Dudley Dursley: My Adventures as a Giant Bucket of Lard

It was twelve days before my seventeenth birthday when I realized that imminent death really does cause one's life to flash before your eyes. When the door splintered open I saw myself running around in the bunny costume that my aunt had given me on my fifth birthday. As footsteps ascended the stairway, Ashley's green eyes fluttering as I leaned in to kiss her for the first time. My father's screams followed by Piers shrieking with laughter as I beat up some first year. Men in black robes opening the closet door superimposed with my mother peaking out of her window.

I was nine years old when I realized I was fat. Sure there had been snide remarks from people I picked on, but they were the angry words of the ignorant. If they were dumb enough to lose their lunch money than surely their opinions meant nothing. It wasn't until I decided that I was worthy of sitting with some fourth graders one day after bullying my fiftieth cache of loose change that the reality of my weight sat in. Grabbing my lunch I held my head high and proceeded to waddle over to the shiny green table and place my overloaded tray down next to a pretty blond girl. As I twisted my way onto the bench the fourth graders stopped talking. I turned and smiled at them, thinking for the first time in my life I was truly among equals. My illusions were quickly shattered when the blonde girl turned to me and promptly explained that I would need to move because she was allergic to lard.

Maybe that instant could have changed me, pulled back the cloak that my parents had placed firmly around me and shown what was truly there. I did spend the day locked up in my room, Mum pacing frantically outside my door because there weren't any crashing sounds. I stood in front of my mirror for hours, looking over my rotund figure, and matted hair, convinced that as soon as I left my room it would be different.

It wasn't. However well meaning the promise I was only eight and the smiles my father gave me when I walked over someone were worth trying to forget my childhood epiphany. I continued to bully, continued to eat, continued not to give a whiff about school work and he continued to laugh encouragingly at my tales. I think that to him I was a sort of validation, since I acted like him he obviously must have been completely normal as a child. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I wouldn't become interested in psychology for at least another seven years.

Things could have changed again when I was fourteen and I met Ashley Fordhardt. She moved into the area at the beginning of fourth year, a wispy body with sandy hair and large green eyes. She read all the time, switching between stories about unicorns and the works of the Marquis de Sad, and by some miracle of fate two weeks after she had arrived when I went to ask for a cup of sugar on the request of my mother she still hadn't heard of my reputation. I stayed for an hour that night listening to her talk.

Ashley was sweet, sensitive, creative everything that would have invited the wrath of my friends if it hadn't have been for a simple fact that I was the first one of us to be regularly snogging a girl. They would make crude jokes and I wouldn't pick on people as much, scared what Ashley would say if she found out. At the time it seemed like a fair trade.

The next summer when Ashley told me she was moving, I lost it. I called her things I had only heard of in American movies. I stole her sister's bike. I almost beat up my cousin. That was also the day I went blind. Harry tried to explain it to me but I didn't care what he said. I knew it was my fault that I couldn't see. So, of course, I blamed it on him.

I thought of Ashley plenty over the next two years. Even as the robed men invaded our house she was what I thought of more than anyone else. As horrible as the screams were it was even worse to know that she would hate me now. I hated myself.

Chapter One: The Beginning

The great thing about selective memory is that one can just as easily block out good things as bad. You know that epiphany of being an unhappy beast that I mentioned a few sentences ago. Completely and utterly forgotten by the time I woke up. I was alive and obviously I was wrong, so where was the television?

Except for when I woke up I wasn't at home. I wasn't even in a hospital. I was in a dark room with gray paneling and furniture. Dust had crept up on some of the edges and a trickle of sunlight filtered in through a grimy window. I was so distracted by the new surroundings that I didn't even notice a woman lurking in the shadows until she stepped forward.

She must have been somewhere in her forties, short, with fading brown hair, and a lined face. At any other time I just would have ignored her or maybe laughed at her for good measure except for the fact that her long flowing clothes were similar to those of the people who had attacked our house. I screamed.

Now at that time in my life people who were not blinded by their love of me would have told you that I had very few talents. Screaming was one of them. On several occasions in the middle of a tantrum the police had come to our house in order to make sure no one was being tortured. In those instances I always got what I wanted simply because my parents didn't want the neighbors worrying.

I don't know how long my scream lasted but it was long enough for five people to come rushing up three flights of stairs. The woman in the robes was trying to get me to calm down but I couldn't hear her over my own voice.

"What is going on in here?!" shouted a woman as the door banged open. I took a breath and continued, but turned my head so I could look at her. Short and plump with curly red hair.

"The boy--."

"What?!"

