Broken

She doesn't like me. I can tell by the way she forces a thin stretched smile across her structured face when mother gives her a jab in the ribs after a well placed comment. This is the last time I'm going to be home, the summer after my last year of Hogwarts, and relief and dread and something a little unidentified washes over me and I shudder. I told James I need this time to straighten things out with my sister. He seemed doubtful but agreed. Most of my belongings are in Godric's Hollow; waiting for me. Like the rest of my life.

She hates me. I can see it in her eyes and smell it radiating off her in steady waves like some hot, pungent odour. Mother, and father too for that matter, both of them. They don't realise they'll probably never see me again when I walk out the door. Cutting myself off may be the hardest thing I've ever had to do, but it breaks me to continue when the only people that love me are my parents. Do you hear me? I'm broken.

She's...different. With her minimal, monotone, marred conversation towards me, with dull eyes that rarely meet mine. I'm leaving tomorrow and I haven't seen her in a week. She's taken her meals in her room and avoided me at all costs, going out to meet friends in town and generally acted as though I don't exist in her life anymore. Like she doesn't have a sister. But it's been like this for seven years...

Always stays the same, nothing ever changes

But I want to talk to my sister.... just to tell her all those things only sisters tell each other before I leave. Just to hold her once more, like I haven't done since I was eleven. To just...

She resents me. I see it in the way she used to almost talk to me before thinking better of it. Back then when I was still an innocent first year and she was still making up her mind regarding our family situation. She knows it, I know it, so do my parents, but I'm not going to bed because I'm Lily Evans and I'm better than that. Still, I miss her. So much.

She detests me. I can tell when she holds my gaze sometimes over the dinner table, when mother and father are discussing Eastenders and her face...it's so full of this pure, unadulterated disappointment, which is worse than the hate, really. It claws away at me and I flinch. I flinch away from my own sister. I have been sitting on this pavement since ten in the morning and it's been raining since twelve. It's now one.

English Summer rain seems to last for ages.

My novel is ruined; the pages soggy and the ink running like black tears and I almost discard it, cheap as it is. It's August, though, and the tarmac was scorching before it began to pour so thick whips of steam are inhabiting the air space, so I don't. I hear her coming from fifty yards away, even though the thundering smack of the rain is almost omnipotent.

She thinks I've changed. I've heard her talking to her friends about me. They laugh, and they know that I'm just on the other side of the door. The smell of that God-awful perfume Vernon gave her invades my nostrils and I fight the urge to move away. I've never even seen the man, but I have a strong disliking for him already. The noise of the cars splashing by seems to take on a sickly backdrop and this comfortable silence seems to be falling on deaf ears because she's fidgeting with the hem of the pink linen dress that mother gave her and scuffing those black leather platforms father gave her.

Yes, that's another thing. She thinks I'm absorbing all the attention from mum and dad; sucking it all up greedily like some rabid, malnourished child. I see it every time I am given something and she makes one of those remarks or finds some sick, twisted way of tainting it. Not that she wants the present, because that would be second hand gifts and she is Petunia Evans. Enough said, really. She's opening her mouth like she wants to say something, and I'm going to let her continue on because I'm not going to be the first to speak. I refuse because I am wet and tired and I've always been the one to initiate one-sided conversation. My heart has been bruised enough. If she wants to say something to me...

"I'm sorry."

Hold your breath and count to ten

It's half past one on Saturday afternoon, and this is all I've wanted to hear, the thing my heart yearned for since I was eleven. The chance I have waited patiently for since it even began to matter. Air is expelled from my lungs, in one deep hollow breath and for a moment, between the scorching sting by my eye, and the sheer utter relief, and the plain, basic break down of the message to my brain, it looks as though I may never inhale again.

"Are you really?" And that periodic, white rush in my ears has just started and I know that my pride will be hard to put aside. This is the sentence that was supposed to stay in my head, locked away with those late night dreams that haunted.

But now that I think of it...

"Of course I am, I wouldn't be saying it otherwise." That familiar crisp irritation creeps into her voice. She's telling the truth, I know, because I just do, but I want her to be lying because I'm suddenly not sure how to respond to this sudden turn of tables. The words I imagined, fantasised to say, have pasted themselves at the back of my throat, dry and invading.

It's fine, you're my sister, I love you, it doesn't matter.

I stay silent and I can see it breaking her, into tiny pieces.

Then fall apart and start again

Her voice is unstable now, and her heavy sniffs are gliding through the barrier I am attempting to put up again, broken, patchy.

"Don't read this until you've gone." She's stuffing an envelope into my hand and I slip it under my top because the purple ink on the front is already running. It burns so close to my heart.

If I were smart, I would have stopped her right then. Just that that point just...

There.

When she was hesitating and probably would have stayed in a heartbeat, had I asked her to.

But I don't, and I suppose the excuse I could give is: I'd been drained of energy. And all I could do was sit and blink at the poison berry bush across the street while the letter blazed away.

The rain is indistinguishable from my tears.

Three years later

It's the night before Halloween. Harry is happily squealing in the bath and I can hear his father shouting with equal delight. Their matching costumes for tomorrow are sitting on the dining room table - Pirates.

My thoughts are with Petunia today, and I'm not entirely sure why. James notices my long spans of silence and is concerned. I brush him off and look outside. James and Harry will only stay out in the back garden tomorrow. These are dangerous times and it isn't safe. The ministry is telling the Wizarding world that everything is under control. We know better of course, but James insists that just a little get together in the garden won't do any harm.

Petunia and I used to go trick-or-treating, dressed as little witches with green hair and fake warts and long plastic fingers with talon like nails to match. Before...

Strands, like that of old string, weathered and thin of that letter echo in my head.

I wanted to be you so much it hurt. I'd have settled for just being able to talk to you but my jealousy...it blinded me. I miss you so much. I love you.

Goodbye...

With all my will I'd wanted to go back as soon as I'd read it but we had already begun training, and I had been restricted as to where I could travel, the muggle world being ruled out most adamantly by Dumbledore.

Miss Evans, I am sorry, but you are as of now not only an of age Witch, but you are also a prime target, and I cannot stress enough how important it is to stay under my watch.

What are a few years between sisters? When this war and confusion steams down, and I am free to roam, as I like, I will find Petunia, and we will talk, and make up for all those many years. One day.

Start again

One day.