Accidental Magic

Accidental Magic

Chapter Three:

Revelations

~*~

Petunia stood outside Harry's bedroom door, her stomach a knot of nerves at what she knew she had to do. As she took a deep breath, she reflected on how things went in this home as Harry was growing up. In the early years, she tried to raise Dudley and Harry equally, giving both of them equal portions of her heart. They were so different and they both needed her in differing ways. Where Dudley was boisterous, Harry was calm. Dudley was demanding, Harry generous. Things changed dramatically shortly before the boys turned four years old; Harry began doing accidental magic.

~*~

Petunia was out in the back garden with Dudley and Harry, enjoying the nice weather of early summer. Her eyes fell upon the boys and she smiled when Harry tossed a ball over to Dudley before turning her attention back to her book. Mere moments later, Harry was screaming, lying on the grass, his nose bleeding, staining his shirt crimson. She dashed across the lawn to the boys and right before her eyes, Harry's nose stopped bleeding and Dudley's hair caught fire.

"Dudley!" she screamed, draping her son's head with the blanket the boys had been sitting upon. Dudley wailed and tears began streaming down his face. She scanned the top of her sons head to assess the damage. There were no burns, no blisters, no acrid smell of burnt flesh and hair. All she saw was a shiny scalp that made her son look like a genie, sans the hoop earring.

Vernon was livid when he returned home from work and nearly drove Harry to an orphanage himself. It was then that changes happened around the house. Photos were removed from the lounge; childhood drawings were taken down from the refrigerator; clothes were no longer new for the little boy. When Harry began primary school, they moved him into the broom cupboard under the stairs. When this happened, a dramatic change happened in Harry's personality. Gone was the happy boy who smiled everyday. He was replaced by a quiet, introspective boy who cowered whenever his uncle's voice was raised. Her son changed as well, following his father's lead, making Harry feel like a pest that needed to be squashed or exterminated. As the years passed, Harry still had occasional instances of magic but by the time he was seven, the occurrences had decreased to the point where she and Vernon were sure the magic had been removed.

~*~

Taking a deep breath Petunia prepared herself for what she needed to do, for what she needed to tell Harry. She had gone over and over the details she needed to say in her head several times already and each time, it never felt right to her. She rapped at the door, ready to get on with it.

"Harry?" the door opened, revealing the lanky young man with tousled black hair whom she should have raised like a son.

"Yes?" She couldn't help but hear the irritation in his voice.

"May I come in? I need to speak with you." Her eyes fell onto the floor, not wanting to meet the green eyes that reminded her so much of her long-gone sister.

"If you must," he answered. Harry backed into his room and fell onto the bed, his hands behind his head and ankles crossed. She surveyed the room and noticed that aside from the owl cage, there was no sight of any of his personal belongings.

"You packed." Of course he did. He was leaving her life forever in a few days.

"Uh, yeah," he said with irritation. "You can give Dudders his room back soon." Harry rolled over onto his side away from her. "So did you need to say anything besides commenting on my cleaning?"

"Harry," she said softly, sitting at the foot of his bed. "I need to talk to you about your mother."

Harry sprung up to sit facing her, his face contorted with what she assumed was a tremendous amount of anger. "What? You haven't brought her up in conversation for as long as I can remember. So what's so important now?" By the look of his clenched fists and the stiffness of his body, Petunia knew he was exercising an extreme amount of magical control.

"Dumbledore wants me to tell you about her."

Harry let out a chuckle. "Impossible. He's dead, Petunia."

"I know, Harry." She placed a hand on his shoulder, which he immediately shrugged off. "He wrote me a letter before he died and I just received it a few days ago. You need to hear this."

"Why?"

"Because you are The Guardian." His eyes widened, telling her he knew what she was talking about.

"What did you just say?" His body relaxed and he looked her straight in the eye.

"You are The Guardian. You will receive the Rosewood Puzzle Box and absorb the knowledge of Merlin and those before you," she answered, reciting exactly what she planned in her head. "And you also need to know about your family and about me. Dumbledore promised me something when I took you in, in addition to providing you with protection. I can only receive the gift if you hear what I have to say." She waited as Harry processed the information he heard. After a few moments, he got up and began pacing his room and running his hands through his hair in frustration. He stopped pacing finally, and leaned against the doorjamb, crossing his arms in front of him.

