Burning Memories by Flooney

There’s a sound coming from the kitchen downstairs in the early hours of the morning when Petunia first steps out from the shared bedroom between her and Vernon. She has to stop for the better half of a second before she cranes her head up to gaze at the clock hanging on the wall in the short hallway. Her throat still feels dry and the way her eyes are trying to tug down on themselves are a minor distraction other than the continued sores coming from inside the room behind her.

But it’s early, and she’s tired, and just who in the world is singing in her kitchen?

She uses the rail to support her on the way down the stairway, tucking the opening of her night robes closed to keep in what little warmth they have inside them.

The sound, she discovers, is humming. Once she reaches the bottom of the stairs, it’s clearer than before, but it carries the same melody as it did earlier; softer, if a little off-rhythm when the pitch changes abruptly. There’s a clearing of the throat, and her hand is just about to touch the knob of the door leading into the kitchen when—

“Morning, Aunt Tuney."

It happens in less than a second. The door is swinging open with a speed that she can’t yet decipher with her weary eyes, and there’s her nephew standing in the doorway with those damn eyes of his looking up at her with all the light in the world. There’s an eerily serene smile gracing his face by the time she composes herself enough that she’s certain she isn’t about to have a shock-induced heart attack.

She has a choppy reprimand doused with venom ready on the tip of her tongue, “Do you have any idea—”

“I made an early breakfast for everyone because I have to go somewhere today,” the boy rambles, words spewing from his mouth faster than her ears have time to register them. All she notices right then is how rude it was of him to interrupt her— “I made pancakes for Dudley and Uncle Vernon’s usual breakfast; the coffee’s all prepped and stuff, just heat up the kettle on the stove. It already has the water in it, don’t worry. I should be back before evening, I’ll get ready on dinner when I get back, 'kay? It shouldn’t take me too long, I don’t think. Guess it just depends on traffic and all that.”

There’s a dull throbbing that’s starting to build up behind her temples when the boy’s prattling is over, and she hears him trotting around her and opening the door to his cupboard while she has her eyes closed to process the information fully.

“Wait,” she sputters, pivoting on the heels of her feet to watch as her nephew delves the upper half of his body into the darkness of his cupboard while rummaging around for something inside. “What makes you think that you’re allowed to leave the house today?”

She’s regarding him with the coldest glare that she can muster when it’s still a whole hour before the sun cracks over the horizon. He looks at her from over his shoulder, and that stupid stupid stupid smile of his is still plastered across his lips as if it's carved into him like a knife to the cutting board.

There’s a slightly wrinkled and weathered letter that he’s holding in his hands when he removes himself from the cupboard now, along with that baseball hat of his that she’d given him on his last birthday and— oh.

It’s his birthday.

“I’m going out to get my supplies for school, and one of the professors from the school is taking me. Somewhere called Diagon Alley or some sort, I dunno. It sounds cool. The Headmaster is nice, too, he said that they have like this whole letter-sending system that uses owls, like they’re homing pigeons! It’s faster than postal, too, I guess.”

Petunia makes a quiet strangled noise, like she’d started to speak but the words decided to shrivel up and die in her throat instead. Her pallor is pallid enough for the boy to notice, but he either pretends not to notice it out of politeness or feigned ignorance. The way his eyes sparkle up with thinly-veiled playfulness at her says otherwise.

“I’m supposed to be meeting with him somewhere, though. And Professor Dumbledore — that’s the Headmaster, by the way, he has nice handwriting like yours — told me that Professor Snape is taking me. He’s supposed to be one of my teachers—”

There’s a coldness seeping into her blood now, and it’s a conflict between her anger and disbelief that are warring over each other in her head for dominance. She’s aware of the way her mouth is parted open, the way her fingers are scratching and shaking against the skin of her neck worriedly, but she does nothing to amend it.

Please, no, no, no, no.

“—at Hogwarts.”

She tells herself that it’s not a breathy groan that leaves her mouth, tells herself that if this were real, real at all, it’d only be in the mindscape of her nightmares—

But the longer she listens to the boy blabber on and on about whatever drivel he has left to tell her makes her drag a hand down her face and sigh. Loudly. Loud enough that it makes the dratted menace snicker to himself behind the mask of his hand quietly to himself. She doesn’t even bother to rebuke him on his behaviour — he’s supposed to know better than showing that kind of attitude, what’s gotten into him? — and instead leads herself into the kitchen to brace herself somewhat against the counter, the platters of food settled on the table to the side going unnoticed.

The boy's leaning against the doorway, that smile having curved into something resembling a grin. There's an abnormal kind of softness in his eyes when he crinkles his eyes at her, though. It looks old, almost; ancient and tired.

It's terrifyingly similar to the gaze of someone else she knows.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Of course, she already knows why he didn't tell Vernon, lord knows how he would react to that piece of news. "Why didn't you tell me?"

It shouldn't be bothering her this much, she knows that, but it does and she doesn't like it. There's that vague sense of what she thinks is betrayal lingering in the back of her mind, and it feels so wrong for her to feel anything but rage and jealousy towards the boy in front of her. But it's there and there's nothing that she can do, say, or feel to change that fact.

He gives her a bland smile.

"I think you already know why, Aunt Tuney."

The old nickname rolls so easily off of his tongue that Petunia has half a mind to wash it out of his mouth with soap. On the other hand, he’s not wrong. And the grin is still there on his face, but it has a different quality to it that’s more solemn, almost. It looks odd along his boyish features, and it’s something that she’d expect to see on someone older— experienced.

And it’s guilt, she knows, that’s filling in her chest. It’s guilt-frustration-remorse. All of it building up, stacking. So when she looks down at her nephew and thinks again, it doesn’t seem so unusual anymore, knowing what she does.

Her mouth opens.

“I better go,” he says instead, and he backs out of the doorway and down the hall, the click of the front door ringing through the house. She doesn’t realize how she’d gotten herself from standing inside the kitchen to standing in the hallway, nor does she remember her legs ever moving from one place to another, but she’s there. He’s turned around again, and his smile is just as bright as it was when she first saw him.

“I’ll see you soon, bye!”

And then he’s gone, the door closed shut, the lock snapping back in place with an echoing click, and the beginnings of the day are dawning through the curtains, light trickling in from the open spaces. When she moves towards the windows and pushes the curtains to the side, the boy’s nowhere in sight.

It’s a lost feeling that consumes her then.

In all of eleven years, she’s never once seen the boy smile in such a way that makes her second guess herself in the short time span of not even five minutes. The cheerfulness he exhibited was so foreign, so new. She knows a genuine smile when she sees one, but when she looks at her nephew, she’s hit with the fact that she hadn’t even known what he looks like when he’s even remotely happy.

The cupboard stares at her from under the stairs, judging.

There’s a chill that crawls up her spine when she looks back.