Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"MOTORCYCLES DON'T FLY!" Daddy screamed, turning around in the driver's seat to glare at Harry. Dudley's cousin Harry had big eyes obscured by thick, round glasses and a mass of wild black hair, and looked nothing like blue-eyed, blond-haired Dudley. He was tiny for his age (it was why he fit so well in a cupboard) and skinnier even than mummy, who spent ten minutes on the scale every morning and would take a swing at Harry's head if her numbers ever got too high.

Motorcycles don't fly. This, Dudley knew as well as anyone, and as Daddy roared and Harry quietly tried to explain himself, he and Piers exchanged looks and sniggered.

Motorcycles don't fly, but the glass in front of a reptile exhibit doesn't disappear without warning either. But on Dudley's eleventh birthday, that was just what it did, right after Harry talked to the snake.

This was just a fact about Harry. Around him, things did what they shouldn't.

Dudley found class dull. He always had. Teachers droned on, used big words and looked at you with a scowl if you didn't understand. They looked at you with a scowl if you didn't pay attention, too, but that at least made you cool. Dudley had lots of practice in not paying attention: he was an expert in keeping quiet and never asking questions. One afternoon, he'd folded seven different paper airplanes in a single period, tearing out his blue-lined notebook paper to do it. He knew he wouldn't be sent to the principal's office, because the last time mummy and daddy had met with the principal the man had come out of the meeting shaking and with a pronounced fear of drills.

But he'd got tired of paper airplanes a while ago. That's why, when he'd seen the book on folded paper ("or-i-ga-mi" they called it) he'd nicked it from the school library.

What Dudley did not find dull was spending time with his friends. Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon had all grown up in Little Whinging just like Dudley had, in the same square streets. They had spent years sitting next to each other and fussing at their mothers as the housewives of Little Whinging gossiped. When they got big enough to toddle, they toddled after each other and attempted to push each other down the stairs. Dudley knew the insides of his friends' houses as well as his own, and better than they knew his, although they came to visit every week without fail.

Because what Piers, Dennis, Malcolm, and Gordon didn't know was that the Second Bedroom, the one that had the door always shut, was Dudley's and not Harry's.

Dudley was never to tell. "Whenever anyone comes over," mummy had always explained to him, "that's your cousin's room." And she pointed to Dudley's Second Bedroom.

"No it's not," Dudley had protested once. "It's mine!"

"Of course it is, sweetums," she'd cooed, giving him a hug, "but the neighbours aren't to know that. You understand?"

Dudley understood. It was one of those things no one was supposed to talk about, like the way that Harry could sometimes be found on top of very tall things like chimneys without ever having climbed up them.

The neighbours knew that Dudley's cousin, Harry, lived with him, and had lived with the Dursleys for almost as long as he had been alive. But what no one—except the Dursleys—knew was that Harry did not sleep in Dudley's Second Bedroom but in the Cupboard Under the Stairs.

Dudley knew this was how things were supposed to be. Harry was small and skinny, and he didn't have very many things, so he wouldn't know what to do with a bedroom even if he had one. Dudley was bigger and stronger, and had very many things that took up lots of room.

With his friends, Dudley played with his games, broke his toys, and hollered. Harry would never play with them, because he did not know the rules of being friends. He only knew about running.

Dudley got very good at "Harry Hunting," and at punching Harry on the nose.

"They have such energy," mum sniffed, dabbing her eyes as she watched Dudley running around with his friends.

"Little tykes," chortled dad.

As Harry got close to turning eleven, things got weird.

It started when Harry got a letter. This was odd, because Harry didn't know anybody. Who would want to write a letter to Harry? But it was mummy and daddy's reaction to the letter that first made Dudley begin to wonder.

Because it was obvious. They knew who'd sent Harry the letter.

Whoever it was, that person was scary, because it made mummy and daddy do what they swore they'd never do: they gave something to Harry that belonged to Dudley.

It was like the glass had been taken off the reptile exhibit and the snakes were sliding through the crowd next to people's ankles all over again.

Dudley knew he could convince mummy of anything if he bawled enough. So as daddy began throwing open the doors of Dudley's Second Bedroom and shoving a path through all his broken toys to deposit Harry on the pristinely-made bed, Dudley screwed up his eyes and cried big fat tears, making his voice wobbly. "I don't want him there… I need that room… make him get out…"

It was true that Dudley didn't need his month-old video camera (he'd never gotten the hang of all the buttons) or the small, working tank that had killed poor Rover, the neighbour's dog (in Dudley's defence, any dog that tiny shouldn't be allowed outside). His first-ever television set was useless, since he'd put his foot through it when his favorite program had disappeared forever, and mummy'd had to have a long talk with him about how TV programs get cancelled sometimes and you can't do anything about it but maybe get a box set or watch reruns.

He did not need the large birdcage, which had once held a parrot; he had not needed the parrot either, so he'd swapped it at school for a real air rifle.

And he didn't need the air rifle, because Dudley had put it aside one day and sat down, and when he sat up again the barrel had been bent.

He didn't need any of these things, but sometimes he would step into the room and sit on the edge of the bed and look around and remember that all these things were his, and they were his because he was special, and they were his because his parents loved him very much, enough to buy him anything he wanted.

He didn't need any of these things, but they were his, and they weren't supposed to go away. And they certainly weren't supposed to go to Harry. Nothing ever went to Harry.

What Dudley did need in his Second Bedroom was the shelves full of books that looked as though they'd never been touched. He had gotten the books as gifts from people who didn't know him and he'd stuck them on the shelf when the words were too difficult to read, but right in the middle of all those useless books was the one book Dudley did look at, the book of folded paper.

It had complicated instructions but also pictures, color-coded pictures that Dudley could always follow eventually. No one had ever figured out that Dudley had nicked the book because no one ever looked in the bookshelf in the Second Bedroom, but Dudley knew that if Harry was in the bedroom he would notice.

He would notice that the book was from the library because of the sticker on its spine. And he would notice that it had been touched because the edges of the pages were soft instead of sharp. And he would notice that Dudley had read the book because on the inside he had written, in big black pen, "DONE" next to every folded paper design he'd finished.

He screamed, whacked daddy with his Smelting stick, made himself barf, kicked mummy, and as a last-ditch effort, he even threw his tortoise through the greenhouse roof.

But for the first time, what Dudley wanted didn't matter.

He wasn't getting his room back.

Whoever was writing to Harry was trouble, and they didn't stop. The letter came back the next day. And the day after, Dudley was woken at six o'clock in the morning by a great "AAAAARRRGH!" that couldn't have come from anyone but daddy. Dudley sat up in bed in a panic, and then realized that daddy was just shouting at Harry from downstairs; Harry must have been sneaking out to try to get the post.

Dudley almost turned over again and went back to sleep, but then he realized his chance. He tiptoed out of his room and creaked open the door to the Smallest Bedroom. It was no longer Dudley's room, Dudley knew, because yesterday when Harry's letter had come it had been addressed to "Mr H Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, 4 Privet Drive," like Harry really lived there.

It didn't look much different now that it was Harry's. The bed was a little rumpled, which Dudley frowned at—mummy would have a fit—and there was a pile of plastic army men on the dresser that Harry had once rescued from a bin on the side of the road. But most importantly, the bookshelf hadn't been touched.

Dudley crept through the room until he reached the shelf. He slid his folded paper book out, breathing a great sigh of relief, and sneaked back out of Harry's room. Then he went into his own room and looked around.

The problem with Dudley's room was that it was very clean, because mummy cleaned it every day. She was proud of how clean it was. She would know at once if there was something new in it. Dudley thought for a moment and then walked over to his schoolbag, and tucked the folded paper book inside it, under his textbook. It was the one place that wouldn't be cleaned out anytime soon.

Now that that was settled, Dudley climbed back into bed and fell asleep to the sound of screaming.

Daddy stopped going to work. First he boarded up the windows, then he boarded up the doors. Once that was done, no one could go in or out. Dudley called Piers and told him the Dursleys were going on a trip and he wouldn't be able to play for the next few days, so Piers wouldn't show up. Then he sat in his room with the door locked. He opened his school notebook and pulled out a piece of paper, folding in and creasing it until he got a perfect square, which was how you always started or-i-ga-mi. He made a cube. He was an expert on making cubes. He could make a cube in less than a minute.

Dudley hid the cube in his backpack and went down for lunch.

Daddy was in a frenzy, and the sitting room smelled like burnt parchment.

Dudley went back upstairs and figured out how to make cubes of different sizes, and then made a whole number of cubes, one inside the other, so that when he shook it the whole cube rattled with all the cubes that were inside.

On Saturday, things began to get out of hand. Instead of egg yolks, all the eggs the milkman handed mummy through the window had rolled up letters inside them. Daddy puffed up like a bullfrog and stomped away to his study, where everyone could hear him making angry telephone calls to the post office, while Mummy calmly dumped the whole lot of eggs into the food processor and shredded them.

"Who on earth wants to talk to you this badly?" Dudley asked Harry, as he sat next to his cousin at the abandoned breakfast table.

"Told you I dunno," Harry said, shoving a piece of toast into his mouth. Dudley tried to tap Harry with his Smelting stick, but Harry dodged and reached for another piece, not even bothering to slather on marmalade. He knew as well as Dudley that mummy wouldn't be distracted for very long.

"You've got to have some idea," Dudley said. "People don't stick a letter in a bunch of eggs for no reason, do they?"

"Maybe if you'd let me read the letter we'd know who it was," Harry said, sending Dudley a glare.

It was true that Dudley was beginning to regret not letting Harry read the letter. It seemed like all of this trouble was as much the fault of mummy and daddy as it was the fault of the letter writer. If Harry had read the letter and written back, that would've been the end of it: but now Dudley was stuck inside on a summer morning while the milkman handed eggs in through the window.

On Saturday, there were more letters, and they came through the chimney. Dudley ducked. Harry, on the other hand, leaped towards them, even though they pelted through the air like bullets. He nearly caught one, too, but then daddy grabbed Harry around the waist and threw him into the hall with a great bellow of "out! OUT!" Dudley ran from the room after mummy and daddy slammed the door shut behind everyone.

"That does it," daddy said, pulling great tufts out of his mustache. "I want you all back here in five minutes ready to leave. We're going away. Just pack some clothes. No arguments!"

He looked so dangerous with half his mustache missing that no one dared argue. Dudley ran to his room and shoved his clothes into his sports bag in a messy heap, and then threw in his VCR. The bag had a bit of room in it still, so Dudley dragged his computer off his desk and put that inside too. But no matter what he tried, his television wouldn't go in, though Dudley gave it a good knock (not too good of one—he didn't want it going the way of his first television).

"Dudley Dursley!" daddy shouted. "It's been five minutes. Where the hell are you!"

"I'm almost done," Dudley shouted back.

Daddy tromped up the stairs as Dudley gave a great heave to the side of his sports bag, but no matter how much he pulled the zipper he couldn't get the edges even near each other.

"What's the holdup? Are you trying to put your entire damn room into that bag?" daddy roared, and clocked Dudley round the head. "Put it back. All of it."

"But I need—"

"ALL OF IT!"

Dudley took out the television, and the computer, and then, at daddy's glare, the VCR too. Daddy walked behind Dudley the entire way downstairs so Dudley couldn't sneak anything else into his bag, and in ten minutes they had wrenched their way through the boarded-up doors and were in the car, speeding toward the highway.

Dudley's sports bag had been thrown into the boot along with mummy's rollaway and Harry's school bag which he'd stuffed full of clothes. In the back seat, Dudley sniffled, wishing he'd thought to bring his Smelting stick with him.

They drove. And they drove. Even mummy didn't dare ask where they were going. Every now and then daddy would take a sharp turn and drive in the opposite direction for a while.

"Shake 'em off… shake 'em off," he would mutter whenever he did this.

They didn't stop to eat or drink all day. By lunchtime Dudley was wishing he'd thought to bring a bag of crisps or beef jerky. By dinner he was having fond memories of tinned peas. By nightfall he was howling. He was hungry, he'd missed five television programs he'd wanted to see, and he'd never gone so long without blowing up an alien on his computer.

Daddy stopped at last outside a gloomy-looking hotel on the outskirts of a big city, where Dudley and Harry shared a room with twin beds and damp, musty sheets. Fortunately Dudley could sleep through anything. He was asleep in minutes, while Harry, restless, had traded the smell of mold for the open windowsill, and was still curled up, staring down at the lights of passing cars.

Dudley had never been so grateful for stale cornflakes and cold tinned tomatoes on toast. He piled his plate as full as it would go and was scarfing down his breakfast when the owner of their hotel came over to their table, asking for a Mr H Potter and holding another letter. Harry made a grab for the letter, but daddy knocked his hand away.

"I'll take them," daddy said, standing up quickly and following her from the dining room.

Dudley stood up too, and went to the sidebar. He fit three tins of tomatoes into his pockets before daddy got back.

"Wouldn't it be better just to go home, dear?" mummy said timidly, hours later: but daddy didn't seem to hear her. Exactly what he was looking for, none of them knew. He drove them into the middle of a forest, got out, looked around, shook his head, got back in the car, and off they went again. The same thing happened in the middle of a plowed field, halfway across a suspension bridge, and at the top of a multilevel parking garage.

"Daddy's gone mad, hasn't he?" Dudley said dully late that afternoon. Daddy had parked at the coast, locked them all inside the car, and disappeared.

It started to rain. Great drops beat on the roof of the car. Dudley sniveled.

"It's Monday," he told mummy. "The Great Humberto's on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television."

He had always figured that if he told mummy what he wanted, she would make it happen.

That had changed when the first letter came.

He had always figured mummy could make daddy do anything she wanted.

He rattled the handle of the car again, hoping it might open this time. It didn't. Dudley gave the locked door an ugly look and looked at Harry instead.

On the other side of the backseat, Harry was curled up with his feet under him. He was staring nowhere in particular, his green eyes even wider than usual under his patched-up glasses. He seemed like he was daydreaming, something mummy surely would've smacked him for on an ordinary day, when she wasn't sitting silent and pinch-faced in the front of the car.

Dudley wanted to blame Harry for all the trouble, but he knew that for once Harry wasn't being a freak at all. All Harry had tried to do was read a letter addressed to him.

Harry had what was called an Imagination. It was what always got him into trouble. But right now, Harry didn't seem to even notice that he was at the top of a parking garage, locked in, while rain beat its way down the windows. He was somewhere better.

For the first time, Dudley felt jealous of Harry's Imagination.

He'd have liked to be somewhere better, too.

When daddy came back and unlocked the car he was holding a long, thin package. Mummy spoke again, for the first time in hours. She said in a shaking voice, "V-Vernon, what is that thing? What did you buy?"

Daddy was smiling, even though he was covered in rain. "Found the perfect place!" he said. "Come on! Everyone out!"

Dudley had seen enough guns to recognize one, even covered in brown paper. We're going to die, he thought. He stepped out of the car on shaking legs and Harry stepped out next to him. Mummy stepped out too and wrapped her arms around herself as her paisley shirt got soaked through.

It was very cold outside the car.

Daddy was pointing at what looked like a large rock way out at sea. Perched on top of the rock was the most miserable little shack you could imagine.

"Storm forecast for tonight!" daddy said gleefully, clapping his hands together. "And this gentleman's kindly agreed to lend us his boat!"

A toothless old man came ambling up to them, pointing, with a rather wicked grin, at an old rowboat bobbing in the iron-gray water below them.

"I've already got us some rations," daddy said, "so all aboard!"

Nobody wanted to get on the boat, but the long, thin package in daddy's arms and the wickedly-grinning old man with his rowboat warned them not to argue. Mummy stepped in first, primly, and settled her skirts over her knees. Harry followed her, stationing himself on the other end, as though he'd figured if he was going to be on this boat anyway he might as well pick his own spot.

Daddy looked at Dudley with his hands on the long, thin package.

Dudley stepped into the boat beside Harry and waited while the rowboat jostled and daddy climbed in. Putting down the package, daddy grabbed the oars from where they were sitting in their oarlocks, and heaved them out into the waves.

It was freezing. Icy sea spray and rain crept down their necks and a chilly wind whipped their faces. Dudley grabbed onto the edges of the boat and tried not to be sick.

After what seemed like hours they reached the rock, where daddy, slipping and sliding, led the way to the broken-down house.

The inside was horrible; it smelled strongly of seaweed, the wind whistled through the gaps in the wooden walls, and the fireplace was damp and empty. There were only two rooms.

Daddy's rations turned out to be a bag of chips each and four bananas. He tried to start a fire but the empty chip bags just smoked and shriveled up. Dudley thought about opening his tinned tomatoes, but wondered if that would mean he'd need to share.

He decided, upon reflection, to save them for tomorrow.

"Could do with some of those letters now, eh?" daddy said cheerfully.

As night fell, the promised storm blew up around them. Spray from the high waves splattered the walls of the hut and a fierce wind rattled the filthy windows. Mummy found a few moldy blankets in the second room and made up a bed for Dudley on the moth-eaten sofa. She and daddy went off to the lumpy bed next door, and Harry curled up on the floor beside Dudley under the thinnest, most ragged blanket.

Dudley pulled his own blanket up to his chin and closed his eyes. He could sleep through anything, even a terrible storm on a hut on a rock.

BOOM. BOOM. Dudley jerked awake.

"Where's the cannon?" he asked wildly, sitting up.

Daddy came skidding into the room, holding a rifle in his hands.

Suddenly the front door was hit with such force that it swung clean off its hinges and with a deafening crash landed flat on the floor.

A giant of a man was standing in the doorway. His face was almost completely hidden by a long, shaggy mane of hair and a wild, tangled beard, but you could make out his eyes, glinting like black beetles.

The giant squeezed his way into the hut, stooping so that his head just brushed the ceiling. He bent down, picked up the door, and fitted it easily back into its frame. The noise of the storm outside dropped a little. He turned to look at them all.

"Couldn't make us a cup o' tea, could yeh? It's not been an easy journey…"

He strode over to the sofa where Dudley sat frozen with fear.

"Budge up, yeh great lump," said the stranger.

Dudley knew better than to disobey a giant. He jumped up and ran to hide behind mummy, who was hiding behind daddy, who was hiding behind the rifle.

"An' here's Harry!" said the giant, as though he knew him.

This must be the person who sent all those letters, Dudley realized.

"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," said the giant. "Yeh look a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yer mum's eyes."

Dudley risked a glance at Harry.

Daddy made a funny rasping noise, and then blustered, "I demand that you leave at once, sir! You are breaking and entering!"

Dudley couldn't imagine talking back to a giant.

Obviously the giant couldn't either, because he said, "ah, shut up, Dursley, yeh great prune," reached over the back of the sofa, jerked the gun out of daddy's hands, bent it into a knot as easily as if it had been made of rubber, and threw it into a corner of the room.

Daddy made another funny noise, like a mouse being trodden on.

"Anyway—Harry," said the giant, turning his back on the Dursleys, "a very happy birthday to yeh. Got summat fer yeh here—I mighta sat on it at some point, but it'll taste all right." From an inside pocket of his black overcoat he pulled a slightly squashed box, which Harry took from the giant and opened. Inside was a large, sticky chocolate cake with Happy Birthday Harry written on it in green icing.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, looking up at the giant.

The giant chuckled.

"True, I haven't introduced meself. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts."

He held out an enormous hand and shook Harry's whole arm.

"What about that tea then, eh?" the giant said, rubbing his hands together. "I'd not say no ter summat stronger if yeh've got it, mind."

The giant's eyes fell on the empty grate with the shriveled chip bags in it and he snorted. He bent down over the fireplace; they couldn't see what he was doing but when he drew back a second later, there was a roaring fire there.

It was just like a fairy tale. Even though he was scared, Dudley couldn't help watching, eyes wide. The fire that hadn't been in the grate a moment ago filled the whole damp hut with flickering light and Dudley felt the warmth wash over him as though he'd sunk into a hot bath.

The giant sat back down on the sofa, which sagged under his weight, and began taking all sorts of things out of the pockets of his coat: a copper kettle, a squashy package of sausages, a poker, a teapot, several chipped mugs, and a bottle of whiskey that he took a swig from before starting to make tea. Soon the hut was full of the sound and smell of sizzling sausage. Nobody said a thing while the giant was working, but as he slid the first six fat, juicy, slightly burnt sausages from the poker, Dudley fidgeted a little. What was food made by a giant like?

Daddy said sharply, "Don't touch anything he gives you, Dudley. "

The giant chuckled darkly.

"Yer great puddin' of a son don' need fattenin' anymore, Dursley, don' worry."

Dudley had heard worse things about his weight, but not from a giant twice as tall as a normal man and at least five times as wide. It was hardly fair.

The giant handed the sausages to Harry, who tore through them hungrily, though he kept his eyes on the giant the whole time.

"I'm sorry," Harry said when he was done, "but I still don't really know who you are."

The giant took a gulp of tea and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Call me Hagrid," he said, "everyone does. An' like I told yeh, I'm Keeper of Keys at Hogwarts— yeh'll know all about Hogwarts, o' course."

"Er—no," said Harry.

The giant looked shocked.

"Sorry," Harry said quickly.

"Sorry?" barked Hagrid, turning to stare at the Dursleys, who shrank back into the shadows. "It's them as should be sorry! I knew yeh weren't gettin' yer letters but I never thought yeh wouldn't even know abou' Hogwarts, fer cryin' out loud! Did yeh never wonder where yer parents learned it all?"

"All what?" asked Harry.

"ALL WHAT?" Hagrid thundered. "Now wait jus' one second!"

He had leapt to his feet. In his anger he seemed to fill the whole hut. Daddy and mummy were cowering against the wall, and Dudley cowered with them.

"Do you mean ter tell me," Hagrid growled at the Dursleys, "that this boy—this boy!—knows nothin' abou,' about ANYTHING?"

"I know some things," Harry interrupted the giant fearlessly. "I can, you know, do math and stuff."

But Hagrid simply waved his hand and said, "About our world, I mean. Your world. My world. Yer parents' world."

"What world?" Harry said.

Hagrid looked as if he was about to explode.

"DURSLEY!" he boomed.

Daddy, who had gone very pale, whispered something that sounded like "Mimblewimble." Hagrid stared wildly at Harry.

"But yeh must know about yer mum and dad," he said. "I mean, they're famous. You're famous."

Harry, famous? Dudley thought. Freakish, loner Harry, who never talked to anybody?

"What?" Harry asked. "My—my mum and dad weren't famous, were they?"

"Yeh don' know… yeh don' know…" Hagrid ran his fingers through his hair, fixing Harry with a bewildered stare.

"Yeh don' know what yeh are?" he said finally.

Dudley remembered the way strange things always happened around Harry, and began to have a very funny feeling. He looked at Harry, sitting on the floor by the fire, bundled in his ragged blanket, with sausage juices on his fingers and his eyes bright. Harry was not afraid of the giant because Harry could make things happen too.

Like the glass disappearing from the reptile exhibit.

Daddy suddenly found his voice.

"Stop!" he commanded. "Stop right there, sir! I forbid you to tell the boy anything!"

A braver man than daddy would have quailed under the furious look Hagrid now gave him; when Hagrid spoke, his every syllable trembled with rage.

"You never told him? Never told him what was in the letter Dumbledore left fer him? I was there! I saw Dumbledore leave it, Dursley! An' you've kept it from him all these years?"

"Kept what from me?" said Harry eagerly.

"STOP! I FORBID YOU!" daddy yelled in panic. Mummy gave a gasp of horror.

"Ah, go boil yer heads, both of yeh," said the giant. "Harry—yer a wizard."

There was silence inside the hut. Only the sea and the whistling wind could be heard.

"I'm a what?" gasped Harry.

"A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good 'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter."

Harry stretched out his hand to take the yellowish envelope, addressed in emerald green to Mr H Potter, The Floor, Hut-on-the-Rock, The Sea. And then at last he was able to pull out the letter, unfold it, and read out loud what was inside.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Headmaster: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE

(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)

Dear Mr Potter,

We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all necessary books and equipment.

Term begins on September 1. We await your owl by no later than July 31.

