Harry Potter - Series Fan Fiction ❯ When the Spirit Breaks, When Does the Body Follow? ❯ Negation: Drabbles XVI-XVIII ( Chapter 5 )

Drabble XVI: Getting Fat

When Marge and Junior were 7 and 5, respectively, Vernon decided that the children were getting fat. Eileen vehemently disagreed and received a black eye for her trouble. One night, after Eileen and the children went to bed, Vernon emptied the kitchen. Every scrap of food, every bottle of milk and juice, binned.

He left for work early the next day; it was the annual chair meeting at his family’s business, and his presence was compulsory. How convenient that Vernon didn’t have to hear his children throw wailing tantrums when Eileen could only provide them glasses of water before school.

Drabble XVII: Worst-Case Scenarios

The children kept her sane. She did her level best to keep Vernon’s wrath focused on her, though she didn’t always succeed. When Marge smarted off to her father about Santa Claus, Eileen wept at the punishment he meted their daughter.

It was far from the first time she had considered using the killing curse on her husband. One phrase, two words, three people freed from terror.

Except then what? The worst-case scenarios ran riot through her head. That police would charge her with murder, that Vernon’s parents would reject their grandchildren… that her parents would discover her secret life.

Drabble XVIII: So Weak

She was a terrible mother. She knew it, her children knew it, probably the neighborhood knew it (or at least suspected).

It’d been a fortnight since Eileen got out of bed for more than using the toilet, and that action alone cost her dearly. Marge and Junior were picking up her slack. She’d hear them picking up toys and sweeping floors, and follow their conversations as they prepared food, and it was a knife to her heart.

They would have been wonderful older siblings if not for Vernon. If not for her staying with Vernon. Why was she so weak?