Save One Thing

Save One Thing

Chapter Nine

Clouds aren't fluffy at all, you find while you're out flying one morning, just wet, and by the time you got up far enough to feel them it was cold, and you couldn't breathe very well. You're not sure if you're getting better with Harry's broom, but you're certainly taking more risks on it, seeing how high and fast it can go long after your desire for speed and altitude has been satisfied. On the way back, you get too close to a tree, trying to do a tight turn around its base and run face first into sharp branches. It smarts at first, but you're too glad not to have poked an eye out to worry long, and you practice a few forward flips before flying home and hiding the broom in Harry's old cupboard.

You stop in the bathroom to wipe the sweat off your face and try to get your hair under control, which is quickly becoming a lost cause. When it first catches your attention, you think it's simply a mark on the mirror or some trick Harry's playing on you. Then you touch it, wincing at the pain the slightest brush of your fingers causes and realize it must have come from your run in with the tree. You reach out with the magic, trying to make it disappear or at least turn it a little less red, but all your attempts fail. No matter what you do, there's still a broken, crocked line running down the center of your forehead.

At breakfast, Harry gives you odd looks and asks if you had a run in with any dark wizards lately, but he shuts up when he finds out you put hot pepper in his orange juice. He coughs for a few minutes and rubs at his eyes, and you begin to wonder if you should make him better when he clears his throat and swallows hard. "I suppose that was for the sugar?"

It really has nothing to do with the bowl of salty cereal you ate a few days before. You want to tell him that it's for the letters and the pig's tail and the time you nearly choked on your own tongue and for every threat he ever made about having his wand in his pocket to curse you with and every time he looked at you, as if he couldn't imagine ever seeing anyone stupider. You want to tell him that no matter what you do it'll never make things even, but instead, you smile and say, "Yeah, it's for the sugar."

He nods and mumbles something about not getting in the way of your food again and then snickers to himself until you kick his legs under the table. "Stop it," he says, getting up and pouring a glass of milk, and you shut your eyes and make the soap flakes vanish from it right before he takes his first sip. "Guess you forgot to do anything to the milk, huh?"

"Yeah," you say. "I forgot."

"Are you okay?" he asks, walking behind you. "Are there any bumps?" You nearly jump out of the chair when you feel him prodding you in the head. "It's pretty clear you banged this on something, if only because you haven't punched me yet."

"I will if you don't quit it," you growl as he starts pressing harder and tracing his fingers over your still-sore forehead.

"Don't worry, Dud," he says, chuckling to himself. "Your head's still plenty thick, and I doubt your brain is large enough to be noticeably damaged."

"Shut up," you say, shoving one of his hands away. "Stop it."

"Fine." You feel him ruffling your hair until you're sure it's even messier than it was when you came back from flying. "I'll stop if you stop too." He walks back to his chair and straightens the jacket over it before leaving you to try and figure out what he means by it.

It's been hard to think about Harry with a clear head, because he's always around you, now, like the magic, and like the magic, he's not really trying to hurt you. Maybe he doesn't want to fight at all. It's strange to think you could trust someone-- trust Harry when all you know is how to throw the first few punches and hope those will be enough. You've never had the endurance for a long struggle. You get tired, and you slip, and you fall, and there are some things you never could fight against, but it doesn't matter if those things aren't fighting you either. It doesn't matter if you both agree to stop. You still think Harry's a freak and always will be, but you make the thumbtacks vanish from his bed and the glue from his bottle of shampoo, and you get up and tell the dishes to start washing themselves.

All the pictures are moving, now, even your old finger paintings, which are mostly just handprints and lazy squiggles, done all in blue, red and yellow. Your four year old hand waves at you and the lines beside it lengthen and squirm over the paper like tiny snakes. On the shelves, your mum's porcelain and glass figurines are pacing back and forth and occasionally dancing with each other, even the furniture you dressed is starting to walk from room to room. In fact, the only still thing left in the house is Harry who's usually sprawled out in front of the television.