Yours sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall,

Deputy Headmistress

Words and phrases that Dudley had never heard before were bouncing through his head: Warlock, Mugwump, International Confed of Wizards… it was like the storm that was shrieking its way around the hut on the rock was also shrieking through his head, tearing at all the cobwebs.

"What does it mean, they await my owl?" Harry asked.

Does this mean there are lots of you? Dudley wondered.

"Gallopin' Gorgons, that reminds me," said Hagrid, clapping a hand to his forehead with enough force to knock over a cart horse, and from yet another pocket inside his overcoat he pulled an owl—a real, live, rather ruffled-looking owl—a long quill, and a roll of parchment. With his tongue between his teeth he scribbled a note, rolled it up, gave it to the owl, which clamped it in its beak, went to the door, and threw the owl out into the storm. Then he came back and sat down as though this was as normal as talking on the telephone.

"Where was I?" the giant said.

Still ashen-faced but looking very angry, daddy finally moved into the firelight.

"He's not going," he said.

Hagrid grunted.

"I'd like ter see a great Muggle like you stop him," he said.

"A what?" said Harry.

"A Muggle," said Hagrid, "it's what we call nonmagic folk like them. An' it's your bad luck you grew up in a family o' the biggest Muggles I ever laid eyes on."

Muggle, Dudley thought, as the word joined all the other words he'd never heard before.

"We swore when we took him in we'd put a stop to that rubbish," said Uncle Vernon, "swore we'd stamp it out of him! Wizard indeed!"

"You knew?" said Harry. "You knew I'm a—a wizard?"

"Knew!" mummy shrieked, her voice suddenly sharper and louder than the wind. "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my dratted sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that—that school—and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was—a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"

Dudley stared in shock at mummy as she stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on in Harry's general direction as though she had been wanting to say all this for years. "Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as—as—abnormal—and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you!"

"Blown up?" Harry shouted. "You told me they died in a car crash!"

"CAR CRASH!" roared the giant, jumping up angrily. He seemed so wild in that moment that Dudley and mummy and even daddy scuttled back into the corner. "How could a car crash kill Lily an' James Potter? It's an outrage! A scandal! Harry Potter not knowin' his own story when every kid in our world knows his name!"

"But why? What happened?" Harry asked.

"I never expected this," Hagrid said, in a low voice. "I had no idea, when Dumbledore told me there might be trouble gettin' hold of yeh, how much yeh didn't know. Ah, Harry, I don' know if I'm the right person ter tell yeh—but someone's gotta—yeh can't go off ter Hogwarts not knowin'."

He threw a dirty look at the Dursleys.

"Well, it's best yeh know as much as I can tell yeh—mind, I can't tell yeh everythin', it's a great myst'ry, parts of it…"

He sat down, stared into the fire for a few seconds, and then said, "It begins, I suppose, with— with a person called—but it's incredible yeh don't know his name, everyone in our world knows—"

"Who?"

"Well—I don' like sayin' the name if I can help it. No one does."

"Why not?"

"Gulpin' gargoyles, Harry, people are still scared. Blimey, this is difficult. See, there was this wizard who went… bad. As bad as you could go. Worse. Worse than worse. His name was…"

Hagrid gulped, but no words came out.

"Could you write it down?" Harry suggested.

"Nah—can't spell it. All right—Voldemort." Hagrid shuddered. "Don' make me say it again. Anyway, this—this wizard, about twenty years ago now, started lookin' fer followers. Got 'em, too —some were afraid, some just wanted a bit o' his power, 'cause he was gettin' himself power, all right. Dark days, Harry. Didn't know who ter trust, didn't dare get friendly with strange wizards or witches… terrible things happened. He was takin' over. 'Course, some stood up to him—an' he killed 'em. Horribly. One o' the only safe places left was Hogwarts. Reckon Dumbledore's the only one You-Know-Who was afraid of. Didn't dare try takin' the school, not jus' then, anyway.

"Now, yer mum an' dad were as good a witch an' wizard as I ever knew. Head boy an' girl at Hogwarts in their day! Suppose the myst'ry is why You-Know-Who never tried to get 'em on his side before… probably knew they were too close ter Dumbledore ter want anythin' ter do with the Dark Side.

"Maybe he thought he could persuade 'em… maybe he just wanted 'em outta the way. All anyone knows is, he turned up in the village where you was all living, on Halloween ten years ago. You was just a year old. He came ter yer house an'— an'—"

Hagrid suddenly pulled out a very dirty, spotted handkerchief and blew his nose with a sound like a foghorn.

"Sorry," he said. "But it's that sad—knew yer mum an' dad, an' nicer people yeh couldn't find— anyway…

"You-Know-Who killed 'em. An' then—an' this is the real myst'ry of the thing—he tried to kill you, too. Wanted ter make a clean job of it, I suppose, or maybe he just liked killin' by then. But he couldn't do it. Never wondered how you got that mark on yer forehead? That was no ordinary cut. That's what yeh get when a powerful, evil curse touches yeh—took care of yer mum an' dad an' yer house, even—but it didn't work on you, an' that's why yer famous, Harry. No one ever lived after he decided ter kill 'em, no one except you, an' he'd killed some o' the best witches an' wizards of the age—the McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts—an' you was only a baby, an' you lived. Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore's orders. Brought yeh ter this lot…"

"Load of old tosh."

Harry jumped.

"Now, you listen here, boy," daddy snarled at Harry, "I accept there's something strange about you, probably nothing a good beating wouldn't have cured—and as for all this about your parents, well, they were weirdoes, no denying it, and the world's better off without them in my opinion—asked for all they got, getting mixed up with these wizarding types—just what I expected, always knew they'd come to a sticky end—"

But at that moment, Hagrid leapt from the sofa and drew a battered pink umbrella from inside his coat. Pointing this toward daddy like a sword, he said, "I'm warning you, Dursley—I'm warning you—one more word…"

In danger of being speared on the end of an umbrella by a bearded giant, daddy's courage failed again; he flattened himself against the wall and fell silent.

"That's better," said Hagrid, breathing heavily and sitting back down on the sofa, which this time sagged right down to the floor.

"But what happened to Vol-, sorry—I mean, You-Know-Who?" Harry asked, not at all afraid.

"Good question, Harry. Disappeared. Vanished. Same night he tried ter kill you. Makes yeh even more famous. That's the biggest myst'ry, see… he was gettin' more an' more powerful—why'd he go?

"Some say he died. Codswallop, in my opinion. Dunno if he had enough human left in him to die. Some say he's still out there, bidin' his time, like, but I don' believe it. People who was on his side came back ter ours. Some of 'em came outta kinda trances. Don' reckon they could've done if he was comin' back.

"Most of us reckon he's still out there somewhere but lost his powers. Too weak to carry on. 'Cause somethin' about you finished him, Harry. There was somethin' goin' on that night he hadn't counted on—I dunno what it was, no one does—but somethin' about you stumped him, all right."

"Hagrid," Harry said quietly, "I think you must have made a mistake. I don't think I can be a wizard."

Hagrid chuckled.

"Not a wizard, eh? Never made things happen when you was scared or angry?"

Harry looked into the fire thoughtfully, and when he looked back at Hagrid the giant was beaming.

"See?" said Hagrid. "Harry Potter, not a wizard—you wait, you'll be right famous at Hogwarts."

"Haven't I told you he's not going?" daddy hissed. "He's going to Stonewall High and he'll be grateful for it. I've read those letters and he needs all sorts of rubbish—spell books and wands and—"

"If he wants ter go, a great Muggle like you won't stop him," growled Hagrid. "Stop Lily an' James Potter's son goin' ter Hogwarts! Yer mad. His name's been down ever since he was born. He's off ter the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world. Seven years there and he won't know himself. He'll be with youngsters of his own sort, fer a change, an' he'll be under the greatest headmaster Hogwarts ever had, Albus Dumbled—"

"I AM NOT PAYING FOR SOME CRACKPOT OLD FOOL TO TEACH HIM MAGIC TRICKS!" daddy yelled.

But he had finally gone too far. Hagrid seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head, "NEVER —" he thundered, "—INSULT—ALBUS—DUMBLEDORE—IN—FRONT—OF—ME!"

He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley—there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, and Dudley felt a pain in his bottom like something growing and twisting from his skin. I'm dying, he thought, howling in pain, clasping his hands over… something… that had burst right through the back of his trousers and curled behind his hand, the same temperature as his own skin.

Daddy roared. Pulling mummy and Dudley into the other room, he cast one last terrified look at Hagrid and slammed the door behind them.

In the other room, Hagrid and Harry kept talking by the warm fireplace, while Dudley sobbed in pain. "What—what's he done to me—mummy?"

"Shh, shh," mummy said, her face grey. "It's all right sweetums…"

"What's he done to me?" Dudley asked, turning to daddy.

"I don't…" Daddy cleared his throat. "Your mother's right, Dudders… you'll be fine…" he reached out to pat Dudley on the shoulder but then thought better of it, backing up a step and looking ill.

"What's… he… done?" Dudley bawled. He felt at the thing poking out through the back of his trousers, and it twitched as though it knew how scared he was. "It's a tail. It's a tail, isn't it."

"It… it's just a little…" mummy said.

"I don't want a tail!" Dudley shrieked. "I don't care if it's a little one!" He cried harder, salty tears pouring over his face. He had never felt worse in his life. Mummy was standing awkwardly in front of him as though she didn't know what to do. Daddy was sitting heavily on the edge of the lumpy bed, looking away from Dudley.

Mummy hugged him. She sat on the dirty miserable floor of the hut on the rock and petted Dudley's hair. She kissed his forehead and said in a trembling voice, "Diddy, dearest, everything's going to be fine."

There was a giant in the front room. Harry was a wizard and had befriended the giant somehow. Daddy had angered the giant over and over again, and then in revenge the giant had cursed Dudley with a tail.

But Dudley hadn't said anything to the giant. He hadn't blustered like daddy. He hadn't shrieked and cursed like mummy. He'd been quiet. He hadn't asked any questions. He'd pretended he wasn't there.

And when the giant wanted to hurt someone, he had still picked Dudley.

The boat was gone the next morning, and so was Harry and the giant. The Dursleys poked their heads out into the other room, where the fire had gone out, leaving the hut on the rock as damp and cold as it had ever been. Daddy stormed out of the hut the moment he was sure they were alone and waved his arms, shouting, toward land, trying to get the attention of the old man who had lent them the boat. Dudley had suffered a sleepless night, and he shifted on the lumpy grey couch as mummy used the thinnest and most tattered blanket to dust the warped floorboards. The tail twitched uncomfortably, smothered against the couch cushions. Dudley pulled his tinned tomatoes from his pocket and opened them, eating listlessly as mummy scrubbed at the floor. She looked over distracted as she crawled by the fireplace grate.

"Where'd you get that?" she said sharply.

"The hotel," Dudley said.

Mummy let out a breath. "Oh. Of course."

"You want one?"

"No," mummy said. "No, you have it, Duddykins."

"Alright."

Dudley ate the rest of the tomatoes. His stomach growled, and the thought about the other two cans in his pocket.

"We're gonna be stuck here forever," Dudley said.

"No," mummy said. "No, of course we aren't."

Dudley didn't believe her. It turned out that mummy and daddy had been lying to him for his whole life about these strange people called wizards. Harry's parents hadn't even died in a car crash. They'd been famous. They'd fought some kind of international terrorist. Mummy and daddy had known Harry was a wizard this whole time, while they pretended they had no idea.

Eventually the old man seemed to notice the trouble. He rowed over to them in his boat, and mummy wrapped a blanket around Dudley's shoulders so the old man wouldn't see the tail before they all got in together. The old man cackled when he saw them.

The sun had come back, though it was cold and sharp. The water was choppy and grey, and the salt-spray was like a million small pins over Dudley's forehead and cheeks.

When they got off the boat the old man said, "It's double for the rescue."

Daddy huffed, and dug out his wallet. The old man took his money with a grin.

Daddy stormed off toward the car, and mummy followed him, holding Dudley's hand in her own clenched fist. Dudley dragged his feet, looking back at the old man with the boat, who winked at him and grinned a grin that showed all his long, yellowed teeth that hadn't been there before.

Harry was at home when they arrived. He peered at them from the top of the stairs when the Dursleys stormed in, and then quickly retreated to the Smallest Bedroom and closed the door behind him. For the whole next month, Dudley could hear the hooting of an owl from the bedroom across from his, and sometimes, when he walked past the door, he caught glimpses of a big, heavy trunk, and piles of books that looked like they'd been flipped through. But Dudley spent very little time with anyone else. Mummy had a terrible way of tearing up when she looked at him, as though he was sick, and daddy would get a thunderous frown. Harry, of course—Harry was a wizard. And whenever he came into the room, Dudley felt something hot and uncomfortable in his throat, and had to leave.

But he was able to avoid Piers for only a week before Piers showed up.

"Dudley?" mummy said, blocking the front door. "He's sick. Yes, I don't think he'll be able to play any time soon."

Dudley sat in his room and made folded paper cubes. He made so many they filled his school bag, and then his sports bag, and then his shoes. He made cubes that cluttered up his desk and cubes that filled the corners and crumpled to pieces under his feet. He used up all his school notebooks, and then took the cubes apart and made them all over again, until the delicate paper fell to pieces.

Finally, a week before he was to go to Smeltings, Dudley pulled on three pairs of briefs, one over the other to keep the tail still, and then his baggiest pair of jeans and his longest sweatshirt. He took a deep breath and walked casually out the door. Daddy was at work, and mummy was on the telephone, talking to the neighbours.

Dudley made it to Piers' house and threw a pebble at the window, and Piers looked out and grinned: a moment later he'd bounded down the stairs and outside onto the wide, paved streets of Privet Drive.

"God, I thought you were gonna be sick till school started!" Piers said with a laugh.

"Yeah," Dudley said. "So did I."

"Wanna mess someone up?" Piers asked.

"Yeah."

"Harry?"

"No," Dudley said with a shiver, "not Harry." He met Piers' curious look and shrugged. "He's at home with mum. I don't want to be at home right now."

"Alright, fair," Piers said. "Hey, how was your trip?"

"I caught the flu and puked the whole time," Dudley said. "It sucked."

On the day that Harry left with his trunk and his owl and all the rest of his wizard things to go to Platform 9¾, Dudley went to the hospital. Mummy was more scared of the idea than Dudley was. She held his hand in the waiting room and looked ill while daddy stepped into the hall to "have a look around."

She followed the nurses all the way to the surgery room as Dudley lay awkwardly on a stretcher, till they finally closed the doors, and then Dudley was inside a gleaming room with all sorts of shining devices, needles and knives set up around. The doctor in charge was named Mr Roberts, and he said, "now, this should be a simple procedure, there's nothing to worry about. We'll get you right as rain in a jiffy."

"But you can't see a lot of cases like this," Dudley said.

Mr Robert's smile didn't slip. "Well," he said. "It is a little unusual. But it's an external surgery. Not dangerous at all. Your parents went over this with you, right?"

"Yeah," Dudley said. He stared up at the bright lights. "I have to get it off before I go to Smeltings," he explained, "or the boys would beat me to death."

"Well," Mr Roberts said jovially. "They won't know. It'll be like nothing was even there."

The tail had hurt when it grew in, but Dudley wondered if it would hurt even more to suddenly have it gone with only a scar.

"I was cursed," Dudley said. "By a giant." He frowned down at the anasthesia going into his veins. "You probably think I'm barking."

He wasn't sure why he was saying all this. Piers had had his tooth out once and said all the anasthesia did was make him sleepy.

"Is this the ana-thesa?" Dudley asked. "Is that why I'm talking so much?"

And he woke up with his bottom aching in a room he'd never seen before, with mummy crying by his bedside. She jumped up when she saw him open his eyes. "I'll get the nurse, sweetums, don't move," she said.

Dudley's head pounded. His mouth felt weird too. He could tell that the tail was gone, and he didn't feel it anymore.

That was good, then.

He went to Smeltings.

He fit right in.

Chapter Text

Dudley's first year at Smeltings went by. He was big enough and brutal enough with his Smelting stick that the boys his age knew it wasn't worth it to cross him. And of course there was always Piers, skinny and sharp-eyed, whom Dudley shared a room with along with two other boys. Dudley found that it was just as easy to skive off but there were more consequences when mum and dad weren't there to stare down the teachers. None of it bothered Dudley much. He'd faced a giant, and even his most terrifying teachers weren't giants. Even the threat of the cane couldn't compete with a giant's huge pink umbrella and the pain of a tail sprouting from your behind. Dudley gained a reputation for easygoing fearlessness among his friends. His enemies—well, they mostly ran.

Dudley forgot about magic, as much as he was able, and about his folded paper book, which was lying at home shoved into the Cupboard Under the Stairs, where he'd hidden it before he left home since he knew it was the only place no one would look. He forgot so well that when the Dursleys drove to Platform 9¾ to pick up Harry, Dudley was sure he wouldn't be afraid: but then they stepped through onto the platform and looked around at people in robes, with owls and toads, and pointy black hats, waving wands, and Dudley realized that wizards had their own kind of Smelting sticks. Harry was with a bushy-haired girl and a tall, gangly ginger boy, and Dudley knew at once that he'd made friends at school. Imagine that!

The giant, Hagrid, had been right that Harry had changed being with wizards for so long. He moved differently, with a kind of open stride and bright-eyed grin that Dudley didn't recognize.

Dad seemed to notice that Harry had changed too, and he didn't like it. The minute they got home, he dragged Harry's trunk from the car and threw it into the Cupboard Under the Stairs, along with a sleek polished broomstick that could never have been used to sweep a floor. Harry winced when he saw dad throwing the broomstick in, but he didn't say anything, only glared sullenly at dad's turned back. But when dad tried to put the birdcage with Harry's owl in there too, Harry put his foot down.

"You can't put Hedwig in there," Harry said firmly. "She's an owl."

"I won't have that—that thing—flying around at all hours—" dad blustered.

"I'm keeping Hedwig in my room," Harry said.

Dad got a crafty look on his face, then, and pulled a padlock from his pocket. "All right, suit yourself," he said, and padlocked the owl's cage door. Hedwig shrieked in disapproval, and dad stepped back, a little ruffled. Then he firmed his expression and padlocked the door of the Cupboard Under the Stairs, too.

Dudley remembered at once that he'd hidden his folded paper book in there, under the mattress Harry used to sleep on. He looked at the padlock with as much dismay as his cousin, but when Harry turned his glare toward Dudley he gave Harry a sneer right back.

The owl, the Dursleys discovered, didn't play nice. Dudley wasn't bothered by the loud hooting from the Smallest Bedroom across the hall from him. He hadn't been bothered by any of the rowdiness at Smeltings either. When Dudley was out, nothing could wake him.

But it bothered dad plenty.

"Third time this week!" he roared across the table. "If you can't control that owl, it'll have to go!"

"She's bored," Harry said. "She's used to flying around outside. If I could just let her out at night—"

"Do I look stupid?" dad snarled. "I know what'll happen if that owl's let out." He and mum exchanged dark looks.

This could go on for ages, and usually did. Dudley interrupted the argument with a loud belch.

"I want more bacon."

"There's more in the frying pan, sweetums," mum said, looking over at Dudley with misty eyes. "We must build you up while we've got the chance… I don't like the sound of that school food…"

"Nonsense, Petunia, I never went hungry when I was at Smeltings," dad said heartily. "Dudley gets enough, don't you, son?"

Dudley knew he was getting what he wanted. He grinned and turned to Harry.

"Pass the frying pan."

"You've forgotten the magic word," Harry snapped.

The effect of this simple sentence on the rest of the family was incredible: Dudley gasped and fell off his chair with a crash that shook the whole kitchen; mum gave a small scream and clapped her hands to her mouth; dad jumped to his feet, veins throbbing in his temples.

"I meant 'please'!" said Harry quickly. "I didn't mean—"

"WHAT HAVE I TOLD YOU," dad thundered, spraying spit over the table, "ABOUT SAYING THE 'M' WORD IN OUR HOUSE?"

"But I—"

"HOW DARE YOU THREATEN DUDLEY!" dad roared, pounding the table with his fist.

"I just—"

"I WARNED YOU! I WILL NOT TOLERATE MENTION OF YOUR ABNORMALITY UNDER THIS ROOF!"

Mum tried to coax Dudley to his feet as Harry looked between them and dad.

"All right," said Harry finally, "all right…"

Dudley let mum pull him back into his seat. She gave him an extra-large helping of bacon for all the trouble, and Dudley shoved a juicy strip into his mouth with a hum of satisfaction.

At that moment, dad cleared his throat importantly and said, "Now, as we all know, today is a very important day."

It was Harry's birthday, Dudley knew. After what happened when Harry turned eleven, Dudley had been worrying about what might happen on the day Harry turned twelve. He'd only said something about that fear once—to mum—but she'd hugged him and said, "nonsense, Duddikins. That kind of thing is just—superstitious nonsense! He's only got to be accepted to that place once, anyhow!" And then she'd gotten up and began to vacuum the front hall very loudly.

"This could well be the day I make the biggest deal of my career," said dad. "I think we should run through the schedule one more time. We should all be in position at eight o'clock. Petunia, you will be—?"

"In the lounge," mum said promptly, "waiting to welcome them graciously to our home."

"Good, good. And Dudley?"

"I'll be waiting to open the door." Dudley put on his most winning smile. "May I take your coats, Mr and Mrs Mason?"

"They'll love him!" mum cried.

"Excellent, Dudley," said dad. Then he rounded on Harry. "And you?"

"I'll be in my bedroom, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry.

"Exactly," said dad. "I will lead them into the lounge, introduce you, Petunia, and pour them drinks. At eight-fifteen—"

"I'll announce dinner," said mum.

"And, Dudley, you'll say—"

"May I take you through to the dining room, Mrs Mason?" said Dudley, offering his arm to an invisible woman.

"My perfect little gentleman!" mum sniffed.

"And you?" said dad viciously to Harry.

"I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," said Harry.

"Precisely. Now, we should aim to get in a few good compliments at dinner. Petunia, any ideas?"

"Vernon tells me you're a wonderful golfer, Mr Mason… Do tell me where you bought your dress, Mrs Mason…"

"Perfect… Dudley?"

"How аbout: 'We had to write an essay about our hero at school, Mr Mason, and I wrote about you.'" This was too much for mum. She burst into proud tears and hugged Dudley, while Harry ducked under the table. Dudley was sure Harry was laughing. He would've been, if he'd heard a boy his age spouting such bull. But Mr Mason was an Important Person to Impress, and Dudley would say as much bull as he needed to for dad's sake.

"And you, boy?"

Harry fought to keep his face straight as he emerged from under the table, though he wasn't entirely successful. "I'll be in my room, making no noise and pretending I'm not there," he said.

"Too right, you will," said dad forcefully. "The Masons don't know anything about you and it's going to stay that way. When dinner's over, you take Mrs Mason back to the lounge for coffee, Petunia, and I'll bring the subject around to drills. With any luck, I'll have the deal signed and sealed before the News at Ten. We'll be shopping for a vacation home in Majorca this time tomorrow."

Dudley grinned.

"Right—I'm off into town to pick up the dinner jackets for Dudley and me. And you," dad snarled at Harry. "You stay out of your aunt's way while she's cleaning."

Harry took off through the back door the minute he'd gotten this permission. Dudley followed after him at a slower place, while Harry slumped down on the garden bench. It was a brilliant, sunny day, without a cloud in the sky. When Dudley was halfway across the lawn, Harry jerked up with a wild look on his face, staring into the bushes.

"I know what day it is," sang Dudley, thumping toward his cousin.

"What?" said Harry, still staring into the bushes.

"I know what day it is," Dudley repeated, coming right up to him.

"Well done," said Harry. "So you've finally learned the days of the week."

"Today's your birthday," sneered Dudley. "How come you haven't got any cards? Haven't you even got friends at that freak place?"

Dudley had kept a close eye on Harry when he came back from school. And this was how he realized that Harry, though he'd had all kinds of people hanging around him at the train station, never got any letters or any calls. He doesn't have friends after all, Dudley had thought. Maybe they only liked him because he was famous in wizard places.

"Better not let your mum hear you talking about my school," said Harry coolly.

Dudley hitched up his trousers.

"Why're you staring at the hedge?" he said suspiciously.

