Work Text:
Dudley Dursley spent most of his young adult life wondering what had happened to his cousin. The Dursley family had been put into a safe house on the day that Harry Potter had turned 17 and kept in hiding for almost a whole year. The house in Privet Drive was still standing, so Dudley's parents had moved back in, and Dudley prepared to go off to university. The wizards who had guarded them at the safe house had been very polite, more polite than perhaps the Dursleys had deserved, but they kept their distance. None of them had been able to give any news about Harry. When the danger was past, Dudley had expected to see Harry again, it was summer and he had always seen his cousin for part of the summer at least, but Harry didn't appear.
Then September came and Dudley went to university in Wales. He deliberately chose it because it was far away from his parents, who had always interfered in his education (however well-meaning their intent,) and far away from Scotland, where the Dursleys had always suspected Harry's weird school had been. Dudley decided that Bangor University sounded positively unmagical and far away from Surrey and was perfect, although on his first day, as his parents drove him into the small city (grumbling about the journey and the bilingual road signs) his first glimpse of the granite college on the hill, with its battlements and lead drainpipes bearing heraldic crests, made him wonder whether Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry looked anything like that.
Dudley settled in to study English Language with Creative Writing; this was a rare cause of friction between Dudley and his father, as Vernon Dursley had wanted his son to study engineering and one day join him at Grunnings, the family drilling firm. Surprisingly, considering his lack of interest in academic subjects, Dudley had shown an aptitude for creative writing at Smeltings, and his teachers at GCSE and A-Level had urged him to play to his strengths. Vernon could no longer argue for a career in engineering when Dudley was failing miserably at Mathematics but earning stellar marks for his English. His story of the Dementor attack he and Harry had suffered when they were 15 had won him a prize – an achievement he couldn't share with his parents because they would have gone mad for including magic in his 'normal' life at school, and he couldn't tell Harry because he never told Harry anything. Plus, mentioning magic probably broke some wizarding law. So Dudley expressed himself through his creative writing and his English teachers loved him for it – their only criticism was that he should probably expand his repertoire and branch out from writing fantasy for a change.
With each passing year at Bangor, Dudley applied himself and passed with excellent marks. He contributed short stories to the student newspaper, Seren, and was a popular member of the Writers Society. He became WriSoc president in his final year at Bangor. Dudley made new friends, leaving Piers Polkiss behind. He moved out of halls in his second year, living in a house with Dylan Morgan and Anwen Adams from his course and Anwen's friend, Trudy Sanders, who was reading Physics. From the moment Dudley saw Trudy, he knew she was the woman for him. She was gorgeous and clever, with clear brown skin and a cloud of curly hair and could do things with numbers that Dudley could only marvel at. She was an amazing chef, whipping up West Indian feasts with ease, and became the inventor of Caribbean-Welsh fusion cuisine. Dudley was getting so well-fed that he had to double the time he spent at the gym to avoid putting on all the weight he had lost at Smeltings. The trouble was, the beautiful Trudy already had a boyfriend, a history lecturer called Marcus, and Dudley really liked him as well. Marcus was charming and friendly and difficult to dislike, and as much as Dudley fancied Trudy, he thought that she and Marcus made a great couple. So, he put his feelings aside and enjoyed their friendship.
When Dudley graduated, he was surrounded by his good friends, and a picture of him in the midst of the WriSoc graduating crowd, all throwing their mortarboards in the air, was pride of place on the mantelpiece at Number 4, Privet Drive.
Every now and again, Dudley couldn't avoid thinking about his cousin. He wondered where Harry was towards the end of every July, because he knew Harry's birthday was around that time. Dudley had a feeling Harry had survived whatever had caused them to have to evacuate Privet Drive and go into hiding, but he couldn't really be certain of anything. He asked his parents once if they had ever heard from Harry since that night and his mother looked so stricken and scandalised and his father turned purple, Dudley didn't want to ask a second time.
Even after graduating with an excellent final mark, Dudley couldn't decide what to do next. His lecturers were trying to persuade him to do an MA in English, which he was tempted to do, but at the same time, his father was grumbling about people who were 'educating themselves out of jobs' and he felt a lot of pressure to begin a career. In the end it was Trudy who made his mind up; she had always planned to become a physics teacher, and she suggested that if Dudley did teacher training as well then at least they would know one other person in the college.
