Chapter Text
Lily Evans, of 7 Ashford Lane, was a spirited and happy girl of eleven. Usually, she'd be making the most of every second before school started again. The trouble was that Lily wasn’t sure if she’d be going back to school in Cokeworth, where she lived with her parents and elder sister. It didn’t matter that Severus insisted a representative of the magical world would arrive to deliver her acceptance to Hogwarts. It hadn’t happened yet, and some things are so far-fetched that it’s hard to imagine them happening at all. Sometimes she wondered if Severus had made it all up, but she could do things other kids couldn't. So it had to be real.
Though Lily hoped and wished for an end to the anticipation, the close of summer worried her more. Her sister had been acting odd since yesterday when a branch had fallen on her. The branch had caught Petunia right on the head with a nasty crack, and she'd been dizzy for ages afterward. At the time, she'd been certain that Severus had made it happen, the same way she could push flower petals closed or sail off a swing. Maybe it really was an accident. Trees dropped branches all the time. Though it was funny timing, right after Severus got angry... The problem was that her sister had woken up… different the next morning.
Petunia, an early riser even after the latest nights sat up giggling with her sister, had not moved from her bed. Lily inspected her, even shaking her gently.
“Tuney! It’s breakfast. We’re going to the shops today” she whined.
The older girl groaned, rubbing her blonde hair out of her face, and blinked with confusion. “Who the hell are you?” she swore, staring.
“That’s not funny, Tuney!” Lily shot back, “I’m telling Mum right now!”
Tuney said nothing, only stared back with her pale blue-grey eyes. Had they always had that dark ring in them? Lily couldn't remember, but something seemed different. Her sister never swore, and never just stared at her like this. It might have gone on forever if Mum hadn’t shouted from the kitchen impatiently. Relieved, Lily rushed down the stairs, looking over her shoulder at her sister who moved absently.
The situation only declined at the breakfast table. Petunia seemed taken aback at the food and odder still, ate it with the wrong hand. Lily had never seen her sister do much of anything with her left hand. Had the tree limb fallen across her dominant shoulder? She thought hard, but couldn’t recall which it had been.
“Mind your own food, Lily.” Her mother chided gently.
Though she could only get one-word answers out of her sister, Lily did manage to convince Tuney to play a round of cards with her on the living room floor while they waited for Mum to get ready to go out. Things seemed normal for a bit, if a bit quieter than usual until the older girl pushed back her blonde hair and stared at the card she had just drawn. It didn’t match the other cards in the deck and Lily didn’t remember having another set. Worse, Petunia wouldn’t let her see the card, mumbling something about having forgotten borrowing it from a classmate.
Things were no less odd at the shops later. Lily watched her sister walk the pavement in a way she’d never done. Petunia bounced along on her toes, her whole weight pitched forward over the balls of her feet with footsteps that barely sounded on the ground. Her eyes darted back and forth, as if the shops were particularly interesting today and twice, Mrs. Evans tugged her around a corner before she took a wrong turn. It was as if she’d wander off at any second.
Weirder still, she stopped at a store display window after leaving the grocers and reached through it. Lily Evans was certainly no stranger to odd happenings and special moments. She was, however, a stranger to her sister being so, so very calm during these moments. Tuney had a nervousness about her, an anxiety when it came to what Severus called magic.
Petunia’s eyes jerked up to meet her own as she pulled her hand back into her pocket. “You did that, right?” she asked after Lily had pressed her, voice low.
Lily frowned. “That wasn’t me. My magic feels different. This was… weird.” Tuney of all people just reached into a shop window and pocketed something?
Lily couldn’t recall a day where Petunia had ever seemed less like the Tuney she knew. Barely more than a year apart, the girls had always been close, always played together. Her sister had never been the absentminded sort, always conscious of how people saw her and rarely carefree. Lily was always getting told off for being too carefree. As if being careful was so much better than actually having fun.
