Harry returns from Hogwarts Legacy

Chapter 396 The sisters' relationship is even worse than that of plastic flowers.
Harry knew, of course, why Vivi had come to Hogwarts, but... when Vivi enrolled, he didn't recognize that the stunningly beautiful and radiant girl was Vivi herself.

It's not Harry's fault, after all, he really didn't expect that a Squib could turn the tables—in fact, even the Grindelwald family back then never expected this.

Ancient magic, isn't it amazing?
Suddenly, a rustling sound came from behind them.

“Look, it’s Penny,” Vivi said, pointing over there.

Harry looked in the direction Harry was pointing and saw Petunia lying behind a tree, clearly having fallen because she lost her footing.

“Penny!” Lily said, her voice filled with surprise and welcome, but Snape jumped up.

"Who's spying on us now?" he yelled. "What do you want?"

Penny was so panicked when she was discovered that she could barely breathe.

Harry could tell she was racking her brains trying to say something hurtful.

"Then tell me what you're wearing?" she said, pointing at Snape's chest. "Your mother's clothes?"

With a snap, a branch suddenly fell from above Penny's head.

Lily screamed as the branch hit Penny on the shoulder, causing her to stagger back a few steps and begin to sob.

“Penny!”

But Penny ran away.

Lily snapped at Snape.

"Did you do it?"

“No.” Snape appeared both unconvinced and frightened.

"It was you!" Lily stepped back in front of him. "It was you! You hurt her!"

"No—I didn't!"

However, Lily did not believe his lies.

She gave him one last angry look, then ran out of the grove to chase after her sister, leaving Snape looking pained and confused…

“Oh dear,” Vivi said gleefully. “Look, Professor Snape seems to have been wronged. I can vouch for him; that branch really wasn’t knocked down by Professor Snape—”

“Look, I now know why Aunt Petunia hates Professor Snape,” Harry said, scratching his chin. “After all, it’s really unpleasant to be wrongly accused.”

“Let’s go, let’s move on to the next scene,” Vivi suggested.

They walked together along the forest path, and at the end of the path was Evans' house.

An owl also came with them to Evans' house.

"Daddy! Mommy! Penny!"

Lily, holding her acceptance letter, ran downstairs to the living room, excitedly showing it to her family.

"Look, it's Hogwarts! Severus wasn't lying, Hogwarts really exists!"

"That's wonderful, Lily, that's wonderful!" Mr. Evans congratulated Lily with a smile. "My daughter is about to become a real wizard!"

Mrs. Evans also congratulated Lily, and although Penny offered her congratulations, she clearly had something on her mind.

In the afternoon, there was a knock on the door, and someone Harry recognized came in.

It was Professor McGonagall, who at this time did not look as old as when Harry first met her.

She received a warm and grand welcome from the Evans family.

Harry and Vivi followed Professor McGonagall and Lily for a stroll around Diagon Alley.

The atmosphere and culture of Diagon Alley in the 70s were significantly different from that in the 90s. At that time, the Death Eaters were not a universally hated organization. Harry could even see people in Diagon Alley openly proclaiming that they were members of the Death Eaters and feeling very honored about it.

“He could never have imagined,” Harry sneered, “that just over a decade later, the Death Eaters would become universally hated and no longer as arrogant as they were then—even their master, Voldemort, would be killed by a baby.”

When Harry returned home that evening, he noticed that as Lily passed by Petunia's room, she saw Petunia tiptoeing around and doing some subtle things.

When the scene changes again, Lily is chatting with Snape in an amusement park.

"Sev."

Lily's voice was very soft, and as she spoke, she craned her neck to look around.

"I've discovered a secret—"

"What secret?" Snape asked, both interested and honored, as he held onto the swing with both hands.

“Yes, my sister Penny—” Lily whispered, “I’ve discovered that although she’s dismissive of magic, she still… well, deep down she still has a deep longing for it.”

"How did you know?" Snape asked, intrigued.

