In the early hours of Christmas morning, Dudley Dursley was jolted awake by a car backfiring seemingly right outside his two-story house in western England. Since he lived on a particularly populous street, this did not surprise Dudley much. The fact that it was soon followed by the sound of a young child squealing in joy, however, did.
Groaning, Dudley heaved himself up off of his uncomfortable bed that had nearly a dozen springs poking out of the mattress here and there and walked across the wooden floor of his bedroom and over to the window. Dudley pulled back the drab gray curtains and very briefly attempted to peer out onto the street below, but to no avail- a thick layer of frost had settled onto the window the night before, and as a result made it impossible to see anything outside.
Unlatching the window, Dudley thrust it open and stuck his head out into the air and peered down onto the street below. Dudley shivered as he felt flakes of the light snow falling down from the sky above settled onto his arms and seeped into his thin t-shirt.
Feeling his teeth start to chatter from the cold air, Dudley glanced down onto the street below, intending to quickly look to see if there was anything strange about, or if it was just all in his head.`
Running on the ground below with a toy broom clamped in between his legs was a little boy of about three to four years of age. Dudley could not determine much about the child's appearance other than the fact that he had a mop of messy dark brown hair and was still clothed in red flannel pajamas.
Rolling his eyes slightly that some parent had let their child out this early in the morning, Dudley prepared to shut the window and climb back in into his falling-apart bed. However, before he could do so, he saw the child go around in small circles and discovered that the child was not running with the toy broom, but flying with it.
Before it even began to dawn on him what exactly he was doing, Dudley had rushed out of his room- leaving the window wide open in his haste- down the old and rickety staircase, - nearly tripping as he went- and Dudley had just made it to his front door that was almost off its hinges when he heard a very loud crack that came from outside.
Dudley froze, his hand in midair as he reached for the door. Outside, he heard a voice calling out frantically, "James? James! James!" Something about that voice sounded deeply familiar to Dudley, but he could not pinpoint exactly where he had heard it from.
Easing the door open slightly, Dudley peered out into the street. The boy with the flying broom had disappeared, and out in the middle of the street stood a man who appeared to be in his mid to late-twenties whirling around frantically in a velvet green robe holding a stick out in front of him.
"James! James, are you there?" The man called out as he turned around and around in a circles.
Dudley pushed the door wide open and stepped out into the street. He knew this man, Dudley thought as he walked towards the man. "Excuse me, sir. Do you need any help?" Dudley asked, and for the very first time the man noticed him.
"My son." The man said urgently. "I've lost- I don't know where my son is."
Dudley looked at the man in disdain. "How?"
"How, what?" The man asked, bewildered.
"How did you lose your son? You are his parent, you're supposed to look after him!"
The man's nostrils flared in anger, and Dudley felt himself involuntarily take a few steps back. "I was asleep! I just woke up and he was gone, I didn't know where he was. I- I just- I don't know. I don't know where he could have gotten too." The man rubbed his hands anxiously through his hair, messing it up even more so than it already was.
"Well, I am sure that he couldn't have gotten far." Dudley said, attempting to reassure the man, who had now started to pace nervously back and forth. "What does he look like?"
The man stopped pacing and turned back to face Dudley. "He- um- he has dark brown hair- it's kind of messy, like mine is- and brown eyes and- oh, god, which pair of pajamas did he have on last night?" The man cried in anguish.
"Just relax, alright." Dudley said, partly to comfort the man and partly to get him to stop whining- after all, exactly how did his son get out of the house if his father was asleep? "I'm sure that we will find your son. He can't have gone far, correct."
"Well-" the man hesitated, as if he were holding something back from Dudley.
"What is it?" Dudley asked curiously.
"Nothing." The man said, and then glanced down at his wrist. "I'm sorry, but I really have to go. I have to go and find my son." The man turned and started to walk away, until Dudley called after him, " Wait! I think I saw your son just a little while ago."
The man froze. Very slowly, he whirled back around to face Dudley. "What? You've seen him. Why didn't you mention this before?"
Dudley shrugged. "You didn't ask whether or not I had seen him."
The man's face grew red with fury as Dudley said those words. "So, what, you wanted to stall me so that the chances of finding my son grew more and more slim!" The man yelled, his voice cracking at the end.
"I'm sorry." Dudley said. "I did not mean any harm. If you are wondering, I saw him from my window up their just about ten minutes before you showed up."
The man's eyes widened considerably. "T-ten minutes ago. But he could be anywhere by now!"
"I highly doubt that." Dudley said.
"You don't know my son. He could be in- Asia, for all I know." The man cried.
"How could your son get to Asia in just ten minutes flat." Dudley asked, furrowing his brow.
"Well-er- that's beside the point. Now, would you please tell me where exactly you saw my son." The man asked.
"I saw him about right here where we are standing when I looked down from my bedroom window." Dudley said, gesturing to the space around them.
The man looked around hurridly. "Well? Where did he go?"
"I don't know." Dudley replied. "By the time I got down here he was gone."