“Come now,” her father would say whenever Lily did something dangerous, like jumping off the swings. “When will you be more responsible, like Petunia? I don’t want you going to the playground alone. What if you break a wrist or ankle?”
Her parents meant well, but honestly, they acted like Petunia was a second mum instead of just her sister. It got old fast. Petunia could be a bit bossy at times and never hesitated to run directly to their mother and tell tales if she felt so inclined. Just yesterday, Mrs. Evans had gotten an earful about “that nasty Snape boy from Spinner’s End.”
Lily wondered if her sister was cross with her. She had been sneaking off to play with Severus and talk about the magical world and dream about their letters from Hogwarts, the magical school for people like them. She had been spying on them yesterday, before the row and the fallen branch. Lily suspected Tuney had heard the boy say that Hogwarts was only real for them, that only they would receive letters. Still, she hadn’t said a word about it, only complaining to their mother about Severus “dropping” the branch on her. She wondered about it all the way home.
By dinner, a glass had jerked off the table when she asked if Tuney wanted more potatoes and shattered on the floor.
“Don’t call me that.” she snapped, lip curling slightly.
“That's rubbish! You never minded before.” Lily trailed off, eyes welling up. It was surprise, really. She’d called her sister Tuney since they were small. It had never bothered her before. “What's really wrong with you?”
Petunia mumbled an explanation as she got up to clean up the glass. She spoke too fast and with an odd sound to her words, which Lily couldn’t place. The sentiment was something about her outgrowing it and disliking her name in general, which prompted Mr. and Mrs. Evans to launch into a lecture about picking baby names some 12 years ago, the shards of glass dumped neatly into the trash. Again, it wasn’t the first odd thing that had happened at 7 Ashford Lane, but it was the first that Lily hadn’t felt coming from herself. Had Severus been wrong? Petunia was 12 already. How did the letters work anyhow? Lily didn’t know and she frowned thinking about it.
She got something of an answer the next day. It was raining, so Severus came to the house to play indoors. She’d suggested they play chess, which neither of them was excited about, but it was still an activity they could chat over. There, in the small cabinet where they kept games, was the same set of playing cards from the day before. The mismatched card sat loosely on top, but Lily remembered her sister removing it from the deck. Why would it be back here?
“That’s a Tarot card.” Severus offered. “Wizards use them for Cartomancy. Why do you have it?”
“It just came up.” Lily said, at a loss. “We were playing and Tuney drew it.” Covering her mouth, she checked to make sure no one had heard. The nickname would be tough to cease using. “But what if she does get a letter? You don't know everything. Do some witches show magic a bit later?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing.” the boy said darkly, glaring at the card. “Obviously it was you. She’s not magical.”
“I don’t know.” Lily continued. “There were a few other things. Things like that branch. It doesn’t seem like the things I’ve done at all.”
“She is not coming with us,” Severus said firmly, his voice getting sharper.
“I'm asking whoever brings my letter, whether you think it's pointless or not.”
“Sure.” he said, noncommittal.
The conversation trailed off, as Severus had never been keen on discussing or talking to Petunia Evans, but Lily felt no less convinced that there was hope yet of starting another school year with her sister. Perhaps things really would go how they’d always planned, a future where they were together always.
***
I have never been much of a morning person. Sure, I can wake up when I have a task and an alarm, but there is no greater joy in life than sleeping late into the morning in a quiet room and cozy bed. I especially hate being touched first thing in the morning, not even when I’ve requested a wake up call from my husband. It was the first day I'd slept in without some sort of disturbance in at least 3 years, only for small hands to jerk me roughly and a high pitched whine to perfectly accent the throbbing in my head. My whole body ached with dull pain, and though I wasn’t ready for the day, I found myself sitting up with a groan. I rubbed my eyes, blinking away the itchiness of a deep sleep and stopped abruptly as my vision came into focus. Two bright green eyes bored into my own. Not the muted hazel green irises of my daughter, but a vivid shade not unlike the lake I swam in as a girl. Vibrant green eyes on a face I'd never seen in my life.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked groggily.