You find an old Polaroid and take a picture of him lying on the sofa. The television's on flashing odd colors as some band jumps about with their instruments, but he's looking directly at the camera, directly at you, and after a few seconds he gives a half-hearted wave and a very exaggerated, very fake smile. "You're going to come out looking completely stupid," you tell him, shaking the picture as it develops, "either that or insane."

He reclines further, stretching his arms behind his head. "Don't you already think I'm both?"

"Well, yeah."

"There was a boy at my school who liked taking pictures," he says, yawning. "Did I ever tell you that?"

"No," you say, wondering what he's on about. "Why would you have?"

Harry shrugs. "Well, there was, anyway." You think about the evil wizard spoken of in your letter and the people with masks stumbling through your lawn at night and being much too cold. "Where is he now?" you ask, not wanting to know the answer, not wanting to hear about people dying or being lost, not even if they are freaks, but Harry only shrugs again and scratches his head. "Probably still taking pictures," he says. "Not so much has changed, really. He was bloody annoying at school though, always-- Look here, Harry! Wave, Harry! Smile, Harry! There were a lot of times I really didn't feel like smiling."

"I never told you to."

"I can't help it." He sits up and stretches his arms again. "You just make me so happy, Dud."

You roll your eyes and try not to laugh. "Well, you're definitely insane."

"You already told me that," he says, grabbing your arm and pulling you down onto the sofa. "This isn't so bad, is it?"

You raise your eyebrows and scoot a few inches away from him. "I thought you were going to leave, for good, I mean, not just going on a day trip to your weirdo friend's house."

"Not yet," he says, jabbing a finger into your chest. "There's work still to be done"

"And you're the freak who has to do it. You said you would"

He rakes his hand through his hair a few times and knocks his glasses into your lap with the heel of his hand. "Maybe I don't want to be anymore. Besides, you don't trust me, do you?"

"Well, I think I--"

"You'd better not," he says as you push his glasses back into his hands. "I don't want to be the one everybody trusts anymore."

"So you're lazy now?"

"Yeah, something like that." Harry puts his glasses back on, taking care to hook them behind his ears and straighten them over his eyes. Then he kisses you, and you kiss back to show him this can't be a game or a joke or a fight anymore and to show him that you really do know what you're doing. "I still think you can, you know," he says, pulling back and adjusting his glasses again. "I didn't ever really stop thinking it."

"Oh. Okay." You nod and look down at the wrinkled picture in your hands. With hardly a thought it flattens itself, and you see Harry sitting on the sofa, smiling and waving and laughing and looking very pleased about something. You think it could have been a good picture if it wasn't of him.

He plucks it from your hands and starts laughing again, even though you don't remember him really laughing the first time. "I can see the headlines now," he says. "The brave Harry Potter spends summer lazing about while hundreds of families still need saving."

"What?" you ask. "If hundreds of families need saving, how come we're only bothering with mine?"

He looks very surprised for a second then nods a few times and begins to smile. "That's the way it works at first. You'll see."

"Oh," you say, not pressing it anymore than that. He might as well know you trust him now, even if he won't let you tell him so. "They really wrote articles about you?"

"Yeah," he says, smile growing. "You're lucky Skeeter got stuck as a beetle when magic stopped working right. I'd hate to see what she'd make of this-- us, I mean."

You stick your tongue out and feel your face twisting in disgust. "Ewww! Someone really writes stuff like that?"

"Yeah," he says in a way that tells you he had a hard time believing it too once. "Yeah, someone really does."

"About you? And other freaks read it?"

Harry shrugs. "Most witches and wizards are a lot like your mum that way. They'd rather hear about sensational crimes and scandalous affairs than any real news."

You look at him, not sure whether to laugh or be sick. "We are not having a scandalous affair!"

"I don't know," he says, smirking. "You did swoop around on a broomstick to steal food, very dashing, that, as long as it was dark enough that no one could properly see you." He stops for a moment to laugh and point to the picture you took. "Then, there's me posing for you-- Boy-who-lived excited to see his pig-like cousin. Is it real romance or just a summer fling?"

