#also can we talk about lily and petunia forever and always PLS their relationship (however NPC it is) GETS ME

[lilevens-blog]

Prompt: Describe going back to see her parents and Petunia. Do they know much about the war, or has she pretended that everything is still going well? What is her relationship like with her sister? By this point in canon Petunia and Vernon are married. Does Lily want that for herself? How does it make her feel, to see her sister settled down and safe?

For all the colour it had, Cokeworth may as well have been cut from a square of gray cloth. There was something wan and listless about her hometown that immediately drained her, like its sallowness was not only an intrinsic part of the place but also alive: it sought you out, entered you, absorbed you into its pale maw. Lily marched along its bleak sidewalks, her arms folded tightly against her chest, squashing her breasts almost uncomfortably. Her back was a brace to the wind, which howled about her like a dog and raked its nails through the unkempt fire of her hair. It made no difference that evergreen wreaths hung from the lampposts, or that lights were strung along gutters and netted over the hedges along the street. The holiday fanfare only made her feel more bleak-- like everyone was trying their hardest for “merry” and coming up short. It was embarrassing.

Even from down the street, Lily could see Vernon’s car parked neatly on their driveway. The Christmas lights strung up along the edges of her old house made it look like a dilapidated Gingerbread home, especially when factoring in that the neighbors hadn’t tried for decorations at all. It was easy enough to take the driveway in a matter of strides-- the wind nearly seemed to push her up it-- but once she got to the door, she found herself haltingly placing her hand around the knocker. She lifted it, then just as quietly set it back in place, a panic rising in her. What would she find inside? The Christmas things, no doubt: the tree and the lights, the tarnished ornaments, the old furniture-- but what else? Her parents, patient and prideful? Waiting to hear all about London and James? Last she had spoken with them, she had said they were moving in together-- how could she explain where she was living now, or, god forbid, why she had chosen to live there instead? And Petunia-- icy, thin-lipped, perched like a bird on the armrest of her husband’s chair; Petunia who wanted nothing to do with her anymore, who would surely notice the bruise painting the upper left part of her arm a vivid purple the second Lily shed her coat. What was there left to say to her sister?

On holidays past, Lily had never returned home from Hogwarts without magical gifts for her family. Quills, chocolate frogs, self-shuffling playing cards. Once she had brought Petunia a deck of Exploding Snap cards, which had so fitfully frightened her that thereafter she’d opened them, she’d locked Lily out of their shared room for hours. Another time she had tried for a gentler gift-- anything to make Petunia at all interested in her again, or maybe interested in the person she was becoming. And even after she’d given up on her sister, she’d never before come empty-handed to her parents. What excuse did she have? Mum, dad, I’ve been fighting in a war? Mum, dad, being away from my friends for even one second makes me so afraid for them that I don’t want to eat this stupid pot roast, can’t even think about eating it, SORRY? That’d go over so well. 

Lily let out a laugh without meaning to-- short, barkish, abrupt. A moment later the lace curtain twitched, throwing a sliver of yellow across the dead gray slate of their yard. Then she could hear the deadbolt sliding, and the lock twisting, and all at once that same yellow light bathed her-- the only square of color in all of Cokeworth. 

“Lily!” Her mother cried, folding her into her arms. It took an incredible amount of effort for Lily to soften her rigid shoulders, and even longer for her to work her arms back around her mother in some semblance of returning the embrace. Her dad’s voice echoed her name from somewhere inside. 

All of the good Christmas smells-- nutmeg, clove, ginger, vanilla-- were making an appearance in her home, and all were too strong to be appreciated. It was an act of suffocating, to step into that cloud of sweetness. Lily moved about the kitchen in the deft pattern of familiarity, if not boredom; filling the kettle with water, lighting the stove, pulling chipped mugs from the cabinet. Her mother had since rearranged herself on a chair in the living room. Her father and Vernon shared the couch, and Petunia had pulled a straight-backed chair from the kitchen. They were wrapped up in their conversation-- every now and then her father would call, too loudly, “Right, Lil?” and Lily would try for a noise of agreement, which often came out harsh and throaty, or otherwise force a laugh and nod her head, although to what she was agreeing was beyond her. Usually bright-eyed and attentive, Lily couldn’t seem right then to get a proper grasp on herself, and she was uncomfortable and frustrated and exhausted all at once. Petunia’s hawking eyes had taken in the stiff way Lily moved, the bloom of color on her arm, in the seconds between her entering the house and hanging her coat; Lily had thereafter slipped into a black turtleneck from her bag immediately. She was grateful for Petunia’s not bringing it up all the same-- uncharacteristic, perhaps, but nonetheless welcome. She was also grateful that her sister had relinquished the role of tea-maker. The kitchen offered a veil of privacy that Lily so suddenly craved.

