FIC: Tingle
Title: Tingle
Author: florahart
Pairing: Petunia/Sirius
Rating: PG13
Prompt: If I put my fingers around your wrist would you fight me?
Content Information/Warnings: It could be argued that Sirius is coercive.
Summary: When Lily's around, no one pays much attention to Petunia.
Author's Notes: What I meant to write: hatesex. What I actually wrote: jealous Petunia and manipulative teenager Sirius fooling around not very explicitly. IDEK.
Lily is beautiful, despite the garish hair, and for a very long time Petunia thinks this is why she's been invited to her special school with her special talents and special lessons. It hardly seems fair, because beautiful people already have a hundred advantages in the world; people gift them things and smile at them, and they choose them first at games and at school, so why would they need yet another way in which to be special? Still, it's a bias that's familiar for her, one she understands, and it's easiest to just think of Hogwarts as one more thing that Lily's bright eyes and generous smile get her.
It never occurs to her that the surly Snape boy, who no one considers handsome except perhaps his mother, is also so talented; it's just as well. For there to be a whole separate set of ways in which Lily wins and Petunia loses would be too much to bear.
(Honestly, maybe it does occur to her, but she's clear on her limits, even when she's twelve, and by the time she's nineteen she's only barely ready to consider the issue anyway.)
This is all so constant for Petunia, so persistently a part of the background of her life, that when the boy approaches her while she waits for her bus on a July morning, all broad grin and easy stride in torn denims and more hair than she thinks is quite decent, it takes her several seconds to understand that he's speaking to her. On purpose. He says her name, and that can't be a coincidence, can it?
She looks around herself just to be sure she can't be mistaken anyway before she answers, and she hates that she can't quite keep suspicion out of her tone. But there's no one else here, and it would be rude to ignore a direct question, so she nods, maybe a little jerkily, and offers a tiny smile.
And then something so absurd happens that she doesn't know how to go about formulating a response. The boy pulls a great bouquet out from behind his back and bows low to present it to her, then insists she accompany him for a cup of tea.
(Tea. She has tea with her parents, with the girls at her school sometimes, with her grandmother when they visit at Easter and occasionally on a chilly autumn afternoon; she's never in her life had tea with a handsome boy in disreputable denims and a devastating smile, ever.)
There's a steaming pot on the table before them and his arm rests quite inappropriately around her shoulders before she manages to make things make sense.
Which is when he confuses her all over again, smiling so broadly again, eyes meeting hers as he asks about her new secretarial course.
It's not that no one knows about it; that's not one person has ever asked, and Petunia feels knocked back, breathless, that someone is interested in what she's doing with her time.
(A corner of her mind whispers that there's something very wrong about that, that she ought not to have expectations anymore and she ought to accept that her life is uninteresting and bland and there is no reason that anyone should find a reason to care. She agrees, silently, and accepts this moment as a surprising gift. What else can she do?)
After an awkward pause, she manages to stammer a few words, looking down at her cup and wondering how she'll ever choke down a sip.
He picks up the conversation as though she's behaving perfectly normally and tells her he's looking at his options for an apprenticeship.
When they finish the pot and stand, she can't remember anything they discussed clearly at all, although she's certain they've talked the whole while, and then he offers to walk her home.
(She feels a strange shiver along her spine as she tries to think about the appropriate response and makes herself shake her head just a little because it's improper, isn't it, to let a stranger take her home? But then they're walking out the door, his hand against her back, and how does he know exactly what she needs to feel both reassured and utterly at sea?)
Halfway down the block he murmurs her name again, low against her ear, and she isn't clear on why, but he's steering her into an alley, his grin filthy and certain and she can't help but follow along. It's not as though she doesn’t know where this must be going, as though she doesn't think she ought to say something, shout out, but then he merely tucks her hair behind her ear and steals a kiss and vanishes before her eyes, and oh, oh he knows Lily.
Of course he does.
Perhaps this was only… only what? If he's one of those, then he must have a hundred, a thousand ways to entertain himself for a few hours on a July afternoon, and why did he come steal her away from her bus? Why… She touches her fingers to her lips and wonders whether the tingle there is how it's supposed to feel, or is it magic? And who in the world she could possibly ask.
