Of Sisters and Sons

Of Sisters and Sons
By Jaylee

"I should be crying,
but I just can't let it show.
I should be hoping,
but I can't stop thinking
Of all the things I should've said,
That I never said.
All the things we should've done,
That we never did.
All the things I should've given,
But I didn't.
Oh, darling, make it go,
Make it go away." Kate Bush, "This Woman's Work"

Prologue:

*****

Dudley was in a coma.

The idea was so foreign to Petunia, as if she was stuck in a nightmare, and the sight of her son: tubes running in and out of his body, unmoving and deathly silent, was something she could shake off, something she could alter if her will was just strong enough.

The stark, white walls of the hospital room added to the allusion of a dream: bright and luminescent, as if intently surreal. Even the words of the doctor seemed distant, as if she were not hearing them up close, but as a faint whisper in her mind, conjuring her worst fears.

"I'm sorry to have to tell you this Mr. and Mrs. Dursley," the man was saying gently, his expression infinitely sad - a look Petunia found to be inexplicably condescending, "but from the deterioration of yours son's liver and kidneys, we've determined that he's been using illegal substances for quite awhile. Coupled with his weight, which has put a large strain on his heart for extended period of time, and his body has just simply decided to shut down, unable to handle the stress of both drug dependency and obesity. We've put him down on a list for a kidney transplant, meanwhile, we have him on dialysis, also, we have performed an emergency bypass to clear the blocked artery. I'm afraid there is little else we can do for your son right now. There is no guarantee, even if we find a donor, that his body will accept the new kidney, or that he'll even wake up. I'm obligated to tell you that life support, regardless of insurance, is rather costly..."

Petunia was too stunned to intercede, too certain that this wasn't real; that is wasn't her boy lying there; that it wasn't her son who had had a history of drug abuse. Dudley was a good boy, now a man; she knew that. He always had been. After all, how could she have possibly not have noticed something as significant as this? How could she not have noticed that her own flesh and blood, her pride and joy, had been using dangerous substances. There had to be some kind of mistake.

Vernon Dursley, however, seemed to have no apparent loss for words. Petunia turned to her husband just in time to see him clutch his fists tightly at his side, his face turning purple from the strain of his tension, his eyes flashing, dangerous and fierce. Vernon, it seemed, would set that doctor straight...

"I know what you're implying, doctor, and I don't like it. My son WILL wake up. And you will do whatever it takes to ensure that he does. I don't care about money, and I don't care about bloody insurance. Do what you have to do to keep my son alive!" the elder Dursley all but screamed, his posture rigid with temper... and with grief.

Petunia could only blink at her husband, unable to hold back her tears. Vernon hadn't demanded an alternative explanation to the decline in Dudley's health, he hadn't ranted and raved about how the doctors HAD to be wrong, instead he had insisted that the life support would remain, and they'd take it from there...

And something inside Petunia Dursley snapped.

Dudley was dying; was practically dead already, and she'd never felt such a potent wash of grief in all of her life: not when her parents had died, and certainly not when her sister had died.

Because she loved him. He was hers: made from her, molded by her, and born to love her first and foremost. She had taken everything she had felt she had been lacking in her own childhood and given it to Dudley, without hesitation. All her good intentions: to make sure that he never wanted for anything, particularly her affection, to ensure that he never felt second fiddle to anyone, to make him feel special for his normalcy - his blessed lack of magic... Her over-indulgence spurning his.

It was she who had signed his death certificate.

The doctor was about to answer Vernon when Petunia raised her head, and met her husband's eyes determinedly, her tears halting in shadow of her resolve.

"The boy," she said aloud, in clear, certain terms, steeling herself against her husband's shock and the doctor's obvious confusion. "They cannot help Dudley here, but perhaps the boy can."

"Petunia," Vernon sputtered, his concern for his son apparently warring with his long adapted sense of propriety, "do we really want to invite one of them into this? To allow that boy access to Dudley once more? We haven't even seen him since he left that last time. It's been three years, we don't even know how to get a hold of him."

