Being Petunia Dursley

A look of horror crossed my face at the spectacle before me. I had the worst luck! I finally had everything in order and now my world is falling apart. He did it again. Something was floating in the air. But this time it was someone.

Poor Beverly Beckham was hovering two meters in the air.

Not only that, but she seemed to be stuck upside-down. Her dress, an awful shade of lavender that didn't compliment her pale skin, was dangling above (or is it below?) her head, revealing her bloomers. For a split second, I realized that her unmentionables matched her dress perfectly, but that thought was wiped from my head.

"Help meeee!!" Beverly squeaked as she kicked her legs in vain. I would have found it quite hysterical if I wasn't so vexed with how horrible my life seems to be. Now that I look back on it, my life wasn't entirely awful. I mean, I didn't like Beverly and she ended up showing her knickers to the world. However, at the moment it was neither comical nor wonderful. It was humiliating.

After a few moments of standing there, petrified like a deer in the headlights of a advancing automobile, I scanned the room, trying to find the miscreant who was ruining my life yet again. But I couldn't find him.

"Parties teas are very different on England," Joselle said, deeply impressed.

Frantically, I ran up to Beverly and tried to yank her down. Nevertheless, a one-hundred-six pound woman as myself cannot pull down a cow like Mrs. Beckham, so I went to a different plan.

"HARRY POTTER, YOU FILTHY LITTLE BOY!! GET OUT HERE NOW!!!" I screamed shrilly, my voice a couple of pitches to high. Breathing so quickly I was practically hyperventilating, I waited for him. When he didn't show up, I screamed, "Wait until Vernon gets you! Better yet, I'll get you!" I then proceeded to hunt down Harry like a mad woman, tossing clothes out of closets and ripping down curtains.

"Mommy, you're scaring me!" Dudley said. But for once I didn't care about what Dudley said. I was going to get that little malefactor and flay him alive.

I don't remember when all of the guests left. I don't know whether I noticed or not on that very day. All I know is that when Vernon came home, our house did not look the same at all.

*

"It's okay, 'Tunia," Vernon said gruffly. "He's at Mrs. Figg's house. He won't be here for an entire day! We are going to spend a wonderful day at the movies with Dudley and Piers. Nothing will go wrong there. And you know why?" he said, tilting my head gently so that my eyes stared dreamily into his. "Harry won't be here." My Vernon. He always knows how the right thing to say to a girl when she's feeling blue. We kissed, and we went downstairs. I was going to cook breakfast, and Vernon was going to take out all of Dudley's presents. We tiptoed through the hall, so we wouldn't wake my Dud-wuddy-woo. I could hear his precious little snores roll down the hall after us, as we descended the stairs. He was like a little man, that one.

As I began to cook, I saw Mrs. Beckham staring at me from her window through mine. I drew the curtains and continued with my work. I won't let her get me down. Not today, at least. I'm sure if one bad thing happened to me, I would die. But the short, painless type of death. It would be the long drawn out excruciatingly agonizing type. The type that had already had. I had already begun to come down with a leprosy of the heart, of the soul. It was gnawing me, flaying me alive. I could feel it. But it seemed to me at the time that there was nothing I could do about it. It seemed as though it was written in the stars.