I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER.

This will be the one and only disclaimer.

'Life is one set of painful experiences followed by the next, and then- you die'

Sometimes the truth behind that statement baffles me, and makes me want to cry, except I can't cry because I just don't even care anymore. My life had never been anything to write home about, disappointments after disappointments till I finally came to the conclusion that maybe living in fiction was much better than the drab ways of the real world.

Fiction is an escape to all of us after all, and how hard could it be for me to escape into a world that is much better than my actual reality.

I guess I wasn't thinking about any of it when I got hit by a car. I swear I saw death come for me in slow motion- media's depiction of the grim reaper with the black hood and the scythe that seemed to have a tint of red. They say your life flashes before your eyes as you die, but none of that bullshit ever happened to me, instead I only stared, my body frozen as the car seemed to rush towards me at a speed that was surely faster than light.

As it hit me, I felt the pain come, the bones break, the agony of having your body mercilessly ripped apart, I barely had the time left to stare at the horrified face of the woman driving the car, I couldn't help but in that instant want to crack a joke related to women and driving. And then, I was no more.

-x-

I woke up in a bed that I wasn't too familiar with, with two faces staring at me. These faces I was extremely familiar with. There was Uncle Monty from 'Withnail and I', of that there was no question, it was one of my favorite movies after all. What I didn't understand was why Richard fucking Griffiths would come to visit me in the hospital bed, or why despite not feeling any glasses on my face, I seemed to be able to see every detail of his face clear as crystal. He seemed to be tired, but pleased to see me, which was good. I was a fan.

I looked at the woman, I knew her too, Fiona Shaw. She was also an actress, and she seemed to be on the job, pulling off what had to be the most convincing 'doting mother' act I had ever seen. I know a character archetype when I see one, I spend time on TV Tropes. It was clear that their feelings of concern were being directed at me, but I couldn't really tell why that was the case. I wasn't famous, or even British as far as I know, and yet here were two relatively more famous actors just at my bedside. In the back of my head, I couldn't help but feel I had seen them before, somewhere. Somewhere together.

"Oh no" I audibly muttered as my brain pieced it together. I had always been told I was sharp, quick to draw conclusions (though I don't know how accurate the words of a fifty year old drunk teacher were) and it seemed like that was an accurate assumption about me to make, but if my mind was really telling me what it was telling me, I was well and properly fucked.

"Oh no" I repeated, perhaps dumbly because I had no idea what was happening. I was surely dreaming, or something along those lines. This was not happening. And then I saw him.

It would be easy to miss him after all. From the corner of my eye, I saw him, peering through the door, he looked worried too, though I had no idea why he was that worried, unless the accident was going to be pinned on him. He had those glasses, and despite him being very far away, I could see the faint mark on his forehead. He looked like Daniel Radcliffe, and he was in make-up too.

I almost wanted to say the F-word when I realized just who I was in this scenario, and I looked at my already pudgy arms, and my protruding belly. Yep. I was Dudley motherfucking Dursley.

"Fuck" I finally said after a minute of silence, before promptly going back to sleep, hoping that I'd wake up in the hospital bed and world that was designated for me. Or dead. Either way would work.

-x-

Have I ever told you how I really hate life?

It had been three weeks since the 'accident' (the word was said in hushed tones around Harry Potter by my parents, and even they didn't seem cruel or sadistic enough to insinuate that he had been responsible for causing the accident, whatever it was, but it was pretty obvious they thought he was responsible, and they were avoiding him as a consequence) and I was almost getting ready to murder my parents, well, fake parents. It was bad enough to be called 'Diddyums' or 'Dudders' every five fucking seconds, but they never left me alone, never gave me time to fucking think, to contemplate what I was going to do.

I'd managed to get working on that despite their best efforts to constantly annoy me with their presence. It had taken me around two days to figure out I had just turned nine years old, and it had taken me another two days to realize that thanks to appropriate birthdays, if I were a wizard, I'd be in the same year as Harry was- for some reason. I am a Harry Potter fan, I've read the books multiple times cover to cover, and I know Dudley was born a month before (or was it me now?) and that he and Harry would thus be eligible to go to Hogwarts together, but that was only if I was magic. And I was pretty sure in cannon, I wasn't magic. Which meant I was stuck in a universe, a fictional universe, away from the few friends and the few family members that were still talking to me, and I wasn't even able to do magic.

