As you may or may not know, I like Petunia. More than I probably should. I refuse to delve into any psychological reasons for this. Here, let me distract you from that disturbing train of thought with pretty, shiny fic!
Fandom: Harry Potter
Title: Porcelain
Copyright: Harry Potter and its characters © JK Rowling, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., Scholastic
Pairing: n/a
Genre: Gen, light humor, light angst
Rating: [all audiences]
Wordcount: 742
Spoilers: n/a
Warnings: n/a
Notes: First story of 2005. Figures that it'd be Petunia-centric. <3
Summary: The powers of observation and precociousness aren't always a good thing.
I met a little elfman once
Down where the lilies blow
I asked him why he was so small
And why he didn't grow.
-- John Kendrick Bangs, The Little Elfman
When Harry was eight, aunt Petunia sometimes let him stay out of his cupboard during her tea parties. When there were too many plates for Dudley to carry, Harry got to bring the extras out to Petunia's friends.
Petunia's friends looked as odd as she did, Harry discovered; there was one so horse-faced that he would have sworn they were sisters. He never did get around to asking if there was any blood relationship.
Sometimes, when the ladies had cooed enough and pinched Dudley's cheeks to an adequate shade (bright, painful red, by Harry's estimation), they would turn on Harry, some sparing him a "such a cute young man", or "you're bringing him up so well, Petunia". It was more praise than Harry ever got from his relatives, and he found himself simultaneously embarrassed and happy for their off-handed remarks.
It was during these parties that Harry noticed that aunt Petunia changed. She sat up straighter, and crossed her legs a little more tightly at the ankle. Harry had tried to imitate her once; she reached across Dudley to slap his knees and returned to light conversation as if it had never happened. Harry was a quick study.
Harry was never allowed to have more than one cookie from the plates; they were for guests, his aunt explained. Dudley wasn't a guest, but he was usually given free rein over the pastel-colored pastries strewn across the coffee table like confetti. Each sort of cookie was to its kind in the dainty china decorated with flowers; butter cookie with butter cookie, pink-centered with pink-centered. Harry never did get to find out what the pink-centered ones tasted like.
Harry also noticed something else his aunt only did at tea parties. She would move with a slow grace that she seemed to possess at no other time, and this led Harry to the idea that she must have stored it all up for her parties. When Petunia lifted her cup, in the same fluid motion, her pinky always separated from the rest of her fingers, sticking out like a little, misshapen teaspout. Harry watched in wonder as it happened over and over again, and began noticing some of the other ladies' pinkies doing the same. He wondered if it was some kind of secret code.
One day, he asked a school teacher what it meant when someone's pinky stuck out. (To demonstrate, he'd had to grab his little finger and manfully move it away from its fellows, for he wasn't trained in the art of making a misshapen teaspout.) His teacher had explained that it was an old story, that one could always tell people of royal descent by their last fingers jutting out, no matter what they were doing.
Harry had gone home that day trying to picture aunt Petunia as a princess: with a crown and a long dress, dancing at balls with nobles with big, funny moustaches. The image had made him laugh. But, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't imagine his aunt as a princess of anything. Then Harry tried to see his mother as a princess, with long, dark hair like his, waltzing with a prince (who also had a big, funny moustache). It had still made him laugh, but it left a warm feeling in his stomach.
At the next tea party his aunt held, Harry was prepared to ask if this meant she was a princess, or a duchess, and what did that make him and his parents, when he noticed something strange: aunt Petunia's finger didn't stick out when she drank from her teacup. He wondered if she had broken it, but there was no bandage to be seen, and it didn't seem to be bent in any funny direction. Harry looked at the other ladies, and their fingers were all still working fine. Not one to be thwarted, Harry had waited for a lull in their chatter to turn to his aunt, leaning around Dudley to look at her, and asked, "Is there something wrong with your finger, aunt Petunia? Mrs. Skeller said that people with royal blood have little fingers that always stick out." His question was immediately followed by his aunt's finger making a miraculous recovery, and her face turning a shade of purple more befitting uncle Vernon.
The image of his mother as a princess came much more easily to him when aunt Petunia began locking him in his cupboard again.
End.