It wasn't the career Vernon Dursley had wanted for him, but as Dudley began his course he discovered he loved teaching. Preparing lessons and activities to keep different ages and abilities of pupils engaged was hard work but it paid off in spades when he got great feedback on his lessons. Dudley wrote to his English teachers at Smeltings for advice and they wrote reams back to him. He decided to be as inspiring a teacher to his future pupils as his Smeltings teachers had been for him.
Trudy and Dudley's shared flat became the hub for the teachers-in-training at college; Trudy would make a feast or Dudley would spend hours making fiddly tapas dishes and Trudy's boyfriend Marcus and the student teachers from college would come round bearing gifts of beer and wine and they'd sit around talking about this teaching theory or that learning concept. Gradually, though, Marcus stopped visiting. Dudley came down to the kitchen one morning to find Trudy walloping some bread dough and muttering about the idiocy of men. Dudley didn't argue with her, men could be idiots, so he put the kettle on and made her a very strong cup of tea, with the merest threat of milk and a hint of sugar. Trudy gave him a watery smile. “Marcus and I want different things,” she said, quietly, tipping the dough back into a mixing bowl and covering it with a warm damp tea towel. “He asked me to marry him with the proviso that I give up a career and support him in his. I thought he was equal opportunities, you know?”
Dudley felt like a stone had dropped into his stomach, “I didn't know Marcus felt that way,” he replied, slowly. “I don't think it's right to ask someone to give up something that means a lot to them.” Trudy flew at him and gave him a big, floury hug. “I knew you would understand.”
“You've always wanted to be a teacher,” Dudley said, patting her back. “It's a no-brainer to me.”
Trudy stuck the mixing bowl with the bread dough in a warm corner of the kitchen to rise again, and she picked up her cup of tea. “Thanks, Dud.”
Trudy and Dudley both qualified as teachers, but while Trudy stayed in Wales, Dudley moved back to Little Whinging. His parents hadn't wanted to worry him or have him abandon his studies, but while Dudley had been away his father's health had not been good. A lifetime of starchy food and being almost permanently furious had wreaked havoc with Vernon Dursley's heart, and Petunia asked her son if he could begin his teaching career closer to home. He took up a post at Stonewall High, the secondary school in High Whinging the town close to the village where he had grown up, the secondary school that Harry Potter would have gone to, if he hadn't received a letter informing him that he had been accepted at wizard school. The madness over the letters had been branded into Dudley's brain – he'd never be able to forget being dragged around southern England trying to avoid deliveries of magical letters that always seemed to be addressed perfectly wherever they went. It was the first time, almost, that he and Harry had been on the same side. He wanted to see what was in the letter almost as much as Harry had.
Dudley almost reminded his mother about it to try and raise a laugh out of her, but decided against it. However amusing he now found the past, it still was a source of anxiety for his parents, especially his mother. Petunia was looking very pale and drawn, bonier than Dudley had ever remembered her, and despite his doctor's orders to keep to quiet hobbies and take time away from the office, Vernon was having none of it. His father's behaviour was scaring his mother, and despite his heavy workload from school, Dudley tried to find time to talk to his father. Vernon had not really adjusted to Dudley having his own mind and did not appreciate being told what to do, and Dudley realised that his father had not really been a healthy man. His job infuriated him, he ate stodgy food, and when Harry had lived with them, Vernon had come home from the office to live on the edge between incandescent rage and fear. A man living with such fury was asking for health problems, but Vernon didn't want to accept that. And then it happened. The phone call they had all been dreading. Vernon had suffered a massive coronary at work and had passed away on arrival at hospital. His last words had been something unrepeatable to a Grunnings helpdesk operator miles away in Mumbai.
Dudley's mother was inconsolable and for the first time he began to appreciate how deeply his parents had loved each other; from the outside looking in they had seemed a very strange couple, but Dudley saw that with all the weirdness that his mother had experienced growing up, his father had been an anchor of normality for her. Petunia didn't speak for forty eight hours after Vernon had died and the stress of planning a funeral by himself while trying to grieve for his father was driving Dudley up the wall, particularly with the imminent arrival of the tyrannical Aunt Marge.