(And does she even want to know? If it's magic it means maybe she'll never feel it again, and maybe that means she should hold onto it for now, right? Or maybe she's wrong to wonder. Or maybe the fact that she feels it means she and Lily aren't so different, after all. No answer will be good.)
She makes her way home alone, walking along the uneven pavement as quickly as she can bring herself to, even though she wants to linger and keep the taste of tea and his lips a little while longer even as she considers how easily she was persuaded, directed, swayed by a willing boy.
--
It's not two weeks before she sees him again, exactly as the last time: she's waiting for her bus, the handle of her bag clutched tight in both hands before her, and she sees him out of the corner of her eye. He's wearing torn denims again, although she thinks this pair is torn differently from what he was wearing last time, and wonders that anyone walks about in several different pairs of torn trousers as though they could be some strange form of art.
He stops right in front of her and wordlessly holds out his hand, eyes dancing with invitation and welcome, and she's certain she ought to just ignore him. Certain that, if he's one of Lily's kind, his intentions must not be good. Certain that after the last time she knows she can't be so easily led astray. It isn't seemly.
Which doesn't explain why she lets her bag drop to one side and takes his hand in her newly free one.
(How many more chances will she get to share this part of Lily? This justification doesn't even make sense as she thinks of it, but she holds to it anyway just like she holds to his fingers and pretends not to realize the callous on the first one is from his wand.)
The tea steams on the table again as his thigh presses against hers from knee to hip, and she picks up her cup to sip as they talk about inane things: how she's learning to type precisely and perfectly; how her fingers are sometimes sore (he takes her hand and massages a bit at that, and she feels her face heat in what must be an unattractive blush, but he smiles at her anyway); how boring all the letters they practice typing are.
When it's time to go, they go through the same dance: he asks to see her home; she says no; he walks with his hand low on her back; he takes her into an alley and steals another kiss.
And then, before he vanishes this time, he steals another, deeper and wetter and less decent (more indecent, more heart-stopping, more thrillingly improper) so he leaves her tingling all over this time, and her walk home takes what seems like hours as she tries to work out first what on earth has come over her and second what on earth has come over him to return for another boring afternoon of typing school and ordinary unmagical tea.
--
Of course the whole thing has to come apart; Petunia's come home early two days later because her exams are far easier than the allotted time would suggest, and she's caught the first bus for once so she's in the sitting room when someone knocks.
When Lily goes to the door, her smug magical boyfriend is there, and Lily waves at someone beyond him as he turns and asks the someone if he's going to find his friend again. His tone suggests the friend isn't anyone he knows.
She hears the answer, too, the familiar voice saying sure, it's a way to pass the time, it's a laugh, and Petunia feels her heart freeze solid. Horrible boy, she thinks, exactly as horrible as she first feared.
Which doesn't explain why she's getting to her feet and walking out the door as Lily and the boyfriend go up the stairs and close the door. Perhaps she just has to prove to herself that it's the same boy, or maybe she's got used to tea and kissing just like that and it's a habit. Dreadful, that would be.
(Maybe he's enchanted her to want him. He would, wouldn't he? Or maybe he doesn't care a whit, and it's only as he says: she's a laugh while he waits for his friend. She doesn't think of a third alternative that casts him in any better light.)
If she were better at just saying what she means to, maybe she would have a plan for what that is, for what words should come out of her mouth when she realizes he hasn't even left the area. He's standing on the grass (of course he is; it's disrespectful of her father's efforts to keep it looking tidy, but this is boy who wears nothing her father would approve of and who kisses girls he barely knows in alleys after tea. Of course he's standing on the grass.) and he turns sharply when he notices he's not alone.
She purses her lips and asks, was he lost? Did he need directions?"
He comes back up the steps and shakes his head, and it's like she never heard him call her a joke. It's like he's magnetic.
Petunia shakes her head to clear it and backs away, putting her hand up to open the door and go back in.
They should have tea, he tells her. It's a tradition, after all.
(It is. They've met three times and the first two, there was tea. And kissing. And his thigh touching hers and her fingers clutching his shirt. It is a tradition, and one ought to keep those.)
She shakes her head again, slowly, and agrees. There's no reason they can't be civil, is there? His grin broadens and he says he knew she was too clever not to see he was joking, he knew she'd understand a bloke sometimes wants to protect his interests, doesn't he? And James would just razz them both.
