For What Might Have Been

In private, she reads the letters over and over again, scanning the bright, newsy pages with desperate yearning. Lily's life is so bright, so shining, so full of joy and wonder; it seems an endless round of parties and dances and late-night broomstick flights, and Petunia's housewife status itches and burns.

...fear and dirt, burrowing her pregnant belly into the mud and praying not to be seen, terror a raw taste in her mouth as the night wears on and the clouds block all light from the moon and the stars...

Vernon can't stand Lily, and whenever the letters arrive - never postmarked, just deposited through the slot sometime in the night - he throws them immediately into the fireplace and storms off to work.
Secretly, Petunia replaces the ashy letters with empty envelopes before she lights the fire, and steals time from her cleaning and sweeping to learn them by heart. She watches the neighbours at their lives, and she wonders if any of them have as much fun as Lily seems to have.

...holding him close, before he leaves again, tears salty on her tongue as he kisses her and promises to be back soon. What is soon, but an eternity of nail-biting terror and pain and loneliness in the dark?

Petunia married Vernon when she was nineteen. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and she does love him, she really does. It's just that he's so busy, so brisk, he never has time to take her dancing or to flatter her beyond a perfunctory morning comment.
"James and I went roller-skating in a cathedral in the air," Lily writes, and "James and I spent yesterday just lazing in the sun," and it's always "James and I this, James and I that". Petunia cannot help but feel a pang of envy when she thinks of slender, beautiful Lily and her charming, athletic husband; Petunia has dieted for years and all she can manage is bony, and Vernon is just fat. James, nobody can deny, is good-looking, with his boyishly floppy hair and his long lanky limbs. Lily has always been lovely. Their life together must be perfect, she is sure.

...working through the night to patch up his side, while he lies still and pale and stains the white sheets with his blood, and she wonders if he'll ever look at her again or if she'll bury him before the week is out. So many of her loved ones have already been laid to rest...

They visited Petunia once, she remembers, when they were newly married and Lily was recovering from her miscarriage. Vernon let them get two steps inside the door before he lashed out in a furious tirade, spitting and swearing and screaming, while Petunia sat quietly and said nothing. Lily cried a little, and James set his jaw and folded his arms, but neither of them did anything until Vernon rounded off his tirade by swinging a punch at James. Petunia had watched out of tired eyes; James did not fall, merely turned around and wrapped an arm about Lily's waist, eyes hard as diamonds, and they walked out together.
Petunia hasn't seen them since. She knows that the Potters won that confrontation, as they always seem to win every battle, but she will not say anything to Vernon - or even to herself. She is always silent. And she reads the letters again when she is alone.

...pregnant again, and this time she will not risk herself in the mud and blood and tears of the war. James is ecstatic and concerned, forcing her to eat and to rest whenever he is home. But when he is not home, she cannot rest. The war is so near, so near...

Yes, Lily's life is perfect, Petunia thinks miserably, as she vomits in the mornings and grows rapidly heavier with her own baby. They're pregnant together, but Vernon will not let her have anything to do with Lily - her tentative attempt to broach the subject left him seething and furious. He has not forgotten James.
She wishes things had been different, but she will not work towards it. Lily still writes, as bright and breezy as ever, and Petunia grows steadily more twisted and embittered as the years wind on. One day, she thinks, she might write back. If she feels like it. But what has Lily done to deserve it?

...pain, but of a different sort, as Lily strains and aches in the hospital and little Harry works his way into the world. She is pudgy and pale and spotty and James is tired and white and strained, but no couple in the world was ever so happy, it seems.
If only the darkness outside was not so strong...

"You really shouldn't rely on the Muggle post, Pet - I've had no letters from you in years," Lily writes, and Petunia gives a twisted half-sob of laughter and then goes to give Dudley another rusk; he is teething and she has no more time for what might have been. How can Lily understand what goes on in her life now? Maybe one day she will write. One day.

...a flash of green light and at last the peace she seeks has come, not only for her but for all the world, and she dies with a smile on her face because now, at last, Harry is safe, and she is joining James ...

And then the news comes that Lily and James are dead, and there will be no more days.
That night, while Harry cries softly for his mother in his makeshift cot, Petunia burns the letters. The smoke is thick and does not all escape up the chimney, and Petunia breathes it in and does not cry at all.