Really, it just slipped out. I am one of those people that’s never very friendly before that first cup of coffee. The girl seemed equally bewildered, as if she’d expected someone completely different.
“That’s not funny, Tuney!” she snapped. “I’m telling Mum right now!”
Mum? What an odd thing to say, I thought. Then again, she looked young, her face round with youth and her limbs sporting the gangliness of a recent growth spurt. There is something uneven about older children, something hard to place, and she had that something. Her dark hair shone red in the morning light from the window behind me, which I puzzled on for a moment. It had been years since I'd slept with the head of my bed against a wall with a window and this bed was… narrow.
It wasn’t just the bed that was off, either. I ran my tongue across my teeth to find rough metal, which I recognized at once. I’d had braces before: from the age of 12-16. I couldn’t imagine why I should feel them in my mouth again considering my teeth felt straight enough. I checked the inside of my bottom teeth, where my bonded retainer should have been, hanging on for dear life. Nothing. I hadn’t been to an orthodontist in almost 20 years, so how could I suddenly have braces?
I was spared having to say anything else when a woman called from downstairs with the sort of impatience only a mother with food going cold on the table would use. I ambled out of the small bed, following the girl down the stairs. The house seemed narrow, three doors crowded around the top of the stairs. I’d been in a home like this before, a townhouse, but the decor had an aged quality about it. It might have been the colors or the decor, but something was decidedly off. This world was awash in shades of green, brown, yellow and puce. There was even old wood veneer paneling on the stairwell wall. It was like one of those houses that had been owned by a grandparent that never updated anything. I’m no fan of millennial gray, but it certainly beats the yellows and browns of the old days. I was willing to bet these were the type of people who believed bathrooms should be carpeted.
The kitchen was a cheery shade of orange, with a rusty diamond motif adorning the white linoleum floor. A blonde woman with green eyes, much like the little girl sat at the small, square table already set with a spread of food I’d only ever seen in food blogs. I pulled out a chair and stared at my plate. Sausages, grilled tomatoes, bacon and baked beans crowded around the sunny side up eggs. An English breakfast? The closest I'd ever tried was beans on toast. A full spread like this is really too much work. Still, I wouldn’t get answers by going against the flow of things, so I picked my fork up and started in on the meal.
The very best way to eat eggs, in my humble opinion, is to set them on a piece of toast and bite into that like a sandwich. That’s why sunny side up is my favorite. The yolk sets just enough to be eaten neatly, but is runny enough for well-sauced toast. On a normal day, my breakfast would consist of only eggs on toast, but today there were sides. I took an experimental scoop of the beans. They were smothered in a rich, sweet tomato sauce. Delicious.
As I worked through the meal, I could feel eyes boring into me. The girl was staring at my plate, my hands and the eggs I balanced precariously on my toast. I wondered idly if I’d gotten drunk and arranged to stay here. Surely my family was looking for me, I mused, but my hands were small and the blonde woman didn’t seem to find me out of place at all.
“Mind your own food Lily” she scolded.
Lily? A Lily with green eyes and long, dark red hair. The thought unsettled me. I have read countless stories about people waking up in books. Perhaps this was the sort of dream where I imagined myself in one of them. My headache had improved with the meal, but it still felt fuzzy, as if each of my thoughts had to pass through a cotton ball. I certainly wasn’t ready to ask questions. If this was a very vivid dream, it’s always better to follow the path of least resistance in a dream. If it wasn’t, I’d only look out of place asking questions with obvious answers.
It was a quiet breakfast after the woman scolded her child. Finishing my last bite, I resolved to clear the table, hoping to see a piece of mail or any other confirmation as to where I might be. It wasn’t long before I spotted it, a tidy stack of what looked like old schoolwork in a small basket on the end of the counter. There, near the tops of the papers, were the names. Lily Evans. Petunia Evans. I nearly dropped the plate. Lily and Petunia Evans, an uncommon pair of names for a pair of sisters. But where was Petunia?
