Chapter Text
Thank you shaddowsong for creating this lovely art of Dorothy Rose.
Dudley didn't like Harry very much. Harry always ruined everything.
For example, they'd been having a perfectly normal summer until the freakish letters started arriving. Dudley wasn't sure exactly how it was Harry's fault that dad had dragged them off to this terribly cold, awful shack on a rock in the middle of a storm, but just because Dudley didn't understand how didn't mean it wasn't true.
He woke up to a thudding so loud he thought the door was going to cave in. Dad was scared, waving his gun around. Mum was scared, standing in front of Dudley like she could protect him. Dudley wanted to stand between her and the giant that was bending dad's shotgun, but Dudley was scared, too.
Dudley remembered looking over at Harry, who was delighted by all this freakishness. He didn't remember much after that.
His mum said later that Harry was a wizard, and that all his freakishness was because of him being magical. A different wizard came and got them off the rock and back home, she told him. They took him to a magical hospital then, though mum wouldn't tell him why.
She said they made him forget so that he wouldn't be traumatised. Dudley knew not to ask questions, so he went to look it up in his children's dictionary on the shelf of what used to be his second bedroom.
Harry was sitting on his bed reading a magical book. Dudley had almost forgotten about him, he'd been so quiet lately. He was blinking through glasses that Dudley probably shouldn't have broken that time Harry hadn't given him his lunch, but he'd been hungry, and Harry was just a freak.
"This isn't your room anymore, you know."
Dudley didn't know what to say. Dad had said that at Smeltings, he'd have to do lots of networking, which meant sharing his sweets and not screaming and not breaking people's glasses. He took a deep breath. Harry was just a freak. Dudley could use him for practise. "Would you like a mars bar?"
The book dropped out of Harry's hands. The pictures in it were moving. Dudley stepped closer and grabbed it. "Are you alright?" Harry said.
On the page, like a cartoon, a knife was slicing some kind of root. "I'll trade you." He was a big boy now, and dad said that was what the world of business was all about. Harry didn't say anything when Dudley left with his new book, but he caught the mars bar when Dudley threw it at him.
"Are you alright?" Harry asked again.
Dudley ignored him. He knew he wasn't supposed to talk to Harry too much because his freakishness might be catching. He'd never liked books, but Magical Drafts and Potions kept him up until late into the night.
He slept in until noon the next day, and when mum asked if he was alright he remembered that he might be traumatised and blamed Harry. Mum promised to make him chocolate chip cookies and told him to go rest in front of the telly.
It wasn't until after dinner and a tummy ache from eating eighteen cookies that he remembered. He hurried to bring out the rubbish, shivering from how extra wet the rain was, then went back to Harry's room to fetch his dictionary.
Traumatise verb to shock and upset somebody very much, often making them unable to think normally or continue with their normal life .
Mum was proud of how normal they were, and Dudley was proud of that too. He was a good boy and was going to grow up to be just like his dad. Not like his cousin Harry, who they were trying to make sure grew up to be nothing like his good-for-nothing dad at all.
Harry's dad had been a layabout and a drunk instead of a good, hard-working, tax paying, Tory-voting, normal man.
Dudley didn't feel traumatised by anything except the rain that was clinging to his skin. He took a hot shower and wondered if maybe they'd erased his memories so he wouldn't be upset about being magicked with a rain curse. He played his Sonic the Hedgehog game and tried not to be too excited about how he'd be going to Smeltings in two weeks. Mum had already packed his bags for him.
Everything was going to be different now. Dudley was going to a new school and he'd be making new friends just like Dad had taught him. He got to decide what kind of person he was going to be, and Dad had explained exactly how Dudley was supposed to go about it.
Dad, who flinched away from him sometimes now and had started drinking an extra brandy before dinner. Dudley knew it was because he'd caught Dudley with his hand down the back of his pants sometimes in the middle of a Terrahawks rerun. He'd tried to explain he didn't mean it, that he wasn't touching his bum like some dirty fairy. Dad's face had turned puce and then he'd gone for a long drive and they hadn't talked about it since.
Dudley still didn't know why he'd done it. He had the weirdest feeling sometimes, like something had been there but wasn't anymore. It was stupid. Dudley was a normal boy and the only thing in his pants was his boy bits. But—even if Dudley wasn't the snooty clever sort like Sally who lived at number twelve—he knew that a part of him was missing.
Soon, he wouldn't have to worry about any of that, because he'd be going to Smeltings come September. If a boy's public school couldn't teach him all about being a good, normal, Tory-voting, tax-paying family man, Dudley didn't know what could.
He dreamt the same weird dream that night as every night before, of lemon scented halls, lime green voices that murmured, " Are you certain, Madam Dursley?" and his mum saying, "I don't want him to be great, we just want him to be normal again."
Thank you to the Fish and Fics Discord server for brainstorming this with me last month, and to my beta readers nateyeh, roofuls, and ace of braids. Finally, thank you for reading. See you in the comments.