"I'm trying to decide what would be the best spell to set it on fire," said Harry.

Dudley stumbled backward at once. "You c-can't—Dad told you you're not to do m-magic—he said he'll chuck you out of the house—and you haven't got anywhere else to go—you haven't got any friends to take you—"

"Jiggery pokery!" said Harry in a fierce voice, his green eyes glittering. "Hocus pocus—squiggly wiggly—"

Dudley suddenly remembered that Harry was not intimidated by giants and had even, somehow, caused the death of a terrorist wizard when he was just a small baby. It was how he'd gotten the tangly-looking scar that snaked across his forehead and made strangers stare, and which Dudley usually didn't notice, it was as much a part of Harry's face as any other.

"MUUUUUUM!" howled Dudley, tripping over his feet as he dashed back toward the house. "MUUUUM! He's doing you know what!"

Mum knew that Harry hadn't actually done anything, but she took a moment out of doing the dishes to aim a heavy blow at Harry's head with the soapy frying pan. Then she gave Harry work to do, with the promise he wouldn't eat again until he'd finished. Dudley smirked, and when mum turned his way, he made a scared face and asked if he couldn't have some ice cream to steady his shaken nerves.

The frenzy in the house buzzed around until dinnertime, when mum shooed Dudley upstairs and into a dinner jacket and bow tie. When he was all ready, Dudley stood by the door and played through his lines like he was an actor on a TV script, while dad went upstairs to give Harry his last warning to stay quiet.

"May I take your coats, Mr and Mrs Mason?" Dudley asked, as the couple stepped through the door. Dad showed them into the lounge to introduce mum and poured some drinks.

The Masons looked appreciatively around the Dursley's well-kept home. Mum laughed and joined Mrs Mason in small-talk. The party was going perfectly.

And then a sound came from upstairs that sounded suspiciously like a wail.

Dad stopped speaking. A thunderous look crossed his face, but he pasted on a smile and continued.

A loud banging noise joined the wailing, and then Hedwig's angry screeches joined too.

The sounds subsided. Mum looked pleadingly at dad, who cleared his throat and said something about dinner.

Dudley wondered what Harry was doing upstairs that would cause so much noise. Maybe Harry had it in for dad and didn't want him to get this deal. Still, even Harry's lot would be improved if they got rich enough to holiday in Majorca. Mum and dad would be so pleased they'd go out every afternoon to the beaches, and Harry would be left alone all the time.

The banging and angry owl screeches stopped for a while, and then started up again. Dudley began to think that whatever it was wailing in Harry's room wasn't Harry at all. I knew we should've moved this dinner to tomorrow, Dudley thought, remembering the giant. The sounds quieted down again, and mum said desperately, "Oh, Mr Mason, Vernon's told me you're a wonderful golfer…"

"Well, I don't know about that," Mr Mason said. "I enjoy it, that's all." He gave mum a smile.

"Speaking of golf, have you heard about the time an American, a German, and a Japanese man went golfing?" dad said.

"I don't believe I have."

"Ah, you'll like it. See, at the third hole, they heard a phone ring. The American stepped aside, put his thumb to his ear and pinky to his mouth and had a whole telephone conversation. "Afterward he looks at the others and said, 'that's the latest American tech in cell phones. I have a chip in my thumb and one in my pinky finger and the antenna is in my hat. Great stuff, eh?'

"They keep going till the ninth hole when they hear a phone ring again. The German tilts his head to one side and has a conversation with someone in German. After, he looks at the others and explains he has the latest German tech in cell phones. 'A chip in my tooth, a chip in my ear and the antenna inserted in my spine. The wonders of German know-how!'

"When they get to the thirteenth hole, another phone rings and the Japanese man disappears into the bushes. The German and American trade looks and walk over to find the Japanese man squatting with his pants round his ankles.

"'What on earth are you doing?' asks the American."

A series of high-pitched yelps from overhead cut through the dining room, so loud they couldn't be ignored.

Dad grimaced and sprang to his feet. "Dudley must have left his television on again, the little tyke!" he shouted over his shoulder as he pounded away down the hall.

Dudley met Mr and Mrs Mason's disapproving expressions with a smile. "Sorry. I guess I was so excited by the thought of meeting you two that I forgot all about the TV," he said.

"Oh yes," mum said, "Duddikins thinks so highly of you, Mr Mason—you had to write an essay, didn't you, dear? At school?"

"Yes," Dudley said. "We were supposed to write about our hero, Mr Mason, and I wrote about you."

"Oh, well," Mr Mason cleared his throat. "I'm glad to hear young people today are taking drills seriously."

"Very seriously," mum said. "Diddum's going to go into the drill business like his father."

"Oh yes," Dudley said.

He'd never thought about it. He realized suddenly that he probably would go into drills. Dudley had nothing at all against drills, especially if he could do as well for himself as Mr Mason. He tried hard to keep up his charming smile.

Dad stumped back downstairs and the dinner-time talk flowed again.

"…tell Petunia that very funny story about those American plumbers, Mr Mason," Dad said. "She's been dying to hear it…"

"Oh, the American plumbers?" Mr Mason said.

There was a huge crash from the kitchen, like the shatter of a dish.

Mr and Mrs Mason stood up with a scream. Dad roared and sprinted into the kitchen to see Harry standing covered from head to foot in mum's pudding.

Mr and Mrs Mason pelted in after and stared in dismay at the small boy. Dad chuckled tightly. "Oh. I'm so sorry you had to see that—just our nephew—very disturbed—meeting strangers upsets him, so we kept him upstairs…" he waved the Masons back into the dining room, where they stood beside Dudley looking shocked.

"That was your cousin?" Mrs Mason asked.

"Yeah," Dudley said. "That's Harry."

"I didn't know," Mrs Mason said. "Does he go to school?"

"No," Dudley said. "He's not all there, really. I'm sure he wasn't trying to cause trouble. He just doesn't like guests."

Mum came back into the dining room with ice cream and a scooper. The Masons seemed to calm down a bit, though Mrs Mason kept glancing back toward the kitchen where Harry was still scrubbing at the tile floor. Mum plated healthy scoops of vanilla beside buttery after-dinner mints and had just started handing out the dessert when a huge barn owl swooped through the dining room window, dropped a letter on Mrs Mason's head, and swooped out again.

Mrs Mason screamed like a banshee and ran from the house shouting about lunatics. Mr Mason stayed just long enough to tell the Dursleys that his wife was mortally afraid of birds of all shapes and sizes, and to ask whether this was their idea of a joke.

Dudley grabbed the Masons' untouched plates and dug into the biscuits and ice cream that had been placed on them while dad grabbed the owl's letter and stormed into the kitchen.

"You didn't tell us you weren't allowed to use magic outside school," dad said loudly. "Forgot to mention it… Slipped your mind, I daresay… Well, I've got news for you, boy… I'm locking you up… You're never going back to that school… never… and if you try and magic yourself out—they'll expel you!"

And laughing like a maniac, he dragged Harry back upstairs.

The next morning, dad got the number of a handyman and paid him in cash to put bars on Harry's window, while Harry sat in the kitchen where mum could keep an eye on him. Dudley took a stack of pancakes and piled them onto his plate. The sound of the workman was loud enough that, when mum got up to wash the dishes, Dudley dared to say, "what'd you do that for?"

Harry looked over with a bleak look. "What?"

"Mucking up dad's deal."

"It wasn't me," Harry said. "It was something called a house elf. He had to punish himself whenever he spoke badly of his masters."

"What, really?"

"He was a slave," Harry said dully. "He couldn't wear anything except a pillowcase. He hit himself on the head with a desk lamp. I dunno. He didn't want me to go back to school."

"Why not?" Dudley asked through a mouthful of pancakes.

"Apparently someone wants to kill me."

Dudley paused with his fork in his mouth, then swallowed. "At school?"

"Yeah."

"Damn."

When the workman had gone, dad spent the afternoon fitting a cat-flap to the bedroom door, so that small amounts of food could be pushed inside three times a day.

They let Harry out to use the bathroom morning and evening. Otherwise, he was locked in his room around the clock.

Hanging out in the back garden wasn't half as much fun without Harry there. And Dudley didn't like the idea of inviting Piers over. In order to go into Dudley's room, they'd have to walk down the hall, and Piers might see the cat-flap on the door. Piers knew the Dursleys didn't have a cat, only an owl and a nephew.

It was summer. The days were long and hot, and the sun shone bright. Dudley found his way to the park where he and the gang would kick a ball around aimlessly for hours.

Three nights later, Dudley woke to the sound of Dad screaming "THAT RUDDY OWL!" and pounding on Harry's door. There was the sound of a car revving and then dad shouting "Petunia! He's getting away! HE'S GETTING AWAY!"

Dudley looked out his window. There, framed against the moon, was a car with the group of gingers he'd seen at Platform 9¾ in it, and Harry was in it too, and the car was flying. Dudley got out of bed and went to the window to watch as the car arced over the blazing blue night like a comet, his eyes open.

Chapter Text

After the Flying Car Fiasco, Dudley rescued his folded paper book from the Cupboard Under the Stairs, when the door of the cupboard was still half-open. When Dudley went back to Smeltings he took the book with him, shoved into the bottom of his school trunk covered with all his clothes and other things. He knew better than to take it out and look at it at school. He only brought it with him because he knew it wouldn't end up locked in the cupboard this way.

Dudley took up boxing. He was good at it, much better than at kicking a ball around. Mum wrote flowery letters every fortnight that Dudley stuffed into his school trunk without reading.

Summer break arrived and Dudley and Piers went back to Privet Drive. The wide paved roads seemed smaller now than they had when Dudley was eleven. The neighbours watched everything from behind white lacy curtains. Piers and Dudley gave each other friendly nods and disappeared into their houses, like strangers. Dudley could not imagine, on Privet Drive, sniggering with Piers over dirty jokes the way they had done at Smeltings.

When Harry came back he was not particularly taller, and barely any wider, though he had calluses on his hands like an athlete. Dudley wondered about Harry's well-kept broomstick that dad locked so ferociously into the Cupboard Under the Stairs. Maybe wizards did fly, like in all the stories.

For a week or so everything was peaceful enough. Dad didn't lock the door of the Smallest Bedroom or even try to put the bars back up. Harry kept his head down.

Then the Telephone Call happened.

"Vernon Dursley speaking."

It was bad luck, probably, that dad happened to be in the kitchen instead of mum. Mum would've hung up the moment "that hooligan" started shouting.

"HELLO? HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR ME? I—WANT—TO—TALK—TO—HARRY—POTTER!"

The voice shouting through the telephone line was loud enough that Dudley put down his fork and turned away from the TV to see what was going on.

"WHO IS THIS?" Dad roared in the direction of the mouthpiece. "WHO ARE YOU?"

Harry hopped up and stared with a look of horror at the telephone.

"RON—WEASLEY!" the boy on the phone line bellowed back, as though he and dad were speaking from opposite ends of a football field. "I'M—A—FRIEND—OF—HARRY'S—FROM— SCHOOL—"

Dad turned his glare on Harry. "THERE IS NO HARRY POTTER HERE!" he roared, now holding the receiver at arm's length, as though frightened it might explode. "I DON'T KNOW WHAT SCHOOL YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT! NEVER CONTACT ME AGAIN! DON'T YOU COME NEAR MY FAMILY!"

And he threw the receiver back onto the telephone as if dropping a poisonous spider.

Then dad stalked over to Harry with a wild look in his eye. "HOW DARE YOU GIVE THIS NUMBER TO PEOPLE LIKE—PEOPLE LIKE YOU!" dad roared, spraying Harry with spit. "FREAKS AND DEGENERATES! DON'T EVEN KNOW HOW TO USE A TELEPHONE! YOU'RE LIVING UNDER MY ROOF AND THAT MEANS YOU LIVE UNDER MY RULES! GOT IT?" He took Harry by the shoulders and shook him.

"Yes, Uncle Vernon," Harry said. "I'm sorry."

"SORRY! SORRY! YOU'D BLASTED BETTER BE SORRY! IF YOUR AUNT WASN'T SO GOODHEARTED YOU'D BE ON THE STREETS WHERE YOU DESERVE INSTEAD OF DIRTYING NORMAL PEOPLE'S HOUSES!"

"Yes Uncle Vernon."

Dad clocked Harry round the head. "YOU'D BETTER BE GRATEFUL WE EVEN LET YOU LIVE!"

"Yes Uncle Vernon."

"NOW GO TO YOUR ROOM!"

Harry didn't need telling twice. He ran upstairs as fast as he could, while Dad breathed in and out like a bagpipe, his face purple.

Dudley turned back to the TV and grabbed another bread roll.

After that fight Harry didn't come downstairs much. Mum sniffed about it. "Teenagers! I should have known the freak would turn out to be one of those sullen types!" she said, but she didn't force the issue; only making Harry come down when he needed to clean the house or weed the garden. This happened about once a week; other than that, all Dudley saw of Harry was during mealtimes, when his cousin was cooking breakfast or sitting sullenly at his spot at the table.

One afternoon, when Dudley had pulled himself up the stairs to use the bathroom, he stopped outside Harry's closed door. Harry, who had been talking quietly to his owl, stopped. A minute later Harry said, "what is it?"

He would never have taken that tone with mum or dad. Mum would've given him chores to do and dad would've yelled at him. But this last fight had been worse than even dad's usual yelling.

"Are you gonna stay in there all summer?" Dudley asked.

"Why shouldn't I?" Harry said. "It saves me from seeing your stupid face."

"Dad didn't mean it, you know," Dudley said.

Harry laughed bitterly. "Sure he didn't."

Dudley shifted from one foot to another. He wished he was back at school in a boxing match. Everything was simple then. You had one thing to do. You did it. It was easy.

"He's not gonna like you any better if he can't see you," Dudley said at last.

"Yes he will," Harry said. "He wishes he could lock me up like he did last year. I might as well save him the trouble."

Dudley chewed his lip. He didn't like to think about Harry sitting in the Smallest Bedroom all summer. Dudley had peeked in there once, after the Flying Car Fiasco, and had seen what a mess it was. Most of Dudley's broken toys had been taken to the curb by mum a long time ago. The bookshelves were still there, but empty. The window had wood splinters around it where the bars had been pulled out, and the cat flap on the door didn't look any better from the inside.

"That doesn't seem like you," Dudley said. "Saving anyone trouble."

Harry shifted around. The springs on his bed creaked. Dudley heard footsteps approaching and backed up. Harry creaked open the bedroom door and peered at him.

Dudley grinned, and Harry sighed. "All right," he said. "I guess the big bad wizard can lower himself to hanging out with muggles. I mean, as long as the muggles aren't scared."

"I'm not scared," Dudley sneered.

Harry rolled his eyes. "If I said a spell right now you'd puke."

"Ha. Says you."

Dudley waited just a moment, to prove he wasn't scared, then walked toward the hall steps.

He turned and looked back on the landing. Harry gave him the finger, and Dudley stuck out his tongue.

Dudley had been figuring out paper chains. Not those flimsy things made from a strip of paper put into a circle and taped. He was figuring out the chains from his folded paper book. You folded a piece of paper back and forth, on top of itself in patterns until it made a sturdy triangle, and then you folded another piece of paper and slid the edges into the previous link. In this way Dudley could make a chain that went in any direction, without a single piece of tape.

He made fat chains and skinny chains, curving chains and straight chains, tangled chains that went off in every direction and chains that stayed very small. He wrote "DONE" in big black letters next to the page on his folded paper book where it showed how to make them. But he wasn't done. He made little chain-links and lined them up one by one, and he made chains that could hang from the hook on his window. He made all the chains he wanted, but when he had made them he smushed them up and threw them in the trash, or unfolded them into crinkly paper, or hid them in his school bag, so that his room looked as spotless as ever.

The morning Harry turned thirteen, an escaped convict was announced on television. Dudley didn't consider for a moment that this might be connected, but he wouldn't have been surprised if you'd told him it was. Strange and terrible things always happened on Harry's birthday.

"Sirius Black, infamous for the mad killing spree, witnessed a decade ago, in which he shot and killed thirteen people, is on the loose. The public is warned that Black is armed and extremely dangerous. A special hot line has been set up, and any sighting of Black should be reported immediately." The man on the television had a gaunt face that was surrounded by a matted, elbow-length tangle, and his teeth were bared in a painful-looking snarl.

"No need to tell us he's no good," dad snorted, staring over the top of his newspaper at the prisoner. "Look at the state of him, the filthy layabout! Look at his hair!"

He shot a nasty look sideways at Harry, whose untidy hair had always been a source of great annoyance to dad.

The reporter had reappeared.

"The Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries will announce today—"

"Hang on!" dad barked, staring furiously at the reporter. "You didn't tell us where that maniac's escaped from! What use is that? Lunatic could be coming up the street right now!"

Mum whipped around and peered intently out of the kitchen window.

"When will they learn," dad said, pounding the table, "that hanging's the only way to deal with these people?"

"Very true," mum agreed, still squinting into next door's runner-beans.

Dad drained his teacup, glanced at his watch, and added, "I'd better be off in a minute, Petunia. Marge's train gets in at ten."

"Aunt Marge?" Harry blurted out. "Sh-she's not coming here, is she?"

"Marge'll be here for a week," dad snarled, "and while we're on the subject," he pointed a finger threateningly at Harry, "we need to get a few things straight before I go and collect her."

Dudley smirked and withdrew his gaze from the television. He knew what Dad was going to say, and he was sure Harry's reaction would be a riot.

"Firstly," dad growled, "you'll keep a civil tongue in your head when you're talking to Marge."

"All right," said Harry bitterly, "if she does when she's talking to me."

"Secondly," dad said, acting as though he had not heard Harry's reply, "as Marge doesn't know anything about your abnormality, I don't want any—any funny stuff while she's here. You behave yourself, got me?"

"I will if she does," said Harry through gritted teeth.

"And thirdly," dad said, his eyes now slits, "we've told Marge you attend St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys."

"What?" Harry yelled.

Dudley stifled a laugh.

"And you'll be sticking to that story, boy, or there'll be trouble," dad spat.

"Well, Petunia," dad said, getting heavily to his feet, "I'll be off to the station, then. Want to come along for the ride, Dudders?"

"No," said Dudley, turning his attention back to the television. He couldn't imagine anyone wanting to sit in a car with Aunt Marge—it would take more than a tenner, that's for sure.

"Duddy's got to make himself smart for his auntie," mum said, smoothing Dudley's thick blond hair. "Mummy's bought him a lovely new bow-tie."

Dad clapped Dudley on the shoulder.

"See you in a bit, then," he said, and he left the kitchen.

Harry jumped up and followed him into the hall.

"I'm not taking you," dad snarled, while the boys on TV opened fire.

"Like I wanted to come," said Harry coldly. "I want to ask you something."

Dudley cocked his head.

"Third years at Hog—at my school are allowed to visit the village sometimes," said Harry.

"So?" dad snapped.

"I need you to sign the permission form," said Harry in a rush.

"And why should I do that?" dad sneered.

"Well," said Harry, "it'll be hard work, pretending to Aunt Marge I go to that St. Whatsits…."

"St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys!" dad bellowed, a definite note of panic in his voice.

"Exactly," said Harry calmly. "It's a lot to remember. I'll have to make it sound convincing, won't I? What if I accidentally let something slip?"

"You'll get the stuffing knocked out of you, won't you?" dad roared.

"Knocking the stuffing out of me won't make Aunt Marge forget what I could tell her," Harry said grimly. "But if you sign my permission form, I swear I'll remember where I'm supposed to go to school, and I'll act like a Mug—like I'm normal and everything."

"Right," dad snapped finally. "I shall monitor your behavior carefully during Marge's visit. If, at the end of it, you've toed the line and kept to the story, I'll sign your ruddy form."

And he walked outside and slammed the door behind him.

The fact that Harry had decided to play along in order to get a school permission form was a level of cunning Dudley hadn't thought Harry capable of. In the past few weeks Harry had even convinced dad to agree to let Hedwig out at night, as long as he didn't send letters to any of his friends.

Dudley missed the second half of his programme so he could dress up for Aunt Marge, and he consoled himself with the thought of the tenner she'd hand him if he smiled and let her hug him with her sweaty hands.

No one could miss her arrival. The moment Harry opened the door she strode in and roared in a voice that rivalled dad's, "Where's my Dudders? Where's my neffy poo?"

Dudley shuffled down the hall, tolerating her one-armed hug and the slimy kiss she pressed on his cheek. Sure enough, a crisp tenner was slipped into his hand, and he stepped back with a triumphant smile the moment he'd gotten his prize.

"Petunia!" shouted Aunt Marge, striding past Harry as though he was a hat-stand to give mum a kiss. Mum, it was sad to say, had to take it without even a consolation tenner.

Dad now came in, smiling jovially as he shut the door.

"Tea, Marge?" he said. "And what will Ripper take?" The Ripper was Aunt Marge's bulldog that she was holding squashed under her strong arm.

"Ripper can have some tea out of my saucer," said Aunt Marge as they all proceeded into the kitchen, leaving Harry alone in the hall with the suitcase. Dudley, who knew how quick Harry could be even dragging a heavy piece of luggage, knew that Harry was dawdling as much as he could. At least Dudley got tea and fruitcake, although he had to sit beside Aunt Marge. Ripper got his saucer of tea, lapping noisily in the corner as dad shouted cheerfully back at his sister.

Mum watched Ripper with a wince as specks of tea and drool flecked her clean floor.

"Who's looking after the other dogs, Marge?" dad asked.

"Oh, I've got Colonel Fubster managing them," boomed Aunt Marge. "He's retired now, good for him to have something to do. But I couldn't leave poor old Ripper. He pines if he's away from me."

What Ripper pined for, Dudley decided, was not Aunt Marge so much as the treats he got if he suffered her embrace.

The dog, who had been happy with his saucer of tea, began to growl as Harry sat down across from Dudley. This directed Aunt Marge's attention to Harry for the first time.

"So!" she barked. "Still here, are you?"

"Yes," said Harry.

"Don't you say 'yes' in that ungrateful tone," Aunt Marge growled. "It's damn good of Vernon and Petunia to keep you. Wouldn't have done it myself. You'd have gone straight to an orphanage if you'd been dumped on my doorstep."

This was probably true. Harry had never figured out the trick of being nice in order to get treats. This may or may not have been Harry's fault, since Dudley could not remember a single time Harry had gotten a treat even when he wasn't making trouble.

Harry gave Aunt Marge a grimace that would've looked at home on the escaped convict Black.

"Don't you smirk at me!" boomed Aunt Marge. "I can see you haven't improved since I last saw you. I hoped school would knock some manners into you." She took a large gulp of tea, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and said, "Where is it that you send him, again, Vernon?"

"St. Brutus's," said dad promptly. "It's a first-rate institution for hopeless cases."

"I see," said Aunt Marge. "Do they use the cane at St. Brutus's, boy?" she barked across the table.

"Er—"

Dad nodded curtly behind Aunt Marge's back.

"Yes," said Harry. He paused thoughtfully and then added, "All the time."

"Excellent," said Aunt Marge. "I won't have this namby-pamby, wishy-washy nonsense about not hitting people who deserve it. A good thrashing is what's needed in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. Have you been beaten often?"

"Oh, yeah," said Harry, "loads of times."

Aunt Marge narrowed her eyes.

"I still don't like your tone, boy," she said. "If you can speak of your beatings in that casual way, they clearly aren't hitting you hard enough. Petunia, I'd write if I were you. Make it clear that you approve the use of extreme force in this boy's case."

Dad changed the subject before mum could say a thing. He probably knew that whatever mum was about to say, it wasn't going to endear her to Aunt Marge. Mum had that pinched look on her face that she only got when she wanted dearly to take things out on someone. But she shoved her fork in her fruitcake instead.

Despite Aunt Marge—or perhaps because of it—Harry's birthday passed without incident.

When dinner and society had been exhausted, the two were excused to their bedrooms on either side of the hall even though the grownups were still talking. Dudley couldn't have been happier to get away. He pulled the bowtie from around his throat and paused by the open doorway where Harry was still standing.