"Neither!" you shout, trying to wrestle it out of his hands. "Give me that! Shut up!"

"Fine," he says after a few minutes of switching the picture from hand to hand and behind his back to keep it away from you. You could have had it at anytime, really. You could have used magic or just punched him, but that's not the point anymore. He hands it to you and rubs his eyes for a moment. "Is there still cake in the refrigerator?"

You reach out with your mind to make sure there will be by the time he gets there. "Yeah, I think so."

"Okay," he says, getting up and pinching your cheeks with both hands. "See you later, Diddykins."

"Gee orfff!"

When he finally listens to you and lets go, you lean back into the sofa and look at the picture again. You decide it might really be good, even if it is of Harry, and you put it in a frame overtop a picture of Aunt Marge and Ripper, who both growl as Harry laughs and waves, and you laugh back.

"You're ready," Harry says at breakfast the next morning, between bites of the candy bar that his owl brought for you.

You look of from your bowl of cheerios, and even though your focus has shifted, the banana on the side of your placemat keeps peeling itself. "Ready for what?"

"Ready to find your parents," he says, looking very serious except for the smudge of chocolate on his nose.

"How do you know?"

He looks back to his owl, perched by the window and waves a letter in his hand. "A friend of mine thinks now would be a good time-- something about the moon and ocean tides and a timetable he made. I'm not sure he has any clue what he's talking about."

"Oh," you say, wrinkling your forehead. "This is how you people plan things?"

He folds the letter and puts it in his pocket before looking directly at you. "You're ready," he says. "You're the one who has to do this, and you've been ready for some time now, and you're going to get it done today." He smirks and plants his elbows on the table. "That's how we plan things."

"I'm ready?" you ask.

"Well, you did find me on a broomstick."

"So I can use--"

"No," he says before you can finish asking. "You're not flying on my firebolt ever again. I don't know how you managed it the first time without breaking your head open. We're taking a bus."

You want to laugh and tell him that you've been flying on his broom everyday, that you can now manage six back flips in a row without getting dizzy and that you've taken it into the city and done loops around the spires of Westminster Abbey and stopped for a rest on the roof of the British Museum, but instead, you nod and roll your eyes and say, "Okay, we can take a stupid bus."

Harry stands up, smiling wider. "You'll do it," he says, pulling you up from your chair. "You'll find them-- you really will, and who knows what else after that--Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, Diagon alley, the Burrow, everything!"

You don't really know what he's talking about, but you smile back.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry's in an open field, holding Dudley's hand, trying to keep him in place as he shakes and swallows hard and bends his knees, as if he might try to bolt at any second.

"Get off," he growls through gritted teeth. "Get off. Get off now!"

Harry sighs and plants his other hand on Dudley's shoulder, wondering just how long he has before Dudley manages to shove him away and why he's trying so hard to hold on. "No. If I get off you'll try to run away, not that you'll get very far."

To Harry's surprise Dudley doesn't kick or punch. He tries to pull his hand out of Harry's grip, but his efforts are weaker than they should be, and he tries to shout, but his voice is slipping away. "N-no I won't! Let go!"

"No! You're doing this. I don't care whether you want to or not! It doesn't matter!"

"Get off! I--" Harry hears him yell before whatever else he was saying is stolen away by a blast of impossibly cold wind.

"No!" Harry yells back as the winds continue to pick up.

"Stop it!" Dudley begins to shiver more and seems to have gained back some of his strength. When he tries to pull away again, he nearly manages it, but Harry stops trying to stand his ground and allows his whole body to be jerked forward. "Leave me alone!"

The gusts are so hard that even the tiny leaves and specks of dirt that fly at Harry's skin feel like pinpricks and then like fire. "You're the only one who can do this!" Harry shouts over the wind and the claps of thunder from somewhere in the distance. "If you don't--"

It's not any other noise that interrupts him, but silence, unnaturally complete silence. He takes a step towards Dudley, who has gone very still, and he doesn't even hear the grass rustling beneath his feet. "Let go," Dudley whispers, shutting his eyes. "Just let go."

