How the Witch Ruined It All

I was dusting the living room, rubbing down the glass cabinet and the china plates inside when Lily came prancing into the room. She was singing happily to herself with a smile that said, 'I don't care if you're unhappy, I'm in bliss'. She was always so carefree and cheerful.

I was never forced to do chores or anything and it far from made me upset. It was just a natural instinct of mine that if something was dirty, I needed to clean it. Lily wouldn't do it, she was too busy reading. Mother praised me for my helpfulness while Lily was praised for her excellent school grades. I loved my sister, but sometimes it was a bit annoying how perfect my parents thought she was.

"What are you so happy about?" I asked, changing directions to dust the side table.

Lily turned to look at me as if she hadn't noticed I'd been in the room. The sides of her mouth twitched as if she were about to break into song. "My teacher is coming today," she replied. "The one I got my letter from."

I made a sound of acknowledgment that I had heard her and continued to clean.

My sister was very different than most eleven-year-olds. See, Lily...was a witch. And I don't mean that as a slight, but she really was! She had received a letter from a school of witchcraft called some odd name like Hog Pimples or something of the sort. She had been quite apt with the idea, not at all surprised--almost as if she'd been expecting it. Lily often did things that could be described as uncanny. Once, she got so upset with Dad that the pineapple Jell-O Mum made suddenly combusted. I was stuck cleaning again.

"Which is it then?" I asked. "Literature? Arithmetic?"

"Oh no, Petunia, Hogwarts doesn't have subjects like regular schools."

I was puzzled while she explained that she had read up on the school. The subjects they offered were referred to as Potions, Transfiguration, Charms and a long list of others. They didn't make much sense to me--except the class she called Potions. Witches, of course, would brew potions and cast spells. That was as much as I knew of them.

"What's...tranfigursation?" I stumbled over the word, trying to pronounce it correctly.

"Transfiguration," she corrected politely. "It's supposed to be where you morph things into other things. Like, a tea kettle into a shoebox--and more advanced would be, maybe, a bird into a goblet!"

"That's awful!" I exclaimed, quite alarmed. What good could possibly come out of turning a bird into a cup, I wondered. You would certainly never drink out of it. You'd be putting your mouth all over a live animal! Or was it still alive? Maybe transforming it killed the poor bird, in which case you would be drinking out of a dead animal. How horrible! But at the same time I felt a jolt of excitement and curiosity. How on earth was it possible to transform a solid object?

"It's really not all that bad. Once you're done using the goblet, you just turn it back." Lily gazed at me with an expectancy that showed she knew I was rapt in the idea.

"All right, I guess it sounds...interesting."

"It is!" Lily said enthusiastically. She looked out the window to her right and saw the gloom outside that reflected none of the excitement in her bright green eyes.

"I'm so excited! I'm going to go shopping for school supplies in a wizard market!"

"A wizard market? There's no such thing."

"There's a pub on the edge of London where they have a secret passage--"

"Lily, please! What could possibly make you believe there is a secret passage leading to a wizard marketplace in the middle of London?"

Lily smiled brightly and said, "Magic."

Just then, a striped cat jumped up on the windowsill and made Lily jump five feet backwards. The cat meowed loudly and I walked over to the window to shoo the animal out. Those strays were always troublesome, scratching up the front door, which made Dad absolutely furious. Almost as soon as the cat jumped from the window, obviously annoyed that it had been shooed off, the doorbell rang. I was about to step over to the door but Lily got in front of me and pushed me aside. I glared as she opened the door but was quite pleased I wasn't required to greet the woman standing at the entrance. Lily was, however, visibly thrilled.

"Good evening, Professor," she said, smiling brightly.

A sour-faced woman of about forty-five stepped through the door. She wore emerald green robes that went down to her ankles and a pointed hat with a large brim that almost hid her eyes. I wondered how on earth she had gotten down the street with an outfit like that without some very odd stares.

She glanced at me with a hard, pestered look on her face as though evaluating my character through mere posture. I shifted on my feet, mumbled a "good evening" and went off into the kitchen where no eyes were baring into me accusingly. Mum was in the kitchen as I stepped inside. She was pulling things out of the oven, half aware that her daughter had entered. When she set down a baking pan on the stove and took off her oven mitts, she noticed me.

"Petunia dear, is that Lily's teacher at the door?" she quickly asked.

"Yes, Mum," I answered wearily.

"Gracious, I haven't had time enough to bake even the third batch! Petunia, would you mind scooping these out into a nice dish and bringing them out for me? I must go meet the professor. Thank you, darling."

With a frantic pat of her hair and removal of her apron, Mum collected herself and stepped out into the living room. I gathered up the spatula that she had left dangling off the counter and carefully attempted to pry the first, now cooled, batch from the pan. Of course my mother had been in such a hurry she had forgotten to spray the pan with any oil and the cookies were stuck to the pan like glue. I slid the spatula underneath the first cookie and lifted up, assuming I wouldn't be able to pry the cookie off the pan. But instead of not being able to, when I lifted up the spatula, only half the cookie came with. I was expecting this, but the spatula flung out of my hand anyway and the half-cookie landed on the floor. The clattering noise the spatula made brought Mum into the kitchen with a questioning stare.

"Sorry, mum. The cookies are really sticking to the pan," I explained.

"Do the best you can, sweetheart," she said and went out the door.

"Of course," I mumbled.