Dudley reached into his pocket and pulled out a five pence and a piece of cherry-flavoured gum. He held the items in Harry's direction without a word, and Harry took the five pence and stuck it into his pocket before unwrapping the gum and sticking it in his mouth.

"I hope you didn't chew this up before you gave this to me," Harry said, though it was obvious the gum had never been touched.

Dudley sniggered.

"Chewed-up gum from Dudley's pocket. My best birthday present ever," Harry continued with a smirk.

"Only the best for the big bad wizard," Dudley said.

Harry managed to keep his temper until lunch on the third day. Aunt Marge loved Harry. Loved having him around to criticize, that is. It got Dudley plenty of expensive gifts, so he couldn't complain. He was getting plenty of treats for tolerating Aunt Marge's presence.

Harry was only getting one.

"You mustn't blame yourself for the way the boy's turned out, Vernon," Aunt Marge said. "If there's something rotten on the inside, there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's one of the basic rules of breeding. You see it all the time with dogs. If there's something wrong with the bitch, there'll be something wrong with the pup—"

Dudley winced as the wineglass Aunt Marge was holding exploded in her hand. Shards of glass flew in every direction and Aunt Marge sputtered and blinked, her great ruddy face dripping.

Aunt Marge thought nothing of it, but Harry, who was staring at the scene in horror, excused himself before dessert.

Over the next three days, Harry made great use of his Imagination. Whenever Aunt Marge started on him, he would stare nowhere in particular until she was finished. This didn't slow her down a bit: she merely proceeded to accuse Harry of being mentally subnormal.

Dudley, meanwhile, stayed quiet and ate whatever was in front of him. In the mornings, Mum washed the dishes with particular vigour, trying to ignore the slobber that Ripper left on the floor.

Dudley's fingers itched for his paper folding, but there was no chance he'd get to practice with Aunt Marge about. Aunt Marge loved to have both him and Harry around at all times, so she had something to talk about. Even Dudley's method of staring into the television during breakfast couldn't entirely drown out the sound of Aunt Marge's loud, bellowing voice.

But at long last, the final evening of Aunt Marge's stay arrived.

Mum cooked a fancy dinner and dad uncorked several bottles of wine. They got all the way through the soup and the salmon without a single incident; during the lemon meringue pie, dad talked about nothing but Grunnings, his drill-making company; then mum made coffee and dad brought out a bottle of brandy.

"Can I tempt you, Marge?"

Aunt Marge had already had quite a lot of wine: her face was very red.

"Just a small one, then," she chuckled. "A bit more than that… and a bit more… that's the ticket."

Dudley shoveled down his fourth slice of pie and counted the minutes until his escape.

"Aah," said Aunt Marge, smacking her lips and putting the empty brandy glass back down. "Excellent nosh, Petunia. It's normally just a fry-up for me of an evening, with twelve dogs to look after…" She burped richly and patted her tweed stomach. "Pardon me. But I do like to see a healthy-sized boy," she went on, winking at Dudley. "You'll be a proper-sized man, Dudders, like your father. Yes, I'll have a spot more brandy, Vernon…

"Now, this one here—"

Dudley risked a glance up from his place and saw that Harry was using his Imagination again. He breathed a sigh of relief and reached for a glass of water.

"This one's got a mean, runty look about him. You get that with dogs. I had Colonel Fubster drown one last year. Ratty little thing it was. Weak. Underbred. It all comes down to blood, as I was saying the other day. Bad blood will out. Now, I'm saying nothing against your family, Petunia" —she patted mum's bony hand with her shovel-like one "but your sister was a bad egg. They turn up in the best families. Then she ran off with a wastrel and here's the result right in front of us."

Harry's Imagination seemed to slip. He stared down at his plate while Dudley's eyes widened. Dudley stared at mum and dad with a look of dawning horror as Aunt Marge continued.

"This Potter," said Aunt Marge loudly, seizing the brandy bottle and splashing more into her glass and over the tablecloth, "you never told me what he did?"

To insult Harry was fine. Expected, even. Mum and dad, Dudley and even Harry knew how it worked. But you didn't insult Harry's parents.

Mum and dad seemed to realize the danger, but the only person who responded to Dudley's silent plea was dad.

"He—didn't work," said dad, with half a glance at Harry. "Unemployed."

"As I expected!" said Aunt Marge, taking a huge swig of brandy and wiping her chin on her sleeve. "A no-account, good-for-nothing, lazy scrounger who—"

"He was not," said Harry suddenly. The table went very quiet, and Dudley suddenly remembered the way the giant had looked right before he lifted up his large pink umbrella.

"MORE BRANDY!" dad yelled, going very white. He emptied the bottle into Aunt Marge's glass. "You, boy," he snarled at Harry. "Go to bed, go on—"

"No, Vernon," hiccuped Aunt Marge, holding up a hand, her tiny bloodshot eyes fixed on Harry's. "Go on, boy, go on. Proud of your parents, are you? They go and get themselves killed in a car crash (drunk, I expect)—"

"They didn't die in a car crash!" Harry screamed, jumping to his feet.

"They died in a car crash, you nasty little liar, and left you to be a burden on their decent, hardworking relatives!" Aunt Marge shouted, swelling with fury. "You are an insolent, ungrateful little—"

But Aunt Marge suddenly stopped speaking. For a moment, it looked as though words had failed her. She seemed to be swelling with inexpressible anger—but the swelling didn't stop. Her great red face started to expand, her tiny eyes bulged, and her mouth stretched too tightly for speech —next second, several buttons had just burst from her tweed jacket and pinged off the walls—she was inflating like a monstrous balloon, her stomach bursting free of her tweed waistband, each of her fingers blowing up like a salami…

"MARGE!" yelled dad and mum together as Aunt Marge's whole body began to rise off her chair toward the ceiling. She was entirely round, now, like a vast life buoy, and her hands and feet stuck out weirdly as she drifted up into the air, making apoplectic popping noises. Ripper came skidding into the room, barking madly.

"NOOOOOOO!"

Dad seized one of Marge's feet and tried to pull her down again, but was almost lifted from the floor himself. A second later, Ripper leapt forward and sank his teeth into dad's leg.

Harry tore from the dining room. Dudley heard the door of the Cupboard Under the Stairs burst open, and then Harry was dragging his school trunk to the front door and sprinting up the stairs. A moment later, Harry was bounding back down, a pillowcase full of stuff in one hand and his owl's empty cage in another. Dad wrenched himself free of Ripper's hold, his trouser leg in bloody tatters, and pelted out of the dining room in Harry's direction.

"COME BACK IN HERE!" dad bellowed. "COME BACK AND PUT HER RIGHT!"

Harry kicked his trunk open and pulled out his wand, pointing it at dad.

"She deserved it," Harry said. "She deserved what she got. You keep away from me."

He fumbled behind him for the latch on the door.

"I'm going," Harry said. "I've had enough."

And in the next moment, he was out in the dark, quiet street, heaving his heavy trunk behind him, Hedwig's cage under his arm.

Dad was the only one who stayed with Marge in the dining room. It was hard to tell if Aunt Marge appreciated it, since the only noises she could make were popping ones. Mum pushed open the door to the back garden and stepped outside, collapsing in front of her rosebushes. Dudley followed her, holding his plate of pie in one hand. The air was crisp, and the streetlamps were only small pools of yellow light in a great blue darkness.

"That boy!" Mum said. "That freak! That horrible boy!" she heaved, splattering yellow vomit into the dirt, and raked her fingers through her brown hair like she was trying to claw it out.

Dudley sat on the back step and finished his pie, then put the empty plate beside him.

Mum began to shiver, and when she turned to look at Dudley her eyes were wet. Dudley held an arm out toward her, and mum crawled to the concrete beside him, sobbing into his shoulder.

Aunt Marge had been wrong about Harry's parents, Dudley knew. They had been killed in a war, or something like a war. The car crash story had been mum's idea, and neither Harry nor Dudley had known it was wrong until Harry's eleventh birthday, when the giant came and told Harry everything. Dudley suddenly wondered if mum had cried when she heard about her sister's death, all those years ago.

When the front doorbell rang, Dudley was the one who got up to answer. On the other side were two colorfully-dressed men that he recognized at once as wizards.

"This the Dursleys?" asked the taller man, who was wearing a great big polka-dotted blouse the color of lemon meringue.

"Yeah," Dudley said.

"We're from the Accidental Magic Reversal Department," said the shorter man, who was wearing a grey cloak and pointed hat. "We heard there was something of a blowing-up incident regarding a Miss Marjorie Dursley."

"Yeah, that's us," Dudley said. "She's in the dining room." He wondered why he wasn't more scared. Perhaps it was because the thought of Aunt Marge staying in the dining room was far more disturbing than even the idea of letting wizards into the house.

"Ah, good."

The wizards strode inside, making a beeline to the dining room, where dad, seeing them, shouted, "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU FREAKS DOING IN MY HOUSE?"

"Not to worry, dear sir," said the man in the polka-dotted blouse. "Miss Marjorie will be just fine." He pulled a long wand out of his sleeve, and dad blanched, scurrying to the other side of the room as the wizard pointed his wand at Aunt Marge. Slowly, Aunt Marge floated back down to earth, where she sat beside the dining room table like a balloon made of flesh, in which only her beady eyes, roaming around, still seemed alive.

The shorter wizard drew a long, shining needle from inside his cloak.

"What—what are you doing with that thing!" Dad said.

"We've got to puncture her, don't we?" the shorter wizard said.

"Puncture her!" Dad said. "Can't you wave your—thing—around and fix this?"

"With a spell like this it's much less trouble just to do a quick poke. It won't take a minute," the shorter wizard said, and slid the long needle into Aunt Marge's distended side. There was a sound like a lot of air rushing out all at once, and Aunt Marge deflated until she looked like herself again, wearing nothing but the tattered remains of her socks.

"WHERE IS THAT IDIOT BOY!" Aunt Marge yelled. "I'LL KILL THAT UNGRATEFUL NEPHEW OF YOURS! HOW DARE HE DO THIS TO ME!"

The taller wizard winced and waved his wand, and in the next moment all of Aunt Marge's clothes had flown back on her and knitted themselves up. "I understand that Miss Marjorie does not know anything about wizards," the taller wizard said. "Is there anyone else in your household who needs a memory modification?" he looked at Dudley as he spoke, as though Dudley was the only one he expected might know the answer.

"Memory—whatsist?" Dad bellowed. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO HER?"

"No," Dudley said. "No one else."

The wizard in the polka-dotted blouse nodded sharply and pointed his wand at Aunt Marge again. "Obliviate!" he said, and a funny look crossed Aunt Marge's face.

Ripper, who had been growling in the corner, came up to her uncertainly, and Aunt Marge hugged the bulldog to her chest. "My!" she said. "How did I end up on the floor! I must've lost my balance," she said, and hiccoughed. "Vernon, help me up, would you?"

The two wizards slipped away, and when Dudley showed them out the front door and peered out after them, he saw that they walked only a few steps into the middle of the street before—with a loud CRACK!—they vanished right into the air.

Chapter Text

"Mr Dursley, do you know why you're here?"

Dudley wasn't fond of the school nurse. She had a perpetual frown between her eyebrows and a way of tsking whenever she saw him.

"End of year. You're meeting with everyone," Dudley said boredly.

"I'm meeting so we can discuss your health."

Dudley heaved a sigh and looked at a crack on the ceiling.

"Your weight has gone up a number of pounds this year."

"You mean I'm fat," said Dudley bluntly.

The nurse sighed. "Your weight is the biggest issue on the table, yes. Quite frankly, you're putting yourself at risk for heart attack."

"Yeah, whatever," Dudley said. "Give me my recommendations so I can get out of here."

"I'm not sure you understand how serious this is, Mr Dursley. This has gone beyond a simple recommendation. Despite having been an active child in the past, your teachers inform me that this year you've skipped PE entirely along with a number of your other classes. You even quit the boxing club."

"I got tired of boxing," Dudley said.

"Did you?" the nurse asked. "I heard you were good at it."

"I'd rather be fat than skinny," Dudley burst out suddenly. "Your 'recommendations' are bullshit. You want to starve me. I won't have it."

The nurse nodded. "I understand your concern, Mr Dursley. And I by no means want to starve you. How about we make a deal. I can't force you to follow the regimen I've put onto this piece of paper or to care about your health. I certainly have no ability to make you skinny. All I want for you is for you to be able to walk around easily on your own feet and participate in a sport. I'm not talking about running or swimming," she added when Dudley opened his mouth to protest. "I'm talking about joining the boxing club again. You're in the heavyweight category, and that's fine. I won't bother you about your health as long as you're able to box. If you can lose enough pounds and exercise enough to rejoin the club when you come back after summer break, I won't trouble you with any more recommendations. How about it?"

Dudley closed his mouth and looked at the floor. He was quiet for a long time.

"Do we have a deal, Mr Dursley?"

Dudley pulled himself to his feet. It took a huge heave to do, and when he had done so, his heart was pounding and sweat had covered his forehead.

"Fine," Dudley said. And he dragged himself out of the room one shuffling footstep at a time.

Dudley had been telling the truth when he said he didn't care if he was fat. But he missed boxing. He didn't know when and how it had suddenly gotten so difficult to even travel a few steps, or why his heart pounded so much at the simplest motions. He didn't think he'd been eating any more than usual, but when Dudley thought about it, he didn't know how much he usually ate in the first place. He simply didn't think about it. When there was food in front of him, he ate it. Dudley liked food. No one had ever dared to call it a problem except his enemies. Dudley was more intimidating now than he'd ever been and his right hook was legendary, but even going after skinny kids who looked at him the wrong way now seemed more trouble than it was worth. He sent his friends to do it instead, and just cracked his knuckles to seem scary. It had been a long time since he'd been able to look at himself in the mirror.

On the day he left for summer break, when his trunk had been packed and he'd sat down, panting at the exertion, at the end of his sagging bed, Dudley said to Piers, "the school nurse said I'm fat."

"Why do you think we call you Big D?" Piers said, and Dudley smirked. He knew as well as Piers the real reason his friends called him that.

"She's right, though," Dudley said. There was no one else in the room and that was the only reason he was able to say, "I lied about being done with boxing. I just couldn't do it anymore."

Piers let out a sigh.

For a moment the two friends just sat there in the empty dorm, sun streaming through the open windows. Finally Piers said, "How're things at home?"

"Fine," Dudley said.

"You haven't heard from Harry?"

Piers had heard a very eclipsed version of Harry's dramatic exit. As far as he knew, Dudley's cousin had just decided to run away for no reason at all.

"He'll turn up," Dudley said.

Piers made a noncommittal sound.

"Are you looking forward to it?"

"What, Harry?" Dudley said. "Don't be daft. I hate Harry."

"Summer break, I mean," Piers said. "I mean, me, I can't wait to be old enough to get out of Privet Drive. It's where people go if they want to spend the rest of their lives shriveling up."

"Where're you gonna go?"

Piers shrugged. "London, maybe."

"Yeah, 'course you'd like it there," Dudley said.

"I'll rent a flat. I'd even invite you to the scene if you want," Piers said, and Dudley made an exaggerated gagging noise.

"You can enjoy your pansy parties on your own, thanks."

Piers laughed. "Give it up, Dudley. We all know you don't actually give a shit about me being gay."

"I wouldn't be your best friend if I gave a shit about something like that," Dudley said.

Harry was unusually cheerful when he came home. This might've had something to do with the fact that he had a godfather now; the escaped convict Black, who had murdered thirteen people without blinking. He grinned on the other side of the table as mum and dad went over Dudley's school report, finding excuses for Dudley's bad marks.

"My Duddikins is a very gifted boy!" mum insisted. "His teachers don't understand him!"

Dad scoffed, slamming his fist down onto the report card. "I don't want some swotty little nancy boy for a son anyway," he blustered.

When the report card accused Dudley of bullying it brought mum to tears. "He's a boisterous little boy," she insisted, "but he wouldn't hurt a fly!"

Dudley was fourteen, and his school friends would've fallen over in shock if they saw the Terror of Smeltings petted like a three year old by his sobbing mother.

But the school nurse's report couldn't be ignored.

It was hard to remember how much Dudley wanted to go back to boxing when mum taped the diet sheet to the fridge, when all his favorite things—fizzy drinks and cakes, chocolate bars and burgers—were thrown into a big trash bag to be replaced with fruit and vegetables. Even his box of moral support donuts had been found and confiscated.

"If my Duddikins has to go through this, we're going to support him," mum decried, and that was the end of the matter.

The Dursleys were on a diet.

Mrs Across-the-Street had come over for tea, and she brought biscuits with her.

"Oh, you're so kind, Yvonne," mum said, looking like she was about to swoon. "But I'm on a diet… in fact, we all are… I've sworn off these kinds of things for good…"

"Oh, really?" Mrs Across-the-Street said. "I thought you'd appreciate the new recipe…"

"I wish I could," mum said. "But I've been reading up about health, you know…" she gestured to the pile of magazines on the counter that sported names like "clean living" and "easy low-fat desserts," "heart disease and all… Vernon's family suffers from it…"

"Ah, well, more's the pity," said Mrs Across-the-Street.

"In my day we never worried about things like cholesterol," dad blustered. "A good steak never hurt anyone, Petunia."

Mum glared at dad across her salad. Dinner had recently become a rather tense affair, owing chiefly to the arrival of large green leaves on everyone's plate and the disappearance of steak night. Dudley chewed on his kale morosely.

"We're standing up for our Duddikins," mum said sharply. "Remember?"

"Yes, of course, but dessert is one thing…" dad tried. "This is rabbit food!"

"It's full of vitamin K!" mum said.

"Vitamins? There's nothing to it!"

"It's salad, Vernon!" mum said. "There's not supposed to be anything to it!"

For a minute mum and dad watched each other across the table, grinding their teeth.

Finally dad hunched his shoulders and stuck a great wad of kale into his mouth, chewing ferociously.

"You're such a good role-model for our Diddy-widdy," mum crooned. Then she glanced over the table and her eyes narrowed on Harry. "You, eat your greens," she said.

Harry, who had been looking at his kale with a nauseous expression, muttered, "yes, Aunt Petunia," and finally braved the salad, taking large gulps of water between each bite as though trying very hard not to gag.

Petunia Dursley's garden parties were legend. Punchbowls glittered, puddings glistened, and snacks piled the gleaming countertops. It was a summer tradition that mum marked off weeks in advance: only this year there was a small hitch in the process.

"How shall I ever do it, Vernon?" mum said, paging through her well-thumbed book of recipes as she sat on the living room sofa one evening. "Butter, cream, sugar, all of my signature dishes out the window… I'll never live it down…"

"It's a special occasion," dad rumbled beside her, keeping one eye on the television. "Give Dudders a break. He doesn't need to keep to that nancy diet all the time."

"A break!" mum shrieked. "Didn't you hear what the nurse said! He might keel over! I'm not going to murder my Duddy just to throw a garden party!"

"Then tell him not to eat the stuff!" dad said.

Mum gasped. "How could you say such a thing! Let Duddikins go hungry!"

Dad groaned. "Give him his own plate of food then… label it so he knows it's his…"

"It's too cruel to make him look at treats he can't have. No, I can't do it…"

Dudley sat quietly on an armchair. This whole diet business had left him feeling more and more like some kind of vaguely unwelcome trouble. He wanted to say that it was fine, mum could do what she always did, but he knew that the moment he saw those platters of sweets all his good sense would disappear and he'd sneak as much food as he could… then mum would feel worse than ever…

"Then… send him off with his friends?" dad tried. "I'm sure he's not interested in a garden party anyway, Petunia… I wasn't, when I was his age…"

"He will not be exiled!" mum wailed.

"THEN CANCEL THE RUDDY THING!" dad shouted, banging his fist on the coffee table. Mum burst into tears.

Dudley looked down at his breakfast, a measly grapefruit quarter, and his stomach rumbled. He dug one section out with a spoon and ate it with a sour look. Mum passed a smaller grapefruit quarter to Harry, who looked at it in despair before finishing it in three bites.

The doorbell rang. Dad heaved himself out of his chair and set off down the hall. Quick as a flash, while mum was occupied with the kettle, Dudley stole the rest of dad's grapefruit and began to scarf it down.

When dad came back he looked livid.

"You," he barked at Harry. "In the living room. Now."

Harry followed dad into the living room and dad shut the door behind them sharply. Gulping down the last of his stolen grapefruit, Dudley pulled himself to his feet and crossed the hall, putting his ear to the door.

"So," he could hear dad saying. "So. This just arrived. A letter—" there was a sound of rustling paper "about you."

Dad started reading aloud, slowly,

Dear Mr and Mrs Dursley,

We have never been introduced, but I am sure you have heard a great deal from Harry about my son Ron.

As Harry might have told you, the final of the Quidditch World Cup takes place this Monday night, and my husband, Arthur, has just managed to get prime tickets through his connections at the Department of Magical Games and Sports.

I do hope you will allow us to take Harry to the match, as this really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; Britain hasn't hosted the cup for thirty years, and tickets are extremely hard to come by. We would of course be glad to have Harry stay for the remainder of the summer holidays, and to see him safely onto the train back to school.

It would be best for Harry to send us your answer as quickly as possible in the normal way, because the Muggle postman has never delivered to our house, and I am not sure he even knows where it is.

Hoping to see Harry soon,

Yours sincerely,

Molly Weasley

P. S. I do hope we've put enough stamps on.

When he had finished reading, there was another rustling sound. "Look at this," dad growled.

"She did put enough stamps on, then," said Harry brightly.

"The postman noticed," dad said. "Very interested to know where this letter came from, he was. That's why he rang the doorbell. Seemed to think it was funny."

There was a long silence inside the living room. Finally, Harry said, "So—can I go then?"

"Who is this woman?" dad asked.

"You've seen her," said Harry. "She's my friend Ron's mother, she was meeting him off the Hog—off the school train at the end of last term."

"Dumpy sort of woman?" dad growled finally. "Load of children with red hair?"

Harry stayed quiet.

"Quidditch," dad muttered under his breath. "Quidditch—what is this rubbish?"

"It's a sport," Harry said shortly. "Played on broom—"

"All right, all right!" dad said loudly. He fell silent for a minute and then spat, "What does she mean, 'the normal way'?"

"Normal for us," said Harry. "You know, owl post. That's what's normal for wizards."

"How many times do I have to tell you not to mention that unnaturalness under my roof?" dad hissed. "You stand there, in the clothes Petunia and I have put on your ungrateful back—"

"Only after Dudley finished with them," said Harry coldly.

"I will not be spoken to like that!" dad shouted.

"Okay, I can't see the World Cup. Can I go now, then? Only I've got a letter to Sirius I want to finish. You know—my godfather."

"You're—you're writing to him, are you?" dad said in a strangled voice.

"Well—yeah," said Harry, casually. "It's been a while since he heard from me, and, you know, if he doesn't he might start thinking something's wrong."

"Well, all right then. You can go to this ruddy… this stupid… this World Cup thing. You write and tell these—these Weasleys they're to pick you up, mind. I haven't got time to go dropping you off all over the country. And you can spend the rest of the summer there. And you can tell your—your godfather… tell him… tell him you're going."

"Okay then," said Harry brightly. He walked out of the living room, grinning at Dudley's shocked look.

"That was an excellent breakfast, wasn't it?" said Harry. "I feel really full, don't you?" He laughed, spun on his heel, and took the stairs three at a time.

Dudley began to wonder when Harry had gotten better at playing mum and dad than he was.

Dudley had thought that he'd gotten over his fear of wizards. He talked to Harry all the time, and when the two wizards had shown up to puncture Aunt Marge, he hadn't been scared. But he thought now he might have been "in shock" when that happened. Because the minute Harry announced that his wizard friends would be arriving to pick him up at five o'clock the next day, Dudley felt a familiar terror in his throat.

"I hope you told them to dress properly, these people," dad snarled at once. "I've seen the sort of stuff your lot wear. They'd better have the decency to put on normal clothes, that's all."

Harry looked doubtful, but didn't say anything.

And for the rest of the day there was nothing Dudley could do to take his mind off of it. He couldn't eat because mum had stripped the fridge and kept as close an eye on it as a general. Dudley sat himself in front of the television, but he kept imagining wizards appearing from the corner of his eye, and it made him jump. Even the eight-sided diamond that Dudley put together from his origami book couldn't calm him down.