"Fine."

"We were close once, your mother and I." Petunia swallowed, her mouth suddenly gone dry. "Even though I was a few years older, we were closer than most sisters. On her eleventh birthday, she received her letter from Hogwarts." Petunia remembered the joy on her sister's face as she read the long missive before running into the sitting room to find their mother. "She was so excited. It didn't matter that no one in the family was magical. She had found her place. She was bright, talented and very mature for her age. Shortly after her birthday, Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall stopped by to discuss things with our parents."

Petunia told him of the conversations and arguments that followed once the witch and wizard arrived. She told him how she and Lily hid at the top of the stairs, straining to hear what the fuss was all about. After a few hours, Lily was taken into the room, leaving Petunia alone on the stairs. Harry listened intently while Petunia told of his mother's squeal of delight and how she trampled up the stairs to explain to her elder sister that she was a witch and would go away to school in Scotland.

"I went to Diagon Alley and was mesmerized by the different world that was suddenly open to my sister while at the same time jealous that I couldn't join her. I was with her when she bought her wand: ten inches of beautiful rosewood with a core of unicorn hair." Petunia motioned for Harry to sit next to her on the bed and he surprised her by agreeing to the request. He also surprised her with his silence and part of her wanted him to lash out at her, show some sort of reaction, anything to show her that he heard what she was saying.

"I wanted to be a witch." Harry raised an eyebrow. "When we got home, I took her wand from her shopping bag and waved it, wanting to see what would happen." Petunia then told her nephew something she had never told another living soul. "I conjured a bouquet of flowers."

"What did you just say?" Harry's eyes were wide in disbelief. "All this time, you were magical and you treated me worse than a stray dog?" The windows of his room exploded, sending shattered glass flying out onto the grass below.

"No, Harry," she began. "I'm not magical. But I'm not a Squib, either. Lily caught me with the flowers. We didn't know what it meant. She was angry and I was so scared. All I wanted was to join her at Hogwarts."

"Then what happened?" he asked. Petunia noticed his voice softened and the look of utter disbelief had left his face.

"Before she left, we went though one of her Charms books and we tried a few things. Lily was able to make a feather float..."

"Wingardium Leviosa." Harry smiled.

"Yes! That was the spell she did." Petunia put on her own smile, meeting Harry's gaze with her eyes. "I wasn't able to do any more than that. Except at Kings' Cross. We couldn't go through the barrier to Platform 9 ¾ with her. I made rubbish bins fall over as I walked passed them on my way back to the car. My parents were embarrassed and angry with me." Petunia paused, attempting to tamp down the emotions that were ready to erupt. "Things were never the same between us after she left."

Petunia explained how while she still felt close to her sister, the distance between them became greater and greater as Lily progressed in school. When Petunia met Vernon, she explained, he was horrified to learn that Petunia's sister was a witch. Vernon used Petunia's hurt and loss to make her sister into a villain of sorts and that was the start of the animosity between the Evans sisters.

"And then, Lily brought your father home for Christmas. Vernon and I were set to be married in March and James wanted to meet the family. It was disastrous."

"I can just about imagine," Harry added, a cheeky grin on his face. "Dad didn't have much patience for those he found annoying."

"Yes." Petunia looked at her nephew again, continuing with her story. "James was not amused by Vernon and James flipped Vernon upside down by his ankles. That's when Vernon found out your family was magical."

"Levicorpus," Harry added. "Vernon got down though, didn't he?"

Petunia blushed. "Well, of course, eventually."

"It was a rhetorical question." Another smirk crossed his lips.

"I was furious with them and told her I never wanted to see her again," she stated flatly. "She took it hard. She sent me an invite to her wedding and your birth announcement but I threw them in the bin. I never forgave either of them."

Harry cleared his throat and stood in front of the window, looking at the glass that lay on the ground below him. "So what did he promise you?"

She barely heard the question. "Pardon me?"

He turned around to face her, an inquisitive look on his face. "What'd the old codger promise you? Magic?"

"Yes."