A Dursley Halloween

The Dursley family of Number Four Privet Drive were happy to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you. Which meant that, like every normal family, they would be celebrating their darling son's sixth Halloween with an evening of wholesome autumn traditions, like apple-bobbing and spooky stories.

Petunia whistled tunelessly as she filled a large tub with water and studied the neighbors' decorations. "Would you look at that!" she harumphed to her husband, who was being pelted with globs of hot caramel by their adorably mischievous son. "Those Murphys are the most tasteless people." She sniffed. "It's a sad thing for a neighborhood when you can't go down the block without seeing fake corpses in the flowerbeds, and what's more that daughter of theirs..."

Her husband, Vernon, interrupted her with howl as young Dudley, dressed as a pirate for the holiday, flung caramel straight off the stove (Petunia had been making candy apples) into his eye. "Little tyke!" he chuckled as soon as he had recovered his vision. "A right Halloween buccaneer, our Dud!"

Petunia smiled benevolently at the scene of domestic bliss spread before her for a moment, then returned to the tub and the window. "People have been arriving at old Mrs. Figg's house for the past hour," she announced, and not bothering to hide her disgust added, "They look like vagrants, the lot of them, not even properly dressed."

Abruptly, she turned off the faucet in one strong flick of her wrist and set the tub down on the kitchen floor with a clang. Vernon immersed himself in wiping Dudley's latest caramel missile off his chin, and the feeling passed.

"Okay my diddle-dinky-Dudderdums! You and Mummy and Daddy are going to bob for apples now! Just put your face right up to it, and bite it with those brand new strong teeth you're getting -"

Dudley cut into his mother's saccharine coo. "Where's Harry?"

Petunia's expression transfigured from sweet to stony and Vernon's complexion deepened. Why on earth would their son, darling angel and paragon of toddlerhood, want to associate with that misbegotten whelp of a cousin?

Suddenly, Vernon's face cleared and his head was filled with visions of his own apple-bobbing days, during which he'd done far more dunking than actual bobbing. Why, the boy was a chip off the old block, all right! He beamed at Dudley. "Don't worry, my boy, I'll go get him right away!"

Sending a gallant smile at his wife, who still looked apprehensive, Vernon made his way to Harry's new room. For Dudley's sixth birthday, his parents had decided to give him the nursery suite to himself. The Dursleys thought they had done a fine job turning that little cupboard under the stairs into a room for Harry Potter. It had taken Vernon all day to squeeze that cot into the dusty space, so the boy ought to be grateful!

He was musing this way to himself when Harry materialized from behind a corner with a shout. "BOO!"

Vernon's heart skipped two beats, which was certainly not healthy for a man of his bulk. (Sheer muscle mass, of course.) Harry giggled demonically at his prank.

Recovering, Vernon felt his face turn a shade of purple usually only seen in modern art and vegetables. "DO YOU THINK YOU'RE FUNNY, BOY?" he demanded thunderously.

Immediately, the giggles stopped, and fear replaced the mirth in the boy's eyes.

"THERE'LL BE NO MORE FUNNY BUSINESS AROUND HERE, THAT'S FOR SURE! IF YOU CAN'T BEHAVE IN A CIVILIZED FASHION, YOU'LL SPEND THE NIGHT IN YOUR CU- ROOM! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME, BOY?"

Gulping, Harry nodded. He followed his irate uncle into the kitchen, considerably subdued.

"Right then," Vernon began when they had gathered around the apple-bobbing tub. He took several deep breaths to completely regain his control. "Harry, why don't you go first?"

Dudley immediately started to wail. "That's not faaair! I wanna go first, I was here first, you like Harry better'n me! I WANNA GO FIRST!"

Petunia shot Vernon a piercing look before kneeling beside her wailing son. "Of course you'll go first, darling. Daddy was only teasing, wasn't he Daddy?"

Vernon reluctantly resigned himself to waiting a bit longer for Harry's plunge. "Thataboy, Dudley, you go get the biggest apple in there."

The tantrum vanished immediately. Dudley grinned charmingly at his parents before going for the largest and shiniest apple in the tub. After a heroic struggle, he came up empty. The thunderclouds forming over his head were nearly visible as his baby blue eyes scrunched up.

Petunia acted fast. "That's all right, Duddy-dums! Try again, Mummy knows you can do it!"

Vernon chuckled with pride as his son made no show of hiding his hands as he grabbed hold of an apple and rammed it in between his jaws, face an inch above the water, before standing up proudly and gesturing excitedly to the captured apple. A less reverent onlooker may have drawn a comparison to Dudley Dursley and a stuffed hog's head, but his parents merely beamed at his accomplishment.