I got my answer when I directed my attention back to the sink I’d filled with water, peering into the blurry reflection of a child’s face staring back up at me. My reflection, but certainly not my face.
I didn’t want to be Petunia Evans, if that was indeed who looked back up into my face, metal glinting in her slack jaw. Who would ever want to be the ordinary, but nasty and bitter Aunt to the main character? Who would even want to dream about it? If that little girl was Lily Evans, I’d be an orphan with a dead sister by the age of 22. No. It would be worse. I’d be an utterly mundane 22 year old orphan in a magical world. I’d be a muggle in the wizarding world of a book series I’d read countless times since my childhood. Definitely a nightmare, I decided as I scrubbed furiously through the pile of dishes.
“Play cards?” Lily’s voice shook me out of my daze. I’d finished putting the dishes in the sink.
“What game?” I asked. I couldn’t remember the last time I played with ordinary playing cards; decades at least.
“Ooh, Crazy Eights!” She declared, smiling for the first time that morning.
I let her go first, asking for a reminder on the rules. Kids love explaining things, especially if it gives them the upper hand in a game of cards. I remembered all the times I fought with my younger siblings about the rules to card games. We each drew our five cards and started playing them to the discard pile, matching by rank or suit, or simply playing an 8 until the winner ran out of cards. That’s what we would have done at least, if I hadn’t drawn the odd card. It wasn’t just a different color than the other cards, but a different feel, one I felt shift as I picked it up. It was a tarot card depicting a snake eating its own tail, twisted in an elegant wreath around a naked girl brandishing a wand. I didn’t know how to read tarot, but I did know the snake eating its own head was called the ouroboros. In some works, I had seen it represent destruction and in others, rebirth. It certainly did not belong in a standard playing deck. On second glance, I couldn’t see how it had ever fit in the first place.
“That's not from our deck. Where did you get it?” Lily asked.
“Nothing. Um, borrowed from a classmate. Mary. I’ll return it next school day.” I stammered, inventing wildly. Why would she ask me what I was holding if she had used magic to change the card? By this age, Lily Evans could do small magic more or less at-will. She wouldn’t, unless she didn’t do it. If she didn’t even know what card I was holding, how could she have conjured it, even accidentally?
Going grocery shopping with Lily and Mrs. Evans went by in a blur. Everything seemed alien, from the money to the food on the shelves to the dirty streets in the gray factory town. As the hours passed, my head cleared and I considered the situation from every angle I could. I listed the things I knew were true: I was a 34 year old woman suddenly acting out the life of a preteen girl. It was 1971. My eyes were the same color and pattern I recognized, even if the rest of my appearance was slightly off. Those things were true, at least right then. I remembered all the books I read, movies I watched, and video games I played. I’d especially loved the fantasy genre and at 11, I had even believed I would get a letter from Hogwarts myself despite being an ordinary American going through a terrible phase of bullying. I think every middle schooler prays at some point to be whisked away to somewhere they can be anything else, but that might just be my bias.
I certainly did not hope to be whisked away at my current age, as an adult with a life I love. I wouldn't wish being a preteen again on my worst enemy. It was an awful thing being at the mercy of the whole world. Worse still, this era was not a happy one in this particular world. Still, it was a world where magic existed. Real magic, not the small miracles of everyday, ordinary life. I could see it for real and I could meet the people I’d read about. I could–
My train of thought was interrupted by the sunlight catching on a pharmacy window display. It was a Maybelline all-in-one makeup compact, from lipstick to eyeliner and mascara.I reached for it without thinking, only my hand passed through the glass, closing on the square object.
“Tuney!” Lily hissed, startling me. “Your hand went right through the glass! What did you do?”