Speaking to Trudy over the phone, Dudley poured out all his feelings, he even mentioned not knowing whether to invite his absent cousin who had grown up in the house to the funeral, and he talked about not knowing what to do about his mother, who was refusing to talk or eat. The next morning, Trudy turned up at Number 4, Privet Drive, having driven five hours from her home in Wales, and in an unobtrusive way began to get the household organised. She held Petunia's bony pale hand in her strong brown ones as the older woman sobbed, and she made buckets of tea as Dursleys began to arrive from all over the country, and slept on the sofa downstairs to make sure visiting Dursleys had space to stay in the spare rooms upstairs. Trudy won the approval of Aunt Marge by making a cup of tea that was mostly brandy and making friends with Aunt Marge's bulldog companion, Crusher, and she won Dudley's eternal admiration for being by his side as he went through the service with the vicar and the funeral director for his father's cremation. She suggested that even if he didn't invite cousin Harry to the funeral, Dudley should at least let him know his uncle had died, but Dudley had no address for Harry so the suggestion was impossible.
“What are friends for?” Trudy would say every time Dudley thanked her, but it was more than that, for both of them. Dudley asked her to sit beside him in the front pew and she did, squeezing his hand tightly as Vernon Dursley was laid to rest to Frank Sinatra's My Way. His mother, sat on his other side, sobbed into his shoulder.
In the days after the funeral, Trudy stayed at Petunia's request, taking up residence in the smallest bedroom, that had belonged to Harry Potter once upon a time, but something was different between her and Dudley. He didn't want her to think he wanted her because his feelings were all over the place and she didn't want him to think she only wanted him because she was sorry for him. Aunt Marge stayed as well, because she decided that her brand of blunt speaking was needed at Number 4, Privet Drive, with the absence of her brother.
When Trudy drove Petunia to the Rose Garden to leave flowers where Vernon's ashes had been scattered, Aunt Marge bullishly asked Dudley when he was going to ask 'that decent young filly out'. When Dudley took his mother into High Whinging to do some shopping, Aunt Marge bluntly wondered aloud if Trudy had noticed what a 'handsome and respectable young gent' her nephew was. A few days later, Aunt Marge bullied Petunia into going for a walk with her and Crusher the bulldog, pointedly saying that Dudley and Trudy could do with getting some air as well.
Sitting in the garden with the sun shining on their faces, the two of them talked, a lot. They talked about his childhood and hers, they talked about their jobs and what they wanted out of their careers, and they talked about each other. They talked about the beginning of their friendship and they talked about their feelings. Dudley and Trudy went out for a meal that night. And the next night. And the night after that. Trudy phoned in to give her notice at her job in Wales and began looking for teaching jobs in Surrey. Their old friend from uni, Anwen, helped Trudy sort out her belongings from her old flat and drove them down to Little Whinging in a removal van.
By the time Aunt Marge was leaving, two months after her brother had passed away, Trudy had moved from Harry's old room and into Dudley's bedroom, had got a job at Stonewall High, and Dudley and Trudy were firmly and finally a couple. Aunt Marge, with the satisfaction of a job well done, left Little Whinging for the coast, to be reunited with her beloved dogs.
There were a few teething problems. As much as Petunia adored Trudy, their ideas about food clashed. Petunia liked bread and potatoes, Trudy preferred food in more than two colours. And when Trudy's parents, Anton and Harriette, came for a visit there was a bit of a dissonance between the socialist Sanders parents and the more conservative Mrs Dursley. But on the whole, Dudley, Trudy, and Petunia had a happy home at Number 4, Privet Drive.
Trudy asked Dudley to marry her one Sunday afternoon while they were going around the supermarket in High Whinging. It wasn't quite the way he had imagined it, among the very unromantic tins of beans and pints of milk at Tesco, and he slowed to a stop. But, as she turned the corner to go down the frozen aisle without him, he caught up with her in two strides and said yes. Trudy's bright smile in response lit up the entire drab day and Dudley felt like he was floating. They kept the news as their secret for a week before cracking and telling Dudley's mother and phoning Trudy's parents. To say Petunia was thrilled was an understatement. First she hugged them both close with her thin, bony arms, and next she put an announcement in the Whinging Weekly News, told all the neighbours and phoned around the family to let them know. Aunt Marge sent a postcard with a large bulldog picture on the front with her congratulations.
