But Esau Have I Hated...

Chapter 1
The Boy from the Park

"It's for your own good, Lily," Petunia shouted behind her as she threw the fence gate open.

"C'mon, Tuney," Lily begged, running in after her, out of breath and panting like old hound dog. "Don't be a tattletale!"

From the park to their house, it had been a full sprint race to get to the house; over sand, then tar, then grass half-dead from the lack of rain. If there was one thing Petunia knew she was better at than her little sister, it was that she was faster than her. All the way home, Lily lagged behind, trying to convince her sister of all the reasons she shouldn't tell their mother on her.

But this had to be done. Lily might cry, and scream, and carry on, but if her sister was in trouble, it was Petunia's responsibility as her older sister to protect her.

With Lily still trailing considerably behind her, Petunia jumped up the back steps and pulled the kitchen door wide open. The Evans' home was a small house of modest means, but in the purely industrial town where they lived, there were hardly any mansions to be envious of. Besides, this house had been home to the Evans family for so many years, and neither of the girls could ever imagine living anywhere else.

The small kitchen was cluttered, but always clean and currently smelled of tonight's dinner: some kind of stew. At the far end, Petunia saw her mother standing over a cutting board; paying less attention to the knife and more attention to the window in her gaze.

"MUMMY!" Petunia shouted at the top of her lungs.

"I can hear you, Petunia," her mother told her, wincing at the volume of Petunia's voice.

Petunia slid across the tile floor, nearly running head-on into the counter as her mother carried the chopped vegetables to a simmering pot. Off to the side sat several bottles of seasonings that her mother would spend an eternity debating over only to end up with the same combination she used every night. On the same counter, not three feet away, there was a china mixing bowl that smelled distinctly of sugar and ginger.

Looking down to her daughter, her mother smiled, wiping her hands on her apron and setting tonight's dinner off to the side.

"Mummy, Mummy, guess what Lily did at the park," Petunia told her mother as she gasped for breath. "She jumped from the swings, even though you told her not to."

"Lily," their mother said in a stern voice to her younger daughter, who had reached the kitchen just in time to be in trouble.

"I didn't get hurt, Mummy," Lily protested, showing both her elbows and her knees, "See?"

Noting her mother's breathe of relief and her softening expression, Petunia could tell that she was losing the battle. Oh, this was not happening again! Too, many times before, Lily had been able to weasel her way out of being punished with a cute smile or a pouting lip. Petunia had always suspected a small bit of favoritism was cast on her younger sister, and moments like these only provided her with more evidence.

Then she remembered what she believed to be the more heinous crime that her sister had committed.

And that's not all," Petunia continued with her accusations. "She talked to a stranger!"

"He was our age," Lily countered as she watched the look of shock take over her mother's face, "and his name is Severus Snape, so now that I know his name, he's not a stranger."

"But he was a freak," Petunia argued, this time facing her sister instead of their mother. "It's not good for Lily to be associating with that kind of person."

"Tuney thinks everyone's a freak," Lily said, looking up towards her mother, hoping she would agree with her. "If I stopped talking to everyone that she didn't like, I wouldn't even be able to raise my hand in class."

At this, their mother laughed and turned her attention back to tonight's dinner. Not a good sign for Petunia's side of the argument.

"You do have a bit of a suspicious mind, Petunia," their mother agreed, "and not a lot of tolerance for anyone or anything different."

Petunia felt her jaw dropped. Here, Lily was the one who had broken two family rules, and she was the one getting a lecture. Behind her, she could almost feel Lily smirking and taunting her with her victory. No, it was not, not, not going to happen again this time!

"Are you mad, Mummy?" Petunia tried to make her mother listen to reason. "Lily's going to get kidnapped if she doesn't learn to have better sense when it comes to socializing!"

"Well, I hardly think a ten-year-old is going to be dragging our Lily off to Siberia in the dead of night," their mother laughed at her own joke. "I hardly see anything wrong with either of you girls making new friends, especially ones that live so close now that you are both on summer holiday."

This time, Petunia turned around to watch her little sister's victory dance. While Lily smirked, Petunia bit at her tongue to hold back any words that might get her in more trouble.

"But at the same time, Lily," their mother said sharply, stopping Lily's little celebration, "you know that I told you not to jump from the swings and you did it anyway. You'll be staying inside tomorrow."

"But Mummy..." Lily whined, stomping her feet against the floor, as though she thought there was a small chance she could still walk away from all this.

"That's the last we'll hear of it, young lady," their mother ordered, effectively ended anymore tantrums. "Now go wash up for dinner, the both of you."

Lily pouted and kicked at the tile floor as she exited the kitchen. Petunia soon followed after her, a slight smile on her face as she left. The same smile she always got on the rare occasions she was able to win her parents' side over Lily's. Such a trifle thing may have seemed insignificant in many families, but for Petunia, it was a way of keeping score almost. A way of keeping track of her own abilities to have power over people and influence in the world, small as it may be to her.