On the day the Weasleys were to arrive Dudley couldn't sit still for a minute. He walked from room to room, jumping at shadows and clutching at his bottom. Any friend of Harry's would have it out for the Dursleys. Dudley knew this for a fact.

Lunch was an almost silent meal. Dudley didn't even protest at the food (cottage cheese and grated celery). It didn't have to be good to take his mind off things. Mum wasn't eating anything at all. Her arms were folded, her lips were pursed, and she seemed to be chewing her tongue. She'd spent an entire half an hour on the scale that morning, Dudley knew, because she'd announced it—along with her own lost pound—to dad in a pleased whisper when she thought Dudley was watching TV.

"They'll be driving, of course?" dad barked across the table.

"Er," said Harry. "I think so."

He disappeared upstairs as soon as lunch was over, as though to avoid as much of the unpleasantness as he could.

In the living room, dad held the paper stiffly in front of his face. Mum compulsively straightened the cushions. Dudley crammed himself into an armchair with his hands firmly over his bottom. He knew it wouldn't help, but he didn't know what else to do.

Five o'clock came and then went. Dad, perspiring slightly in his best suit, opened the front door, peered up and down the street, then withdrew his head quickly.

"They're late!" he snarled at Harry.

"I know," said Harry. "Maybe—er—the traffic's bad, or something."

Ten past five… then a quarter past five… mum and dad began to speak in tense whispers.

"No consideration at all."

"We might've had an engagement."

"Maybe they think they'll get invited to dinner if they're late."

"Well, they most certainly won't be," said dad, standing up and starting to pace the living room. "They'll take the boy and go, there'll be no hanging around. That's if they're coming at all. Probably mistaken the day. I daresay their kind don't set much store by punctuality. Either that or they drive some tin-pot car that's broken d-AAAAAAAARRRRRGH!"

Dudley jumped out of his seat faster than he thought possible and flew into the hall where Harry was waiting.

"What happened?" said Harry. "What's the matter?"

But Dudley couldn't speak. He sped for the kitchen in a terror and turned on the TV to keep his mind off the terrible banging and scraping that had suddenly made its way from the fireplace. It worked for a minute or two, when—BANG!

Dudley jumped, remembering the way the giant had burst into the hut on the rock so many years ago.

"Ah—you must be Harry's aunt and uncle!"

Dudley edged his way to the kitchen door and peered into the living room, which was now filled with an assortment of gingers, two of which he recognized from the Flying Car Fiasco.

"Er—yes—sorry about that," said a tall, thin, balding man who could only be Mr Weasley, lowering his hand and looking over his shoulder at the blasted fireplace. "It's all my fault. It just didn't occur to me that we wouldn't be able to get out at the other end. I had your fireplace connected to the Floo Network, you see—just for an afternoon, you know, so we could get Harry. Muggle fireplaces aren't supposed to be connected, strictly speaking—but I've got a useful contact at the Floo Regulation Panel and he fixed it for me. I can put it right in a jiffy, though, don't worry. I'll light a fire to send the boys back, and then I can repair your fireplace before I Disapparate." The man turned to Harry and smiled brightly.

"Hello, Harry!" he said. "Got your trunk ready?"

"It's upstairs," said Harry, grinning back.

"We'll get it," said one of the boys from the Flying Car Fiasco. Winking at Harry, his two friends left to go upstairs, and Dudley ducked back into the kitchen, heart pounding, until he was sure they'd gone by.

"Well," said Mr Weasley. "Very—erm—very nice place you've got here."

As the usually spotless living room was now covered in dust and bits of brick, this remark didn't go down as well as it might.

"They run off eckeltricity, do they?" Mr Weasley said knowledgeably. "Ah yes, I can see the plugs. I collect plugs," he said to dad. "And batteries. Got a very large collection of batteries. My wife thinks I'm mad, but there you are."

Dudley decided he was more at risk from the two boys that had gone to retrieve Harry's trunk than the crackpot in the living room, and edged himself into the living room, sliding along the wall in mum's direction.

"Ah, this is your cousin, is it, Harry?" said Mr Weasley.

"Yep," said Harry, "that's Dudley." He exchanged looks, and smirks, with a ginger his own age.

Dudley clutched his bottom and wondered what kind of stories Harry had told his friends about the cousin who tormented him during the summer. Did they laugh, hearing about the time a giant had cursed him with a pig's tail? Would they want to get in on the fun?

"Having a good holiday, Dudley?" Mr Weasley asked.

Dudley whimpered.

The other two boys walked back in with Harry's trunk.

"Ah, right," said Mr Weasley. "Better get cracking then."

He pushed up the sleeves of his robes and took out his wand. "Incendio!" he said, pointing his wand at the hole in the wall behind him.

Flames rose at once in the fireplace, crackling merrily as though they had been burning for hours. Mr Weasley took a small drawstring bag from his pocket, untied it, took a pinch of the powder inside, and threw it onto the flames, which turned emerald green and roared higher than ever.

"Off you go then, Fred," said Mr Weasley.

"Coming," said the boy who must have been Fred. "Oh no—hang on—"

A bag of sweets had spilled out of Fred's pocket and the contents were now rolling in every direction—big, fat toffees in brightly colored wrappers.

Fred scrambled around, cramming them back into his pocket, then gave the Dursleys a cheery wave, stepped forward, and walked right into the fire, saying "the Burrow!" Mum gave a little shuddering gasp. There was a whooshing sound, and Fred vanished.

"Right then, George," said Mr Weasley, "you and the trunk."

Harry helped another Weasley carry the trunk forward into the flames and turn it onto its end so that he could hold it better. Then, with a second whoosh, George had cried "the Burrow!" and vanished too.

"Ron, you next," said Mr Weasley.

"See you," said Ron brightly to the Dursleys. He grinned broadly at Harry, then stepped into the fire, shouted "the Burrow!" and disappeared.

Now Harry and Mr Weasley alone remained.

"Well. . . 'bye then," Harry said. He moved toward the fire, but just as he reached the edge of the hearth, Mr Weasley put out a hand and held him back. He was looking at the Dursleys in amazement.

"Harry said good-bye to you," he said. "Didn't you hear him?"

"It doesn't matter," Harry muttered. "Honestly, I don't care."

Dudley eyed a toffee that had fallen at his foot. It was probably a terrible idea to eat a wizard's food… but when would Dudley get a chance like this again?

He crouched down and reached out a trembling hand, unwrapping a glistening toffee and inhaling it onto his tongue.

Mr Weasley did not remove his hand from Harry's shoulder.

"You aren't going to see your nephew till next summer," he said to dad in indignation. "Surely you're going to say good-bye?"

"Good-bye, then," dad said resentfully.

The toffee was the best one Dudley had ever had. He didn't know if it was because it was made by a wizard, or because he had spent so long without a single sweet, but as the taste of sugar melted on his tongue Dudley felt a moment of pure bliss.

"See you," said Harry, putting one foot forward into the green flames.

But suddenly the bliss turned to fear as Dudley found his tongue expanding, gagging him and lolling over his open lips, farther and farther, until it had become an unwieldy, foot-long appendage through which he couldn't even breathe.

Mum hurled herself onto the ground beside Dudley, seized the end of his swollen tongue, and attempted to wrench it out of his mouth; Dudley yelled and sputtered worse than ever, trying to fight her off. Dad was bellowing and waving his arms around.

I don't want to have my tongue removed, Dudley thought, as he remembered the shining surgical arena. A tail was one thing, but what would he be without a tongue? He tugged away from mum's desperate grasp, heaving on the floor.

Mr Weasley had to shout to make himself heard. "Not to worry, I can sort him out!" he yelled, advancing on Dudley with his wand outstretched, but mum screamed worse than ever and threw herself on top of Dudley.

"No, really!" said Mr Weasley desperately. "It's a simple process it was the toffee—my son Fred —real practical joker—but it's only an Engorgement Charm—at least, I think it is—please, I can correct it—"

"Let him fix it," Dudley tried to say, but it came out of his mouth as gurgles. He was as wordless as Aunt Marge floating on the ceiling.

Mum was sobbing hysterically, tugging Dudley's tongue as though determined to rip it out. Dudley was suffocating under the combined pressure of his mum and his engorged tongue; and dad, who had lost control completely, seized a china figure from on top of the sideboard and threw it very hard at Mr Weasley, who ducked, causing the ornament to shatter in the blasted fireplace.

"Now really!" said Mr Weasley angrily, brandishing his wand. "I'm trying to help!"

Bellowing like a wounded hippo, dad snatched up another ornament.

"Harry, go! Just go!" Mr Weasley shouted, his wand on dad. "I'll sort this out!"

Harry stepped into the fire, looking over his shoulder as he said "the Burrow!"

Dudley's last fleeting glimpse of his cousin was of the black-haired boy standing wreathed in flames that seemed the exact color of his wide, emerald eyes. Mr Weasley blasted a third ornament out of dad's hand with his wand and mum screamed again, still lying on top of Dudley so that Dudley couldn't move. His tongue lolling out like an anchor, he watched Harry spinning around like a top, faster and faster, disappearing in the rush of bright flames.

It took Mr Weasley yanking mum, sobbing, off of Dudley's prone body for the wizard to perform his reversing spell, but the moment he did, Dudley's swollen tongue began to recede. Mum's wails choked off into hiccoughing sobs, and even dad paused with his hand on a china figurine.

"I'm so sorry about all this, Dudley," Mr Weasley said, squatting on the floor as Dudley heaved himself into a sitting position, and he patted Dudley awkwardly on the shoulder.

Mum shrieked, and Mr Weasley drew back his hand, alarmed. Then he gave Dudley a sheepish look.

Turning back to the rubble that now made up the larger portion of the Dursley's living room, Mr Weasley waved his wand. "Reparo!" Bricks flew through the air back in the direction of the fireplace, sticking themselves back together as they did and falling at last into their rightful places, one-by-one, as orderly as a puzzle. At the same time, the china figurines that dad had thrown pulled themselves out of the fireplace and put themselves back together again, depositing themselves gently on the sideboard where they'd been before dad picked them up. The dust that had been covering the floor in a thin layer of gray was sucked back with the force of a vaccum, and became wall again, with only one thin crack in it.

With a frown of concentration, Mr Weasley flicked his wand, and the crack disappeared too. In a moment you could not even tell that the fireplace had ever been dismantled.

Mum looked like she wasn't sure whether to be relieved at the state of the living room or sick about the magic that had fixed it. Dad eyed the china figures warily, as though they might start doing wizardly things any moment.

"I'll leave you to it, then," Mr Weasley said with a brisk nod, and vanished with a loud crack of air before anyone could answer. Mum shrieked and began sobbing again. She grabbed Dudley by the shoulder and smothered kisses into his hair while Dudley squirmed to his feet, panting and swaying. Dad put the last, never-thrown china figure back onto the sideboard with a shaking hand.

"You—you all right then, Dudders?" dad said.

"Yeah," said Dudley. He trudged away, ignoring the grasping hand mum reached out after him.

He stomped up to his room, his heart pounding, and locked the door behind him. On his bedside table was a clean piece of notebook paper that had never been folded. Dudley reached a shaking hand toward it. He started to fold an eight-sided diamond, feeling his pounding heart slow and the cold fear drift from his veins.

By the seventh diamond Dudley realized that he wasn't scared of Mr Weasley.

Dudley had known Harry's friends had it out for him. It was only common sense that they would. But he'd still eaten the toffee Harry's friend had dropped.

And it had been the most amazing toffee of his life.

Dudley paused in the middle of his eighth diamond.

It had been. Even with everything that happened afterward. For a minute, the taste of it had been so sweet he had forgotten to be afraid.

Dudley enjoyed his food. Everyone knew this.

But did Dudley?

All of a sudden, Dudley wasn't sure if he'd ever spent enough time tasting what went in his mouth to tell.

Chapter Text

Harry had grown over the school year. This did not make him a giant—Dudley was still slightly taller—but it felt odd not to crane down to catch his cousin's eye. Harry's face had rearranged itself as he grew, his jaw stronger than it used to be, his eyes not quite so wide under his thick round glasses. Harry had always had mum's skinniness, but for the first time that skinniness was also accompanied by something of mum's pinched look.

Dudley knew he'd changed himself: with a year of (mostly) sticking to his diet and rejoining the boxing club, this time in earnest, he had gained muscle. He'd also gained the title Junior Heavyweight Inter-school Boxing Champion of the Southeast, which Dudley had grinned about for days, remembering the shock of his knockout blow through the meat of his arm and the way his opponent had fallen flat out cold.

And the cheers! They had been even sweeter than the slice of pie he'd treated himself to after.

Dudley had never been prouder of anything in his life. So he didn't know why when dad talked about having a boxing champion for a son he could only paste on a smile.

During the day, Number 4 was stifling with summer heat. Even the turn of the ceiling fan merely stirred the heat, doing nothing as far as Dudley could tell. His clothes gained pools of sweat under the arms, and mum sat fanning herself between sips of iced tea.

Dudley spent all the time he could in his room, making folded wreaths. He started with a small, flat diamond from one sheet of paper, then slid another one on the end, turning and turning until he had a circle. Dudley put one around his headboard, another around his neck. He took the circles apart again and hid them in his schoolbag, then went downstairs into the kitchen and poured himself a cup of iced tea. When he glanced into the living room, he saw that Harry had flung himself on the couch between mum and dad as they watched the news.

"What are you so interested in, boy?" Dad hissed.

"The news," Harry said.

"The news!" Mum spat. "That's a likely story."

Harry didn't reply, but kept his face glued to the screen.

"What trick are you trying to pull this time?" Mum sneered.

"Nothing. I want to watch the news."

"You think you're going to impress someone?" Dad growled. "You think we don't know what kind of freak you are?"

Harry kept his eyes on the screen.

Mum ground her teeth.

This was another thing that had changed about Harry. Instead of trying to avoid the Dursleys, he was hanging around them any chance he got, watching TV. It made Dudley uncomfortable.

Harry, he decided, didn't belong on the couch between mum and dad, though not for the reasons they were trying to insinuate. Harry was always running, light on his feet. When he wasn't running, he could be found sitting in his room, where he talked to his owl or sent Hedwig flying out across the yellowing expanse of Little Whinging, bringing back dead mice and letters in shimmering ink.

Harry paged through spell-books with moving pictures inside; he rummaged through a heavy school trunk stuffed with long black robes, he wrote using parchment and feather-quills. Why would Harry of all people want to sit in the stale, perfumed living room watching the news?

Drought seared the pristine lawns of Privet Drive. The patter of sprinklers (except Mr Next-door's) disappeared. Heat-haze rose from the blacktop. The midges whined, filling the air in droves.

The only time Little Whinging came alive was at night. The moment the sun's grip loosened, Dudley was out, leaving mum with a fib about going to tea.

Instead, with the gang, he took to his racing bike until the wind covered up the clink of china inside boxy houses.

They stopped at the corner shop and stole fags under the disapproving shouts of the proprietor, took to the play park, climbing on the swings and egging each other on to greater and greater feats of daring. They laughed when the chains broke and landed on wood-chips, getting splinters on their palms. They smoked their ill-gotten loot on street corners, delighting in the disapproving looks from passing cars, throwing stones at windshields. Dudley's legs ached with the burn of pedals as he over the quiet streets, whooping, drunk on his own power.

They shoved little Mark Evans' face into the fence and punched him till the bastard cried uncle. Dudley grinned, watching snotty tears run down the kid's cheeks, and clapped his friends on the back.

Across the empty road, Harry was sitting, broken trainers perched on the low stone wall.

"That guy gives me the creeps," Gordon said, looking at Dudley's cousin.

The dim summer air crackled like warm fire.

Sometimes in the distance Dudley would see Harry walking alone along the curb, hands in the pockets of his torn jeans, nicking the magazines from the bins of unwary houses.

Harry, too, only seemed to come alive at night.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING AT AN HOUR LIKE THIS?" Dad thundered. Dudley, upstairs in his room, turned up the TV. Whatever Harry answered was lost under the noise. "YOU THINK IT'S FUNNY, LOITERING AROUND LIKE A HOOLIGAN? THE STREETLIGHTS CAME ON HALF AN HOUR AGO!"

The cartoons flashed bright in front of Dudley's eyes with endless static movement.

"DUDLEY ALWAYS GETS HOME AT A REASONABLE TIME—"

He could not hear Harry's response, though he could imagine the sullen mutter of it: Dudley just walked through the door five minutes ago—

"IF YOU EVER COME HOME AFTER HIM AGAIN, YOU'LL BE SPENDING THE NIGHT LOCKED IN THE GARDEN SHED! YOU HEAR ME?"

Dudley turned the TV volume higher and rooted in the back of his closet for one of his forbidden cakes. He tore the plastic wrapper and took a bite, making sure to taste it for as long as he could. It was his rule. Dudley could break his diet if he wanted to, but only if he let himself enjoy it.

When Dudley was a boy, he'd been able to sleep through anything. At fifteen, he found himself waking. A howl tore through the hall; a whimper in Harry's voice. "Don't," his cousin begged. Dudley waited for dad to rouse, to pound his fist against the wall until Harry stopped. But dad slept, his snores rattling the walls. Harry's nightmare obviously didn't disturb him the way a hooting owl did.

"Don't," Harry said again. For a minute he fell silent. Dudley started to drift off once more, when the moaning started again. "Don't kill Cedric!" There was a keen, and again Harry pleaded, "don't kill Cedric!" Harry sounded like he was trying, and failing, to fight; the pleading turned to sleep-jumbled sobs.

"Dad!"

The sound was so clear and piercing that Dudley sat upright, staring with wide eyes toward the room across the hall. He had never once heard Harry call out for help from his dead father. Like mum and dad, he kept quiet about them, as though all the Dursleys knew it was best to pretend James and Lily didn't exist.

"Help me! Dad! Mum!"

Harry was dreaming.

The cries turned to mumbles. Harry's bed creaked. The mumbles faded off into snores.

Dudley remembered, years ago, sitting beside Harry at the kitchen table while dad brought a workman in to bar the window of the smallest bedroom. He remembered Harry saying, "Apparently someone wants to kill me," in a matter-of-fact voice.

And Dudley remembered the giant talking about how James and Lily died: at the hands of a monster who'd tried to kill Harry too, and left him with a tangled scar on his forehead.

Dudley had lived in the same neighbourhood all his life, and he could name every sign and street-corner, every quirk and imperfection pointed out by mum's keen eyes. But there were not many of them, even by the standards of Petunia Dursley. Magnolia Road, like Privet Drive, was full of large, square houses with perfectly manicured lawns, all owned by large, square owners who drove very clean cars.

But no matter how large and square the houses and no matter how shining the cars, Dudley thought that it was only at night, when the curtained windows made patches of jewel-bright colour in the darkness, that Little Whinging seemed big enough to hold him.

"...squealed like a pig, didn't he?" Malcolm said, to a round of guffaws.

"Nice right hook, Big D," said Piers.

"Same time tomorrow?" asked Dudley.

"Round at my place, my parents will be out," said Gordon.

"See you then," said Dudley.

"Bye, Dud!"

"See ya, Big D!"

The gang scattered.

Dudley walked through the night-dark streets, hands in his pockets, humming tunelessly. The sky was royal blue and endless above him; and the sweet scent of lilac filled the air.

"Hey, Big D!"

Dudley turned.

"Oh," he grunted. "It's you."

Harry had a strange half-smile; his eyes glittered behind the thick roundness of his lenses. "How long have you been 'Big D' then?" There was a hum around him like static from a TV screen.

"Shut it," snarled Dudley, turning away.

"Cool name," said Harry, grinning and falling into step beside his cousin. "But you'll always be 'Ickle Diddykins' to me."

"I said, SHUT IT!" said Dudley, hands curling into fists. Harry had a way of taking up space without even trying, and the road which had seemed so endless a minute ago was now suffocating. Dudley choked on his anger, knowing it would be moronic to clock Harry even if he wanted to.

"Don't the boys know that's what your mum calls you?"

"Shut your face."

"You don't tell her to shut her face. What about 'Popkin' and 'Dinky Diddydums', can I use them then?" Harry taunted.

You don't tell her to shut her face either, Dudley thought, but he said nothing. The effort of keeping himself from hitting Harry demanded all his self-control.

"So who've you been beating up tonight?" Harry said. "Another ten-year-old? I know you did Mark Evans two nights ago—"

"He was asking for it," snarled Dudley.

"Oh yeah?"

"He cheeked me."

"Yeah? Did he say you look like a pig that's been taught to walk on its hind legs? 'Cause that's not cheek, Dud, that's true…"

A muscle was twitching in Dudley's jaw. He knew Harry loved how furious he was making Dudley, and that Harry was spoiling for a fight; he also knew he'd be lucky to end up like Aunt Marge if he fought back.

They turned right down the narrow alleyway which formed a short cut between Magnolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk. It was empty and much darker than the streets it linked because there were no streetlamps. Their footsteps were muffled between garage walls on one side and a high fence on the other.

"Think you're a big man carrying that thing, don't you?" Dudley said after a few seconds, airing what he would not have dared to refer to under the open sky.

"What thing?" Harry pressed nastily.

"That—that thing you are hiding," Dudley stammered.

Harry grinned again. "Not as stupid as you look, are you, Dud? But I s'pose, if you were, you wouldn't be able to walk and talk at the same time…" In the unlit alley he, too, could do what he wouldn't have dared along Little Whinging's wide roads. He pulled out his wand, and Dudley looked sideways at it.

"You're not allowed," Dudley said. "I know you're not. You'd get expelled from that freak school you go to."

"How d'you know they haven't changed the rules, Big D?"

"They haven't," said Dudley. He knew they hadn't, because if they had, Harry wouldn't have bothered waving his stick around before using it. It was still hard to sound sure with the wand pointed in his direction, knowing what it could do.

Harry laughed softly, his teeth flashing white. With his wand in his hand he was fearless.

"You haven't got the guts to take me on without that thing, have you?" Dudley snarled.

"Whereas you just need four mates behind you before you can beat up a ten year old. You know that boxing title you keep banging on about? How old was your opponent? Seven? Eight?" Harry jeered.

It's not me that keeps banging on about it, Dudley thought with sudden spite.

"He was sixteen, for your information," he snarled, "and he was out cold for twenty minutes after I'd finished with him and he was twice as heavy as you. You just wait till I tell Dad you had that thing out—"

"Running to Daddy now, are you? Is his ickle boxing champ frightened of nasty Harry's wand?" Harry sneered.

"Not this brave at night, are you?" Dudley snapped.

"This is night, Diddykins," Harry taunted, gesturing with his wand. "That's what we call it when it goes all dark like this."

"I mean when you're in bed!" Dudley snarled.

He had stopped walking. Harry stopped too, staring at his cousin.

"What d'you mean, I'm not brave when I'm in bed?' said Harry. "What—am I supposed to be frightened of, pillows or something?"

"I heard you last night," said Dudley breathlessly. "Talking in your sleep. Moaning."

"What d'you mean?" Harry said again. But this time he must have known what Dudley meant. He looked down, his hand tightening around his wand as though for the first time in their spat he felt he needed it. Dudley felt strangely triumphant.

He laughed harshly. "'Don't kill Cedric! Don't kill Cedric!'" Dudley mimed. "Who's Cedric—your boyfriend?"

"I—you're lying," said Harry in a shaking voice. His face had gone grey and pinched, making him look more like mum than ever. In a flash Dudley realized that the taunt, which he'd used to make Harry feel small, had actually hit home.

"'Dad!" Dudley pressed his advantage. "'Help me, Dad! He's going to kill me, Dad! Boo hoo!'"

"Shut up," said Harry quietly. "Shut up, Dudley, I'm warning you!"

But Dudley wasn't going to stop. "'Come and help me, Dad! Mum, come and help me! He's killed Cedric! Dad, help me! He's going to—' Don't you point that thing at me!"

Dudley backed into the alley wall. In a flash Harry had pointed the wand directly at Dudley's heart. He bared his teeth, face twisted into a snarl. "Don't ever talk about that again," Harry spat. "D'you understand me?" The expression on his face was so full of loathing it would've looked at home under dad's moustache.