"Fine, quit!" Harry shouts into the quiet, tightening his grip on Dudley's fat fingers. "I don't care if you never see your stupid parents again!"

Dudley takes a few unsteady steps forward, dragging Harry with him. "I'm not," he says, "I'm not quitting. They're in the house."

"House?" Harry asks, but Dudley doesn't seem to hear him.

"I'm trying to get in, but-but it's trying to keep me out . . . my head . . . hurts."

"There's a house?" Harry asks again, and Dudley finally opens his eyes and looks up at him.

"Yes. . ." He reaches his free hand out in front of him and then pulls it back, as if it's been burned.

"What was that?"

"Nothing-- something-- I don't know. Just shut up, will you. I'm trying to concentrate."

"Oh."

Dudley looks down at their entwined hands, sneering. "And get off of me."

Harry lets go quickly and takes a step back as flashing lights begin to erupt around Dudley, but Dudley doesn't move except to shut his eyes and reach his hand out again until it presses flat against an invisible surface. His face is scrunched up in pain, and there's blood trickling down from the scrape on his forehead.

There's a loud crackling sound, and the air shimmers, lighting with hundreds of white sparks that swirl around them like tiny fireflies before slowly flickering out, and for the first time in months, Harry can feel magic again. Slowly, a large house comes into focus right in front of Dudley's outstretched hand.

He watches as the walls become brighter and the corners become sharper, more defined. He watches as the field becomes a street and dozens of other houses pop up all around them, and he whispers, "I knew it," even though he would never have imagined Dudley doing more than trying to get his parents back, even though he never really expected him to succeed.

Dudley turns around to look at him, red faced and out of breath. "Shut up," he says before falling back against the side of the house to keep standing.

Harry swallows hard and takes a few steps forward. "You okay?"

"I will be," Dudley rasps, sliding down the wall. "I will be when I don't have to hear you anymore."

"Come on." Harry grabs his arm and uselessly tries to pull him up. "The hard part's over."

Dudley gives him an odd look. "No it's not," he says, still gasping for air. "This is just the start of it."

The magic snaps against Harry's skin and sets his hair on end. "It's over," repeats, feeling uncomfortably warm and beginning to shiver. He tries to breathe the magic in and grab hold of it, but it keeps slipping away from him, so instead, he tightens his grip on Dudley's arm and keeps pulling.

"No," Dudley says, shoving him away and struggling to stand up on his own. There's something desperate in his voice that makes Harry wonder whether he believes himself or he just wants to very badly. "No, you're wrong."

"I was right about you being able to do this, wasn't I?" Dudley doesn't say anything. He doesn't even look at Harry. He tilts his head back, and his eyes widen, as if he's just noticed the sparks still flying through the air. "Wasn't I?"

"Shut up," Dudley mumbles, watching as a small pile of sparks gather on the palm of his hand, but he's starting to smile, and his face is gradually returning to its normal pinkish color.

Harry's shivers subside, leaving nothing behind, but a warm, comfortable tingle. "Come on," he says. "We're not done here yet."

Dudley nods and leads the way to the back of the house, where they find his parents on the door step looking lost and very confused.

Dudley clears his throat, but that doesn't seem to catch their attention. "Er . . .hi," he says shoving his hands in his pockets.

Uncle Vernon is the first to notice them and after a few seconds of gaping he manages to find his voice. "Dudders? What the ruddy hell is going on here?"

Dudley turns his head back and gives Harry a quick look that's one half smile and the half a question he can't bring himself to ask out loud and may not even have the words to ask with. Harry only shrugs and whispers, "Tell them something."

Dudley nods and winks before turning back to his parents, and by then, Aunt Petunia has ran over to Dudley and begun hugging him. "Harry used his freak powers to find you," he says in his best 'I deserve forty-seven presents' voice. "I made him. He said it would be impossible, but I wouldn't leave him alone until he did it, and I also made him do the cooking and wash the dishes and sweep the floor."

