New Beginnings

Every flurry of punches that Dudley threw at the bag, he was attacked. No, he wasn't facing an opponent in the ring...he hadn't done that for several months, but he still kept up a regular regimen of training given the kind of work he did.

Another flurry of punches as his enemy threw more attacks at him.

It was always the same...the demons that plagued Dudley Dursley throughout his life, his fears, his insecurities, those phantoms that had been given a solid form the night the Dementor touched him, bringing them out of the shadows to permanently become a part of him. Up until two years ago, they assaulted him with his worst fears and self-loathing and then they used real weapons in the form of memories when he got into a fight with his father and nearly killed him. Granted, it was justified and it was self-defense, but that didn't stop the phantoms from whispering their doubts.

That phrase was accompanied by a mental image of his fist slamming into his father's face, knocking the large man off his feet and into the wall. Then the final assault came with memories of the last two years...encounters with Dementors, cult-members, actual demons, and the deaths of friends at the hands of things that looked like something out of a Lovecraft novel. It came as a rush of images and sounds, assaulting his mind, but he kept pounding away on the punching bag, as if he could banish the memories with each impact of his fist. He wasn't fooling himself, though, he knew he could never banish the memories and make them go away...but working out whether via punching bag or running long distances helped shut them up for a while...along with the drugged cocktail he had been taking at nights to sleep.

Now that was a new one. Apparently his inner demons were tying a different approach now. Instead of violent memories and shouting, this voice was calm, almost friendly.

One vicious right hook slammed into the bag, knocking it off the hook and to the ground. Dudley stood there for a moment, staring at the punching bag before smiling. "You lose," he said to the now silent voice. "Went too far that time."

If that voice had said that to him when he had turned fifteen, he might have listened to it. But he knew the truth, it wasn't Harry's fault. In hindsight, having heard what Harry had to deal with and getting a taste of what it was like, Dudley was surprised his cousin hadn't gone psycho and killed them all for the hell they put him through at Privet Drive. Yes, the Dementor attacked him because it was after Harry...but in a way, it was a good thing. It showed him his worst memories, his fears, and his own self-loathing...it also made him realize that he was truly ignorant of the world around him and that it was a truly dark place beneath that sugar coated thing he saw as his life. So what if he was plagued by phantoms that attempted to gnaw at his sanity, he didn't care. To give into them would be weakness, to be a victim, and he was never going to let that happen again. He was going to go down fighting if he had to. Besides, in a way, he accepted their taunts and whispers as a sort of penance for what he and his family had done to Harry.

He was half expecting the voices to accuse him of "running away" and being a coward, but he knew that wouldn't happen. He dealt with dark creatures and evil on a regular basis...and he never ran. That was when he chuckled when he realized that some people would consider him insane for talking to himself, but he knew he wasn't crazy. He knew that those voices were merely fragments of his sub-conscious preying on his fears. The only way to deal with them was to stand and face them...better that than to be lying there pathetic and defenseless while something tried to suck his soul out of him.

Yeah, it would have been different, alright. He probably would have been an obese and bigoted git like his father, probably an even bigger one since the next generation always tried to surpass the previous one. Yes, he may live a dangerous life now, but at least he was living it and not letting it live him.

His cell-phone went off, breaking him out of his thoughts. He had thought about ignoring it, but a glance at the clock on the wall told him it was almost ten in the evening and that the gym would be closing down shortly. He walked over to a nearby weight bench and grabbed his cell-phone off it...one of his few constant companions the last two years.

"Dursley here."

"Dudley, it's Derek...you need to return to the house now."

Dudley didn't bother hiding his groan of disappointment.

"Aw, c'mon, Derek...I'm on vacation, remember?"

"I'm aware of that, but this is an emergency."

"It's always an emergency. I'm not goin-"

"Dudley," said Derek in a voice that Dudley recognized as the one his employer used only in the most dire of situation. "It's your father...I'm sorry...he passed away a couple hours ago."