Disclaimer: No I don't own anything in regards to Harry Potter.

Summary: Dudley had always known exactly what Harry was, until he realized that he had been completely wrong. (Aka: Dudley's thoughts on Harry as they grow up.) Eventual HPxDD (Slash between cousins.)

Warnings: Mentions of child neglect and abuse. Possible future slash (or at least slashy thoughts) of the incestuous kind (between cousins).

x x x x x x x x x x

"The Freak"

Chapter 1

If someone asked Dudley Dursley what he thought of his cousin, the immediate response would have been…

"He's a freak."

Dudley didn't see anything wrong with this statement. It was the truth after all. One his mother and father had enforced since before he could remember. Dudley was their wonderful, precious, normal child and his cousin, Harry, was a strange freak that should be grateful that the Dursley's had taken him in and not just left him on the street or shoved him off into an orphanage.

Dudley had never understood why Harry was a freak, but it didn't really matter. He was, and that was all Dudley needed to know.

When they went to school, Dudley, like most children, gathered a group of friends and shared his opinions on various topics with them. For the first time Dudley had to tell his others why his cousin was a freak. This stumped him a little. Wasn't it obvious? He just was. But other answers soon came as well, from half remembered comments his parents had made before to their own friends.

He's so small

So skinny

Ungrateful

Always gets in the way

He's weird

A trouble maker

Look at his hair

And those funky glasses

His clothes don't fit right

He's a FREAK!

Dudley's new friends soon agreed with him and started blaming things on Harry when they made a mess or whenever things went wrong. Dudley had never had to blame Harry before, his parents did it for him more often than not, but it was an easy enough transition when dealing with other adults. Dudley learned that most adults were slower in believing that Harry was a freak but once enough trouble was laid at the green eyed boy's feet they would fall in line.

It was Dudley's best friend, Piers, who first started hitting Harry. Well, Dudley's mum and dad gave Harry smacks for some of the freaky things he did before throwing him into his cupboard sometimes, but this was the first time anyone else had done it. Harry was playing with the blocks and Dudley's group had decided that they wanted them. The teacher hadn't been watching so there hadn't been any reason not to take what they wanted, it was only Harry after all. Dudley had been surprised when his cousin resisted, Harry almost never bothered to at home, but he quickly stopped when Piers started hitting him.

As they grew such incidents became more and more common, though always out of sight of the teachers, and 'Harry Hunting' just seems like the most logical next step. Harry wasn't Dudley's gangs only target, but he was the most common one because he was 'the freak'.

To Dudley, it seemed to be his duty to chase after Harry. More and more weird things kept happening around his cousin, a set of dishes the boy knocked over floated to the floor, and didn't break, their teachers hair turned blue while she was yelling at him, he disappeared while Dudley was chasing him and ended up of the roof, and then there was the snake incident at the zoo. Dudley still didn't know how Harry had done that but Dudley had heard him hissing to the snake who looked like it was actually listening and then when he interrupted his cousins odd conversation the glass of the tank just vanished letting the snake escape it had hissed at him as it left. The two most memorable things that Dudley recalled from his eleventh birthday was his fear of the snake attacking him and the smile on his cousin's face as it left.

For those few moments Harry had actually looked happy. Harry never looked happy, let alone smiled.

Then the letters came. One and two and ten and hundreds of letters and Dudley's dad got weirder and weirder with each one. His mum even gave the freak his second bedroom! Then there was their odd, horrible, 'vacation' to that strange, ugly, little island and the giant who stole Harry and gave Dudley a pig's tail. Harry's 11th birthday, for that's what the day it was, the giant had even brought his cousin a cake, was one of the scariest days of Dudley's life. That was the day he learned that magic was real, his cousin had it, and Dudley had gotten an odd, nasty, curly little pig's tail to prove it.