What if, when Petunia Dursley found a little boy on her front doorstep, she took him in? Not into the cupboard under the stairs, not into a twisted childhood of tarnished worth and neglect—what if she took him in?
Petunia was jealous, selfish and vicious. We will not pretend she wasn’t. She looked at that boy on her doorstep and thought about her Dudders, barely a month older than this boy. She looked at his eyes and her stomach turned over and over. (Severus Snape saved Harry’s life for his eyes. Let’s have Petunia save it despite them).
Let’s tell a story where Petunia Dursley found a baby boy on her doorstep and hated his eyes—she hated them. She took him in and fed him and changed him and got him his shots, and she hated his eyes up until the day she looked at the boy and saw her nephew, not her sister’s shadow. When Harry was two and Vernon Dursley bought Dudley a toy car and Harry a fast food meal with a toy with parts he could choke on Petunia packed her things and got a divorce.
Harry grew up small and skinny, with knobbly knees and the unruly hair he got from his father. He got cornered behind the dumpsters and in the restrooms, got blood on the jumpers Petunia had found, half-price, at the hand-me-down store. He was still chosen last for sports. But Dudley got blood on his sweaters, too, the ones Petunia had found at the hand-me-down store, half price, because that was all a single mother working two secretary jobs could afford for her two boys, even with Vernon’s grudging child support.
They beat Harry for being small and they laughed at Dudley for being big, and slow, and dumb. Students jeered at him and teachers called Dudley out in class, smirked over his backwards letters.
Harry helped him with his homework, snapped out razored wit in classrooms when bullies decided to make Dudley the butt of anything; Harry cornered Dudley in their tiny cramped kitchen and called him smart, and clever, and ‘better ‘n all those jerks anyway’ on the days Dudley believed it least.
Dudley walked Harry to school and back, to his advanced classes and past the dumpsters, and grinned, big and slow and not dumb at all, at anyone who tried to mess with them.
But was that how Petunia got the news? Her husband complained about owls and staring cats all day long and in the morning Petunia found a little tyke on her doorsep. This was how the wizarding world chose to give the awful news to Lily Potter’s big sister: a letter, tucked in beside a baby boy with her sister’s eyes.
There were no Potters left. Petunia was the one who had to arrange the funeral. She had them both buried in Godric’s Hollow. Lily had chosen her world and Petunia wouldn’t steal her from it, not even in death. The wizarding world had gotten her sister killed; they could stand in that cold little wizard town and mourn by the old stone.
(Petunia would curl up with a big mug of hot tea and a little bit of vodka, when her boys were safely asleep, and toast her sister’s vanished ghost. Her nephew called her ‘Tune’ not ‘Tuney,’ and it only broke her heart some days.
Before Harry was even three, she would look at his green eyes tracking a flight of geese or blinking mischieviously back at her and she would not think ‘you have your mother’s eyes.’
A wise old man had left a little boy on her doorstep with her sister’s eyes. Petunia raised a young man who had eyes of his very own).
Petunia snapped and burnt the eggs at breakfast. She worked too hard and knew all the neighbors’ worst secrets. Her bedtime stories didn’t quite teach the morals growing boys ought to learn: be suspicious, be wary; someone is probably out to get you. You owe no one your kindness. Knowledge is power and let no one know you have it. If you get can get away with it, then the rule is probably meant for breaking.
Harry grew up loved. Petunia still ran when the letters came. This was her nephew, and this world, this letter, these eyes, had killed her sister. When Hagrid came and knocked down the door of some poor roadside motel, Petunia stood in front of both her boys, shaking. When Hagrid offered Harry a squashed birthday cake with big, kind, clumsy hands, he reminded Harry more than anything of his cousin.
His aunt was still shaking but Harry, eleven years and eight minutes old, decided that any world that had people like his big cousin in it couldn’t be all bad. “I want to go,” Harry told his aunt and he promised to come home.
Tag: ;_____;
Wait, I’m confused. Do you think that Venus ever really did die in the SilMil? Or was she alive when Queen Serenity did her reboot thing?
It wasn’t something I’d ever really thought about for my own take on things, or for my personal Silver Millennium headcanon, but I definitely think that’s what Moon Pride is saying, yeah. Venus and Venus alone is left standing at the end.
I don’t know if it’s how I’d keep it for my Giant Sailor Moon Canon Voltron, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t damned appealing. Because I am a terrible person who loves to hurt those she loves.
There was no salvation for her, no forgiveness; she had failed. You had one job, whispered the voice of the ashes, of the shards, of the thin, eternally falling mist that had been her friends, and would never be anything but debris, galactic spindrift pooling around her like the rings of Saturn (and where was she, when the world was ending, when the breaking times came? This was her burden, not mine, came the thought, before it went, just as quickly, because she did not deserve to be angry; not here, not now, not anymore).
One job. Protect the Princess. One job. Know how to break anything, anything to keep Serenity safe. One job. Be the last line of defense. And she had failed. She hadn’t been able to break the Princess’s heart in order to save her; that had been too much to ask, in the end. So she had allowed her to think that she was clever, little rabbit peeking out of the warrens of the moon, dreaming of freedom for the first time.