I almost wanted to let out a dramatic 'no' and wail myself to the floor, but the grown up me was not going to be party to any of that childish behavior, I proceeded to do what I ordinarily do in situations like these- which is be a grump.

I spent one week after that just moping about, lamenting the world I was stuck in. My 'parents' avoided me, and Harry seemed to run away as soon as I walked into the room, which was counterproductive to what I was trying to do. I was going to have to be away from the action, the least I could do was regularly correspond with Harry and constantly change things, that was all I had.

"Why do you keep running away?" I asked him, we were back in present day of course, and I'm sure I was wearing what had to be the grumpiest face a child could make.

"Are you seriously asking me that question?" he asked me boldly. I remembered him being more- timid, that was the appropriate word for it, in the books. He surprised me with his boldness in this one though.

"Yeah, I mean I know that I haven't exactly treated you very well, but I don't remember you running away from me"

Harry looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face, I think the Dudley in this universe had been even more dumber than the books had depicted him, I think he was surprised I had managed to put together two sentences together.

"I don't know" he finally managed to say. I looked at him with some measure of pity, here was a child that had been mistreated. They never went out and out abusive uncles on him, but he slept in a fucking cupboard for the love of God, he was alone, his parents dead, a destiny of pain, sacrifice and sorrow ahead of him, and he wasn't even allowed to be happy. I cursed Rowling for having come up with such a good setup for a character, wondering why I could never write shit like that.

"Hey" I said to him, perhaps more softly than a big fat and whiny kid like could muster. "Sit down, tell me what happened"

He looked up quickly, I think he was more shocked at the softness in my voice, at how it was not an order to sit down like the Dudley of the old would have given him, this was more of a request. His face quickly morphed into one of fear, perhaps I had played this card with him before then.

"I'm not going to do anything, I promise. No one tells me about the incident" I told him, which was true. My 'parents' had been avoiding talking to me about it all the time, they seemed extremely happy that I did not remember the so called 'traumatic incident'. I knew I was in the hospital, I had suffered a mild ankle sprain and nothing more, and that had healed with time too. I seemed to have been knocked out for a while, but had no concussions. Health wise, I was in the clear. I didn't understand what was so awful about the thing that happened to Dudley just before I was thrown into the world that no one was talking about it.

"Promise me" he told me.

"I swear"

"You really don't remember?" he asked me again, and I couldn't help but get irritated. I knew that he was mentally a child, even if I wasn't, but I had gotten used to people responding promptly. I didn't deal with children much in my previous life.

"Just tell me" I said, sighing.

"You and Piers" he began, I recognized that name as Piers Polkiss, my sidekick, and overall annoying fuck (from what little of him was described in the book, as far as I remembered, he was in the first one) "You guys were- uh, trying to hit me with a tube light, trying to break it on my head and see what would happen"

"Ugh" I said in disgust. "I'm really sorry about that." That was followed by another shocked expression on Harry's face.

"So you were about to hit me, and I was really scared, and I couldn't control myself and the tube light in your hand burst" he told me. "This seemed to scare you, and you backed onto the street, to get away from me" he said. "You seemed pretty- off, almost scared, and your eyes went weird"

"What do you mean my eyes went weird?" I asked him sharply.

"You went cross-eyed, like your eyes rolled into the back of your head" he seemed to have described that perfectly fine. "I thought you were in shock" he continued.

"And you finally stepped onto the street, where a car was racing toward you, it was going really fast"

I waited with bated breath, this was very similar to what ended my old life (I think).

"Then you looked at the car, and the car suddenly turned sharply, it narrowly grazed your knee, and you tripped and fell on your ankle, but the car just smashed into another car"

"Did the driver do that?" I asked him. "Did the driver try to swerve?"

My excitement was palpable, it was possible that for some reason, by some miracle, maybe through the magic of transportation, my name was also on that Hogwarts registry, and I had activated my dormant magic so that I could save my eyes. I was excited, almost too excited by this.

"Dudley, how are you doing that?" he asked me.

"Doing what?" I asked him absently, before looking at the light bulb in the room, it seemed to be glowing brighter, much brighter than any light bulb I had seen.

"That" Harry said, and it was like a damn burst, and I willed for the bulb to explode.

And it did.