Next, Petunia insisted that Dudley and Trudy accept a family heirloom in place of buying an engagement ring. They both politely declined, their tastes being quite different to Petunia's and Trudy not being a fan of diamonds, but the ring she wanted them to keep was beautiful. "It belonged to my mother," she explained. "I inherited all of her jewellery when she died, she passed away not long after my sister..." Petunia gave the ring to Dudley, who showed to to Trudy. It was a rectangular emerald with a plain silver band. "It wasn't her engagement ring, she got given it from a neighbour years ago, Eileen Snape, I think. I really want Trudy to have it. From Rosemary Evans, to Petunia Dursley, to Trudy Sanders." The ring needed a slight adjustment, but it was soon on Trudy's finger, and they didn't think that they could possibly be any happier than they were at that moment.
Until Harriette Sanders asked about Dudley's thoughts on children and what his own childhood had been like, that is. Trudy, who knew a little bit about Dudley's childhood, deflected the conversation, but Dudley seriously started thinking about how he grew up. He compared his mother and her sister, Lily, the aunt he had never met. One normal, the other a witch. He compared himself to his cousin, Harry, one normal, the other a wizard. He began to worry. It was in their family, whatever it was that made people receive letters by owls and talk to snakes and magically turn up on school rooftops and give human boys pig's tails with the zap of a pink umbrella. Everything weird he had ever experienced as a by-product of being related to Harry Potter rushed back to him; his tongue growing over four feet long because of an enchanted toffee, being assaulted by invisible Dementors that sucked the cheerfulness out of the very air, having wizards turn up behind the gas fire and having to blast their way out into the room, having to go into wizard witness protection for a year... Dudley thought about half-remembered biology lessons about genes. What if he passed some recessive wizardness on to his children? How could he discuss his fears with Trudy, she'd think he was crazy. He couldn't even discuss them with his mother, who surely would have had similar concerns about her own genes. In the end, it all came back down to the unknown of what had happened to Harry Potter. Dudley had lived with Harry for eleven years and seen his cousin at least part of every summer for six years. To go from that to no contact whatsoever for almost a decade left him with more questions than answers, but as Dudley critically considered his childhood and the treatment of his cousin under their roof, he couldn't really blame him for disappearing without a word. But the gap in Dudley's knowledge fuelled his fears even further.
Trudy couldn't help but notice Dudley was less buoyant about their engagement and had been since her mother had mentioned children. So, adopting Aunt Marge's brutal honesty she called him out on it. Trudy told him that if he was worried about the difficulties their children would have because their father is white and their mother is black then they needed to talk about it, and soon. Dudley would have laughed if Trudy wasn't so serious. He wanted their children to look like the very image of their mother because she was perfection in his eyes, and he kissed Trudy's forehead and nose and lips and chin and told her exactly that. And so they planned for their wedding...
...Which ended up being postponed when Trudy fell pregnant with their first child. Dudley and Trudy were thrilled, but Petunia was not very happy that the white wedding she had envisioned was not going to take place. With each new scan picture, however, Petunia was being won around. Dudley was so happy about his impending fatherhood, but his concerns about having a magical child grew with each week that passed. Having no one to talk to, he kept his fears to himself, but they were still there and they were still real.
The next time Dudley thought about Harry Potter was when he and heavily pregnant Trudy were talking a stroll through High Whinging's main street on a sunny May weekend. It was a beautiful day and the two of them had just had a pleasant lunch in town when they came across a display from a bird charity. There were owls of all breeds and sizes on show, tied to wooden perches hammered into the grass. The owls were very intent on watching Dudley, to Trudy's amusement. A pretty little barn owl seemed to be his biggest fan. It reminded Dudley painfully of the evening Mr and Mrs Mason (potential investors in Grunnings,) had come for dinner. Something weird had been going on upstairs and then Harry had destroyed a massive dessert that Dudley's mother had created. To top if off, a barn owl had swooped in and delivered a letter, sending the Masons off howling into the night, as Mrs Mason had a phobia of birds of all kinds.
The owls' handler was pleasantly surprised to see his birds behaving in this way and at Trudy's urging, he allowed Dudley to hold the barn owl, who hooted cheerfully in his gloved hand. Dudley was applauded by some of his third years from Stonewall, who then all wanted a go.
Dudley thought about the owl for the rest of the day. "Do you think those owls are there every weekend?" he wondered. "Maybe," Trudy replied with a grin, "Why? Do you want to adopt an owl?"