"Good on you, Dudders," Uncle Vernon booms clapping his hand down on Dudley's shoulder. "Way to show him who's boss."

"You've been okay haven't you?" Aunt Petunia asks.

"Yeah fine, Mum."

"You've had enough to eat, haven't you?"

Just watching them has always been enough to make Harry sick, but this time there's a strange sinking feeling that comes along with it, and he crosses his arms over his chest as the cold winds return. "Obviously," he mutters in a voice louder than the one he meant to use, loud enough to make Aunt Petunia let go of Dudley and turn on him looking more furious than he's ever seen her.

"You," she snaps, as if that's the worst possible thing she could call him. "I bet you wanted to run off with the rest of those-- those freaks you call your friends and not care at all about what we've had to endure because of you. That's the way you people are no discipline, no responsibility. Just like your--"

"Mum!" Dudley shouts, and Harry watches his expression become suitably smug when everyone's eyes turn back to him, and for once, he's thankful that Dudley can't go two minutes without being the center of attention. But instead of demanding his parents give him video games or money or whatever else he thinks he's owed for having to spend nearly two months without them, he just stands there, and when his smile falls away, he looks very uncomfortable.

"What is it then?" Uncle Vernon asks, and Dudley swallows hard and gives Harry a look that he can't quite read.

"Harry kept these really weird guys out of the house," he says all in one breath. "They were trying to get me, but he kept them out using magic, and he didn't have to do that." Dudley's not a good liar by any means, but he's had a lot of practice telling his mother he was going to tea parties when he was really going to smoke and beat up younger kids, and she's had a lot of practice believing him.

She puts a hand to her chest, horrified at the thought of anyone wanting to hurt her precious son. "Alright, Sweetums, if you say so."

Harry's caught between gaping and rolling his eyes when Uncle Vernon turns to glance at him and nods with something that looks like approval and maybe even acceptance and says, "It's about time the ruddy stuff did something useful." Beside them, Aunt Petunia rubs Dudley's shoulders and flattens Dudley's hair and talks about what a brave boy her little Diddykins has been.

Harry thinks he might hurt himself from laughing so hard or at least Dudley might hurt him, but Dudley's laughing too, and somehow, without his parents noticing, he grabs Harry by the hand and pulls him closer. It feels like the first time Harry touched the wand that was meant only for him or the first time he saw Hogwarts shining from across the lake or the first time he flew. "You were right," Dudley whispers to him. "I can't believe it, you freak. You were really right."

Harry wonders vaguely if the Dudley's parents notice that there are sparks raining down around them and covering their clothes or that Dudley seems to be floating a few inches off the ground. "So were you," Harry whispers back. "Good job, Dud."

One day, Dudley could wake up after having saved the world and wonder what happened, what changed, what step he took that could never be reversed, and this would be the answer-- knowing how to get up after falling, learning that the truth is rarely comfortable, and the future will never be safe but should be looked forward to anyway. Harry smiles. He didn't ever really need to tell Dudley what the consequences of saving one thing could be. Somehow, he knew all along.

The ride back to Number Four Privet Drive is quicker and quieter than it should be, and while Uncle Vernon was getting the car out of a nearby garage, Harry was able to sneak a quick look at the house they stayed in. It was a very drab, normal house filled with very drab, normal things that looked overpriced and just a bit pretentious. All in all, it was a place perfectly suited for the Dursleys, and for some reason, that made Harry smile.

Back in Dudley's room, Harry's lying on the bed with a videogame controller in his hands and absentmindedly zapping the aliens on the television screen with some sort of laser gun. Beside him, Dudley's staring down at a newspaper, mumbling to himself.

"Be quiet," Harry says nudging Dudley's leg with his foot. "I'm trying to concentrate."

Dudley snorts and flips through the pages some more. "A whole neighborhood appeared out of nowhere," he says. "You'd think someone would have noticed something."

"Not muggles." Harry watches with a grim sense of amusement as his spaceman character loses its final life to a cloud of poison mist. "Muggles only believe what's easiest to believe. If it doesn't make enough sense, they won't let themselves notice it."