She was so claustrophobic. Looking out the window, at the anemic sky and the frosting lawns, gave her no sense of depth or space in which escape felt possible. Her hands, bony and marbled with cold, shook as she arranged sugar cookies in half-moons on tiny tea plates. She pulled tea bags-- Lady Gray, Earl Gray, Peppermint-- from their boxes and set them into the mugs. She stared hard into the empty bottoms of those mugs and imagined herself back in London, curled against the bodies of Marlene and Dorcas, a cigarette rotating between them, the promise of safety in their warmth and laziness. Why was she here? There was no escaping, not even for a second, the presence of this War. Cokeworth could not shroud her in its smoggy drear. She could only let the War in. 

“Are you getting that?” Her sister’s voice came unexpectedly from behind, and closely. The kettle whistled and then screamed, and Lily mimicked its tone in a short outburst of surprise. 

“You’re jumpy.” Petunia observed, warily and with some ice. 

Lily gathered her thick hair in her hands in an effort to hide their shaking, and pulled that mass of curls over one shoulder, wincing some at the movement. “Yeah,” she managed, stupidly, hating herself more than she felt she’d ever hated herself before in her life. She stepped aside without being asked as Petunia moved into her space; she watched doeishly as her sister took the kettle from the stove and poured the water into the mugs lined up in compulsive fashion along the countertop. 

“You haven’t said a word to Vernon.” Petunia started, evenly, although Lily knew she had somehow stepped backwards and into a minefield. She’d barely been inside her home for five minutes, but her sister’s anger was a constant thing. A presence that seemed to wedge itself into every space between them, no matter how small. It was exhausting. Lily felt more exhausted than she had ever felt before in her life. 

“Right. And you haven’t asked me about James.” She shot back, even though she hadn’t wanted to talk about James at all before that moment.

“You’re still with that one?” Petunia sneered, and Lily’s face flushed vibrantly despite how drained she felt. “There hasn’t really been many others.” She pointed out, somewhat snidely, although her mind flashed first to Remus and then Marlene, although they didn’t count, she knew they didn’t count, and her face grew hot all over again for an entirely different reason. 

Petunia made no comment in her defense. Only nodded towards the plates of cookies that Lily had so painstakingly arranged, mugs in hand. Begrudgingly, Lily stopped her fidgeting with her hair and picked up the plates. And apparently that was that: her sister turned sharply and made her way towards the living room, her dissatisfaction a tangible thing. But before they had entirely left the kitchen, Lily heard herself blurting:

“Does he make you happy?”

Petunia paused at the threshold, her dark hair so tightly wound to her head that it looked almost painful to Lily, and her face hidden from Lily’s immediate vantage. With the presence of that awkwardness  and upset, and the heavy cloud of sugar-smell, there was no way Lily felt capable of breathing in the moments between her voice stopping and Petunia’s starting. And those moments were long. Finally, with some reluctance, Petunia replied, “Like no one else could.”

A flare of jealousy, like a sun, burned up inside Lily so violently for a moment that she felt there was nothing she could do but stand there and feel it burn. Petunia, with her boring husband, visiting this boring house they grew up in and then returning to her own boring house she now owned. Petunia, pregnant-- she would tell them later that evening-- in her boring house with her boring husband. Lily wanted nothing to do with it and, at the same time, all of it for herself. (But isn’t that so often how it goes with her? Sometimes she only wants James himself so that no one else can have him). 

She tried to imagine herself and James in a small house, maybe a cottage, just the two of them; she tried to imagine herself pregnant, sleeping in a bed that wasn’t just some mattress thrown haphazardly in the corner of a room. She tried to imagine a space in which they both occupied neatly, orderly, with intention. It seemed fake. It made her shudder like a cold wind ripping through her. She tried imagining it with Marlene next and it felt different, then; the image was a bit more welcome, but it didn’t exactly make her feel better about the idea itself. She tried to imagine everything exactly as it was, only without the War, and that idea made her so sick with longing that her stomach churned. 

“Okay.” Lily said, in a soft way that surprised even herself. And she followed her sister out of the kitchen.