He couldn't help but be interested. He had always thought Penny was pretentious. She desperately craved magic, yet she pretended to be nonchalant.

Snape's second biggest interest now is exposing Petunia's deadpan act.

Lily smiled and said to Snape, "I've discovered that Petunia is writing a letter—to Headmaster Dumbledore."

“Ha ha,” Snape laughed. “That’s impossible. She’s just daydreaming. It’s common knowledge that Muggles can’t write to Dumbledore, and even if she did, she couldn’t mail it.”

“But I clearly saw that she received a reply!” Lily retorted.

Snape looked completely unconvinced. He shook his head and said, "Impossible, absolutely impossible—I bet Petunia will never receive a reply from Dumbledore. You have to believe me, Lily, how could a Muggle possibly deliver a letter to Dumbledore?"

Seeing that Lily disagreed, Snape rolled his eyes.

“How about we make a bet?” Snape said confidently. “I bet Petunia won’t receive a reply at all—”

"How do you prove it?" Lily asked, intrigued.

“You could sneak into her room,” Snape said with a smile. “Why don’t you just take a look at the letters she received?”

"This...this isn't right, is it?" Lily said hesitantly. "After all, that's Penny's privacy. Isn't it inappropriate to do this?"

"Isn't it wrong to do that?" Snape said dismissively. "When she called you a monster, didn't you feel anything wrong with that? Or do you enjoy being insulted like that? Listen, if you knew the truth, you'd have something to say in the future, instead of standing by and secretly wiping away tears! Lily!"

Lily fell silent.

She admitted that Snape was right.

Why can Penny keep calling me a monster, while I have to just take it all?

She had to find a way to fight back. With that thought in mind, she finally made up her mind.

“Tomorrow, Mom and Dad are taking us shopping, but I can say I'm not feeling well and don’t want to go,” Lily said, her eyes sparkling. “You wait here for me, and after they leave, we’ll sneak into Penny’s room to see if there’s a reply from Dumbledore, okay?”

“Why don’t you go see for yourself?” Snape’s voice was deep, but it wasn’t as slow as Harry remembered—it seemed that when Snape was with Lily, he never spoke in a drawn-out and greasy voice like he did when he was with his classmates.

“Oh, come with me, Severus,” Lily said in a sweet, soft voice. “I can’t do bad things all by myself, can I? You know what I mean? I need someone with me so I dare to sneak over there…”

“Okay.” Snape raised his hands in surrender.

“Wow.” Vivi shook her head and exclaimed, “I never would have guessed there was such a thing. No wonder, no wonder you said that Aunt Penny was so resistant to the mention of magic… No wonder she and your mother don’t get along. If I’m not mistaken, this might be the beginning of their falling out.”

“Maybe so.” Harry opened his mouth, anyway, he felt that his aunt was really in the wrong—who would call their own sister a monster?
Someone else once spoke to Harry like that; it was a member of the Ashbringer Party.

Harry's reaction was also quite reasonable.

How dare you talk to me like that?
Is your mom a wholesaler?
“By the way,” Harry said to Vivi without turning around, “if Gellert had read my reply to you, what would you have done?”

"Sneaking a peek at the reply?"

Vivi laughed, a laugh that seemed so bright, but Harry found it eerie and chilling.

"I'll make him regret being born."

Harry shuddered.

This woman is terrifying...

A day passed in the world of memory. The next morning, as expected, Lily used the excuse of feeling unwell and did not go shopping with her parents and Penny.

After the Evans left, she went out of her house and went to the amusement park.

“Come on, Severus,” Lily invited Snape. “Mom and Dad are gone, and Petunia went with them. Let’s go to her room and see what happened!”

Harry and Vivi followed the two to Penny's room.

Just as Snape was about to start searching, Lily stopped him.

“I’ll look for it,” Lily said. “Penny will be furious if she finds out I let you go through her things.”

Snape said "Oh," and stood to the side with his hands at his sides.