That's true. James is the boyfriend, and he's smug and so is Lily. Oh, and Lily would say something, too, wouldn't she? She might, and Petunia doesn't need another way for Lily to be superior or condescending, so yes, they should just keep things between them for the time being.
She lets him take her somewhere he knows, lifting her away with a confusing stomach-turning way she can't quite understand and ushering her through a door she isn't sure she can see, where he orders tea and hot whisky that burns the roof of her mouth and leaves her head spinning, just a little.
(She swears the whisky is actually on fire, but she can't feel the flames with her fingers, and he tells her he wouldn't give it to her if it would hurt someone like her. She asks like what, and he clears his throat and says never mind. She drinks it quickly to prove she can.)
When they leave, it's into an alley again, and he presses her against the wall and has his hand on her bum, and she can't remember why she was ever annoyed at him, but when he pulls away from her, lips swollen and pink from kissing, she asks him if he's making her feel this way.
He chuckles and says he hopes so, but no, he knows what she means, and no, he swears on Merlin's underpants, which makes her laugh and cover her mouth with her fingers until he pulls them away and kisses her some more.
It's only when she realizes it's growing late--the sun is going down!--that he spins her away back home, and she goes inside and upstairs hurriedly and straightens her skirt before the mirror.
--
Lily's trunk is mostly packed and tomorrow's the day she'll go back for her final year at the school. Petunia sits in her own room, listening to her rummage through the mess of her things and wonders, if James isn't coming to see Lily--and why would he? After this year, she'll leave school and most likely she won't return home again, will she?
So, if James isn't coming here to see Lily, will she ever see Sirius again?
Probably not. Probably she is just a way to pass the time, just a laugh.
She's to start her new job in the secretarial pool at Grunnings on Monday, and she supposes it's just as well. She's got enough to worry about, with a new job and learning the way things work in a real office.
Still, as far as she can tell, he's found her away from the house a number of times, some of which she knows Lily was busy somewhere else. Even if he hasn't made her any promises, he's seen her on purpose, at least sometimes, and that has to mean something.
(Or nothing. Secretary at Grunnings is not the sort of person a wizard wants to look for, is it? And, although she can't say for sure, from some of the things he's said, whispered between secret kisses in half a dozen alleys and also, twice, in the dark at the back of a theater he's snuck them into and once in her bedroom in the middle of the afternoon, he's from money.)
The tap on her window is startling. It's a knock, not something thrown, and it takes her a moment to work out how or why anyone might be at her first-floor window at nine in the evening. She goes to the window and opens it, poking her head out and feeling slightly foolish because no one should be there.
It's James, of course (of course); he apparently forgot which room was which. Or he just wanted to infuriate Petunia; this would hardly be out of character, now would it?
She pushes the window shut, leaving it an inch for the cool evening air, and draws the curtains. He goes to the next window over and leaves her to her thoughts as he takes Lily away from her again. Early, even, not leaving the one last night of normal.
When she wakes in the morning it's early, the sun barely up, and there's a note on the table beside her. It just says what she knows: he's back at school and won't be around until they break for the holidays, but maybe they could have a bit of fun then.
She suspects he was just as glad to leave a note and avoid a scene.
(Petunia wonders if he knows her at all, though; making scenes is, in her opinion, to be avoided in most cases, and she is a realist. Who happens to know that the fantastic does exist. She goes downstairs and makes a cup of tea and pretends it hold no particular association.)
(She does wish he'd expressed any interest in making sure there had been no unwanted consequences of the afternoon in the bedroom, but then, he has magic; maybe he knew and just didn't tell her. In which case it would have been nice if he'd saved her the worry.)
(Nobody needs to tell her he's got what he wants now.)
--
"D'you think they'll be happy?" Sirius asks, leaning against the door frame as though it's perfectly appropriate for him to be lounging in Petunia's bedroom uninvited.
Petunia ignores the impulse to screech (because she suspects it will only encourage him) and puts on her shirt, turned away so he can't see her hands shake as she buttons. "I think nothing I say has any influence on Lily's choices, so the right thing is to hope so."
"And you? Are you going to be?"
Petunia does startle this time when she realizes he's come up behind her, his chest to her back, his hands at her shoulders. "Am I going to be what?" she asks.
"Lils says you're marrying some bloke from the whatsit department. Will you be happy?"