"Look at that determination!" Vernon pointed out, in high spirits once more. "No one will stop our Dudley from getting what he wants!"

Without warning, Harry spoke up. "It's like the witch's cauldron. Can I go?"

Vernon's color became unnatural for the third time that day and Petunia let loose a shriek. "What did you say?" she hissed at him.

"We did it in school," Harry started to explain, but Vernon already had him by his ill-fitting shirt (a hand-me-down of Dudley's) and was halfway to the cupboard.

Pushing the boy into his room, Vernon spent a minute striving for speech. "YOU'LL SPEND THE REST OF THE NIGHT IN THERE!" he shouted at last. "AND IT'LL BE LONGER THE NEXT TIME I HEAR ANY OF THAT NONSENSE!" He slammed the door shut on Harry's confused face.

* * *

The Dursleys resumed their Halloween festivities, but Vernon and Petunia were on edge, though they took pains to see that their son enjoyed himself thoroughly. After all the apples had been more or less bobbed, Dudley was declared the winner with seven apples to his name. He demanded they be coated in sweets, so Petunia gladly poured ample amounts of caramel over the fruit and then rolled it in black and orange jimmies. Dudley had no sooner dug in then was demanding more, so she started on the next apple. When she brought the candy-dipped apple to the plate of jimmies this time, however, she realized with a start that it was no longer there.

"Duddy-dums? Did you take Mummy's jimmies?"

Vernon chortled and assured her that their son was far too absorbed in his apple to have even noticed anything else. It was at this point that Petunia caught sight of the jimmies on the other side of the room. Shaking her head at her own absent-mindedness, she crossed the kitchen and plunged the apple into...the counter-top.

Petunia spun around, as if to catch the culprit in the act. Neither Dudley nor Vernon, however, had moved from their seats. She spotted the jimmies on top of the refrigerator and, lips pursed tightly, cautiously advanced. Slowly, she held the apple over the plate and waited.

Nothing happened. Petunia sighed with relief and covered the apple with jimmies. She made her way to Dudley to give her son his treat, but stopped short halfway there.

They were crawling.

Letting out a high-pitched scream, Petunia dropped the apple. Her family turned around, Dudley looking cranky that his sweets were not coming in a steady flow and Vernon apprehensive.

"Something wrong, dear?"

Not trusting her own voice, Petunia merely pointed at the fallen apple. To her bewilderment, it looked perfectly normal.

"Mummy!" Dudley whined in impatience. "Want apple NOW!"

"Coming dear." Petunia crouched and gently wrapped her trembling hands around the stick. Nothing. She picked up the apple, examined it, and plucked off an orange jimmy to examine.

It became a worm in her hands and without thought, she flung the apple across the room. It landed heavily in the sink, disrupting the pile of dishes on the counter and causing them to slide in deafening succession to the floor.

When the dust had cleared and their ears stopped ringing, Dudley was crying and Vernon's color was yet again unnaturally crimson.

"We're going into the living room for scary stories," she said firmly. "Now."

Vernon picked up the still-complaining Dudley and they fled.

"Right then," Petunia began when the three had settled into a circle in front of the fire. "Daddy's going to turn off the lights now, and then we can tell scary stories, okay DumDum?"

"But...but...I want...my..."

Petunia hastily cut in. "And after that, you can have all the sweets you want!"

Dudley's smile was cherubic once more. "Okay."

Vernon stood up and turned off the lights in the room, leaving it lit only by the fading sunset. There was a sudden bang and both Dursleys jumped.

There was a very tense silence, and then Vernon let out a rather forced chuckle. "Little tyke's left his remote-control truck on again," he said with a marked lack of conviction.

He sat down again, with a slight shaking of the furniture, and addressed his family cheerfully. "I'll go first then, shall I?" They nodded. "It was a dark and stormy night." Vernon hesitated. Then he remembered that Halloween storytelling had been a great tradition when he had been a boy - his sister Marge had been particularly good at sending chills up the family's spines with her tales of rabid bulldogs terrorizing the neighborhood. "A dark and stormy night," he repeated with more confidence. "and Ver...onica, uh, Smith had just been dared to ring the doorbell of the creepiest house on her street. The other children had always said that a -" but Vernon couldn't bring himself to say the word. "That a bad woman lived there. But Veronica knew that nobody lived in the abandoned old house, so she wasn't afraid to go right up to the house and knock..."