"That's not true," Dudley says, rustling the paper and setting it down on his nightstand. "That's not true at all."

"Yeah it is."

"No it's--" Dudley begins, but Harry doesn't let him finish.

"Tell me, are you doing magic?"

"Shhhh," Dudley hisses. "Don't--"

"Because before you said you weren't, and I wonder if the fact that you made about fifty houses pop up in an empty field might have changed your mind."

"Shut up," Dudley whispers, holding a hand threateningly close to Harry's mouth, as if he might use it to shut him up he has to. "Someone will hear if you keep going on like that."

Harry gives an exhausted sigh and lets his head flop back on the pillow as he waits for the game to reload. "No they won't. That's my point. If they do, they'll come up with their own explanations that won't involve anything unnatural."

"Fine," he says, tentatively moving his hand away, "but if you're loud they'll hear that you're in my room, and that's nearly as bad."

"You can tell them you're making me clean it."

"My parents aren't stupid." Dudley glances around his room, which looks like it's been hit by several tornadoes and blown up dozens of times but really just hasn't been cleaned for about as long as they've both been alive. "They wouldn't believe that," he says with a smile. "No one would."

Harry wants to tell him that they really are that stupid, and if he admits it he might have a chance of not turning out the exact same way, but Dudley's already getting good at noticing things, so all he says is, "Okay, fine."

"They're not," Dudley repeats firmly, and Harry remembers he's already quite good at noticing lies. He wonders if they'll spend the rest of the afternoon arguing and whether he has any energy left for it, but he's pulled from his thoughts when a tiny owl zips in through the window and immediately begins pecking at his head. He looks over at Dudley, who's biting his bottom lip and turning very red.

"Go on," Harry says, "can't have you suffocating."

"That's great!" he shouts, laughing louder than Harry's ever heard him. "If you could see your face--wish I had the camera!"

"And you told me to be quiet," Harry mutters before turning his attention back to the owl in his hair. "Hey, Pig, lay off, alright."

"What did you just call it?" Dudley takes a piece of chocolate out of his pocket and holds it out it out until Pig flaps over and starts eating.

"Pig," Harry says. "That's his name. It's short for Pigwidgeon." Dudley smirks and tosses another two pieces of chocolate down onto the bed for Pig to nibble on. "Good to see you finally have him living up to it."

Dudley nods. "That means impossible things are happening."

Harry rakes a hand through his hair and pulls out a few feathers. "What?"

"Pigs fly," Dudley says and starts laughing to himself again.

Harry rolls his eyes and shakes his head and kisses Dudley on the side of his mouth. "Impossible, huh, is that what this is?"

"All of it," Dudley whispers, "completely impossible."

After snatching the letter off Pig's foot, Harry settles back down and pokes Dudley in the side with his finger. "Speaking of pigs flying, what did you do with my broom? You didn't break it on the way back, did you?"

"No," he says, pushing Harry's hand away. "It's in the cupboard."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"So you put it right back after coming home?" Harry asks.

"Er--yes," Dudley says, flattening his hair and looking incredibly guilty.

"So it's not broken at all? Not snapped in half? Not dented? Not completely bent out of shape from you sitting on it?" Harry stands up to jump away from Dudley's thrown pillow, and there's a loud crack beneath his feet when he lands.

"Hey!" Dudley shouts.

"Uh--"

"You talk about me breaking things."

"Look around," Harry says indicating the broken toys lining Dudley's shelves, and Dudley narrows his eyes at him. "Well, it's not like you can't fix it if you want to."

"How could I fix a . . .Oh . . ."

"Yeah."

For a second, his face screws in concentration. "Does it feel fixed?" he asks as Harry carefully sits back down.

"Not really," Harry says looking up at Dudley's eyes, which are still narrowed. "What?"

"Your hair's grown back."

Harry reaches around and feels hair, rough and stubbly where there the bare patch had been. "About time."