"Point that thing somewhere else!" Dudley shouted.

"I said, do you understand me?"

"Point it somewhere else!"

"DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?"

"GET THAT THING AWAY FROM—"

Dudley gave an odd, shuddering gasp, as though he had been doused in icy water.

Something had happened to the night. The star-strewn indigo sky was suddenly pitch black and lightless—the stars, the moon, the misty streetlamps at either end of the alley had vanished. The distant rumble of cars and the whisper of trees had gone. The balmy evening was suddenly piercingly, bitingly cold. They were surrounded by total, impenetrable, silent darkness, as though some giant hand had dropped a thick, icy mantle over the entire alleyway, blinding them.

"W-what are you d-doing?" Dudley stammered. "St-stop it!" He groped forward, anchorless.

"I'm not doing anything!" Harry snapped uneasily. "Shut up and don't move!"

"I c-can't see! I've g-gone blind! I—"

"I said shut up!"

The cold was so intense he was shivering all over; goose bumps had erupted up his arms and the hairs on the back of his neck were standing up. Dudley didn't know what Harry had done to the world, or to Dudley, that could have taken even the stars from the sky. A sinking dread numbed him.

"I'll t-tell Dad!" Dudley whimpered, stumbling. "W-where are you? What are you d-do—?"

"Will you shut up?" Harry hissed, "I'm trying to lis—"

But Harry fell silent then, and in the silence Dudley heard something that was neither himself nor Harry; something that was drawing long, hoarse, rattling breaths.

"C-cut it out! Stop doing it! I'll h-hit you, I swear I will!"

"Dudley, shut—"

WHAM! The sound of Harry's voice had showed Dudley where he was, and he felt the sting of his blow connecting. Harry's skinny form went flying across the alley, and with a hollow clatter of wood his wand flew out of his hand. But the darkness didn't recede.

"You moron, Dudley!" Harry yelled, his fingers scrabbling against the ground.

Dudley ran, hit the alley fence, stumbled.

"DUDLEY, COME BACK! YOU'RE RUNNING RIGHT AT IT!"

The rattling sound was in front of him, and there was a heavy tide tugging him to his knees. Dudley screamed.

"DUDLEY, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!" Harry shrieked. "WHATEVER YOU DO, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT! Wand! Where's—wand—come on—Lumos!"

In the cold, directionless glow of Harry's wand, Dudley could see the thing in front of him clearly; a figure robed in tatters, floating, curling its gnarled fingers toward his throat. With every breath it seemed to suck the night in, every star, every sound, and its putrid, death-cold breath filled his lungs. In the monster's breath, Dudley drowned.

The giant seized his umbrella and whirled it over his head, "NEVER —" he thundered, "—INSULT—ALBUS—DUMBLEDORE—IN—FRONT—OF—ME!"

He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley—there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, and Dudley felt a pain in his bottom like something growing and twisting from his skin.

Dudley gasped for breath through his nose like he was swimming in deep water, trying to keep his mouth shut while the vortex in the hooded robe brushed its papery fingers against his neck.

Dad clocked Harry round the head. "YOU'D BETTER BE GRATEFUL WE EVEN LET YOU LIVE!"

"Yes Uncle Vernon."

Dudley turned back to the TV and grabbed another bread roll.

Dudley fell to the ground heavily, back against the dirt, and the creature came toward him, floated over him.

"The ones who live at Number 4?" Mrs Next-Door laughed. "I wouldn't be caught dead with them if it wasn't for politeness. Social climbers," she sniffed. She was sitting out on her lawn chair, taking the sun; completely unaware of Dudley on the other side of the picket fence, on the garden bench behind the bushes where he had fallen asleep an hour ago. Dudley rubbed his eyes and blinked, unable to believe his ears.

"Did you hear about the father?" her companion added sagely. "They say he once spent an entire day barricading his family inside—hammering plywood over the doors—even the milkman couldn't come in!"

Dudley's lungs were rattling almost as loudly as the creature's, now. He curled up, arms across his face, trying to shield himself from the inexorable darkness.

"Wait there sweetums, your bath will be ready in just a minute," mummy said, locking the bathroom door and turning on the water, testing the temperature with her hand.

She put the toilet seat up and kneeled in front of it, sticking her fingers up her throat to make herself sick. Thick yellow chunks of acid went plopping into the toilet.

Dudley watched the tub fill with water as mummy heaved, and stood up, and flushed the toilet, nice and neat.

"DUDLEY? DUDLEY!" Harry's footsteps came closer, pelting wildly against the ground. "GET IT!" he screamed, and the moon, the stars and the streetlamps burst back into life. A warm breeze swept the alleyway. Trees rustled in neighbouring gardens and the mundane rumble of cars in Magnolia Crescent filled the air again.

The lilac trees bloomed, sweet under pools of liquid light.

Dudley's feet moved in a daze. He could feel Harry's broad shoulders under his arm. Harry stepped, sagging, along the street. Mrs Figg was saying something about sorcery.

"Dumbledore—the ministry—underage magic—"

In his mind's eye, Dudley could still see Mum bent over the toilet, trying to make herself as clean as the inside of her house.

"Dementors—magic—MUNDUNGUS FLETCHER, I AM GOING TO KILL YOU!" There was a huge crack of displaced air.

The only real thing seemed to be Harry's back, holding him steady. Dudley tottered and swayed, sweat on his brow, shivering though the chill had already gone.

Stumbling like a drunkard, they made their slow, painful way up number four's garden path.

The hall light was on. Harry stuck his wand back inside the waistband of his jeans and rang the bell, and they watched mum's outline grow larger and larger, oddly distorted by the rippling glass in the front door.

"Phone the police, Vernon! Phone the police! Diddy, darling, speak to Mummy! What did they do to you?"

"Who did it, son? Give us names. We'll get them, don't worry."

"Shh! He's trying to say something, Vernon! What is it, Diddy? Tell Mummy!"

Harry's foot was on the bottom-most stair when Dudley found his voice.

"Him."

"BOY! COME HERE!"

Harry turned around in reluctant obedience and trudged behind the procession. Mum helped Dudley into a chain, and sponged the sick from his leather jacket. His was still nauseous, the world swimming in and out of focus: the scrupulously clean kitchen had an oddly unreal glitter after the darkness outside.

"What have you done to my son?" dad said in a menacing growl.

"Nothing," said Harry.

"What did he do to you, Diddy?" mum said in a quavering voice. "Was it—was it you-know-what, darling? Did he use—his thing?"

Dudley nodded dully.

"I didn't!" Harry said sharply, as mum let out a wail and dad raised his fists. "I didn't do anything to him, it wasn't me, it was—"

A screech owl swooped in through the kitchen window. Narrowly missing the top of dad's head, it soared across the kitchen, dropped the large parchment envelope it was carrying in its beak at Harry's feet, turned and zoomed outside again and off across the garden.

"OWLS!" dad bellowed, the well-worn vein in his temple pulsing angrily as he slammed the kitchen window shut. "OWLS AGAIN! I WILL NOT HAVE ANY MORE OWLS IN MY HOUSE!"

Dudley barely noticed the letter, or that Harry was reading it. He barely noticed dad, purple-faced, shouting, his fists still raised; he barely noticed mum's arms around him. Dudley's insides were queasy, all the terror he'd ever felt trying to squeeze itself through him at once.

Harry pulled his wand out and turned to leave the kitchen.

"Where d'you think you're going?' dad yelled. He pounded across the kitchen to block the doorway into the hall. "I haven't finished with you, boy!"

"Get out of the way," said Harry quietly.

"You're going to stay here and explain how my son—"

"If you don't get out of the way I'm going to jinx you," said Harry, raising his wand.

"You can't pull that one on me!" dad snarled. "I know you're not allowed to use it outside that madhouse you call a school!"

"The madhouse has chucked me out," said Harry. "So I can do whatever I like. You've got three seconds. One—two—"

A resounding CRACK filled the kitchen. Mum screamed, dad yelled and ducked, and Harry wheeled around, looking for the disturbance, his wand outstretched.

"OWLS!" Dad howled, as Harry crossed the room and wrenched the window open. Harry unfolded the letter tied to the owl's leg and looked at it for a long moment.

"Right," Harry said suddenly, "I've changed my mind, I'm staying." He flung himself down at the kitchen table defiantly and faced mum and Dudley. Mum glanced despairingly at dad.

"Who are all these ruddy owls from?" dad growled, catching her glance.

"The first one was from the Ministry of Magic, expelling me," said Harry shortly. "The second one was from my friend Ron's dad, who works at the Ministry."

"Ministry of Magic?" dad bellowed. "People like you in government? Oh, this explains everything, everything, no wonder the country's going to the dogs…." he waited as though expecting Harry to respond.

When Harry didn't give him the satisfaction, dad glared at him, then spat out, "And why have you been expelled?"

"Because I did magic."

"AHA!" dad roared, slamming his fist down on top of the fridge, which sprang open, letting several of Dudley's low-fat snacks topple out to burst on the floor; Dudley watched them go with a kind of mournful dread. "So you admit it! What did you do to Dudley?"

"Nothing," said Harry. "That wasn't me—"

"Was," muttered Dudley. Mum and dad bent over to listen.

"Go on, son," dad said, "what did he do?"

"Tell us, darling," mum whispered.

"Pointed his wand at me," Dudley mumbled. Nothing made sense. The only thing he knew was that magic had happened and Harry had been there. Harry would explain. He'd have to, because Dudley could still remember the creature crawling through Dudley's head and the thoughts that it had stirred up were still there, floating uneasily like dead things, bloated and bobbing on the surface of a lake.

"Yeah, I did, but I didn't use—"

"SHUT UP!" mum and dad roared in unison.

"Go on, son," dad repeated, moustache blowing about furiously.

"All dark," Dudley said hoarsely, shuddering. "Everything dark. And then I h-heard… things. Inside m-my head…"

"What sort of things did you hear, popkin?" mum breathed.

But Dudley only shuddered and shook his head. He couldn't explain. If he tried, he would only sound as though he were being foolish, scared of a few memories.

"How come you fell over, son?" dad said, in an unnaturally quiet voice, the kind of voice he might adopt at the bedside of a very ill person.

"T-tripped," said Dudley shakily. "And then—"

He gestured at his chest.

"Horrible," he croaked. "Cold. Really cold."

"OK," said dad, in a voice of forced calm, while mum laid an anxious hand on Dudley's forehead to feel his temperature. "What happened then, Dudders?"

"Felt… felt… felt… as if… as if…"

"As if you'd never be happy again," Harry supplied dully.

"Yes," Dudley whispered, still trembling.

"So!" said dad, voice restored to full and considerable volume as he straightened up. "You put some crackpot spell on my son so he'd hear voices and believe he was—was doomed to misery, or something, did you?"

But it wasn't crackpot, Dudley thought. It was true. All those memories were true.

"How many times do I have to tell you?' said Harry, temper and voice both rising to match dad's. "It wasn't me! It was a couple of dementors!"

"A couple of—what's this codswallop?"

"De—men—tors," said Harry with exaggerated slowness. "Two of them."

"And what the ruddy hell are dementors?"

"They guard the wizard prison, Azkaban," said mum.

Two seconds of ringing silence followed these words before mum clapped her hand over her mouth. Dad was goggling at her. Dudley had not been so shocked to hear anything his mother said since that night in the hut on the rock so many years ago.

"How d'you know that?" Harry said.

"I heard—that awful boy—telling her about them—years ago," mum said jerkily.

"If you mean my mum and dad, why don't you use their names?" said Harry loudly.

Dad looked at mum, opened his mouth and closed it, as though not sure what to say. Finally he croaked, "So—so—they—er—they—er—they actually exist, do they—er—Dementy-whatsits?"

Mum nodded.

Another owl zoomed through the still-open window like a feathery cannon-ball and landed with a clatter on the kitchen table, causing all three of the Dursleys to jump: as usual only Harry took the lunacy in stride, holding out his hand for the message.

"Enough—fucking—owls…" muttered dad distractedly, stomping over to the window and slamming it shut once more.

Harry read the note the owl gave him while everyone watched with baited breath. Predictably, dad ran out of patience first. "Well?" he said. "What now? Have they sentenced you to anything? Do your lot have the death penalty?"

"I've got to go to a hearing," said Harry.

"And they'll sentence you there?"

"I suppose so."

"I won't give up hope, then," dad said.

"Well, if that's all," said Harry, getting to his feet.

"NO, IT RUDDY WELL IS NOT ALL!" dad bellowed. "SIT BACK DOWN!"

"What now?" said Harry snappishly.

"DUDLEY!" dad yelled. "I want to know exactly what happened to my son!"

"FINE!" roared Harry. He still had his wand clutched in his hand, and at his words, red and gold sparks shot from the tip, lighting the room like a sparkler.

Dudley flinched.

"Dudley and I were in the alleyway between Magnolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk," snarled Harry. "Dudley thought he'd be smart with me, I pulled out my wand but didn't use it. Then two dementors turned up—"

"But what ARE Dementoids?" asked dad furiously. "What do they DO?"

"I told you—they suck all the happiness out of you," said Harry, "and if they get the chance, they kiss you—"

"Kiss you?" said dad, his eyes popping slightly. "Kiss you?" Predictably, the thought that there might have been anything queer involved in Dudley's attack disturbed him more than if Dudley had come home with teeth missing and a dislocated arm.

"It's what they call it when they suck the soul out of your mouth."

Mum uttered a soft scream.

"His soul? They didn't take—he's still got his—" Mum seized Dudley by the shoulders and started shaking him like she might hear his soul rattling around inside him. Dudley'd never known a soul was a thing that could get separated out. He'd not been sure he'd even believed in souls at all till now. His mind strained for what he recalled of religious talk: a soul was where you lived. It collected all your actions in it like a jar getting slowly filled and at the end you'd see what you were made of.

"Of course they didn't get his soul, you'd know if they had," said Harry.

"Fought 'em off, did you, son?" said dad loudly. "Gave 'em the old one-two, did you?"

It was magic, Dudley thought. If it hadn't been for Harry—

He remembered drowning. Cold seeping through him. Death opening its jaws.

"You can't give a Dementor the old one-two," said Harry through clenched teeth.

"Why's he all right, then?" dad blustered. "Why isn't he all empty, then?"

"Because I used the Patronus—"

WHOOSH.

With a clattering, a whirring of wings and a soft fall of dust, a fourth owl came shooting out of the kitchen fireplace.

"FOR GOD'S SAKE!" dad roared, pulling great clumps of hair out of his moustache, a sure sign he was at the end of his rope. "I WILL NOT HAVE OWLS HERE, I WILL NOT TOLERATE THIS, I TELL YOU!"

Harry read the letter with a frown.

Harry saved me, Dudley thought. Why?

"—a peck, I mean, pack of owls shooting in and out of my house. I won't have it, boy, I won't—"

"I can't stop the owls coming," Harry snapped, crushing the letter in his fist.

"I want the truth about what happened tonight!" dad barked. "If it was demenders who hurt Dudley, how come you've been expelled? You did you-know-what, you've admitted it!"

"I did the Patronus Charm to get rid of the dementors,' Harry explained. "It's the only thing that works against them."

"But what were Dementoids doing in Little Whinging?" said dad in an outraged tone.

"Couldn't tell you. No idea."

"It's you," said dad forcefully. "It's got something to do with you, boy, I know it. Why else would they turn up here? Why else would they be down that alleyway? You've got to be the only—the only—the only you-know-what for miles."

"I don't know why they were here," Harry said flatly.

Dad thought for a moment.

"These demembers guard some weirdo prison?" he asked craftily.

"Yes."

"Oho! They were coming to arrest you!" said dad, with the triumphant air of a man reaching an unassailable conclusion. "That's it, isn't it, boy? You're on the run from the law!"

"Of course I'm not," said Harry, shaking his head.

"Then why—?"

"He must have sent them."

"What's that? Who must have sent them?"

"Lord Voldemort."

"Lord—hang on," said dad, his face screwed up. "I've heard that name… that was the one who…"

"Murdered my parents, yes," Harry said dully.

"But he's gone," said dad impatiently. "That giant bloke said so. He's gone."

"He's back."

"Back?" mum whispered.

"Yes," Harry said, meeting her eyes. "He came back a month ago. I saw him."

The nightmare, Dudley thought. Don't kill Cedric, Harry had pleaded. But whoever Cedric was to his cousin, Lord Voldemort had killed him in front of Harry.

"Hang on," said dad, looking from mum to Harry and back again. "Hang on. This Lord Voldything's back, you say."

"Yes."

"The one who murdered your parents."

"Yes."

"And now he's sending dismembers after you?"

"Looks like it."

"I see," said dad. "Well, that settles it, you can get out of this house, boy!"

"What?" said Harry blankly.

"You heard me—OUT!" dad bellowed, and Dudley and even mum jumped. "OUT! OUT! I should've done this years ago! Owls treating the place like a rest home, puddings exploding, half the lounge destroyed, Dudley's tail, Marge bobbing around on the ceiling and that flying Ford Anglia—OUT! OUT! You've had it! You're history! You're not staying here if some loony's after you, you're not endangering my wife and son, you're not bringing trouble down on us, if you're going the same way as your useless parents, I've had it! OUT!"

Harry didn't move.

"You heard me!" dad said, bending forwards, his purple face so close to Harry that flecks of spit hit Harry's face. "Get going! You were all keen to leave half an hour ago! I'm right behind you! Get out and never darken our doorstep again! Why we ever kept you in the first place, I don't know, Marge was right, it should have been the orphanage. We were too damn soft for our own good, thought we could squash it out of you, thought we could turn you normal, but you've been rotten from the beginning and I've had enough—OWLS!"

The fifth owl zoomed down the chimney so fast it actually hit the floor before zooming into the air again with a loud screech. Harry raised his hand to seize the letter, which was in a scarlet envelope, but it soared straight over his head, flying directly at mum, who let out a scream and ducked, her arms over her face. The owl dropped the red envelope on her head, turned, and flew straight back up the chimney.

Harry darted forwards to pick up the letter, but mum beat him to it.

"You can open it if you like,' said Harry, "but I'll hear what it says anyway. That's a Howler."

"Let go of it, Petunia!" roared dad. "Don't touch it, it could be dangerous!"

"It's addressed to me," said mum in a shaking voice. "It's addressed to me, Vernon, look! Mrs Petunia Dursley, The Kitchen, Number Four, Privet Drive—"

She caught her breath, horrified. The red envelope had begun to smoke.

"Open it!" Harry said. "Get it over with! It'll happen anyway."

"No."

Mum's hand was trembling. She looked wildly around the kitchen as though looking for an escape route, but too late—the envelope burst into flames. Mum screamed and dropped it.

An awful voice filled the kitchen, echoing in the confined space, issuing from the burning letter on the table.

"REMEMBER MY LAST, PETUNIA."

Mum looked as though she might faint. She sank into the chair beside Dudley, her face in her hands. The remains of the envelope smouldered into ash in the silence.

"What is this?" dad said hoarsely. "What—I don't—Petunia?"

Mum said nothing. Dudley stared at her, his mouth hanging open. After everything mum had said about wizards—that they were freaks, that they were useless, terrible, disgusting—

"Petunia, dear?" said dad timidly. "P-Petunia?"

Mum raised her head. She was still trembling. She swallowed.

"The boy—the boy will have to stay, Vernon," she said weakly.

She talks to them, Dudley thought.

"W-what?"

"He stays," mum said. She got to her feet again.

"He… but Petunia…"

"If we throw him out, the neighbours will talk," mum said. She was rapidly regaining her usual brisk, snappish manner, though she was still very pale. "They'll ask awkward questions, they'll want to know where he's gone. We'll have to keep him."

She's talked to them before, Dudley thought. All this time... everything she acted out in front of us… it was as pretend as the lies we tell the neighbours…

"But Petunia, dear—" dad tried.

Mum ignored him. She turned to Harry.

"You're to stay in your room," she said. "You're not to leave the house. Now get to bed."

"Who was that Howler from?" Harry said.

"Don't ask questions," mum snapped.

"Are you in touch with wizards?" Harry continued.

"I told you to get to bed!"

"What did it mean? Remember the last what?"

"Go to bed!"

"How come—?"

"YOU HEARD YOUR AUNT, NOW GO UP TO BED!" dad thundered. With a disdainful glance, Harry turned on his heel and stalked loudly upstairs, and none of the Dursleys could miss the way he slammed his bedroom door behind him.

No one spoke after Harry had gone. Dad coughed and shifted, giving mum a pleading look. Mum crossed her arms over her chest tightly before seeming to remember that Dudley was in the room.

"Diddikins," she cooed, "are you all right? Have you recovered?" she grabbed onto his shoulder in a clawed grip.

No, Dudley thought. How can I have? He wasn't sure he'd ever feel the same again. He could not forget the dementors, and he could no more easily forget the memories that came with them. They were memories that had sat quietly in his head for years before being pulled in front of him like criminals waiting for interrogation. Why are some of my worst memories about you and dad? The dementors had skipped past the names his teachers called him when they thought he couldn't hear, the cruel tricks his classmates had tried before he showed them he was too strong to ignore, even Aunt Marge with her wet slobbery breath and her pet bulldogs, and instead come to roost right on Privet Drive. Why did it take a dementor sucking all the happiness away for me to even realize it?

Dudley had filled his days with the distractions of TV and expensive gifts, and food, gobs of food, heaps of food, food he barely even tasted. He sat and let his mum pull him around like a doll and his dad speak over him and never said a word about it. He let Harry ask the questions and take the punishment, while always keeping one ear perked to whatever it was Harry asked, because Dudley wanted to know too. He folded paper obsessively, with the same frantic energy as mum when she vaccumed the carpets and wiped down the counters with her sterile spray. He went out at night with his friends and beat up small children and pretended it made him powerful. He didn't feel powerful. He didn't feel good. The only time Dudley had ever felt good was at school. He felt good about himself when he was boxing. He never had at any other time.

It wasn't a realization.

Dudley had already known this before the dementors showed him. It was why he had shouted at Harry earlier that night. He had known for years that he was cowardly and small, that no matter how much space he took up no one in his family would ever notice him as anything more than a china figurine on a sideboard. He could piss on the floor and mum would still gush about her sweet, angelic son, just as Harry could be as helpful as you please and never be anything more than a freak.

"Dearest? Sweetums?" mum said.

"Dudley."

"What was that?" mum said.

"My name's Dudley, isn't it?" Dudley said quietly.

"Why of course it is!" mum said with a fluttering little laugh. She gave dad a look of fond exasperation. "And you're the best Duddy-wuddy in the whole wide world—"

"Then how come you never use my name?"

"Don't you talk to your mother like that," dad snapped.

"Vernon, hush, he's had a fright," mum said.

"You never do," Dudley said. "You've never once called me by my name. And neither has dad. You never call Harry by his name either." his voice was rising. "Can you even remember what they are?"

"That's enough!" dad boomed.

"No," Dudley said, voice shaking. "I want to know—"

"I said don't ask questions!" said mum. The words rang in the air like a slap. Her eyes widened, and she looked at Dudley like she had forgotten, for a moment, that it was him she was speaking to and not Harry.

Dudley swallowed bitterly.

"I think you should get some rest," dad said meaningfully.

Dudley pulled himself to his feet. He looked from his mum's shocked, pale face to his dad's blotchy purple one. "Good-night," he said, stupidly.

He turned around and walked upstairs, walking to the room across from Harry's and shutting the door.

Chapter Text

When the Dursleys returned, fuming, to Number 4 Privet Drive, Harry had gone. Dad was still yelling about the disrespect, about being tricked, and mum was still alternatively sobbing and hugging Dudley, reassuring him that even if they hadn't actually won the All-England Best Kept Suburban Lawn Competition, anyone with sense would know they were beyond compare. Dudley, who did not give a fig about the front lawn, was therefore the only one who noticed the letter on the kitchen counter. As it was written on heavy parchment, sealed with wax, and written in a flourish of ink, there was no question what kind of people had written it. While mum consoled herself by pointing out the wilted look of Mrs Next-Door's runner beans, Dudley opened the letter.

Dear Mr and Mrs Dursley,

Don't worry about Harry. Your nephew is safe and will see you again next summer.