But the universe held a thousand enemies, for a rabbit, and she had failed; she had not been there, not fast enough, not good enough, and Serenity was falling, and there was nothing she could do.
“For the love of Serenity, burn. For the love of Serenity, freeze. For the love of Serenity, break the sky.” She had practiced those phrases so many times, said them over and over until her heart no longer broke every time she spoke them, and now, in the end, it had all been for nothing. She might as well have been her mask. She might as well not have tried.
She felt the Silver Crystal come down. Felt the world burn white, and for a moment, she dared to think that her Queen, who had never been merciful, would at least be kind. Only for a moment.
Time is a malleable thing. The Queen tore down, destroyed, and rebuilt a universe in the matter of seconds. A flash of light, and everything was gone.
But for one girl, one broken, deathless failure of a girl, the light lasted for an eternity.
For the love of Serenity, whispered the Silver Crystal, and it was not merciful, it was not kind, it was not any force that a loving heart should pray to, remember.
And Venus did.
SEANAN
SEANAN NO
HOW DID YOU BUILD ON THE WORDS
THE SIX WORDS YOU AREN’T ALLOW TO SAY
WHY DID YOU DO THIS THING
She ferrets it out of them, one careless question and casual comment at a time. She works it like a child with a puzzle, making them think she’s just being her usual, silly self, until she knows she sure that each of them, when they first saw their Princess, remembered just enough to know that they loved her: just enough to press down the parts of themselves that would question this sudden, unthinking devotion, and become the good, loyal soldiers Queen Serenity had always wanted them to be.
Water can drown even the strongest men, but it is pliant, shapeless, formless; form yourself to her, the Queen had said to Mercury, more than once, when Mercury’s racing mind had left the Princess behind—and look, here is a girl who never leaves the shallows.
Fire can burn even the swiftest hand, but it is hungry, needy, helpless; need her more than you need yourself, the Queen had said to Mars, more than once, when Mars’s temper had left the Princess crying—and look, here is a girl who never loses her temper.
Lightning can strike even the smartest hand, but it is brief, cold, transitory; learn to be rooted for her, the Queen had said to Jupiter, more than once, when Jupiter had looked to the sky for meaning—and look, here is a girl who looks no further than her beloved Rabbit.
But they do not remember.
They will come back to themselves, their true selves, the selves they blossomed into here, in this bright blue world with its limitless sky; they will remember the pleasures they currently forsake, and leave their ghosts behind. A single glimpse of a cold silver palace filled with thin air and the scent of moondust is not enough to unmake a lifetime. And still, they will not remember, for that was not their punishment.
For the love of Serenity, Mercury froze, Mars burnt, Jupiter shattered herself across the sky. For the love of Serenity, they gave up everything, and have been rewarded with everything made new.
For the love of Serenity, Venus remembered. She remembers still. Perhaps she always will.
For the love of Serenity, she alone will never leave that endless flash of white, when the world burned and a Princess fell and a Queen showed that sometimes, the moon has no mercy after all.
HOW IS THIS OKAY
Luna is waxing rhapsodic about the moon again—the balls, the beautiful ladies, the dresses that were only possible in the lower gravity—and Minako is pretty sure that she would get in trouble if she drowned Usagi’s guardian cat in the bathtub. Pretty sure. Almost positive.
Probably shouldn’t test it out.
So there’s really only one thing to do: announce breezily that all this talk of grand banquets has made her hungry, and volunteer to go out for pastries. Which stops the moon talk for five minutes while Usagi places an order large enough to be a banquet. Minako doesn’t argue. Minako is getting the hell out of here.
She’s on her way back from the bakery with aching arms and a half-clear head when she hears a throat cleared above her. She looks up, and there he is, little white cat best friend guardian rat fink, looking at her with concern.
"Why don’t you ever want to hear about the Moon?” he asks. She can hear the capital letter, and it makes her want to tear her hair out. “Luna just wants to help. She wants you to remember where you came from.”
But she never mentions the walls, screams Minako’s heart. She never mentions the way the dust stuck to your skin and glittered, so that the ladies of the court called it a cosmetic, but I knew it was the Moon, the Moon claiming me for its own, forever. She never mentions the way the servants didn’t look at their Queen, or the way the Queen didn’t seem to realize they were there. She never mentions the rules, or the laws, or the guards, or the reason a Princess needed four guardians powerful enough to destroy worlds. All she remembers is the sparkle. Knives sparkle, Artemis. When you hold them in the light, knives sparkle.
But Minako has seen the knife; has already been cut past healing. So she smiles, and says none of those things. Just: “I know where I come from. I’ll send her some postcards from London, okay?”
Still remembering, Minako walks on.
That’s fine. No, you know, it’s great. I’m totally okay with all of this. I am completely unaffected, and you can just do what you do and I’ll sit back in my chair and nod and sip my drink and absolutely not under any circumstances will I be crying.
Because I am fine.
I am FINE.
SittingOverHereDreaming 