"I'm sure I don't know how that's your business," Petunia says. She straightens her shoulders and adds, "although, I imagine it would help if no one saw a strange man in my bedroom." She doesn't ask if Lily talks about her often. Surely not.
"Not that strange," he says. He drops his head forward and his hair, still indecently long, still soft, brushes her collarbone. "Not to you, right? If I put my fingers around your wrist would you fight me?" His hands are stroking down her arms; the question isn't rhetorical.
She steps forward and turns to face him.
"You've come back for another go, is that it?" she says. "I suppose while I was available, it wasn't any fun?"
"I'm told I'm an arse," Sirius says. "I get that quite a lot, actually, but I think it's just part of my charm. You didn't answer the question." He advances toward her and takes her hands, pulling them together and holding around the wrists, tight enough she knows he could hold her there, loose enough she can get free.
"Yes, I would fight you," she says, yanking her hands away. "Of course I would. Honestly. Now go on; I'm sure James is looking for someone to carouse with."
"He's with Lily," Sirius says. "I don't think carousing is the usual word, but it will do."
"I see."
"Aw, come on. Old times' sake? We could go out, have a cuppa, find something to see. Carouse."
"Boredom isn't a good reason to... carouse, and never has been," Petunia says sharply. "Go on."
Sirius shrugs and steps back, then surges forward and kisses her roughly, deep and hard and so exactly as she likes it.
She kisses him back for a heartbeat (or two, or six or maybe sixty), then pulls free and slaps him. Hard.
He throws back his head and laughs before he vanishes, leaving the way he came, and she could swear he's like the Cheshire Cat, grin disappearing last.
She changes her shirt and pats a cool towel on her face, and looks over her shoulder twice in case he's come back (she's not sure if it's hope or dread), then sits down and touches her lips with cold fingers. They tingle (her lips; her fingers to too chilly), and this time she knows it's that he's magical, because this time she has a point of comparison.
Well, lots of people get on without magic, and she'll be one of them. She will.
And maybe eventually, she'll forget that she ever had a sister with garish hair, that her sister had a friend who kissed her, that the friend's broad smile included her even when he was being, as he had said, an arse.
Or maybe she won't, but she can try.
Author: florahart
Pairing: Petunia/Sirius
Rating: PG13
Prompt: If I put my fingers around your wrist would you fight me?
Content Information/Warnings: It could be argued that Sirius is coercive.
Summary: When Lily's around, no one pays much attention to Petunia.
Author's Notes: What I meant to write: hatesex. What I actually wrote: jealous Petunia and manipulative teenager Sirius fooling around not very explicitly. IDEK.
Lily is beautiful, despite the garish hair, and for a very long time Petunia thinks this is why she's been invited to her special school with her special talents and special lessons. It hardly seems fair, because beautiful people already have a hundred advantages in the world; people gift them things and smile at them, and they choose them first at games and at school, so why would they need yet another way in which to be special? Still, it's a bias that's familiar for her, one she understands, and it's easiest to just think of Hogwarts as one more thing that Lily's bright eyes and generous smile get her.
It never occurs to her that the surly Snape boy, who no one considers handsome except perhaps his mother, is also so talented; it's just as well. For there to be a whole separate set of ways in which Lily wins and Petunia loses would be too much to bear.
(Honestly, maybe it does occur to her, but she's clear on her limits, even when she's twelve, and by the time she's nineteen she's only barely ready to consider the issue anyway.)
This is all so constant for Petunia, so persistently a part of the background of her life, that when the boy approaches her while she waits for her bus on a July morning, all broad grin and easy stride in torn denims and more hair than she thinks is quite decent, it takes her several seconds to understand that he's speaking to her. On purpose. He says her name, and that can't be a coincidence, can it?
She looks around herself just to be sure she can't be mistaken anyway before she answers, and she hates that she can't quite keep suspicion out of her tone. But there's no one else here, and it would be rude to ignore a direct question, so she nods, maybe a little jerkily, and offers a tiny smile.
And then something so absurd happens that she doesn't know how to go about formulating a response. The boy pulls a great bouquet out from behind his back and bows low to present it to her, then insists she accompany him for a cup of tea.
(Tea. She has tea with her parents, with the girls at her school sometimes, with her grandmother when they visit at Easter and occasionally on a chilly autumn afternoon; she's never in her life had tea with a handsome boy in disreputable denims and a devastating smile, ever.)