"I said the boy seems to be in some state of shock!" By then three more people were standing in the doorway. A woman with purple hair, a girl with frizzy brown hair, and another girl with long flowing red hair.

"Oh, will please shut-up," said a familiar voice from the doorway. I turned to find my cousin pointing his twig at me before muttering some gibberish. Only it mustn't have exactly been gibberish because the next moment I found my screaming had stopped. I opened my mouth to yell at him but no sound came out.

"Harry," gasped the brown-haired girl. The other two were smirking. "You're only sixteen."

"But I'm the Boy-Who-Lived and only a fortnight away from my birthday so I doubt that anyone at the Ministry gives a shit."

I was beginning to panic when the red headed woman turned to my cousin.

"Now Harry, was that really necessary?"

He simply rolled his eyes. "He wouldn't have shut-up otherwise." His next words were directed at me. "Some of us were trying not to have an ear-splitting head-ache."

"Well, he's quiet now so you can remove it." At her words Harry waved his stick. In those few moments of readily interrupted conversation I could tell that something about my cousin had changed. Of course me being the person that I was I went ahead with my standard comment.

"Fuck you."

"Now we do not allow that kind of language in this house," said the red haired woman sternly, but her eyes quickly softened. "And Harry I don't think you're helping the situation so why don't the four of you go downstairs."

"Yes, Mrs. Weasley."

"And eat something, you're too skinny." When the door closed behind the group the woman I presumed to be Mrs. Weasley turned back to me, clapping her hands on her knees as she sat down. She wasn't necessarily frowning but she definitely wasn't smiling.

"So you must be Dudley."

I nodded.

"You're Harry's cousin?"

I nodded again.

"Do you mind telling me why you screamed?" She was acting like I was a three year old but at the moment I didn't care.

"Her clothes," I pointed to the stately woman. "They're like the ones the people were wearing."

"Oh. That's a coincidence. She has nothing to do with them. This is Madam Pomfrey. She is a healer."

I looked back up at her as I lowered my arm. Somewhere during her introduction pity had entered her eyes, immediately returning me back to myself.

"I want to go home, away from you freaks. Where's my father?" But my words didn't have the desired affect. Instead of making her angry she simply looked over at the healer with a sympathetic expression.

"Now Dudley," she began. "When the Death Eaters--?"

"--Death Eaters?"

"Men in weird clothes," she continued, "entered your house." The door opened again before she could finish. A statuesque woman entered. She had silver hair, a pointy black hat, and carried herself rigidly. Now, that was what I'd call a witch.

"I heard a commotion, Molly. Is everything alright?"

"Yes, Minerva. I was just explaining to the child what happened."

Finally the tall woman seemed to notice I was in the room. "You must be Dudley. I am Minerva McGonagall." If Mrs. Weasley hadn't seemed too keen on me this Minerva lady seemed to outright dislike me.

"Now what exactly do you remember about the attack." Images flashed through my head and I found myself unable to speak. She seemed to understand what was happening and continued without waiting for me to answer. "I regret to inform you that, while no one was killed last night, both of your parents sustained grievous injuries. Both of them are residing in St. Mungo's, that's one of our hospitals, at the moment. Your mother looks like she will be fine with the exception of a limp in a couple of days but I regret to inform you that your father has yet to awaken." She quickly turned back to Mrs. Weasley. "Well, if that's all, I shall return to my duties." And with those words she exited, leaving Mrs. Weasley completely and utterly perplexed.

I, of course, started screaming again as soon as the door slammed shut, and didn't stop until Harry came up and cast another spell on me.

Several hours later and three cups of partially finished chocolate they had managed to calm me down enough for Mrs. Weasley to explain what had happened. Our house had been invaded by four unknown Death Eaters. They had teleported into a gas station at the end of the block before disguising themselves as a salesman, his hat, his briefcase, and his jacket. Once on our front porch they had transformed again and knocked down the front door.

My father was in the kitchen when it happened. He had managed to make it five feet into the dining room before the first spell caught him. They had hit him several more times with things I didn't understand before leaving him on the floor, not dead, but with an injured spinal cord, burnt face, and severed foot. My mother had already feinted in the bathroom by the time they had reached her so they didn't waste too much time there. A fractured leg and they headed on to where I was hiding in the closet.

That's when the so called good guys had arrived. Apparently in the skirmish that ensued I had been knocked unconscious by a stray curse. It had taken little under a quarter of an hour for our house to be cleared and a little over a half an hour for them to vacate it.

