A magical love affair - Severus Snape x Petunia Evans

Chapter 1 - On the run from a nightmare

Random streets, Cokeworth, July 1978

Petunia Evans was on the run. From her special, perfect sister Lily who had announced her exciting engagement news with a beaming smile, happy tears, showing off of her huge, glittering with a central Ruby surrounded by little diamonds, engagement ring and gushes about her perfect fiancé James Potter. From her impulsive, often times mean boyfriend of one year Vernon Dursley. A twenty-five-years-old, bulky blonde with little, mean-looking amber eyes, a round, easily turning red face and a silly, dirty-blonde mustache, who had studied mechanical engineering and business economics at the University of Warwick and worked as a salesman for a drill-making company Grunnings located in Surrey. This afternoon, he had reduced her to tears, hurt her fragile feelings publicly and set off her aimless flight through the sunny, dusty streets of Cokeworth, by ogling a curvy, buxom brunette with hungry eyes, mocking her for her thin, boyish figure and her favorite floral dress and complaining about her continued studies in taxation on their lunch date in the only existing café in Cokeworth "Emma's Garden".

At first, Petunia had tried to mask her hurt feelings behind a mask of indifference, reprimand him for his ogling of other women with a stern look and respond to his babblings about his irresponsible, lazy and unintelligent colleagues with faked rapt attention; throwing in the usual nod or one-letter-word at a convenient time and smiling to his silly jokes as expected. But Vernon kept eyeing the buxom brunette with lustful eyes, grumbling redfaced and in a raised voice about the issues at Grunnings and questioning Petunia's skills as a proper housewife as well as critizing her outfit, so that she nervously put some of her honey-blonde locks behind her ear, twisted her fingers with a distraught expression on her face in her lap and occasionaly straightened out the non-existent creases in her cream, covered in a lovely colurful foral pattern of dark red and lilac roses, knee-length summer dress. When other customers started to gaze in their direction, exchanging whispers about the poor Evan's girl and Vernon kept swallowing his strawberry cake slice between his rants like a Neanderthal, Petunia lost her cool, dissolved into tears and left the cafè hurriedly without looking back at her dumbfounded boyfriend.

She ran at a quick pace through the silent, sunny streets of Cokeworth. Her honey-blonde wavy hair flying around her face, her tear-stained cheeks glowing pink by the physical exercise and her embarrassment and her breath coming out in heavy, sob-stricken and closely followed puffs. Petunia knew that she didn't act like a proper young lady from a middle-class family by breaking down. Her mother Violet taught her how to act like a well-educated, lovely young woman with manners, decorum and modesty and would get a fit when she heard about her daughter's utter failure. A lovely young woman controlled her facial expressions in any situation instead of breaking down in tears. She listened closely, with rapt attention and a happy smile on her face, to the stories of her boyfriend instead of tuning his words out and zoning out in her own miserable thoughts. And she walked calmly, self-confident and with steady steps through the streets instead of running like a scared chicken at full speed aimlessly through her surroundings. But Petunia couldn't act like a proper young lady today and she frankly didn't care about the stares, opinions and gossip of the inhabitants of Cokeworth for the first time in her life.

Petunia was utterly distraught by the behavior of her boyfriend and the engagement news of her little sister Lily. Petunia wallowed in her own self-pity, passing every building, passer-by and bicycles without a glance. She knew that she would always be second best to Lily. She wasn't as beautiful, talented, kind, vibrant and charming as she. Her parents awed proud at Lily every time she managed to produce a potion, conjure an object or invent a charm and gushed about her kind-heartedness to their relatives. With a twinge in her heart, overwhelmed by her emotions of envy, jealousy, loneliness, and sadness, Petunia remembered how she had tried to gain her parents attention, love and interests without succes. She had excelled in school, studying hard to get top marks especially in Mathematics, Science, and Economics since her father, Henry Evans, worked as a financial advisor in a law office. She had hoped to gain his praise by sharing the his interest. She had worked as a shop girl on the side, managing with difficulty to jungle her schoolwork with her part-time job, to earn her own money and not burden the family finances unnesseceraly. She had learned how to cook, bake, clean the house, do the laundry and iron to relieve her mother from her household chores. She had learned from her how to be the perfect young lady. She had even researched everything about the newest fashion trends, beauty cosmetics and behavior of a modern woman, taken more care to always look her best and behave according to the rules of society, but nothing was good enough to enchant her parents. All they did was to compare her unfairly to her sister so that Petunia felt constantly as the unloved, forgotten daughter. She knew, that her parents probably loved her and wanted to see her happy, but their constant ignorance or their little enthusiasm they expressed for her achievements, hurt her deeply.