There's a steaming pot on the table before them and his arm rests quite inappropriately around her shoulders before she manages to make things make sense.
Which is when he confuses her all over again, smiling so broadly again, eyes meeting hers as he asks about her new secretarial course.
It's not that no one knows about it; that's not one person has ever asked, and Petunia feels knocked back, breathless, that someone is interested in what she's doing with her time.
(A corner of her mind whispers that there's something very wrong about that, that she ought not to have expectations anymore and she ought to accept that her life is uninteresting and bland and there is no reason that anyone should find a reason to care. She agrees, silently, and accepts this moment as a surprising gift. What else can she do?)
After an awkward pause, she manages to stammer a few words, looking down at her cup and wondering how she'll ever choke down a sip.
He picks up the conversation as though she's behaving perfectly normally and tells her he's looking at his options for an apprenticeship.
When they finish the pot and stand, she can't remember anything they discussed clearly at all, although she's certain they've talked the whole while, and then he offers to walk her home.
(She feels a strange shiver along her spine as she tries to think about the appropriate response and makes herself shake her head just a little because it's improper, isn't it, to let a stranger take her home? But then they're walking out the door, his hand against her back, and how does he know exactly what she needs to feel both reassured and utterly at sea?)
Halfway down the block he murmurs her name again, low against her ear, and she isn't clear on why, but he's steering her into an alley, his grin filthy and certain and she can't help but follow along. It's not as though she doesn’t know where this must be going, as though she doesn't think she ought to say something, shout out, but then he merely tucks her hair behind her ear and steals a kiss and vanishes before her eyes, and oh, oh he knows Lily.
Of course he does.
Perhaps this was only… only what? If he's one of those, then he must have a hundred, a thousand ways to entertain himself for a few hours on a July afternoon, and why did he come steal her away from her bus? Why… She touches her fingers to her lips and wonders whether the tingle there is how it's supposed to feel, or is it magic? And who in the world she could possibly ask.
(And does she even want to know? If it's magic it means maybe she'll never feel it again, and maybe that means she should hold onto it for now, right? Or maybe she's wrong to wonder. Or maybe the fact that she feels it means she and Lily aren't so different, after all. No answer will be good.)
She makes her way home alone, walking along the uneven pavement as quickly as she can bring herself to, even though she wants to linger and keep the taste of tea and his lips a little while longer even as she considers how easily she was persuaded, directed, swayed by a willing boy.
--
It's not two weeks before she sees him again, exactly as the last time: she's waiting for her bus, the handle of her bag clutched tight in both hands before her, and she sees him out of the corner of her eye. He's wearing torn denims again, although she thinks this pair is torn differently from what he was wearing last time, and wonders that anyone walks about in several different pairs of torn trousers as though they could be some strange form of art.
He stops right in front of her and wordlessly holds out his hand, eyes dancing with invitation and welcome, and she's certain she ought to just ignore him. Certain that, if he's one of Lily's kind, his intentions must not be good. Certain that after the last time she knows she can't be so easily led astray. It isn't seemly.
Which doesn't explain why she lets her bag drop to one side and takes his hand in her newly free one.
(How many more chances will she get to share this part of Lily? This justification doesn't even make sense as she thinks of it, but she holds to it anyway just like she holds to his fingers and pretends not to realize the callous on the first one is from his wand.)
The tea steams on the table again as his thigh presses against hers from knee to hip, and she picks up her cup to sip as they talk about inane things: how she's learning to type precisely and perfectly; how her fingers are sometimes sore (he takes her hand and massages a bit at that, and she feels her face heat in what must be an unattractive blush, but he smiles at her anyway); how boring all the letters they practice typing are.
When it's time to go, they go through the same dance: he asks to see her home; she says no; he walks with his hand low on her back; he takes her into an alley and steals another kiss.
And then, before he vanishes this time, he steals another, deeper and wetter and less decent (more indecent, more heart-stopping, more thrillingly improper) so he leaves her tingling all over this time, and her walk home takes what seems like hours as she tries to work out first what on earth has come over her and second what on earth has come over him to return for another boring afternoon of typing school and ordinary unmagical tea.