Throughout the explanation Mrs. Weasley did manage to skirt around one issue. She never once mentioned why, after all this time, something so horrible had happened. But even without her saying it I knew the answer. It was all Harry's fault.

I awoke to a clock striking midnight. If I thought it had been dark in the room earlier it was nothing compared to how it looked in the middle of the night. Shadows piled on more shadows with little edges of gleaming wood and metal. I shivered as I wrapped the antique blanket further around me. A breeze whispered, a step creaked, a dog howled. Pulling my legs out of their comfortable confines I slipped out of bed.

Normally I would never have wondered around a magical infested house but everything seemed so surreal at the moment. I don't remember much about my trip down to the kitchen, which I found out of sheer luck, just trying not to make much noise. Why I cared about waking people I didn't know.

I faced another problem once I made it to the kitchen. I had no clue where anything was and as I quickly learned not every cabinet even contained food. The first one I opened, located approximately in the same spot where Mum keeps the jam, was full of paper clippings, some of which, to my horror, moved. The second one contained an assortment of wool. The third one had oven mitts.

"Try the third shelf from the upper right corner," said a voice, interrupting me from my search. I whirled around to find the brown haired girl standing behind me. Although, truth be told, girl wasn't the most accurate word. She was at that in-between stage, little glimmers of the woman that she would soon become peaking through her childhood face. "That's where they keep the tea. You were looking for tea, right?" she continued.

Actually, I had no idea what I had been looking for but I nodded anyways.

"Here, I'll get it. Tea is a good thing to have at night. Mrs. Weasley has this great lavender blend that helps with insomnia." She had already taken the crate down and started the water by the time she finished speaking. After a moment of silence she turned around to look at me. "I'm Hermione, by the way." She wasn't smiling like most people did when they introduced themselves.

"I'm Dudley." She nodded at my response, as if to say she already knew, before once again focusing on the tea. It was completely silent as she walked from counter to stove but she moved as if something rhythmic was running its way through her head. "I could just heat this up the regular way, I suppose, but it normally doesn't taste as good." I nodded, having no idea what she was talking about. I looked down at the table in front of me and began to pick at a chipped corner.

The next thing I knew the pot was whistling and the dent in the table had expanded by several centimeters. "Sugar? Milk?" she asked, pushing a drawer closed with her hip as she placed a canister on the counter.

"Both."

I heard the clinking of sugar cubes against porcelain, then the swishing of feet as she made her way to the table. I looked up at her as she placed the cup in front of me.

"I'm sorry about your parents," she said, except there was something contradictory in her face as she spoke. It wasn't that she wasn't sincere. It was more that she was conflicted about expressing her sympathy. When I didn't speak she continued. "I'm always scared that something like that will happen to my parents."

"Like those black robes would go after your family. Your--."

"--Muggle-born," she finished to my confusion. "That means my parents aren't magical, just like yours. The Death Eaters target people like me. And I guess it probably doesn't help my popularity that Harry and I are so close."

At that I snorted, crossed my arms, and looked back down. "Yeah, it's all that little freak's fault." I might have continued ranting except for at that moment the witch sprang out of her seat, shoving the table against me. She quickly leaned down and looked me in the eyes.

"Now look here, you little runt. After all of the," she paused for a moment, "the shit you put Harry through your lucky I didn't hex you the moment I laid eyes on you. I'm sorry about what happened to you and your family but if I hear you so much as hint that this is Harry's fault I will emasculate you--"

"--Emasculate?"

She rolled her eyes. "Cut off your penis, really it is so hard to threaten people with infinitesimal vocabularies. He has enough shit to deal with right now without you adding needless guilt to it."

"You can't use magic." Even as I said it I gulped. "You said so earlier."

"While Harry may still be a few weeks off from his birthday I am a fully qualified witch. Plus, as I said, I'm muggle-born. If I wanted to emasculate you I wouldn't do it with my wand." She then leaned even closer, a sadistic gleam lighting her face. "I'd use a rusty spoon."

I felt my eyes widen but she simply pushed herself away from the table and yawned. "Well I had better be going to bed if I want to be any help with chores tomorrow."

She was halfway up the stairs when she called back to me. "Dursley."

I turned around to face her, too afraid not to.

"I really am sorry about your parents." With that she sighed and bounded up the stairs, entering the first room on the left.

I watched my tea for a moment, the amber liquid lapping against the pearly sides, before pushing it away. I didn't think even the best cup of tea in the world would stop the bile from teasing my throat.

Emaleneangel: Well, that's it. Please review. And since I know someone is going to comment on this, yes I know it's not called teleporting but that's what he would have called it.