Dudley heard the man swear violently as he started running his hands through his hair again. "Maybe you should look in the park." Dudley suggested. "Kids like going to the park."
"Yeah, I guess." The man said. It seemed to Dudley that the man grew more and more hopeless of ever finding his son the longer he stood their talking to him.
"Come on." Dudley said, walking down the street. "I will help you find your son."
Dudley glanced back to see the man give him a grateful look before following him.
They had been walking down the street for about five minutes, glancing down the side streets alleyways as they went along, in complete silence before the man said. "By the way, what's your name?"
"Why?" Dudley asked, distractedly.
"I just want to know the name of the man who helped me find my- James!" The man exclaimed suddenly, racing down one of the side streets, where the same boy that Dudley had seen earlier was flying up and down the street with the same toy broom that Dudley had seen him with earlier.
The boy looked up and, when seeing the man, immediately began flying toward him yelling quite happily, "Daddy!"
The man met the boy mid-stride and hastily picked him up off of the broom and hugged him tightly to his chest.
"James Sirius Potter!" The man said, apparently trying to sound angry with his son, but failing. "Where on Earth have you been. I was worried sick about you."
Something the man said stuck vividly out in Dudley's mind. "Potter" He said, almost to himself. "I knew a Potter once."
The man put his son down on the ground. "You did? What was his name?"
"Harry, though to be honest I haven't seen him in a long time." Dudley said, looking down at his feet. When he looked up the man was staring back at him with large, disbelieving eyes.
"Dudley?" The man said, so shocked that he hadn't even noticed that his son had hopped back on the broom and was now flying in circles around his feet.
Everything that had happened to Dudley in the past half hour or so came rushing together so quickly that Dudley was sure for a moment that he would collapse from the shear force of it. "Harry?" Dudley forced himself to say, as his mouth had gone quite dry.
The man- Harry, Dudley thought- started shift awkwardly on the balls of his feet. "Er, um, hi." Harry said, so softly that Dudley could barely hear him.
"Hi." Dudley said.
A very awkward silence followed as Harry, who noticed that James had started to fly back down the street again, ran off after him. When he returned, holding James in one hand and the broom in the other.
"Do you want to come into my house for a cup of tea?" Dudley asked, finally breaking the silence.
" Sure, why not." Harry said.
Within about fifteen minutes, Dudley sat beside Harry at his kitchen table quietly sipping his tea while little James slept on the couch with the broom tucked under his arm- he had fallen asleep on the way over there.
For a while all that could be heard was the chink of sitting down the slightly chipped cup on the equally chipped saucers.
"So, where's Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon." Harry asked, causing Dudley, who had been taking a drink, to sputter and cough.
It took a few minutes before Dudley was able to speak. "What?" He asked, wiping his face with a napkin.
"Where are Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon?" Harry repeated.
"Ah, well, we kind of had a falling out a few years back. . ." Dudley said, trailing off at the end.
Harry's eyebrows rose in shock. "What for?"
"You know how a couple of your wizard friends took me and them to a safe place?" Dudley questioned, and when Harry nodded his head he continued. "Well, they didn't take to kindly to it. I mean- I think that they were grateful, in a way, but they just couldn't stand the thought of-"
"Being associated with people like me." Harry said.
"Yeah, that. So, when I told them that people like you had done us a huge favor, Dad got really mad at me and started to tell me about how much wrong had gone on in the world because of you-all. I don't remember the fight much, just that there was a lot of yelling from me and Dad and crying from Mum.
When I turned twenty, I couldn't stand how they didn't seem to understand how much you had done for them- so I moved out."
Now it was Harry's turn to sputter and cough. "You moved out!?"
"Yes. Mum literally begged me on her knees to stay with them, and Dad said that if I wanted to associate with people like you that I had better not ever come back until my head was glued back on straight."
"I guess I could be considered a bloody idiot for doing so. I mean, what was I thinking? I had next to no money and I can barely hold a job for the life of me. No one wants to hire some idiot who has little skills." Dudley said, disgruntled.
"I'm sorry." Harry said.
"Why?" Dudley asked, surprised. "It's not your fault that I'm in this mess. So, what going on with you. Did you kill that Voldy-warts guy."
Harry gave a small laugh. "Voldemort, and yeah, I did, a long time ago actually."
Dudley looked down at Harry's finger. "Your married." He said, more of a statement than a question.
"Yes, and we now have two kids, James Sirius over there and Albus Severus who just turned a year old a couple of months ago.
"Congratulations." Dudley said, briefly toasting Harry with his now empty tea cup.
Suddenly, Harry leapt up from his chair at the table. "I'm very sorry Dudley, but I have to get going- I didn't leave my wife any note about where I was, so she's probably wandering around the house looking for me. It was nice seeing you again." Harry said as he scooped James up from the couch.
Dudley nodded his head at him. "You, too." Dudley said, and with a crack like a whip he had disappeared and Dudley was alone again in his dark, old house.