I tried again, picking up the spatula lying on the floor, wiping it off and starting with the next cookie. This time I tried to lift the cookie off the pan without that much force. I tried every way to get that cookie off the sheet after that and I became so fed up with it that I dropped everything on the kitchen table and went to the door. I stood in the doorway, feeling very childish, and said, "Mum, I need your help in the kitchen."

She looked at Lily, who looked around at her teacher who, to my surprise, got up from her seat.

"I believe I can be of some assistance in this matter if you will allow me to demonstrate some amateur magic in your house, Mrs. Evans."

She spoke in a rather smooth voice and had straight posture with a very authoritative figure for some reason I couldn't grasp.

"Oh, um..." my mother said, unsure. "I suppose it would be fine. Will it, uh, be dangerous?"

"No, no, of course not. I would just like to show you what exactly our school will be teaching your daughter. It's very simple and will not harm anyone or thing inside or outside of this house. The only effect it will have will be to relieve your other daughter the duty of presenting your snacks, Mrs. Evans, I can assure you."

"Please do, then, Professor," said mother.

We all watched in curiosity as the teacher held out what looked like a part of a tree branch and flicked her wrist. Seconds later I felt something brush past my shoulder and as I looked to my left, my eyes popped open at the sight of the cookie tray I had put out to set the cookies on. It was hovering in thin air, with beautifully shaped cookies assorted neatly on top, and it continued to hover until it settled softly on the coffee table in the middle of the living room.

"Oh my..."

"That was amazing!" said Lily excitedly.

"You will see many more 'amazing' things once you arrive at Hogwarts, Miss Evans," said the teacher.

Mother and I were still in plain shock to see what we had just seen. How many regular people witnessed actual magic before? I was speechless and quite reasonably so, I should think. I didn't quite register the rest of the conversation that Lily and her teacher were having while I stood at the door, completely still. Eventually I heaved myself back into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

It was one thing for Lily to go to a magic school and become a witch. It was another for her to go gallivanting about, flaunting her new magical powers to people--everyone would love her! Where would I be? A little child in the background who dusted shelves and cleaned up the messes Lily made.

"Petunia! Could you come here for a moment?"

No, I couldn't go back in that room. I was starting to get suspicious of that teacher. She kept looking at me like I had harmed her. I'd never seen the woman before, had I? There was no possible way I could have done something.

"Coming," I called back. I buried my head in my hands. After a few seconds' reflection, I stood up and walked back into the living room. "Yes, Mum?"

"Professor McGonagall is taking Lily shopping in Digonelly--"

"It's Diagon Alley," corrected Lily sweetly.

"Yes, thank you, dear. We'll be gone for a while."

"We?" I asked.

"I'm going along...and we're picking up your father from his work. I hope you don't mind if we leave you alone, darling."

"No," I said, though it had been somewhat delayed. "It's okay. I'll be--"

I could tell no one was listening to me. They were all getting their jackets and purses and heading for the door, leaving me in their wake while they sailed away to some fascinating magical universe, which apparently I was forbidden to enter. I went back into the kitchen and grabbed the first thing in sight, slamming in against the cabinet. There was a loud crash and I looked up to see what I had thrown. It had been a glass pitcher of orange juice.

I wondered if they had heard it and quickly ran to the other side of the kitchen to get towels to clean up the mess, but when I came back, Mum, Lily and the teacher were all standing in the doorway, staring down at it.

"What happened, Petunia? Did you knock it over?"

"I'm sorry, Mum," I said, avoiding her eyes.

"It's no problem, Mrs. Evans, if you'll allow me..."

The professor held out that stick she had in her hand and said, "Scorgify." Before I blinked my eyes, all the orange juice that had just soaked the floor had vanished. "Reparo," said the teacher and the millions of tiny glass pieces picked themselves off the floor and re-assembled themselves perfectly. There stood the glass pitcher without even a scratch.

This time we were all speechless. The teacher was the only one who could say anything.

"I'm sorry about startling you all, but I was trying to help. Mrs. Evans, we should probably be on our way if you would like to get to your husbands' work and to Diagon Alley before dark."

"Certainly," said mother absentmindedly.

"And Miss Evans," the teacher said, directing her pointed stare towards me. I straightened up and tried not to look so shocked. "You should try to be more careful with these fragile things. No one will be here to fix it once it's been broken a second time."

She exited the room with an aura of satisfaction and ease. I was nearly fuming, my cheeks flushed red, and mother was looking at me fixedly with a hard stare.

"It wasn't an accident? Petunia May Evans, why on Earth--"

"Mum, we need to go," said Lily, pulling on the back of her jacket and walking through the door. She did look back at me with an expression that said, 'Sorry but what can I do about it?'

"We will talk later, Petunia," mum said angrily as she picked up her purse that was on the table, turned and followed Lily.

Now I was fuming.

Before that witch had come, everything had been fine! Mother had never been angry with me and now she was furious. Lily was always complimenting me on how fine a job I did with dusting and the other things I did and now the only thing she cared about was her precious magic. I never lost my temper and now I was throwing and breaking things. I wanted to scream!

The only thing I could think about was how incredibly disastrous my life was going to be when Lily started going to that school. It was never going to be the same and it was all magic's fault. It was all that teacher's fault. I blamed the witch. Magic is nothing but tricks. I wasn't going to fall under some spell because my sister was going to be using it, I knew better than that. I would always see witches for what they were: freaks.