As Harry bolted from the room, I grinned. "This just got very interesting"

-x-

It took a week of Harry running away from me (which I found extremely comical) before I finally managed to convince him that I also had special powers. I swore that I had little control over the powers and that what I had, I was not going to use to torment him. I then gave him a heartfelt apology, telling him in as many words that I was sorry about what I had done to him, and how I had treated him because I thought he was different, but that I was willing to change, and that I was going to stop bullying him and start treating him more like what he was, which was a brother.

To convince him of that took longer, I threw a first class temper tantrum to get the Dursley's to give the smallest bedroom in the house to Harry. I even had Petunia buy him some new clothes. I gave him some of my (still working) toys, and that was what finally convinced him that I had changed for good, and after that, we were really close friends. Something that seemed to annoy my parents more than anything else, also something I couldn't give a rat's arse about.

The game plan was set, I had to stick to Harry, and I had to help him, whilst enjoying my time in Hogwarts. It took a while to accept that the old life I had was gone, a car ran over it. This was my new life, and I had to be one of the worst characters in a world of fiction, but it was okay, as I was a wizard. I even tried it out, making snowflakes appear when I really concentrated.

I discovered that having the mind of an adult helped me control my wandless magic like nothing else. I was even able to lock doors, and make the bulbs flicker when I was in the room. I was capable of making the candle put itself out with just my thoughts (Petunia noticed this and sent me to my room, the first time I was ever punished), which meant I was a wizard. It also meant that some things needed to change.

I had made friends with Harry, and pretty soon, we were extremely close. It was hard hanging out with a nine year old again, but we managed to make do. Nothing like a bit of Super Mario to ease the tension. I'd also wanted to look good while I was at Hogwarts, which meant I began exercising, and hard. I worked out every second I had free after school, thanks to my mind, my grades improved, I was in detention and remedial classes less, which meant I was working out or playing soccer with Harry more. I also began working jobs, as many as I could. I cleaned yards for people at first, before moving on to also delivering paper and selling lemonade. I made do with whatever I could to save up some money, because I knew that there was going to be an averse reaction to the discovery of me being a wizard, and I just might need some money to help me with school.

I began teaching Harry how to control some of his magic as well. The plan was to make him, and Ron (when I met him) into proper badasses. Hermione was going to be just fine as she had prodigal talent, but Ron and Harry would need help. Ron more than Harry, and I was going to help them. I had a plan on who my allies were going to be, I avoided the Slytherins, I stuck to the Ravenclaws and the Hufflepuffs, I resolved to help Neville out whenever I could too, but he was going to take a backseat to the golden trio.

I was basically trying to just save this universe, and try to save as many as I could through my actions, or my machinations.

-x-

The Office Of The Headmaster

Albus Dumbledore stared at the registry with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. He was an old man, he had lived for a century and a half, and he had sen a lot of wondrous things in his life, he had also seen a lot of dangerous things in his life, he could even say that he helped create some of those dangerous things. He wasn't alone in the office, looking at the registry of the students attending that year was done once before the letters were sent out, and the tradition called for the headmaster and the deputy headmaster to look at it together. The deputy headmaster wrote the letters under the supervision of the headmaster, it was one of those things that was done from the time of the founding figures of Hogwarts and had carried over to this day.

"What is so funny?" the current deputy headmaster, Minerva McGonagall asked him. She herself was no slouch in the age department, a witch of prodigious talent, and a reputation for being a very hard and fair teacher to boot, Albus was extremely lucky to have her on his side, helping him run the school.

"Irony" he said simply with a twinkle in his eye, before passing over the register to McGonagall.

She stared at the name 'Dudley Dursley' in the registry, he was right below 'Harry Potter'

"His cousin is also magical" she said flatly. "I don't see the irony here Albus"

Minerva wouldn't know the irony of the situation. He remembered it like it was yesterday, when a young Petunia Evans, jealous of the fact that it was her sister and not her who was magical, had written him a letter, asking him, no, begging him to let her attend Hogwarts alongside her sister. Of course, he was heartbroken when he realized he was going to have to tell her that she hadn't activated any magic in her, which probably meant that she had none in her to use, or to learn to control.

"Our world works in a funny way Minerva" he said to her. "We really are very lucky to be a part of it"

-x-

So that was the first chapter, thanks for reading it if you're still here. And please review the story, as it inspires me to create more and more. My other fics are also on the way, so don't you worry about that, this idea just didn't want to leave my head.