiff legs from under her, and scrubbed her eyes with her fists before walking over to the wreckage of the framed photo. She reached into her pocket and pulled out her wand – her willow and unicorn hair wand that had turned Tuney against her forever – tapping it lightly against the shattered glass.

'Reparo.'

The frame and glass flew back together and Lily was once again looking at a Muggle photograph of her and Petunia on her first day at primary school. The two girls had their arms around each other and were grinning hugely at the camera, identical looks of happiness lighting up their faces.

She would never have thought then that twelve years later she and Petunia would be having one of the worst fights they'd ever had, over Lily not being invited to meet her future in-laws. She would never have dreamt that her sister would be so full of resentment that she would speak such spiteful words to her, never imagined that Tuney would one day be so ashamed of her that she would refuse to involve Lily in her life.

It was worse this summer than any of the ones before. Now that she was seventeen and could do magic outside of school whenever she wanted Petunia watched her like a proverbial bloody hawk, ready to lose her cool the second Lily showed any sign of 'abnormal behaviour'. Her mother kept telling her to be patient, blaming the strain Petunia was under organising her engagement party (she was obsessed with making the 'right impression' on Vernon's friends and family) for her treatment of Lily.

But today's argument had been too much even for her mother, and now Petunia had stormed out and she was left crying in her room for yet another relationship that had completely fallen apart on her. A few years ago she would have been able to run out of the house and tell Sev about it; now she didn't even know if he was home for the summer. She kept telling herself sternly that she shouldn't regret the loss of his friendship - after all it had been a miracle that kept it up for as long as they had given who his other friends were. But on days like this, when Tuney seemed to hate her just for existing and her parents were exasperated and upset by the rift between their two girls, Lily found herself wishing for their friendship, for someone who could understand and sympathise with how she was feeling.

'Alright Evans, are you a Gryffindor or what? We don't sit in a pathetic heap on the floor of our bedroom feeling sorry for ourselves do we? No. We get off our backsides and sort ourselves out.'