He trailed off as the family became aware of a knocking on their own door. "I'll get it," Petunia said quickly and rose with considerable trepidation, even though she was sure it was only that dratted dictionary salesman again. Some people just couldn't take a hint.

But when she opened the door, scowl in place to tell off the persistant little salesman (Flickwit or some such - always inviting himself in and pretending to be interested about her children, although she told him time after time that they simply weren't interested in peddler's wares), the front steps were empty. Shivering in the October chill, she returned inside and slammed the door shut behind her.

"Delinquents!" she pronounced, re-entering the living room. "I've a mind to write the city council." Petunia settled herself next to her son and smiled cheerfully. "Keep going, Vernon."

Vernon cleared his throat. "So, uh, Veronica knocked on the door, and the old woman who answered had green skin, a long nose, and loads of hairy warts. She was dressed all in black, with a pointy hat, and was holding a broom." He shifted uncomfortably. "Later, the other children would say it had only been a nice old grandmother, and tease Veronica, and call her Vermin Wets-His-Pants, but -"

"Dear," Petunia cut in gently. Vernon started.

"Ah, yes, but anyway..." He was interrupted by the sound of breaking glass. The Dursleys spun around to see their most recent family portrait (not including Harry, naturally) lying face down on the carpet, frame broken and glass shattered. They watched in horror as the rest of the mounted photos on the wall fell in noisy succession.

There was a very dreadful silence in which Vernon and Petunia regarded the fallen objects in unconcealed terror, but it was soon broken when Dudley began to cry.

"I don't wa-wa-wanna sit in the dark anymore!"

"Of course not, Duddydums!" Petunia quickly agreed. She hurried to the light switch and the living room was once more illuminated. Apart from the fallen pictures, there was nothing out of the ordinary. "I must have left a window open," she explained with a valiant attempt at lightheartedness. "Silly me! And now a breeze has knocked our photos down! Don't worry, Dudley, we'll get new frames at the shop tomorrow."

They avoided actually looking at the windows. Neither parent was ready to test Petunia's convenient theory.

"Let's not tell scary stories anymore," Petunia suggested cheerily. "After all, there isn't any such thing as," she paused, "ghosts, or goblins, or -" but like her husband, she could not name the last creature. "Or bad people like Daddy was talking about."

"Too right, m'dear!" Vernon averred loudly. "No such thing as ghosts!"

The vase on the coffee table next to him toppled off the table and crashed to the ground.

Vernon jumped up and shouted, "Whoever you are, come out from under whatever bloody coat you've got on this time and face me like a man!"

Petunia gathered Dudley in her arms and said shakily, "Don't be silly, dear. You knocked that vase off the table yourself. See how clumsy Daddy is today, Dudley?"

Dudley scrunched up his face and began to wail into her shoulder.

Meanwhile, Vernon was circling the room, beady eyes darting back and forth and never turning his back on one side of the room for more than a second. "I've had enough!" he roared at his unseen foe. He rolled up his sleeves and glared menacingly. "If you want a fight, you'll get a fight!"

Petunia started to say something pacifying but froze at the sound of footsteps behind her. She suddenly knew, with cold hard dread that seized her middle and stole her breath, the face she would see if she turned around. Her feet moving without permission, she faced the owner of the footsteps and looked into a pair of bright green eyes. They held gentle reproof and earnest plea at once and Petunia could hear a voice from long ago ask, Don't you love me at all anymore, Pet?

"What's going on?" asked Harry Potter. "Who's Uncle Vernon talking to?"

"YOU!" Vernon shouted, his body shaking with rage. "What are you doing out of your cupboard?" In his rage, he didn't bother to pretend it was a proper room. "Get back!" Seizing the boy's shirt collar, he dragged him out of the room.

* * *

Vernon lay in bed, refusing to look at Petunia. There was no point in telling her that when he'd put the boy back in the cupboard, the door, which he knew he'd locked the first time, had completely disappeared. He'd fetched plywood from the basement propped it against the cupboard with a chest from the hall, telling the boy to shut his idiot mouth about "'splosions." Tomorrow he would wake up early and build a stronger door, with better locks.

Petunia had buried herself in the covers by the time Vernon came to bed. She wanted only to forget the entire night. This was certainly the last time they would celebrate such a ridiculous holiday; what kind of responsible parents exposed children to such nonsense? For a moment, when her nephew had entered the living room, even she had been seeing things.

She would see to it that Vernon punished the child with an extended stay in his room. She did not want to look at green eyes for a long time.