"He's our only hope, Vernon," she answered firmly, "and this is the last option at our disposal. I wont allow my son to die when we could have done something, anything, to save him."

Her tone was absolute but her spirit was not. It was possible that the boy wouldn't help them; it was possible that the boy would want nothing more to do with them at all... she had ensured that as well.

Two boys, both of them hers at one point: one revered, one ostracized, and all because of a woman with eyes as green as spring leaves, and hair like silk-spun amber.

'Lily, what have I done?'

*****

Three-year-old Petunia Evans wasn't entirely sure how a baby should look, having never seen one before, but she was certain that her new sister looked more like a hairless version of the monkeys she had seen at the zoo than she did a regular human being. One-week-old Lily's skin was rose petal red, too bright to possibly be considered normal, and Petunia couldn't help but notice that she seemed to sleep an awful lot, which wasn't very fun in the grand scheme of things.

Her parents had promised her a playmate when they had told her that she had a brother or sister on the way, and she couldn't help but wonder if the one they had brought home was somehow broken. After all, no one person should be allowed to cry as loud as Lily did whenever she was hungry, it made Petunia's ears hurt just to listen to her.

But the worst of Lily's sins, by far, was how busy she made their mother. Ever since her family had returned from the hospital, bringing Lily along with them, her mother had spent nearly every waking moment either feeding the baby, or changing her nappies. When she wasn't doing that, she, too, was sleeping, and Petunia was beginning to get more than a little annoyed with the situation.

None of this was supposed to be a part of the deal. Lily wasn't supposed to take her mother away, and she certainly wasn't supposed to turn out as boring as she obviously had. Clearly something had to be done.

The obvious choice was to present the matter to her father, since her mother was otherwise indisposed, and as soon as he walked through the door following work that day, Petunia latched on to him, determined to communicate her plight.

"Daddy, I think we should take the baby back," Petunia announced with certainty, her eyes all but pleading for him to comply with her decision.

"Now, why would we want to do that, Pumpkin?" the elder Evans asked, bending down to knee level to face his daughter as the corners of his mouth twisted into a grin he unsuccessfully tried to repress.

"Because," the little girl answered, frustrated that the reasons weren't entirely obvious without the need to illiterate, "she's not right."

At this her father shook his head, now smiling widely, much to Petunia's growing confusion. She didn't find the situation funny in the least.

"Now why do you think that, Petunia? As babies go, your sister is very healthy, the doctors told us so themselves. And even if she wasn't, we'd never place her anywhere but here, she's our child, just as you are. Your mother and I would miss her terribly if she were gone," the young father replied complacently, holding open his arms for his daughter to walk into.

"But Daddy, all she does is sleep and cry," Petunia announced with a whine, clutching her father tightly in an obvious show of possession. She was their child first; after all, he and her mother were hers.

The elder Evans laughed merrily at this, hugging his small daughter to him as he shook his head in amusement.

"Petunia, that is what babies do. Until they get a little bit older, they are entirely dependent on us for their needs. You were the same way when you were that small. Would you have liked us to take YOU back?" he asked her, his smile turning gentle when she softly mumbled a quiet "no" through the bottom lip that was sticking out in a pout.

"Good, then we're not going to take Lily back either. Rest assured, when she's older, she'll be walking and talking our ears off, just like you do, especially because you're here to show her the ropes. It's a big responsibility, being an older sister, and a very important task. Lily is going to look up to you. Think you can handle that?" the young father soothed, patting his daughter gently on the head as he stood and smiled down at her.

"Yes," the child replied, still pouting, but feeling a little better about the situation as a whole. Yes, she was forced to share her parents, a fact she still didn't quite like, but at least she had the promise that her sister would grow out of this odd stage she was temporarily stuck in... at least she had her father's word that Lily would one day become a normal child.

To be continued...