I do not own Harry Potter okay? I was rereading (for the bazillionth time) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and wondered what it was Dudley was hearing when the dementor attacked him. Well I got to thinking and this is my idea of what played in his mind. Anyway, enough of this A/N, on with the fic!

Dudley Dursley felt the cold grip of the dementor on his neck, even if he couldn't see it. Harry was standing right beside him. Dudley knew he was a wizard and he had said some things that made him mad and struck a nerve but he never thought Harry could do something like this. Then, Dudley realized that it couldn't be Harry, he was trying to do something with his wand to stop it. Harry looked just as terrified as he was. Dudley looked down and then noticed that his feet were floating off the ground and his neck was being tilted back and he could feel as if something was taking his breath away. "What are you doing?" Dudley cried out.

"I'm not doing anything!" Harry yelled, making a motion with his wand and silver vapor came out but did nothing.

"Make it stop!" Dudley cried out. Bad memories were coming to his mind. Flashes of whatever bad happened to him came back in his mind.

He was in the private hospital in London. The nurses had been gossiping about his tail in the time he was waiting for the doctor. It made him uncomfortable but when the doctor came in he felt ashamed.

"This kid is so big, he could be a pig!" The doctor laughed. "This tumor looks just like a pig tail on a pig kid! Oink oink piggy!"

"Shut up..." Dudley whispered as the doctor put him under anesthetist to perform the removal.

Then another flash came into his mind, of when they first entered the hospital. Dudley saw his mom look around nervously and kept fighting with the blanket she had made him wear even though it was the middle of August. It made him feel like a freak. Dudley had asked if they couldn't just pass the tail off as a tumor, which they said it was anyway to the doctors, but Petunia wouldn't allow it. Dudley was scared and confused and his parents were of no help. He looked again at his mother who had her lips pursed making sure no one would see the tail on him so they could gossip about her and her son like common trash.

"It's fine Mum!" Dudley said. "I keep tripping over this thing anyway!"

"You need it so no one can see your...growth... Diddykins." Petunia said.

"Yeah son, no one needs to know our connection to that lot..." Vernon said as he finished the admission paperwork. "At least we'll be shot of that boy for nine months a year now..."

Dudley sat in the waiting room and sighed. That was all his parents cared about. People gossiping about them and hating Harry's existence. He hated how his dad refereed to Harry and hardly paid any real attention to him. In fact Dudley on really picked on Harry to get his father's attention. After what happened when they were little he never wanted to see his father like that again...

The scene in Dudley's mind changed again. Harry was still producing feeble silver vapor and from what Dudley could tell, it was to stop what was happening and it wasn't working too well.

This time it was a scene when they were to start their first year of primary school. Vernon had already swore up and down when he found out that Dudley and Harry were in the same class and Petunia had hardly looked at either of them and kept them inside as if they were contaminated by that fact. One day, Vernon had called and tried to get the Headmaster to change the class arrangements but when he had threatened to kill the headmaster, the police had been called to their house and warned Vernon to cease and desist or he would be arrested. After the police had left and drove off, Dudley saw Vernon take Harry by the ear, lifting him up from the ground and threw him in the cupboard under the stairs.

"Stay there boy! No meals! You will use the bathroom when I let you out!" Vernon said.

"What did I do?" Harry asked.

"Doesn't matter." Vernon said.

This did not seem right to a 5 year old Dudley. He didn't know Harry was a wizard and Vernon and Petunia were trying to squash magic out of him, all he knew was Harry was his cousin who had come to stay when his parents were killed in a car accident. Dudley knew Harry had nothing to do with class arrangements and he shouldn't be punished for it. So when Petunia gave Dudley his lunch, he saved half of his sandwich to give to Harry. There was no real lock on the front of the cupboard but he figured he would be polite and knock.

"Harry..." Dudley said as he knocked on the door.

"Go away!" Harry cried. Dudley ignored this and opened the door and saw that Harry was curled up in a corner of the cupboard and crying from hunger.

Dudley pulled out the sandwich and handed it to Harry. "Here, I saved this for you."

"What is it?" Harry asked wiping his eyes.

"Half of my sandwich." Dudley said.

"But Uncle Vernon said no meals..." Harry said taking the sandwich in his hands reluctantly.

"Well Dad wasn't very nice. He was mad and I don't know why he punished you. You didn't do anything." Dudley said. "And I don't blame you for being in the same class as me. I kind of want to be in class with you."

"You...you don't?" Harry said wiping his eyes.

"No, I don't. I still don't know why Dad would be so mad." Dudley said.

"I do, he hates me." Harry sulked.

"No he doesn-" Before Dudley could finish, the door to the cupboard was yanked open and Vernon Dursley was standing on the other side as Dudley had never seen him before. His face was blood red and he had a thick leather belt in his right hand. He then yelled and grabbed Dudley and hit him repeatedly with the belt as he carried him up the stairs. "HOW DARE YOU GIVE THAT BOY YOUR FOOD WHILE I AM PUNISHING HIM! YOU ARE AN EVIL CHILD!" Vernon said as he threw Dudley into his room. "Now stay in your room and never talk to that boy again!" He said as Dudley cried as Vernon shut the door.

While Dudley was reliving what was a bad enough memory, the scene changed to what happened later that day.

Dudley was still crying in his room when he heard a knock at his door.

"Dudley, can I come in?" Vernon asked with a sickly sweetness.

"Sure Dad." Dudley said drying his tears.

"Well your mother and I think you are such a sweetheart and for that you should be given this..." He pulled a box from the hallway into his room.

"A new TV?" Dudley asked.

"All for you. Now you can watch whatever you want without bothering your mother and me and having to watch the boring news and soap operas your mom likes." Vernon said.

"Thanks Dad." Dudley said as Vernon hooked up the TV.

From that point on, Dudley associated any act of generosity that his parents gave to him as nothing more than an act to make Harry even more miserable. He then got more conformation each time Dudley got called to the headmaster's office for bullying and his parents did nothing but blame the victim or the school. Sure, on the outside he looked proud of himself, but that was to keep his dad from yelling at him for being a sissy boy. Harry had avoided him all this time because Dudley was intimidated by his father's rage. The voices of those meetings played in and out of his mind as the cold was starting to fade away.

"Expecto Patronum!" Harry yelled as he led a sliver stag to push away the invisible dementor that was making Dudley feel this bad. He collapsed onto the ground feeling weak and sick. He could hear Harry and Mrs. Figg talking about stuff he wasn't quite sure about. He could make out words like 'dementors' and 'Dumbledore' and 'squib' but he didn't care about that. He had just fought for his life and soul while seeing why he was the way he was to people flash before his eyes. Dudley thought he had hid those feelings all these years. It made him even sicker. If the boy he had made miserable all theses years had just saved his life after how his father treated them, Dudley knew as Harry and Mrs. Figg picked him up and carried him that Harry was not the waste of space his parents thought he was.

So how was that? Good? Bad? Short? Let me know in a review. From the scene in the seventh book where Dudley said that Harry wasn't a waste of space I knew there had to be a better reason why Dudley was a jerk to Harry. I am guessing that after the dementors, Dudley saw something he hated and so he wasn't as big a jerk in the sixth and seventh books. Well remember to read, (well you just did) and to review. Ciao for now

otherrealmwriter

aka

Realm