--
Of course the whole thing has to come apart; Petunia's come home early two days later because her exams are far easier than the allotted time would suggest, and she's caught the first bus for once so she's in the sitting room when someone knocks.
When Lily goes to the door, her smug magical boyfriend is there, and Lily waves at someone beyond him as he turns and asks the someone if he's going to find his friend again. His tone suggests the friend isn't anyone he knows.
She hears the answer, too, the familiar voice saying sure, it's a way to pass the time, it's a laugh, and Petunia feels her heart freeze solid. Horrible boy, she thinks, exactly as horrible as she first feared.
Which doesn't explain why she's getting to her feet and walking out the door as Lily and the boyfriend go up the stairs and close the door. Perhaps she just has to prove to herself that it's the same boy, or maybe she's got used to tea and kissing just like that and it's a habit. Dreadful, that would be.
(Maybe he's enchanted her to want him. He would, wouldn't he? Or maybe he doesn't care a whit, and it's only as he says: she's a laugh while he waits for his friend. She doesn't think of a third alternative that casts him in any better light.)
If she were better at just saying what she means to, maybe she would have a plan for what that is, for what words should come out of her mouth when she realizes he hasn't even left the area. He's standing on the grass (of course he is; it's disrespectful of her father's efforts to keep it looking tidy, but this is boy who wears nothing her father would approve of and who kisses girls he barely knows in alleys after tea. Of course he's standing on the grass.) and he turns sharply when he notices he's not alone.
She purses her lips and asks, was he lost? Did he need directions?"
He comes back up the steps and shakes his head, and it's like she never heard him call her a joke. It's like he's magnetic.
Petunia shakes her head to clear it and backs away, putting her hand up to open the door and go back in.
They should have tea, he tells her. It's a tradition, after all.
(It is. They've met three times and the first two, there was tea. And kissing. And his thigh touching hers and her fingers clutching his shirt. It is a tradition, and one ought to keep those.)
She shakes her head again, slowly, and agrees. There's no reason they can't be civil, is there? His grin broadens and he says he knew she was too clever not to see he was joking, he knew she'd understand a bloke sometimes wants to protect his interests, doesn't he? And James would just razz them both.
That's true. James is the boyfriend, and he's smug and so is Lily. Oh, and Lily would say something, too, wouldn't she? She might, and Petunia doesn't need another way for Lily to be superior or condescending, so yes, they should just keep things between them for the time being.
She lets him take her somewhere he knows, lifting her away with a confusing stomach-turning way she can't quite understand and ushering her through a door she isn't sure she can see, where he orders tea and hot whisky that burns the roof of her mouth and leaves her head spinning, just a little.
(She swears the whisky is actually on fire, but she can't feel the flames with her fingers, and he tells her he wouldn't give it to her if it would hurt someone like her. She asks like what, and he clears his throat and says never mind. She drinks it quickly to prove she can.)
When they leave, it's into an alley again, and he presses her against the wall and has his hand on her bum, and she can't remember why she was ever annoyed at him, but when he pulls away from her, lips swollen and pink from kissing, she asks him if he's making her feel this way.
He chuckles and says he hopes so, but no, he knows what she means, and no, he swears on Merlin's underpants, which makes her laugh and cover her mouth with her fingers until he pulls them away and kisses her some more.
It's only when she realizes it's growing late--the sun is going down!--that he spins her away back home, and she goes inside and upstairs hurriedly and straightens her skirt before the mirror.
--
Lily's trunk is mostly packed and tomorrow's the day she'll go back for her final year at the school. Petunia sits in her own room, listening to her rummage through the mess of her things and wonders, if James isn't coming to see Lily--and why would he? After this year, she'll leave school and most likely she won't return home again, will she?
So, if James isn't coming here to see Lily, will she ever see Sirius again?
Probably not. Probably she is just a way to pass the time, just a laugh.
She's to start her new job in the secretarial pool at Grunnings on Monday, and she supposes it's just as well. She's got enough to worry about, with a new job and learning the way things work in a real office.
Still, as far as she can tell, he's found her away from the house a number of times, some of which she knows Lily was busy somewhere else. Even if he hasn't made her any promises, he's seen her on purpose, at least sometimes, and that has to mean something.
