Turned Away

It is easier to hate him when he has turned away from you. When you aren't looking directly at him, you can fool yourself with the knowledge that this child was his father's own: James Potter's scion alone and not your dearly departed sister's legacy to you. There is nothing of Lily when you look at his back.

When the child is turned, you see the messy hair that forever required hours of painful brushing to no avail. You see the slim body that, by your own hand (and Vernon's too, you tell yourself), was far too small for his age. You see the bones, sticking out from under his shirt collar and through the back of a threadbare shirt that once belonged to your own precious baby. You do not, you remind yourself, see any part of Lily.

Even his posture, you remember, and see clearly from behind, was so different from Lily's. The hunched, defeated stance the boy had perfected almost from the time he could stand must have come from the father. "Stand up straight, boy," you told him over and over as he was growing up, the way your mother always told you. The way your mother never told Lily. Lily would never stand like that, thank you very much. Lily was graceful and poised, exuding a confidence that you longed for always, but were never able to attain.

Lily, with her perfect posture, and perfect hair and perfect body would never have created a child like the one whose back is turned from you now. She was, you tell yourself, destined to raise beautiful children with flowing red hair and ready laughs. Babies who grew up in the affectionate care of loving mothers and normal fathers, and not living under the stairs in a cupboard, placed there when their aunts and uncles took them in, when they couldn't stand the sight. Babies, you tell yourself, that would have been easy to take if an unfortunate accident had occurred, but not this baby who belongs to you now, who is the remnant of a meddling father and a mother whose love followed him blindly into death.

There were times when you could pretend that the child before you wasn't your sister's at all. Those were the easiest times to face; when you could settle yourself during sleepless, questioning nights with the disillusioned belief that there was a mistake and some other woman's child was left on your doorstep, with instructions to raise and protect. Love, you remember, was not part of the instruction sheet and you were glad then, as you are glad now. You lived up to your end of the bargain, fulfilling your duties to the letter. No more, though considerably less.

The arrangement you made, the plan you agreed to, was made before the baby you found when you put out the milk bottles first opened his eyes to you. Lily's legacy was in the child's eyes. It was only in those green glass orbs that you saw his mother's soul, a soul that loved you as you should have loved her son. You question what you would have done if the boy had looked at you before you wrote back that you would keep him; before you and Vernon agreed that the best place for him to sleep would be the cupboard and that you would train your own precious baby that your nephew (not Vernon's nephew, you remind yourself) was a monster, worthy of abuse and scorn. What would you have done if he'd looked at you before you both told yourselves and each other all magical tendencies the child may have inherited would be stamped out irrevocably? What would you have done if you saw Lily in the face of the baby who slept in the basket on your table as you and Vernon looked on, discussing his future with fury and fear? If he had looked at you while you discussed the arrangements, would you have felt the urge to scoop him up in your arms? Would you have loved him?

It is easier to look at the boy you raised when he isn't looking back at you. You don't have to be reminded of how your sister, though you had been estranged for years, put her faith and trust in the love you shared as children, the love you were too selfish to pass on to Harry. Love, you thought for all those years, was taken from you the day you shut her out of your life and transferred from you to the boy's father. The final joke, you realize now, is the fact that the child looks just like the man you resented. You do not see your sister in any fiber of the child when his back is turned to you. All you see now is the man who took your sister away from you, into a world that knows only danger and heartache. You only see the man who spit back a child that you were loathe to love and resentful to care for; a mini-monster who, from the back, only reminds you of the man Lily loved and the man you have grown to hate.

And that's why you bury his child facing down.