Sincerely,

Professor Remus Lupin

"Harry's gone," Dudley said.

"Probably took the first chance he had to sneak out and cause trouble," dad said with a sneer before he noticed the letter in Dudley's hand. "What's that?" he barked.

Mum gave a quiet shriek at the sight of her darling son holding a wizard's letter, and sagged against the counter.

"It's from a professor," Dudley said. "They've taken Harry with him. He won't be back till next summer."

Dad grunted. "Is that so."

"Yeah," Dudley said. He handed the letter to dad, who skimmed it and grunted.

"Well, good riddance," dad said. He tossed the letter onto the kitchen table.

Dudley opened his mouth, then closed it again. He could hardly have expected a different reaction from his parents. "Are we sure he's all right?" he asked timidly. "Usually they at least bother to call ahead."

"I couldn't care less if the boy's all right," dad said. "He's out of our hair and that's what matters."

"I wouldn't worry, Diddums," mum said, smiling at Dudley tremulously. "He's done this before and he's never come to any harm." Before the dementors, Dudley would've keeled over to hear her say such a thing, but for the past three days mum had been trying to make up for her unaccustomed outburst by being attentive to his feelings. As neither Dudley nor mum was sure what Dudley's feelings were, this was having only a marginal amount of success.

"I know," Dudley said slowly, "but that was before that Lord-You-Know-Thingy came back."

Mum's smile seemed to shiver. She opened her mouth, but evidently had no consolation to give.

"Forget about the blasted boy!" dad burst out. "He's gone. Making a namby-pamby fuss about it won't change that."

Dudley went back to Smeltings. He was no better at his classes than before, but in boxing he excelled. Every day he lifted dumbbells and watched with increasing satisfaction as his arms padded out with muscle and his legs became a little steadier. He did not think about Harry much, or the dementors, but something of their shadow followed him. He had, Dudley thought, a debt.

"What are you planning to do in London?" Sajhid asked. Everyone in their year had been in a tizzy of excitement all afternoon; plans were talked about loudly and quietly, talked over, refined, and changed again—the Smeltings boys were going on a school trip.

"Haven't decided," Dudley said.

"Well, if you want to join us at the bars, you're welcome to," Sajhid said.

"I might take you up on it," Dudley smiled.

It hadn't been a conscious decision to walk London on his own. Despite what he told Sajhid, Dudley had no great interest in going to bars. Smoking was his choice of vice; he had seen too much of dad and Aunt Marge after one glass too many to find the thought of drink appealing. And Piers, whom he might have joined, was going to Soho in the hopes of running into a handsome stranger. So for one glorious weekend Dudley was on his own. He took the train wherever he wanted, eating in dingy foreign shops with dishes Dudley couldn't pronounce. He marvelled at the brightness of London at night, and in the morning, under a rainy sky, ducked into a huge bookstore whose windows were piled full, cover to cover, with books. It wasn't the kind of place Dudley felt at home. He could not help the way he shifted nervously, afraid that every passing browser would realize he didn't belong, that he had never once read his way through a novel, let alone a hefty encyclopedia. But after a long time of screwing up his nerve, Dudley made his way to the front desk.

"Can I help you?"

"Er," Dudley said. He looked down at the floor and mumbled.

"What was that?"

"I said, does there, er, does there happen to be a book of origami here."

"Origami?"

For a minute Dudley thought the shop-boy was going to laugh at him. Shame made his face red.

"I think we might, down that way." The answer, when it came, was brisk and painless.

"Uh," said Dudley. Somehow he had never considered what might happen if he managed to get this far. He followed the shop-boy's pointing finger. "Thanks." He edged his way down the aisles, keeping his eyes peeled.

The origami section was not large, but six books was more books on the subject than Dudley had seen in his life. He hesitated before pulling one out and paging through: the book was full of instructions and pictures for paper folding. Dudley grabbed the lot and glanced toward a nearby table that seemed to be unused, and with a furtive look round he edged himself into the seat and spread each book out in front of him. He wasn't going to get all six, so he'd better find the best one.

An hour later, Dudley had whittled his selection of books down to two and decided it was as good as he was going to get. He hefted the books under his arm and walked back to the front desk, letting them fall to the desk with a thud. "I'll have these," he said abruptly.

"Right you are," said the shop-boy without a second glance, as if Dudley was the kind of person who bought books every day. The shop-boy rang up the amount and a minute later Dudley was deposited onto the street, blinking and clutching a brown paper bag between his fists. The rain had let up.

Dudley had every intention of making an apology when Harry came back, but he wasn't sure how to start. It didn't help that Harry took the first chance he got to disappear into his room, and did not, as far as Dudley could tell, come back down again at all except for meals. There was of course no possibility of talking to Harry then, in front of mum's furrowed brow and dad's thundering frown.

Despite Harry's usual disappearing acts, Dudley still expected to have most of the summer to catch his cousin alone. If he had realized he'd get a mere fortnight, he would have stationed himself in front of Harry's door to catch him when he stepped out to use the loo.

Tomorrow, Dudley thought instead. And when tomorrow came, Perhaps in a day or so.

It was pitch black out when the doorbell rang.

"Who the blazes is calling at this time of night?" Dad shouted from the living room where he and Dudley had been sitting. He lumbered to his feet and yanked open the front door.

"Good evening," said an old, clear voice. "You must be Mr Dursley. I daresay Harry has told you I would be coming for him?"

As Harry clattered down the stairs, Dudley stood up and edged toward the hall, not quite brave enough to peer round the living room door.

"Judging by your look of stunned disbelief, Harry did not warn you that I was coming," the owner of the voice said pleasantly. "However, let us assume that you have invited me warmly into your house. It is unwise to linger overlong on doorsteps in these troubled times." There was the sound of a pair of tall boots stepping smartly over the threshold, and the door shutting with a definitive click. "It is a long time since my last visit. I must say, your agapanthus are flourishing."

Dad, being in no state to register the compliment, only breathed out harshly.

"Ah, good evening Harry," said the wizard, not at all bothered by the way he had invited himself into the hall. "Excellent, excellent."

"I don't mean to be rude—" dad blustered.

"—yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often. Best to say nothing at all, my dear man. Ah, and this must be Petunia."

The kitchen door had opened, and mum, wearing rubber gloves and a housecoat over her nightdress, was staring at the unseen wizard in shock.

"Albus Dumbledore," said Dumbledore to mum. "We have corresponded, of course." Then he turned, as though he'd noticed the very moment Dudley had allowed himself a glimpse into the hall, and looked at Dudley with bright, sparkling blue eyes hidden behind half-moon spectacles. Albus Dumbledore was an ancient man with a long, white beard tucked into his beaded belt, but he held himself in such a sprightly way that he looked decades younger than he should. His pointed wizard's hat and his robe was blue and embellished with so many gems, sequins, and sparkling mirrors that his every movement seemed to send rainbows down the Dursleys' bland walls.

"And this must be your son, Dudley?" Dumbledore asked.

Although no one said a thing, Dumbledore continued the conversation unperturbed. "Shall we assume that you have invited me into your sitting room?"

Dudley scrambled out of the way as Dumbledore passed him. Dumbledore, he recognized, was another friend of Harry's, and was perhaps more powerful than even the giant.

Harry, clutching his telescope and trainers, jumped the last few stairs and followed Dumbledore with an anxious look, as the old man settled himself in the armchair nearest the fire and took in his surroundings wilh an expression of benign interest. The wizard looked quite extraordinarily out of place—or rather, he looked precisely where he ought to be, only the Dursley's house didn't.

"Aren't—aren't we leaving, sir?" Harry asked with a kind of deference in his voice that Dudley had never heard before.

"Yes, indeed we are, but there are a few matters we need to discuss first," said Dumbledore. "And I would prefer not to do so in the open. We shall trespass upon your aunt and uncle's hospitality only a little longer."

"You will, will you?" dad said loudly at the wizard as he entered the room, mum following him with her eyes fixed on Dumbledore.

"Yes," said Dumbledore simply, "I shall."

He drew his wand so rapidly that Dudley barely saw it; with a casual flick, the sofa zoomed forward and knocked the knees out from under all three of the Dursleys so that they collapsed upon it in a heap. Another flick of the wand and the sofa zoomed back to its original position.

"We may as well be comfortable," said Dumbledore pleasantly.

Dudley realized at once why the giant had held Dumbledore enough regard to curse anyone who spoke against him: they both found taunting those weaker than them to be a marvellous sport. Only unlike the giant, Dumbledore did so with such a composed manner that no one could accuse him of doing anything of the sort.

As the old man replaced his wand in his pocket, Harry blurted out, "Sir—what happened to your—?"

And following Harry's gaze, Dudley saw that one of the wizard's hands was shriveled with more than age; it was blackened so badly it looked as though his flesh had been burned away.

"Later, Harry," said Dumbledore. "Please sit down."

Harry took the remaining armchair at once.

No one else dared to speak; and Dudley watched Harry with growing alarm. Never once in his life had he seen Harry obey anyone with such promptness. Even his cousin's usually-unquestioning capitulation to mum's demands were accompanied by a certain pause, a certain sigh or slouch of his shoulders that seemed to say he was only doing what she said because he pleased—that, indeed, he was condescending to clean the floors, or the windows, or weed the garden out of his own personal interest in the matter.

"I would assume that you were going to offer me refreshment," Dumbledore said, "but the evidence so far suggests that that would be optimistic to the point of foolishness." A third twitch of the wand, and a dusty bottle and five glasses appeared in midair. The bottle tipped and poured a generous measure of honey-colored liquid into each of the glasses, which then floated to each person in the room.

"Madam Rosmerta's finest oak-matured mead," said Dumbledore, raising his glass to Harry, who caught hold of his own and sipped, with evident intention, in the same manner that Dumbledore did.

At the same time, the glasses that had reached the Dursleys had begun to nudge them gently on the sides of their heads. Dudley did not need anyone to tell him that trying anything this wizard gave him would be tantamount to hurling himself off a cliff under the impression he could fly.

"Well, Harry," said Dumbledore, turning toward Harry collegially, "a difficulty has arisen which I hope you will be able to solve for us. By us, I mean the Order of the Phoenix. But first of all I must tell you that Sirius's will was discovered a week ago and that he left you everything he owned."

"Oh," said Harry. "Right."

Dudley could never have forgotten about Sirius Black, the unrepentant murderer who was Harry's godfather; but he had not known that Sirius had died.

"This is, in the main, fairly straightforward," Dumbledore went on. "You add a reasonable amount of gold to your account at Gringotts, and you inherit all of Sirius's personal possessions. The slightly problematic part of the legacy—"

"His godfather's dead?" said dad loudly from his spot on the sofa. Dumbledore and Harry both turned to look at him in the same mirrored motion; Dudley thought that Harry had never looked quite so much a wizard as he did right then.

The glass of mead was now knocking quite insistently on the side of dad's head; he attempted to beat it away. "He's dead? His godfather?"

"Yes," said Dumbledore. Turning back to Harry as though dad was nothing but an unruly fly, the old man continued, "Our problem is that Sirius also left you number twelve, Grimmauld Place."

"He's been left a house?" said dad greedily.

"You can keep using it as headquarters," said Harry. "I don't care. You can have it, I don't really want it."

Who, thought Dudley, was this Dumbledore, that Harry would so nonchalantly throw away land and inheritance from a godfather he'd seemed to treasure? Harry, who jealously guarded every scrap of food he was given, every book in his school trunk, and who polished the gleaming wood of his flying broomstick with the same care mum gave to her flowerbeds?

"That is generous," said Dumbledore. "We have, however, vacated the building temporarily."

"Why?" Harry said.

"Well," said Dumbledore, ignoring dad's muttering, though he had to be aware of the way the Dursleys were now being rapped smartly over the head by the persistent glasses of mead, "Black family tradition decreed that the house was handed down the direct line, to the next male with the name of 'Black.' Sirius was the very last of the line as his younger brother, Regulus, predeceased him and both were childless. While his will makes it perfectly plain that he wants you to have the house, it is nevertheless possible that some spell or enchantment has been set upon the place to ensure that it cannot be owned by anyone other than a pure-blood."

"I bet there has," Harry said.

"Quite," said Dumbledore. "And if such an enchantment exists, then the ownership of the house is most likely to pass to the eldest of Sirius's living relatives, which would mean his cousin, Bellatrix Lestrange."

Harry sprang to his feet. The telescope and trainers he'd been holding in his lap rolled to the floor; but Dudley's cousin didn't even seem to notice.

"No," Harry said harshly.

"Well, obviously we would prefer that she didn't get it either," said Dumbledore calmly. "The situation is fraught with complications. We do not know whether the enchantments we ourselves have placed upon it, for example, making it Unplottable, will hold now that ownership has passed from Sirius's hands. It might be that Bellatrix will arrive on the doorstep at any moment. Naturally we had to move out until such time as we have clarified the position."

"But how are you going to find out if I'm allowed to own it?" Harry insisted.

"Fortunately," said Dumbledore, "there is a simple test."

He placed his empty glass on a small table beside his chair, but before he could do anything else, dad shouted, "Will you get these ruddy things off us?"

While the wizards had been speaking, the glasses had taken their chance, and now all three of the Dursleys were cowering with their arms over their heads as their glasses bounced up and down on their skulls, their contents flying everywhere.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," said Dumbledore politely, as though he hadn't enchanted the glasses himself, and he raised his wand again. All three glasses vanished. "But it would have been better manners to drink it, you know."

It looked as though dad was bursting with any number of unpleasant retorts, but he merely shrank back into the cushions and said nothing, keeping his eyes on Dumbledore's wand.

"You see," Dumbledore said, turning back to Harry and again speaking as though dad had not uttered, "if you have indeed inherited the house, you have also inherited—"

He flicked his wand for a fifth time. There was a loud crack, and in the same moment a small, twisted creature with a snout for a nose, giant bat's ears, and enormous bloodshot eyes was crouching on the Dursleys' shag carpet, covered in nothing but grimy rags.

Mum let out a hair-raising shriek; nothing this filthy had entered her house in living memory. Dudley drew his bare feet off the floor, afraid the thing might take a lunge at his exposed ankles in the way Aunt Marge's bulldogs had always enjoyed. And dad bellowed, "What the hell is that?"

"Kreacher," finished Dumbledore.

It was a minute before Dudley realized that Dumbledore was naming the thing on the carpet instead of simply stating the creature's existence. It wasn't till the thing started speaking that Dudley put it together, because it didn't sound like a name at all. You might as well name someone 'boy.'

"Kreacher won't, Kreacher won't, Kreacher won't!" croaked the unhappy-looking thing, in a voice quite as loud as dad, stamping his long, gnarled feet and pulling his ears. "Kreacher belongs to Miss Bellatrix, oh yes, Kreacher belongs to the Blacks, Kreacher wants his new mistress, Kreacher won't go to the Potter brat, Kreacher won't, won't, won't—"

"As you can see, Harry," said Dumbledore loudly, over Kreacher's continued croaks of "won't, won't, won't," "Kreacher is showing a certain reluctance to pass into your ownership."

"I don't care," said Harry again, looking with disgust at the writhing, stamping thing in front of him. "I don't want him."

And Dudley suddenly remembered a conversation he'd had with Harry, ages and ages ago, when he'd asked what had possessed Harry to ruin dad's deal with the Masons. "It wasn't me," Harry had said. "It was something called a house elf. He had to punish himself whenever he spoke badly of his masters."

"What, really?" Dudley had asked, twelve and incredulous.

"He was a slave," Harry had replied, just as young and innocent.

In all the years since, it had never quite hit Dudley that wizards kept slaves.

"Won't, won't, won't, won't—" Kreacher was wailing.

The disgust on Harry's face hadn't lessened; he was looking at the house elf in the same way mum might look at a clod of dirt that had stuck to her shoe.

"You would prefer him to pass into the ownership of Bellatrix Lestrange?" Dumbledore asked. "Bearing in mind that he has lived at the headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix for the past year?"

"Won't, won't, won't, won't—" Kreacher was wailing horribly, pulling at his long, grimy ears.

Harry stared at Dumbledore.

"Give him an order," said Dumbledore. "If he has passed into your ownership, he will have to obey. If not, then we shall have to think of some other means of keeping him from his rightful mistress."

"Won't, won't, won't, WON'T!" Kreacher shrieked.

"Kreacher, shut up!" Harry barked.

It looked for a moment as though Kreacher was going to choke. He grabbed his throat, his mouth still working furiously, his eyes bulging. After a few seconds of frantic gulping, the house elf threw himself face forward onto the carpet and beat the floor with his hands and feet, as anguished as ever but suddenly, entirely, silent.

Dudley felt sick.

"Well, that simplifies matters," said Dumbledore cheerfully. "It means that Sirius knew what he was doing. You are the rightful owner of number twelve, Grimmauld Place and of Kreacher."

"Do I—do I have to keep him with me?" Harry asked.

"Not if you don't want to," said Dumbledore. "If I might make a suggestion, you could send him to Hogwarts to work in the kitchen there. In that way, the other house elves could keep an eye on him."

"Yeah," said Harry. "Yeah, I'll do that. Er—Kreacher—I want you to go to Hogwarts and work in the kitchens there with the other house elves."

Kreacher, who was now lying flat on his back with his arms and legs in the air, gave Harry one upside-down look of deepest loathing and, with another loud crack, vanished.

"Good," said Dumbledore. "There is also the matter of the hippogriff, Buckbeak. Hagrid has been looking after him since Sirius died, but Buckbeak is yours now, so if you would prefer to make different arrangements—"

"No," said Harry at once, "he can stay with Hagrid. I think Buckbeak would prefer that."

"Hagrid will be delighted," said Dumbledore, smiling. "He was thrilled to see Buckbeak again. Incidentally, we have decided, in the interests of Buckbeak's safety, to rechristen him 'Witherwings' for the time being, though I doubt that the Ministry would ever guess he is the hippogriff they once sentenced to death. Now, Harry, is your trunk packed?"

"Erm…"

The wizards had moved on from the house elf without another apparent thought, as though the house elf's passing off from one owner to another was nothing but an item on a to-do list.

"Doubtful that I would turn up?" Dumbledore suggested shrewdly.

"I'll just go and—er—finish off," said Harry hastily, hurrying to pick up his fallen telescope and trainers. He excused himself from the living room and the Dursleys could hear him running quickly up the stairs, and then the clatter of his things being thrown together.

Dumbledore began to hum tunelessly. He was well-pleased with the whole situation, and Harry's promptness was no more than he expected.

No one said a word.

It was ten minutes before Harry returned, heaving his trunk down the stairs and ducking back into the living room to say an awkward, "Professor—I'm ready now."

"Good," said Dumbledore. "Just one last thing, then." And he turned to speak to the Dursleys once more.

"As you will no doubt be aware, Harry comes of age in a year's time—"

"No," said Aunt Petunia, speaking for the first time since Dumbledore's arrival.

"I'm sorry?" said Dumbledore politely.

"No, he doesn't. He's a month younger than Dudley, and Dudders doesn't turn eighteen until the year after next."

"Ah," said Dumbledore pleasantly, "but in the Wizarding world, we come of age at seventeen."

"Preposterous," dad muttered, but Dumbledore ignored him. Not so much as though dad were a fly, Dudley realized suddenly, but as though dad were… were another house elf, something that could walk and talk but which was unquestionably beneath him.

"Now, as you already know, the wizard called Lord Voldemort has returned to this country. The Wizarding community is currently in a state of open warfare. Harry, whom Lord Voldemort has already attempted to kill on a number of occasions, is in even greater danger now than the day when I left him upon your doorstep fifteen years ago, with a letter explaining about his parents' murder and expressing the hope that you would care for him as though he were your own."

Dumbledore paused, and although his voice remained light and calm, and he gave no obvious sign of anger, there was a sudden chill emanating from him. It was not quite as bad a chill as a dementor's, but something about it was just as icy.

"You did not do as I asked," Dumbledore said. "You have never treated Harry as a son. He has known nothing but neglect and often cruelty at your hands. The best that can be said is that he has at least escaped the appalling damage you have inflicted upon the unfortunate boy sitting between you."

Mum and dad looked around instinctively, as though expecting to see someone other than Dudley squeezed between them.

"Us—mistreat Dudders? What d'you—?" began dad furiously, but Dumbledore raised his finger for silence, a silence which fell over dad as though he had struck him dumb.

"The magic I evoked fifteen years ago means that Harry has powerful protection while he can still call this house 'home.' However miserable he has been here, however unwelcome, however badly treated, you have at least, grudgingly, allowed him houseroom. This magic will cease to operate the moment that Harry turns seventeen; in other words, at the moment he becomes a man. I ask only this: that you allow Harry to return, once more, to this house, before his seventeenth birthday, which will ensure that the protection continues until that time."

None of the Dursleys dared to say a word. Dudley frowned down at his hands. A thought was struggling to the surface of his brain. He could not pretend that he didn't understand what Dumbledore meant by "appalling damage." He had long since realized that despite their protestations, the Dursleys were not the kind of family anyone would envy; and that, though Harry had taken the brunt of the abuse, Dudley's lot had its own kind of misery. But he wondered from what high tower Dumbledore meant to speak, a wizard who used his own power in the same way. That Dudley was the Dursley's favoured son was in no doubt; it had strangled him as well as a noose.

Harry was in some similar way Dumbledore's favorite. And Dudley wondered about the shape of Harry's own noose, and if he prized it as much as Dudley had once prized his own.

Chapter Text

"Kingsley Shacklebolt and Arthur Weasley," said the wizard, in a deep and steady voice. "May we come in?"

It was not the first time the Dursleys had been met by two fully-grown wizards on their doorsteps, but that didn't stop dad from blustering. "What the devil do you think you're doing here?" He turned his ire chiefly toward the more wizardly-looking of the two, a tall, thin, and graying man in patched robes. The Dursleys had met Mr Weasley once before under less than pleasant circumstances, in which Mr Weasley had demolished half the living room while one of his sons dropped a toffee that, once eaten, made Dudley's tongue grow to an alarming length.

"We're here on account of your safety," Mr Shacklebolt said.

This seemed to throw dad off. He sputtered, and looked at Mr Shaklebolt suspiciously. Mr Shacklebolt was a close-shaven black man with a gleaming bald head and a clean-cut suit sporting only an inch of turquoise trim at the cuffs. An air of deep competence seemed to surround him, even more noticeable because of Mr Weasley's nervous energy.

"Our safety?" dad said.

"Yes," Mr Shacklebolt said.

"Well—" dad said. "Well—" it was evidently beyond his powers to invite the wizards in, and so for a long moment he merely stared at the waiting men, growing more and more red in the face.

"The living room's on the left," Harry spoke up at last, and Dudley, who had been peering down the hall over his shoulder, edged away.

Mr Shacklebolt took this as invitation enough, striding inside purposefully; Mr Weasley, following on his heels, gave Dudley a half-ashamed look as he passed and muttered, "terribly sorry."

The wizards sat down side-by-side on the couch, and Harry took one of the armchairs across from them. After a moment's hesitation, dad took the other one. Mum, who had been upstairs when the men knocked on the door, took the opportunity to slide into the room, standing beside the armchair and clutching onto dad's shoulder as though not sure whether she was trying to support him or hide behind him. Dudley stationed himself on her other side and looked at the wizards uneasily. "What's all this about, then?" Dad said.

"I don't know how much you know," Mr Shacklebolt said calmly, "so I'll start at the beginning. The wizarding world has descended into civil war, and your nephew is at the center of it. Because he survived a deadly curse when he was just an infant, Mr Potter is a figurehead in this war. The man who killed Mr Potter's parents, and whose faction we're fighting, has now returned and part of his attempts to crush the opposition include targeting anyone Mr Potter is in contact with. That includes you, your wife, and your son."

It was hard to argue with such a brutal recounting of the facts, though dad looked like he would dearly like to do so. "Target?" he said finally. "Us? Preposterous. We've had Harry under our roof all this time, and your Lord-Whatsit came back years ago…" Dudley was impressed by the fact that dad didn't even try to pretend he didn't know what Mr Shacklebolt was talking about.