(Or nothing. Secretary at Grunnings is not the sort of person a wizard wants to look for, is it? And, although she can't say for sure, from some of the things he's said, whispered between secret kisses in half a dozen alleys and also, twice, in the dark at the back of a theater he's snuck them into and once in her bedroom in the middle of the afternoon, he's from money.)
The tap on her window is startling. It's a knock, not something thrown, and it takes her a moment to work out how or why anyone might be at her first-floor window at nine in the evening. She goes to the window and opens it, poking her head out and feeling slightly foolish because no one should be there.
It's James, of course (of course); he apparently forgot which room was which. Or he just wanted to infuriate Petunia; this would hardly be out of character, now would it?
She pushes the window shut, leaving it an inch for the cool evening air, and draws the curtains. He goes to the next window over and leaves her to her thoughts as he takes Lily away from her again. Early, even, not leaving the one last night of normal.
When she wakes in the morning it's early, the sun barely up, and there's a note on the table beside her. It just says what she knows: he's back at school and won't be around until they break for the holidays, but maybe they could have a bit of fun then.
She suspects he was just as glad to leave a note and avoid a scene.
(Petunia wonders if he knows her at all, though; making scenes is, in her opinion, to be avoided in most cases, and she is a realist. Who happens to know that the fantastic does exist. She goes downstairs and makes a cup of tea and pretends it hold no particular association.)
(She does wish he'd expressed any interest in making sure there had been no unwanted consequences of the afternoon in the bedroom, but then, he has magic; maybe he knew and just didn't tell her. In which case it would have been nice if he'd saved her the worry.)
(Nobody needs to tell her he's got what he wants now.)
--
"D'you think they'll be happy?" Sirius asks, leaning against the door frame as though it's perfectly appropriate for him to be lounging in Petunia's bedroom uninvited.
Petunia ignores the impulse to screech (because she suspects it will only encourage him) and puts on her shirt, turned away so he can't see her hands shake as she buttons. "I think nothing I say has any influence on Lily's choices, so the right thing is to hope so."
"And you? Are you going to be?"
Petunia does startle this time when she realizes he's come up behind her, his chest to her back, his hands at her shoulders. "Am I going to be what?" she asks.
"Lils says you're marrying some bloke from the whatsit department. Will you be happy?"
"I'm sure I don't know how that's your business," Petunia says. She straightens her shoulders and adds, "although, I imagine it would help if no one saw a strange man in my bedroom." She doesn't ask if Lily talks about her often. Surely not.
"Not that strange," he says. He drops his head forward and his hair, still indecently long, still soft, brushes her collarbone. "Not to you, right? If I put my fingers around your wrist would you fight me?" His hands are stroking down her arms; the question isn't rhetorical.
She steps forward and turns to face him.
"You've come back for another go, is that it?" she says. "I suppose while I was available, it wasn't any fun?"
"I'm told I'm an arse," Sirius says. "I get that quite a lot, actually, but I think it's just part of my charm. You didn't answer the question." He advances toward her and takes her hands, pulling them together and holding around the wrists, tight enough she knows he could hold her there, loose enough she can get free.
"Yes, I would fight you," she says, yanking her hands away. "Of course I would. Honestly. Now go on; I'm sure James is looking for someone to carouse with."
"He's with Lily," Sirius says. "I don't think carousing is the usual word, but it will do."
"I see."
"Aw, come on. Old times' sake? We could go out, have a cuppa, find something to see. Carouse."
"Boredom isn't a good reason to... carouse, and never has been," Petunia says sharply. "Go on."
Sirius shrugs and steps back, then surges forward and kisses her roughly, deep and hard and so exactly as she likes it.
She kisses him back for a heartbeat (or two, or six or maybe sixty), then pulls free and slaps him. Hard.
He throws back his head and laughs before he vanishes, leaving the way he came, and she could swear he's like the Cheshire Cat, grin disappearing last.
She changes her shirt and pats a cool towel on her face, and looks over her shoulder twice in case he's come back (she's not sure if it's hope or dread), then sits down and touches her lips with cold fingers. They tingle (her lips; her fingers to too chilly), and this time she knows it's that he's magical, because this time she has a point of comparison.
Well, lots of people get on without magic, and she'll be one of them. She will.
And maybe eventually, she'll forget that she ever had a sister with garish hair, that her sister had a friend who kissed her, that the friend's broad smile included her even when he was being, as he had said, an arse.
Or maybe she won't, but she can try.