"It looks terrible," Dudley says, smiling again. "I might have to tell Mum to cut it like she used to."

Harry stretches his arms and lets his head flop back onto the pillow. "You won't."

"Fine, I won't, but you owe me."

He gives an exaggerated sigh and rolls his eyes. "Aren't I lucky?"

"Yes," Dudley says, lying down beside him, and Harry's closes his eyes and feels the jagged, painful worry he'd been carrying with him smooth over and fall away until everything seems perfectly balanced as it hasn't been in a very long time. "Yes," Dudley repeats, and Harry can't think of any reason to disagree.

Two days later, Hermione calls on the phone swearing she started seeing runes again.

Five days later, Ron shows up on the doorstep in freshly pressed dress robes to tell him that the Burrow's put itself back together and invite him to stay. When Harry refuses, he only nods and tells him to be careful, and Harry wants to say there's no reason and now's finally the time he doesn't have to be careful anymore, but something in Ron's eyes stops him from doing anything but nodding back and whispering, "You too."

A week later, Harry's wand starts shooting off sparks in every direction.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It starts when the broom will no longer jump into your hands and when it feels cold to the touch and when it doesn't fly. Harry waves a letter from his friends in front of your face too fast for you to read it and tells you that what you've done is more than find just one house or one neighborhood, and you tell yourself you might be tired from it, but you don't feel tired. You feel cold and jumpy and less sure of yourself, and you wonder why you parents aren't asking what's wrong or why you start shivering sometimes despite the heat. You wonder if they notice at all.

Harry watches as you pick up your clothes from the chairs and throw them on the floor of your room. He watches you tapping the picture frames and looking in the refrigerator and staring at the dishes in the sink, but he doesn't say anything and neither do you. Before you can scream at him to stop watching, he kisses you right there in the kitchen with your parents sitting in front of the television one room away. "You know they won't find out," he whispers before you can tell him they will, and that makes you want to scream more, but instead, you swallow hard and press your hands against the wall to stay standing when the magic starts flashing all around you.

You don't talk much during the day. You play on your computer and with your video games, but neither seems very interesting anymore. At night, you follow Harry as he walks around the neighborhood with his wand and shows you what new tricks he can do. Summer's fading, but everyday, he gets brighter and can manage something just a little more spectacular. Everyday, you feel less real, and it gets harder to breathe.

Sometimes, it seems like you're falling apart slowly, and sometimes it seems like you're disappearing, even though you're just as big as ever. Sometimes the sight of your own shadow against the wall makes your heart jump by coming so unexpected, and it's only Harry's odd looks in your direction that tell you you're really there. You don't know whether to be thankful or hate him.

Nothing feels right, not the twisted covers of your bed or the wrinkled, fragile pages of newspaper beneath your fingers-- stupid newspapers that still don't say anything about what's really happening in the world.

Harry wakes you up in the middle of the night and tells you, you were screaming, and you're lucky you have him to blame it on if your parents notice at all, but you don't feel very lucky. You stare into the dark corners of where your walls meet and out the window at the empty lawns and streets, hearing nothing but your own breath, and no matter how many blankets you take from the hall closet, they can't stop you from shivering when cold winds whip through your room.

Your father promises you a job at Grundings to start in the fall, and you wonder if you have any power left to keep leaves on the trees and stop the days from getting shorter. You sit at the kitchen table, starring at the milk bottle and then back at the bowl of cereal in front of you, and nothing happens until Harry comes in and pours it for you and starts talking how he's going to visit some magic shops to buy some magic things and looks at you strangely when you tell him to shut his stupid face.

When he's gone, you sneak into his room. You look at his pictures, but they don't move, and you find his broom leaning against the wall and try to hold it one last time, but it's so cold it nearly freezes your hand off, and you peer through the eyepiece of his telescope and see nothing but black.

You find his top in your pocket and cradle it in your hands for a few moments before setting it on the floor. "Go on, spin," you whisper, and you try making it twirl yourself, but it only wobbles slightly before falling over onto its side. You leave it there on his floor and go back to your own room. You try watching television and playing Mega Mutilation Four on your play-station two, but you can't seem to concentrate on either. You lie down and try to sleep, thinking it will be easier when it isn't so dark, but you can't relax and clear your head.