A short while later, Lily found the letter.

“Look,” Lily said to Snape, picking up the letter. “I’ve found it—Dumbledore’s reply to Petunia.”

Lily and Snape held the letter together, while Harry and Vivi peered behind them, getting a full view of Petunia's secret.

“I must say,” Vivi whispered to Harry, “Dumbledore’s wording was indeed very tactful. If it were me, I probably wouldn’t have replied to Petunia at all.”

“That’s what makes Dumbledore different,” Harry said, shrugging.

“But actually it would be better not to reply at all.” Vivi shook her head helplessly and said, “Dumbledore… really, even the most tactful wording is no different from scolding her, and it will make Petunia feel desperate.”

Harry thought about it and realized that it made sense.

Just then, the scene shifts again, and he and Vivi arrive at King's Cross Station.

On Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, Snape stood beside him, slightly hunched over, close to a thin woman with a sallow complexion and a gloomy expression who looked very much like him.

Snape was staring at a family of four not far away, with two girls standing apart from their parents—Lily seemed to be pleading with her sister.

Harry and Vivi leaned over to listen.

“…I’m so sad, Petunia, I’m so sad! Listen to me—” She grabbed her sister’s hand and held it tightly, while Petunia struggled desperately, “Maybe once I get there—no, listen to me, Petunia! Maybe once I get there, I can find Professor Dumbledore and persuade him to change his mind!”

“I—don’t—want to go!” Penny said, struggling to pull her hand away from her sister’s. “Do you think I want to go to some ridiculous castle and learn to be—a—”

Her light-colored eyes gazed at the platform, at the cat meowing in its owner's arms, at the owls flapping their wings and calling to each other in their cages, and at the students—some already dressed in black robes, carrying their luggage onto the bright red steam locomotive, happily greeting their classmates loudly after a summer's separation.

"—You think I want to become—a monster?"

Penny finally pulled her hand away, and Lily's eyes were full of tears.

“I’m not a monster,” Lily said. “That’s a really harsh way to put it.”

“That’s where you’re going,” Penny said enthusiastically, “a school for monsters. You and that boy named Snape… freaks, you’re both freaks. It’s good that you’re kept separate from ordinary people, for our safety.”

As she said this, Penny's face was contorted in extreme pain, making her look as if she hated Lily to the core.

“She deserves it,” Vivi said gleefully. “Even if she gets into Hogwarts, she probably won’t get along with Lily much.”

Harry didn't say anything, but agreed with Vivi's point of view.

Lily glanced at her parents, who were watching the scene on the platform with genuine joy, thoroughly enjoying the view.

Lily remembered the letter she had seen a few days ago—the letter Penny had sent out, and Dumbledore's reply.

She turned back to look at her sister, lowered her voice, and her tone became very intense.

"When you wrote to the principal begging him to accept you, you didn't think this was a monster school."

Penny's face turned bright red.

"Beg? I didn't beg!"

“I saw his reply; it was written very tactfully.”

“You shouldn’t have peeked—” Penny’s face flushed red instantly, and she said angrily, “That’s my privacy—how could you—?”

Lily glanced at Snape, who was standing nearby.

Penny immediately understood what was going on, and she gasped.

If it were just Lily seeing it, it would be fine, but with Snape, an outsider, also witnessing it, Petunia immediately felt betrayed.

"That boy found out! You and that boy sneaked into our room!"

“No—it wasn’t sneaking in—” Lily was now defending herself. “Severus doesn’t believe Muggles can contact Hogwarts, that’s it! He said a wizard must have infiltrated the postal system and was secretly watching over things—”

“Looks like you freaks just love meddling in other people’s business!” Penny said, her face, which had been flushed, now turning deathly pale. “Monster!” she spat at her sister, then abruptly turned and ran towards her parents…

“I think,” Harry suddenly commented, “my mother’s relationship with Aunt Petunia isn’t as good as yours with Cassandra’s.”

(End of this chapter)