"No," Dudley laughed. "Nothing like that." And that was true. He didn't want an owl. He just wondered madly if any owl could take a message or whether they had to be specially trained for it, but he couldn't say that to Trudy.
The following weekend they had Trudy's parents to stay and help with the finishing touches to the baby's nursery, which had been Harry's old room. Dudley went into town with a paint swatch to pick up another few tins of pale blue and, hopefully, to see if the owls were still there.
In his pocket, burning a hole, was a letter. It was written on plain white printer paper and folded up tight, and on the outside was written, "Mr Harry Potter".
The owls were back, to Dudley's relief and anxiety. And it was the same man with them as last time. The owls all hooted a greeting and the barn owl flew right off her perch and tried to land on him. She would have reached if she hadn't been tethered to her perch.
The owl handler remembered Dudley as well. "Hello! Back again! You made an impression on the birds last week."
"They, er, made an impression on me," Dudley said. "I don't suppose I could hold one again, could I?"
The owl handler smiled. "Alright then," he untied the barn owl from her perch and handed Dudley a thick leader glove which he hastily put on. "There she is," the owl handler gently passed the barn owl to Dudley.
"Thanks," he replied, and then he faltered. The owl handler was watching him, so how could he give the owl his letter and set her free to fly? And how could he test if she was a post owl if he couldn't show her the letter?
Fortune struck in the form of some more of Dudley's students. A trio of sixth form girls out shopping had stopped by to coo over the owls and the owl handler seized a moment to talk about owl adoptions. Dudley slipped the letter out of his pocket and surreptitiously showed it to the barn owl. She hooted excitedly and snatched up the letter in her sharp beak, pulled herself free from Dudley's grasp and was off.
The sixth formers screamed as the owl swooped over their heads and away over the rooftops of the town.
The owl handler was very upset but to Dudley's relief believed it was an accident. Dudley got him a cup of tea from a nearby cafe and made the owl handler sit down to get over the shock. "I've never had an owl take off like that," he said, shaken. "They're really tame, they don't like to go far."
"I'm sure she'll come back," Dudley hoped, he didn't really know whether the owl would come back or whether she had made a permanent break for freedom. "All of them are ringed and coded," the owl handler said, "I just don't want to tell the charity one of the owls got loose." Thanking Dudley for the cup of tea, the owl handler decided to pack up the display early.
Dudley, feeling both guilty and exhilarated, said his goodbyes and ventured to B&Q with his paint swatch.
***
Harry and Ginny Potter were sitting in the sunny spot in the garden of the Burrow, watching Ron Weasley chase their young son James around the garden. James was zooming a foot off the ground on a toy broomstick and Ron was following him on foot. James' peals of laughter were infectious and even the garden gnomes were giggling inside their rabbit holes in the lawn. "Go on, James, you can beat uncle Ron on the next lap!" Ginny called out, laughing.
A small barn owl swooped overhead and landed on Harry's knee, a letter in her beak. She dropped it into his lap and clicked her beak for a reward. "Accio owl treats," Harry flicked his wand towards the open kitchen door and a packet of treats rocketed towards them. Ginny caught the packet out of the air and slipped the barn owl some food as Harry opened the letter. "That's not parchment," Ginny said, her sharp brown eyes not missing anything.
"No," said Harry, his brow furrowing as he read. "Would you believe, this is from my cousin."
"The Muggle?" Ron called from the other side of the garden, and then leaned over and clutched his side from a stitch and wheezed. "Time for a rest now, James. Uncle Ron's had it."
"Well, unlike you, I don't have any other cousins," Harry smiled. "So, yes. It's Dudley Dursley. Must be about ten years since I saw him last." Harry's green eyes followed Dudley's handwriting, which had drastically improved since he last saw it. "He took a chance with a charity barn owl to see if owl post worked for everyone. A lot's changed for him, wants to know how I'm doing."
"That's nice," Ginny replied, stroking the barn owl. "A lot's changed for you too, Harry. You've both grown up and changed, you're different people from who you were as kids."
Harry looked over and kissed her cheek. "When did you get to be so wise?"
Ginny narrowed her eyes. "You know what I mean. Anyway, it's nice to be in touch with family. We'll put him on our Christmas card list."
"Yes dear," Harry got to his feet and the barn owl fluttered to his shoulder. "Since Dudley's gone to all this trouble I think I'll send him a decent length reply in return."