Sure, Lily might be mad and stomp around the house for the next few days, but at least her parents were on her side for now.

**********

At night, the girls were allowed to spend a half hour playing in their room before they had to go to bed. Lily normally spent this time doing things Petunia herself considered to be childish, such as coloring, or even talking to her stuffed animals; a habit Lily admitted she was getting a bit old for. And yet, she continued to keep hold onto her imagination that made such things fun for her.

Petunia, who abandoned such practices when she was even younger than Lily, would write in her diary. Entries that would be very stiff in style and not leave out a single detail. Tonight's entry was filled with rants of horrid little boys and freaks of every nature.

But tonight, instead of her usual pretend games, Lily sat on the floor, propped up against Petunia's desk, sulking and occasionally thumping the back of her head against the solid oak; something Petunia was sure her sister was doing just to annoy her.

"You can stop giving me the silent treatment now," Petunia let out an exasperated sigh. "It wasn't my idea to punish you."

Lily glared at the wall in front of her. It was clear that Lily was very angry, but at the same time, Petunia could also tell her sister wanted her to think she was not paying attention to her.

Thump, thump, thump. Lily still continued to bang her head against the desk while Petunia winced with every sound. How could her sister not care how many brain cells she was destroying right now?

"You're better off without him you know," Petunia continued to scrawl out her perfect script along the lined pages. If Lily was going to ignore her efforts at communication, Petunia was going to ignore her efforts of trying to annoy her. "I could tell he was a bad influence before he even said a word."

"You just can't stand the fact that you can't pick out every detail of my friends," Lily sulked, finally giving up her code of silence. "If you had your way, we'd lock ourselves in our house and we wouldn't even let the milkman near our door!"

"You see, that's part of you problem, Lily," Petunia told her sister in a pompous voice, still keeping most of her focus on the words in her diary. "For you, everyone is either your best friend or your worst enemy. You cannot tell who it's okay to trust and who's not."

"And your problem is that you become too easily suspicious," Lily argued back, but shouting as the she were having the argument with the wall. "You see the face of a monster in a ten-year-old boy."

"He called you a witch, Lily!" Petunia explained, setting her pen in the crook of her diary, and turning her chair so she could look down at the floor. "And he thinks he's a wizard!"

"He was probably just pretending," Lily shrugged, still not making eye contact. "Tommy Brown thinks he's a duck."

"Well, Tommy is insane," Petunia justified. "And that Snape boy probably is too."

"But I like insane people," Lily rested her head against Petunia's chair, but kept her gaze on the rosebud wallpaper on the opposite side of the room. "They're interesting."

"Either way, I want you to stay away from that boy," Petunia said, reaching down to touch her sister's shoulder. "Hanging around with that kind of crowd cannot be good for your developing brain."

"You use too many big words," Lily answered, looking up, "you know that, right, Tuney?"

Petunia had to giggle at the remark. Even when they were having a fight, the Evans sisters always managed to bring the best out of each other. Lily might have been a bit naïve towards reality with less sense than God gave a Billy goat, but deep down, Petunia cared deeply for her little sister. She had been helping to take care of her since the day she was born, and if anything bad happened to her now, Petunia knew she would never be able to forgive herself.

And the fact that Lily was now smiling too told her they were that much closer to being over this little spat.

"Just promise me you won't go running around with anymore people who think they're witches or ducks or anything else like that, okay?"

"Well, I'm not going to be able to be around anyone tomorrow anyway," Lily reminded her sister as she crawled in the bed, "I'm not allowed out of the house, remember?"

Petunia didn't look up from her diary, but her face took on another triumphant smile. Lily might not know this now, but she was going to thank her for this one day. As an older sister it was her duty to make sure Lily was running with a 'proper' crowd. If she started associating with freaks like Tommy Brown and that Snape boy, who knows how she might turn out.


Dear Diary,

Today I went to the park with Lily and we played on the swings. It was lots of fun until that horrid Snape boy from Spinners End came poking around. He said horrible things to the both of us and called Lily a witch. It's a good thing I got her out of there when I did, for I am quite sure that boy is wrong in the head.

Lily is throwing a temper tantrum now because I told Mummy she jumped from the swings...AGAIN. But if I know Silly Lily, by tomorrow morning, even though she is being punished, she'll have forgotten all about it. Maybe when the ice cream man comes through our street tomorrow, I'll bring her back an orange sherbet pop. Those things have the magic ability to bring Lily out of even her foulest moods. Anyway, more tomorrow.

Love,
Petunia

Satisfied with both her diary and the events of the evening, Petunia turned off her desk lamp and climbed into bed herself, ready to dream normal dreams of horses, beaches, and whipped cream desserts.