There's only one thing you can think of properly, and it's sitting in an otherwise empty shoe box in the bottom drawer of your dresser surrounded by a growing pile of clothes that are too small for you but too good for Harry. You bite your lip, and you clench your fists, and you try to focus on anything else, but it's useless. There are some things you never could fight against.

There are no sparks when you lift the lid off the shoebox this time, and there's no warm tingle of magic when you hold the last letter in your hands. Once again, you set it on your bed, and once again, you watch as Harry's name changes to yours under your trembling fingers, and once again, you open it by tearing the thick paper rather than breaking the seal.

Dudley Dursley
Second floor
Largest Bedroom
Twice-broken bed
4 Privet Drive
Little Whinging
Surrey


This letter is not for you. It never was, and by now you should know better than to open other people's mail. You would have done well to mind your own business, but you never did pay attention to past warnings, no matter what it cost you. Keep in mind that you have more yet to lose.

This letter was for your cousin, Mr. Potter. It was meant to be seen by him alone, and the truths it contains are not for the eyes of fat, spoiled, muggle children, and you are a muggle, Dudley, and a child. No matter what past events have led you to believe, you were never anything else. You know by now that your cousin is rather extraordinary. Gifted, I believe, is the word your schools used for it, and while he far surpassed your abilities in reading and maths, it was not those subjects where his true talents were found. You see, Mr. Potter is still a wizard-- the greatest wizard of the age-- vanquisher of the Dark Lord Voldemort and the restorer of our world.

No matter how your parents tried to stop him, he came to Hogwarts school to learn magic. He did things and saw things a boy like you could never dream of, though you've had a taste of it now, haven't you? Be careful, Dudley, he is able to destroy you with a word, and your usefulness has just run out. It would be wise to mind yourself around him.

~Albus Dumbledore,
Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

You hear your heart beating in your ears and feel your breath hitch in your chest. You turn the volume of your television up, and your computer starts beeping as the magic still swirls around you prodding and mocking. You sit on the floor with your back pressed against the wall when standing makes you too dizzy, and you feel so cold that you can't imagine ever being warm or whole or happy again.

There is a quietness that weaves itself through all the dull, everyday sounds surrounding you-- a silence that rises above the electronic roar. You force yourself to stand again, just for a second, just long enough for you to slam the window shut and get one last look out into the empty sky before the colors become duller than you've ever seen them.

In your room, everything is still, and the air is getting thick and uncomfortable, as the flashing slows, and the winds stop, and the magic begins to fade until there's nothing left to tell you it was ever there but an old, crumpled piece of ordinary paper lying on your bed.

You want it back. You want it even if that means having to take every horrible thing that comes along with it and made you hate it worse than you ever thought you could hate anything. You think, for a moment, that if you hadn't bothered listening to Harry and went looking for your parents you might still have the magic, but that was your decision, in the end, and you would have made it again, even knowing what would happen after. You try to reach out with you mind, but you don't remember how, and it doesn't really matter, because there's nothing left for you to reach for. It never was yours.

In the hallway, Harry's knocking on your door, talking about the places he's been and the things he's brought back for you to see, but you close you eyes and sink into the complete noiselessness, letting it wrap itself around you and muffle every sound except your heartbeat and your ragged breathing. You hear a few last, far-away shouts from Harry before his voice fades, and you feel one final jolt of magic as the thought of him trying to kiss you makes you sick.

You've always known you couldn't win against something that you couldn't punch and kick and shout into submission, but for a few days at least, you thought that if you kept your head and refused to admit defeat, it might not be able to win against you either. For a few days, you could fly and laugh and not be afraid of anything. But you've lost now. In your head, you see black robes against a black sky, and a tiny voice whispers that this is what you knew when you were sure of nothing else, and this is what you said you wanted all along.

It's getting dark, and you shiver.

The End