Mr Shacklebolt, in turn, was quite unlike any wizard Dudley had seen, for he waited for dad to come to grips with the terrible idea without making any sort of condescending gesture. "Yes, that's true. Up till now Harry has been in no particular danger in this house. A protective charm keeps him safe, but that charm will break when he reaches the age of majority in a few months."

"Majority…" dad muttered.

"Seventeen," Mr Shacklebolt clarified. "I understand that's different among muggles."

"Yes," dad said, puffing up. "Yes, seventeen—bally ridiculous if you ask me—eighteen is a nice normal age, the right time to become a man—"

Mr Shacklebolt didn't argue, and dad nodded once and then again, sharply. "Ridiculous," he repeated.

"As soon as this protection breaks, Mr Potter and your family will be in serious danger. That's why we, the Order of the Phoenix, are offering you our protection. We'll move you to an undisclosed location and keep you safe from enemy forces as long as necessary."

"Move us!" dad burst out.

"Yes," Mr Shacklebolt said.

"Out of the question!" dad said. "Move us! Away from Privet Drive—away from my own home—"

"I'm sorry," Mr Shacklebolt said. "It's all we can do. I wish we could do more."

"Well, what—what about—" dad groped for a better idea, "the government! That's it! Why do we have to rely on you Order blokes anyway, hm? We're not involved in any of that nonsense!"

"That would've been our first choice too," Mr Shacklebolt said, "but the Ministry has been infiltrated."

Dad gaped at him, his face turning a sickly puce. "Infil—infiltrated?" he stammered.

"It's bad," Mr Shacklebolt said. "It's only going to get worse."

During the next four weeks, dad paced the floors, packed and unpacked the cars, announced they were leaving for good only to—hours later—announce they were staying. For once, he was actively seeking Harry out, to loudly rehash both sides of the argument while Harry gained a look of greater and greater long-suffering.

"This Lord Whatsit," dad said.

"Voldemort," Harry said.

"You're sure he's coming here? Who told you?"

"He's coming here," Harry said. "Kingsley and Mr Weasley went over this."

"Yes but, but," dad puffed up, "he's one of your lot. Can't have much interest in the normal world, can he?"

"He does," Harry said flatly. "He kills Muggles all the time. It's a sport to him."

Dad's face went even more purple than usual. "Just because you say so—"

"Yes!" Harry snapped. "Because I say so, because I've seen it! He takes Muggles like you and he kills them, but not before he has a good laugh about it first—he loves watching the way you scream, and cry, and beg him for mercy, because it makes him feel more powerful than anything!"

Harry sprang to his feet as he was talking, and the electric buzz that sometimes hung around him grew stronger than ever, making the hair on Dudley's arms stand on end. Dad eyed Harry uneasily and then harrumphed.

"Well," he said. He stormed out of the house and Dudley could hear the sound of the car starting and the boot being opened and shut. A minute later dad was stomping back in and dragging mum's bags out the door.

Harry's anger had faded. He slumped down and rested his elbows on the kitchen counter with a grey look on his face.

"You've seen it?" Dudley said.

Harry looked up as though surprised to see him in the room. "What?"

"You said you've seen it…"

Harry's shoulders hunched. His eyes grew a little sharper under his thick round glasses. "I…" he started. But whatever he might have been about to say, Dudley would never know, because at that moment mum swept into the room to make a lot of noise with the dishes. Without another word Harry stood and walked out of the kitchen, thudding up the stairs to his room.

Dudley didn't know what a safe-house guarded by wizards would be like. The thought of leaving home and driving away to some unknown place buzzed around in his head, in one moment making his hands icy with terror, in the next, driving his feet with a strange kind of excitement. In between frantic bouts of packing under mum's watchful eye, and even more frantic unpacking under dad's bellowing proclamations, Dudley opened his new origami book and paged through it. His old one had focused on shapes, and it had surprised Dudley immensely to realize that there was far more you could make with folded paper. He paged through a bestiary's-worth of animals, his gaze landing over and over again on the simple instructions for a paper bird, a crane.

The paper crane, the book said, is given as a symbol of health to those who are ill, and as a symbol of victory to the athlete. Additionally, the crane, which stands for peace, honors those lost in war…. It's said that when you make 1,000 paper cranes, whatever you wish for, whether it be health, victory, or peace, for you or someone else, will be granted.

The news had always been bad, Dudley thought, but perhaps it was getting worse than usual. Certainly mum and dad looked far more worried when they watched it than they ever had before. Once dad even jumped to his feet and pointed. "Why, it's that fellow who talked with us—" he said; there could be no mistaking the stately, watchful air of Kingsley Shacklebolt as he stood with, but a little apart, from the Prime Minister's guards as the man made his visit to a hospital.

"I told you," Harry said. "It's a war. Your government is as involved as ours."

Dad was still gaping at the TV. It had not ever occurred to him that he might see a wizard there. He sat down heavily as the next segment started. A bridge had fallen; some kind of structural fault; they were still counting the casualties.

For the first time no one had complained when Harry sat himself down beside the Dursleys as they watched the news. He sat in the center of the couch and looked grimly at the screen, speaking over the newscaster with his own running commentary, "Death Eaters… that one's an attack too… those people were torn up by hags, not an escaped boar… the fogs always follow Voldemort's movements, he's using it to hide… that one's Imperiused… they never said what the plane collided with…"

Mum gasped and shrieked at every one of Harry's conclusions and looked at him in a kind of wide-eyed terror. Dad's hands clenched and unclenched on his knees.

"That's it!" dad said suddenly, jumping to his feet again. "We're getting out of this ruddy place. Out, OUT!—well?" he roared, turning to look at the assembled group. "I want you all packing!"

Dudley still had not figured out how to make his amends. Despite his best attempts (and they might not have been very good attempts) he'd not yet managed to catch Harry alone. Harry barely left his room, although there was a great deal of noise from behind the door: the thud of books being thrown down, of a school trunk being opened and shut, of the wardrobe and the floors and every part of the smallest bedroom being torn through from top to bottom.

Dudley gave Harry the biggest roll at lunch, but Harry only accepted it with a dull nod and ate it mechanically. Dudley poured tea and left the cup outside Harry's closed door when Harry did not come down for tea-time, but was forced, every day, to retrieve it hours later when the untouched liquid had grown cold.

He accidentally "forgot" a tenner in the hall where Harry couldn't miss it, and watched from behind his half-closed doorway as Harry crouched, bemused, to slip the lost bill into his pocket. And, wracking his brains for anything Harry might appreciate, Dudley even bought every newspaper he could from the corner store and slid them one by one through the cat-flap, only to be met with a barrage of swearing that would've given dad a run for his money.

Nothing he did seemed enough.

As he always did when he couldn't figure out what to do, Dudley folded paper.

The first crane took shape under his hands before he'd ever decided he was intending to make one—he had stared so long and hard at that page of his new book that the instructions were seared into his fingers. Dudley looked at the small paper bird on his palm and sighed. He threw it on the ground, where it fell with a papery plop to the floor; but in the next moment Dudley bent down to retrieve the thing, a wild notion entering his head. Grabbing a big black pen, he scrawled a careless "1" on the bird's crisp wing.

And from that moment Dudley knew he was going to make a thousand paper cranes.

He packed his suitcases and dragged them into the boot; dragged them out again and unpacked them; poured Harry cup after cup of untouched tea. Down in the living room, he sat beside his parents as they watched television with Harry, until at some ominous sign or other, dad would stride forward and, bellowing, yank the cord from the wall and shout at them all to hurry up.

The cranes in Dudley's bedroom began to pile up. First ten, then twenty… then thirty… forty… soon every corner was filled with piles of paper cranes, and Dudley ceased bothering to unpack at all, only heaving his luggage in and out of his room and leaving it on the floor where he could pull out his clothes.

One evening, around the 600-crane mark, Dudley took a break from folding to call at Piers'. His childhood friend came outside when Dudley threw a pebble at his window, and the two walked aimlessly through the growing twilight, neither speaking for a long moment.

"So we're moving," Dudley said at last.

Piers nodded. "I figured. Your dad's been dragging stuff to the curb for the past two weeks. Where are you going?"

Dudley shrugged. "Away," he said. "That's what matters, doesn't it?"

"I guess so," Piers said.

They paused under a lilac tree and listened to the night-insects singing. Piers sighed.

"Hey," Dudley said. "You'll get out too."

"I know," Piers said. "It's stupid; I just thought we'd have another year…" he trailed off.

"Yeah," Dudley said. "Me too."

They said nothing for a long time, and at last, Dudley turned to go.

"Hey, Big D," Piers said.

Dudley paused at the corner, looking back.

"Good luck."

The day of their departure had finally arrived. Everything Dudley wanted to bring with him had been stuffed into the boot, except for a few scraps of notebook paper that he tucked into the pockets of his leather jacket. His childhood bedroom was empty except for a stripped down mattress on its bedframe and a few items of furniture too big to bring along: his bedside table, his wardrobe, a well-trodden rug. It looked like a bedroom that someone was moving out of, which it was. The only part of the room that might have been a surprise to any onlooker was the piles and piles of paper cranes that filled every available surface, like a flock that had sat on a waiting pond for a spot of rest during their long journey.

999 paper cranes.

Dudley made his way onto the landing and glanced toward Harry's bedroom as he did. His cousin was still packing; the cup of tea outside the door was still untouched. Dudley sighed. He walked downstairs into the living room, where mum was sitting with a pile of lists and a pen.

"All packed, Dudders?" dad said.

"Yeah," Dudley said.

Dad grunted and turned to the television, which stood in its pride of place: one last time, the Dursleys were going to spend the afternoon watching the news.

Dudley sat down on a stuffed armchair and felt the piece of notebook paper in his pocket. He watched his parents sitting beside each other on the couch, dad's big arm wrapped around mum's bony one. The neighbours were mowing, and beyond the sound of the TV the noise of the machine drifted in, familiar to Dudley from a lifetime of suburban mornings. Dudley got up and went into the kitchen for a cup of water, filling his glass pensively. The kitchen with its gleaming fridge and stove had been wiped down by mum until everything gleamed; but the lace curtains had been taken down, and in their absence the sun slanted in.

Dad muttered something about seeing to the car and got up, wandering outside. Mum shut off the TV. She pulled her salmon-colored coat around her, picked up the duster that had been lying against the shelf and went over the tabletops one more time.

The sound of Harry pacing upstairs had reached a crescendo. Drawers were slammed open and shut, books thudded; the neighbour's mower stalled and he bent down to restart it.

"Lies!" Harry bellowed.

Dudley finished his glass and set it on the counter, watching Mr Next-Door through the unclouded glass. The man was looking up in the direction of the second bedroom with an uneasy expression: the Dursleys and their tempers were notorious on Privet Drive.

The front door slammed, letting dad back in to scrape his shoes on the mat. "Oi! You!" he yelled.

Harry didn't answer. Dudley walked back into the living room to wait.

"BOY!"

The door to the smallest bedroom finally opened, and Dudley's cousin stepped nonchalantly onto the landing.

"You took your time!" roared dad. "Get down here, I want a word!"

Harry strolled downstairs, his hands deep in his jeans pockets.

"Yes?" asked Harry insolently.

"Sit down!" said dad. Harry raised his eyebrows. "Please!" added dad, wincing slightly as though the word was sharp in his throat.

Harry sat.

Dad began to pace up and down, his purple face crumpled with concentration. He was obviously talking himself into another change of heart.

Dad stopped in front of Harry and spoke.

"I've changed my mind," he said.

"What a surprise," said Harry.

"Don't you take that tone—" mum began in a shrill voice, but dad waved her down.

"It's all a lot of claptrap," said dad, glaring at Harry. "I've decided I don't believe a word of it. We're staying put, we're not going anywhere."

Harry adopted a bland and somewhat amused expression.

"According to you," dad said now, resuming his pacing up and down the living room, "we—Petunia, Dudley, and I—are in danger. From—from—"

"Some of 'my lot,' right," said Harry.

"Well, I don't believe it," dad repeated, coming to a halt in front of Harry again. "I was awake half the night thinking it all over, and I believe it's a plot to get the house."

"The house?" said Harry. "What house?"

"This house!" dad shrieked, the vein in his forehead starting to pulse. "Our house! House prices are skyrocketing around here! You want us out of the way and then you're going to do a bit of hocus-pocus and before we know it the deeds will be in your name and—"

"Are you out of your mind?" said Harry. "A plot to get this house? Are you actually as stupid as you look?"

"Don't you dare—!" mum hissed again, but again, dad waved her down: Slights on his personal appearance were, it seemed, as nothing to the danger he had spotted.

"Just in case you've forgotten," said Harry, "I've already got a house, my godfather left me one. So why would I want this one? All the happy memories?"

There was silence. Dad's face puffed up, and then deflated. His theory about Harry's intentions was pretty soundly defeated.

He resumed pacing, grasping for some other reason why the Dursleys would have to stay. "You claim, that this Lord Thing—"

"—Voldemort," said Harry irritably, "and we've been through this about a hundred times already. This isn't a claim, it's fact, Dumbledore told you last year, and Kingsley and Mr Weasley—"

Dad hunched his shoulders angrily.

"—Kingsley and Mr Weasley explained it all as well," Harry pressed on remorselessly. "Once I'm seventeen, the protective charm that keeps me safe will break, and that exposes you as well as me. The Order is sure Voldemort will target you, whether to torture you to try and find out where I am, or because he thinks by holding you hostage I'd come and try to rescue you."

Dad and Harry's eyes met for a moment in awkward silence.

Then dad walked on and Harry resumed, "You've got to go into hiding and the Order wants to help. You're being offered serious protection, the best there is."

Dad said nothing, but continued to pace up and down. Outside the sun hung low over the hedges. The next-door neighbor's lawn mower stalled again.

"I thought there was a Ministry of Magic?" said dad abruptly.

"There is," said Harry, who seemed as surprised as Dudley by the fact that dad had willingly let the dreaded M-word leave his mouth.

"Well, then, why can't they protect us? It seems to me that, as innocent victims, guilty of nothing more than harboring a marked man, we ought to qualify for government protection!"

Harry laughed bitterly. "You heard what Mr Weasley and Kingsley said. We think the Ministry has been infiltrated."

Dad strode to the fireplace and back, breathing so heavily that his mustache rippled.

"All right," he said, stopping in front of Harry yet again. "All right, let's say, for the sake of argument, we accept this protection. I still don't see why we can't have that Kingsley bloke."

Harry spoke through gritted teeth, "As I've told you," he said, "Kingsley is protecting the Mug—I mean, your Prime Minister."

"Exactly—he's the best!" said dad, pointing at the blank television screen as though perhaps Mr Shacklebolt was still somewhere inside it.

"Well, he's taken," said Harry. "But Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle are more than up to the job—"

"If we'd even seen CVs…"

Harry lost patience. Getting to his feet, he advanced on dad, now pointing at the darkened TV set himself.

"These accidents aren't accidents—" Harry hissed. "The crashes and explosions and derailments and whatever else has happened since we last watched the news. People are disappearing and dying and he's behind it—Voldemort. I've told you this over and over again, he kills Muggles for fun. Even the fogs—they're caused by dementors, and if you can't remember what they are, ask your son!"

Harry's words ended in a shout as he turned to look at Dudley, and Dudley raised his hand to his mouth.

"There are… more of them?" Dudley said haltingly.

"More?" laughed Harry wildly. "More than the two that attacked us, you mean? Of course there are, there are hundreds, maybe thousands by this time, seeing as they feed off fear and despair—"

"All right, all right," blustered dad. "You've made your point—"

"I hope so," said Harry viciously, "because once I'm seventeen, all of them—Death Eaters, dementors, maybe even Inferi—which means dead bodies enchanted by a Dark wizard—will be able to find you and will certainly attack you. And if you remember the last time you tried to outrun wizards, I think you'll agree you need help."

Finally dad blurted out, "But what about my work? What about Dudley's school? I don't suppose those things matter to a bunch of layabout wizards—"

"Don't you understand?" shouted Harry. "They will torture and kill you like they did my parents!"

And Cedric, Dudley thought, remembering the nightmare in which Harry—the bravest person he knew—had been able to do nothing more than sob.

And suddenly Dudley had had enough.

"Dad," said Dudley in a loud voice, "Dad—I'm going with these Order people."

"Dudley," said Harry, "for the first time in your life, you're talking sense."

Harry glanced at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece. "They'll be here in about five minutes," he said, and left the room.

Dad and mum said nothing. Dudley didn't either, but he stuck his hands in his pockets awkwardly, eyeing the fireplace. Most wizards came to the door, but you never knew.

The doorbell rang.

Harry, who had gone dramatically up to his room after his pronouncement, came back downstairs and answered the door.

"Harry Potter!" squeaked an excited voice; a small man in a mauve top hat was sweeping him a deep bow. "An honor, as ever!"

"Thanks, Dedalus," said Harry. "It's really good of you to do this… They're through here, my aunt and uncle and cousin…."

"Good day to you, Harry Potter's relatives!" said Mr Diggle happily, striding into the living room. He seemed cracked even for a wizard. Dudley shrank back and looked anxiously at the man's companion, Hestia Jones, who at least had the good sense not to seem delighted at the prospect of ripping a family away from house and home.

"I see you are packed and ready. Excellent! The plan, as Harry has told you, is a simple one," said Mr Diggle, pulling an immense pocket watch out of his waistcoat and examining it. "We shall be leaving before Harry does. Due to the danger of using magic in your house—Harry being still underage, it could provide the Ministry with an excuse to arrest him—we shall be driving, say, ten miles or so, before Disapparating to the safe location we have picked out for you. You know how to drive, I take it?" he asked dad politely.

"Know how to—? Of course I ruddy well know how to drive!" spluttered dad.

"Very clever of you, sir, very clever, I personally would be utterly bamboozled by all those buttons and knobs," said Mr Diggle. He was clearly under the impression that he was flattering dad, who was visibly losing confidence in the plan with every word the wizard spoke.

"Can't even drive," dad muttered under his breath.

"You, Harry," Mr Diggle continued, "will wait here for your guard. There has been a little change in the arrangements—"

"What d'you mean?" said Harry. "I thought Mad-Eye was going to come and take me by Side-Along-Apparition?"

"Can't do it," said Ms Jones tersely. "Mad-Eye will explain."

A loud voice screeched "Hurry up!" and made everyone jump; only Mr Diggle didn't seem alarmed. He pulled out his pocket watch, which had been the source of the noise, and nodded at it before tucking it back into his waistcoat.

"Quite right, we're operating to a very tight schedule," said Mr Diggle. "We are attempting to time your departure from the house with your family's Disapparition, Harry; thus, the charm breaks at the moment you all head for safety." He turned to the Dursleys. "Well, are we all packed and ready to go?"

Dad said nothing. He was still staring, appalled, at the bulge of the talking pocket watch in Mr Diggle's waistcoat pocket.

"Perhaps we should wait outside in the hall, Dedalus," murmured Ms Jones.

"There's no need," Harry muttered.

"Well, this is good-bye, then, boy," dad said loudly. He swung his right arm upward to shake Harry's hand, but at the last moment seemed unable to face it, and merely closed his fist and began swinging it backward and forward like a metronome.

"Ready, Diddy?" asked mum, fussily checking the clasp of her handbag so as to avoid looking at Harry altogether.

Dudley could not answer. He realized for the first time that in all their jumbled gibberish the wizards had been speaking of sending him and dad and mum to one place, while Harry went somewhere entirely different.

"Come along, then," said dad.

"I don't understand," Dudley said, looking at Harry.

"What don't you understand, popkin?" asked mum.

Dudley gestured at Harry. "Why isn't he coming with us?"

"What?" said dad loudly.

"Why isn't he coming too?" asked Dudley.

"Well, he—he doesn't want to," said dad, turning to glare at Harry and adding, "You don't want to, do you?"

"Not in the slightest," said Harry.

"There you are," dad told Dudley. "Now come on, we're off."

He marched out of the room. They heard the front door open, but Dudley did not move and after a few faltering steps mum stopped too.

"What now?" dad barked, reappearing in the doorway.

They were going to watch Harry disappear with a bunch of wizards and no one was going to say a thing. Finally, after a painful struggle, Dudley forced himself to ask a question he wanted to know the answer to. "But where's he going to go?"

"But . . . surely you know where your nephew is going?" Ms Jones asked, looking bewildered.

"Certainly we know," said dad. "He's off with some of your lot, isn't he? Right, Dudley, let's get in the car, you heard the man, we're in a hurry."

Again, dad marched as far as the front door, but Dudley did not follow.

"Off with some of our lot?"

Ms Jones looked outraged. It did not seem to occur to her that not a single wizard had ever bothered to explain a bit of Harry's life to the Dursleys.

"It's fine," Harry assured her. "It doesn't matter, honestly."

"Doesn't matter?" repeated Ms Jones, her voice rising ominously. "Don't these people realize what you've been through? What danger you are in? The unique position you hold in the hearts of the anti-Voldemort movement?"

"Er—no, they don't," said Harry. "They think I'm a waste of space, actually, but I'm used to—"

"I don't think you're a waste of space."

Harry was staring at Dudley in astonishment. Dudley went red in the face, embarrassed that Ms Jones and mum were here to see him say something like this. But he had run out of time. There was going to be no moment where he could catch Harry alone.

"Well… er… thanks, Dudley," said Harry, looking just as uncomfortable as Dudley felt.

"You saved my life," Dudley mumbled.

"Not really," Harry deflected. "It was your soul the dementor would have taken…."

After opening his mouth once or twice more, Dudley subsided into scarlet-faced silence. He could not think what else to say, now that he had thanked Harry. Harry did not seem to know what to say either. They stared at each other in an awkward silence that was broken only when mum burst into tears.

"S-so sweet, Dudders…" she sobbed, throwing herself against Dudley "S-such a lovely b-boy… s-saying thank you…"

"But he hasn't said thank you at all!" said Ms Jones indignantly. "He only said he didn't think Harry was a waste of space!"

"Yeah, but coming from Dudley that's like 'I love you,'" said Harry, with an amused look towards mum.

"Are we going or not?" roared dad, reappearing yet again at the living room door. "I thought we were on a tight schedule!"

"Yes—yes, we are," said Mr Diggle. "We really must be off. Harry—"

He tripped forward and wrung Harry's hand with both of his own.

"—good luck. I hope we meet again. The hopes of the Wizarding world rest upon your shoulders."

"Oh," said Harry, "right. Thanks." He did not look encouraged by this reminder.

"Farewell, Harry," said Ms Jones, also clasping his hand. "Our thoughts go with you."

"I hope everything's okay," said Harry with a glance from the wizards to mum and Dudley.

"Oh, I'm sure we shall end up the best of chums," said Mr Diggle brightly, waving his hat as he left the room. Ms Jones followed him.

Dudley gently released himself from his mum's clutches and walked toward Harry, holding out his hand; this gesture inspired Mum to start sobbing all over again.

"Blimey, Dudley," said Harry, "did the dementors blow a different personality into you?"

"Dunno," muttered Dudley. "See you, Harry."

"Yeah…" said Harry, taking Dudley's hand and shaking it. "Maybe. Take care, Big D."

Dudley nearly smiled.

Dad was in the driver's seat with the wizard, Mr Diggle, beside him. His moustache was already beginning to blow about; despite Mr Diggle's optimism, Dudley knew it would take more than a road trip to make him and dad 'the best of chums.' For one thing, he would have to lose the waistcoat.

Ms Jones was sitting in the backseat. She glanced up when Dudley got inside, and he nodded at her awkwardly.

Ms Jones' lips thinned. She did not approve of Dudley, or the Dursleys.

After a minute mum walked down the path to the car. Dudley got out again to open the door for her, and she slid into the center—("my Duddi-wuddy should take the bigger seat")—and then Dudley was back in the car, shutting the door, rolling down the window, and the engine was rumbling to life.

He glanced over his shoulder. Number 4, Privet Drive, was becoming smaller and smaller as it receded into the distance. Somewhere inside it, Harry was waiting for his future; with the hopes of an entire world on his shoulders.

Dudley took a piece of notebook paper from his pocket and began to fold it on his knee.

"So," mum was saying to Ms Jones. "It's— It's lovely weather we're having."

It was. There was never a day more bright or more blue. Dudley folded each crisp line, watching as a paper crane slowly began to form.