I jerked my hand back and pocketed the item as I met her eyes. “You did that, right?” I asked. I thought that she must have, after all, her son would one day make a pane of glass vanish entirely.
“That wasn’t me,” she answered, her eyes tight with concentration. “My magic feels different. This was… weird.”
By the end of the day, I was sure it was me. Lily had called me Tuney again at dinner and the irritation of it set off my temper. What kind of person picks such a foul flower name for their firstborn and then lets their second child absolutely butcher it? In any case, my water glass had gone flying and I’d apologized thoroughly while cleaning up the mess. The one useful piece of information I’d garnered was that Lily had been conceived so quickly after the birth of their first daughter that the Evans couple just stuck with flowers. What a pity two flowers aren't exactly a bouquet.
It was the second of the differences I’d noted from who Petunia Evans should be. This girl should be years older than her little sister, enough that she married when Lily was still a student. I don’t recall braces ever being mentioned and she certainly shouldn’t look as much like me as my reflection did. Sure, the girl reflected in the mirror fit the description given in the books. She had a long face, long neck, large teeth and blonde hair. I suppose my eyes could still be considered pale, but with the thick, dark limbal ring around the edge and tiny flash of orange around the pupil, they were certainly more gray than they were watery blue. Last, but not least, the defining characteristic of Petunia Evans was that she should not be a witch. Fate depended on her nature being thoroughly non-magical, but here I was. Here she was too, having a different birthday than she ought, braces and whatever else could come up that I didn’t know about.
The knowledge that I was the source of the oddities settled in on me, but it didn’t exactly change anything. It was July. I couldn't expect someone to be watching the book of admission for the magic quill to write down a name that should have come into magic a year ago if it was going to do so. Late bloomers were exceedingly rare in the wizarding world, the only one of which I was aware of possibly wasn’t even canon. Still, I would have to test these abilities and going to Hogwarts in the 70s was a stupid idea anyway. It was a brilliant idea if I wanted to die young, I suppose, but not one I was keen on. I needed a plan, but more importantly, I needed to know for sure it was me doing the magic.
My chance came the very next day, when Lily invited her friend Severus Snape to play inside at the Evans’ house. Lily was right about magic, I noted. Magical effects are all about intent. Incantations, wands, potions and other tools were just that: tools for channeling one's own power. Logically, if I was a witch, focusing hard on the goal with a simple directive would create an effect. I settled on a sort of knockoff invisibility effect.
There were two types of invisibility that I was aware of in this world. True invisibility, the first of the two methods, was reserved for those using one very specific invisibility cloak. The second method, which could be cast as a spell or imbued into a lesser cloak, was called a disillusionment charm. In essence, it is camouflage so effective that the user simply melts into the background of any given room. I wouldn’t aspire to the lofty effect of a legendary artifact or the advanced disillusionment charm. No. What I would try would be much more in line with a trick of the mind, something that the most dangerous wizard of this time had alluded to being able to do well before my new apparent age. I dubbed it the Look-Away spell.
It was simple. A suggestion of intent to deliver to those who happened to be in the room. Look away, look away, look away from me. I could hear the footsteps of Lily Evans and her playmate thumping up the stairs and held my breath.
Look away I thought, my whole self thrown into the musing. Look away from me. Don’t see me. You are alone. You want to go to the game cupboard. The room is vacant. Look away.
I felt something building inside me as I chanted it, a warmth spreading in my chest and out into the room. It was at that moment when the door burst open and there was Lily, staring right through me, Severus at her side. He was exactly as I expected, a small, dark haired boy with a pale face and black eyes like water on a moonless night. I held my breath and my intent steady.
Look. Away.
They did. Triumph rushed through me, but I pushed it aside and focused on holding the effect. I noticed then what they were discussing. The ouroboros card had turned up again in the game cupboard after I removed it. There it was, waiting for me. I held my breath, chanting for them all to look away. Lily, Severus… and that card.