Naively, she thought that studying taxation in Coventry away from home, meeting new people and hanging out with girls that understood her and shared her interests or boys that admired her for her intelligence, independence, and down-to-earth attitude would make her happ. And possibly even open her parents' eyes for her achievements, verifying the old saying "The heart grows fonder with distance", but nothing really changed for the better. Sure, Petunia met Vernon at a down-key, lovely university party, where alumni and current students of the business economics courses at Warwick University exchanged their experiences, career chances and dreams for the future, dated him for roughly fourteen months now and established herself as an intern in a huge law firm. But in spite of this, she still felt lonely, unhappy and unloved. Her relationship with Vernon was a real farce because he constantly criticized her for everything, never listened to her issues and ogled other women. Sometimes, he even shouted red-faced in his boisterous voice at her for a mistake she had made. Like wearing the wrong dress or not calling him back fast enough. Therefore Petunia often interacted scared, guarded and docile with him to prevent one of his scary, verbal abusing outbursts. Once, he had even pushed her into a shelf, because she hadn't bought him his favorite sweets. An incident that shook Petunia to her core and urged her to walk on eggshells around him. She realized that she was trapped in an unhappy, abusive relationship, which caused her pain, sorrow, and trauma. But she couldn't find a way out of it. She didn't have any best girlfriend she could talk to. Her relationship with Lily was destroyed beyond repair and she didn't want to give her the satisfaction to say "I told you so" by confessing her unhappy romance because Lily had warned her about Vernon's dominant behavior after their first meeting. And her mother wouldn't believe her stories of verbal and physical abuse due to the perfect maskVernon put on in their present.

He treated her like a real gentleman. Setting her chair in place, gifting her flowers as a welcome present, kissing her on the cheek in greeting and gushing about her achievements at the University and her cooking skills, when her parents were around. It was as if he had a split personality like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In the company of her parents, he acted like the kind-hearted, nice Dr. Jekyll. Paying her compliments for her beauty or intelligence, gazing lovely at her or listening with interest to her stories. Behind closed doors, he acted like the cruel, angry Mr. Hyde. Mocking her for her hideous looks or lack of intelligence, staring at her with rage in his beady eyes or ignoring her words. Besides that, he constantly tried to pressure her into sleeping with him or quitting her courses at University. When he looked at her hungrily with lustful eyes, intensified their kisses and touched her breasts ungentle, Petunia panicked and frantically searched for a way out. She put him off of going further by stating that she wanted to wait for sexual intercourse until her marriage because she dreamed of losing her virginity to her husband in her wedding night or faking a migraine attack. With a vicious look, some hurtful insults and annoyed grumblings, Vernon would stop his actions, leave her dorm and masturbate with lustful mourns, low grunts and boisterous screams in her bathroom. Petunia would wait these tense moments out in her dorm, nervously fidgeting with her fingers, focusing on the sound of her heartbeat and blocking out Vernon's sex noises. After Vernon's hasty leave, Petunia would cry herself into sleep, wallowing in self-pity and being hunted by mocking voices that predicted her a miserable life in solitude, isolation, and submission to Vernon because nobody could ever love her.

Although Petunia realized that she needed to break it off with Vernon to not end up as a broken, abused and submissive desperate housewife, she didn't have the courage and power to do it. She was scared of Vernon's reaction and didn't want to face a life in loneliness, emotional coldness and isolation. So she stayed with Vernon and endured his abuse. Due to her bottling everything up in herself, not opening up to her family or an advice center, Petunia felt desperate, alone and emotionally exhausted every day. In public, she tried to numb herself, compose her thoughts and mask her emotions so that she seemed like a happy, satisfied young woman, who was in love with her boyfriend and managed her life without issues. But today, as Vernon had ogled this buxom woman and mocked her for her looks openly in public, Petunia's mask cracked, her hidden emotions bubbled up and she needed to run. Running away disorientated from the mess and nightmare that was her life.