Dennis had always enjoyed throttling his classmates, but his favorite victims were challenges. At his old school, he had taken on the rival Dragon gang with three mates (there had been five Dragons) on a regular basis. Here in his new school in Surrey, it seemed this Dudley Dursley ran the most powerful gang around, and his cousin, Harry, was proving quite hard to catch. My first day, and already on my way to helping my new mates take down the escaped convict, he thought.

Dennis knew, in the back of his mind, that the boy was not a prisoner on the lam with a small army of tattooed, knuckle-cracking friends, but he found that, at nine years of age, he still had not outgrown the urge to pretend. Piers, Malcom, Gordon, and Dudley, by an odd stroke of luck, thought it was some sort of cool slang, and tried to imitate his prison-guard talk. The wardens were closing in on their target.

"Won't we have to stop when your parents—I mean the other jailers-- get home?" he asked, after he had grown bored with his job of holding Harry down while Gordon punched him. "For that matter, where are the convict's accomplices?"

Dudley smirked. "He works alone." The other half of Dennis' question was soon to come.

"And how are you boys today?" Mr. Dursley greeted them, apparently entirely unaware of the marred body of his nephew. "Ah, the strong against the weak. I remember primary school."

"Dudley has so many friends," Mrs. Dursley agreed happily. "Would you all like some oatmeal cookies in the kitchen?"

The other boys raced off with the Dursleys, temporarily unaware that they had left Harry and Dennis standing quietly in the hall. Dennis was staring in awe at the boy whose screams he had just been both causing and muffling.

"You… they… they didn't even care! Your aunt and uncle just walked by, convict. Don't you have parents to stop this sort of thing?"

Harry looked at the newest member of Dudley's gang in surprise. "My parents died in a car crash. I've lived here since I was a year old, and I've never gotten on with the Dursleys."

Dennis looked solemnly at the boy across from him, all games forgotten. "Why not?"

Harry had grown suspicious. This was, after all, one of Dudley's gang, new though he was. "I'm a monster. I'm a scary, ugly, horribly mean monster! You'd better go away before I get you!"

He ignored Harry's last comment. "Why don't you at least hide in your bedroom?"

"I don't have a bedroom," said Harry in his gravely monster voice. "They shut me in the cupboard so I don't kill them in their sleep. Stay away!"

Dennis didn't think he'd ever heard anything so horrible. He looked Harry straight in the eye. "Listen, kid," he intoned urgently, "You aren't a monster. You need to tell a teacher what your uncle and aunt are doing to you, and you need to do it soon."

Harry swallowed and regarded Dennis with a wary eye. "They don't believe me. They came once to see if I was telling the truth, and Aunt Petunia was horribly nice, and they recommended I be sent to counseling."

Piers chose this moment to stick his head back into the hallway. "Are you coming, Dennis?"

Harry was no fool. "Owww! Stop it!"

Dennis obliged with a stage punch. Luckily, Piers was almost as stupid as Dudley.

"Just a minute, Piers!" he called. To Harry: "Er, why don't we step into your cupboard for a bit?"

Dudley's gang really was entirely too stupid. As long as Harry and Dennis yelled some insults at each other every minute or two, they were able to have a decent conversation. Dennis discovered that Harry also enjoyed making things up, especially about magic, and they agreed to talk in an invented wizard code from then on. They talked a bit about unfair teachers and particularly revolting girls in their grade. Dennis found he could tell almost anything to this serious, bespectacled boy.

The next two visits went much the same way. Believing Dennis had Harry under control, Piers, Malcom, Gordon, and Dudley began playing basketball. Dennis even managed to slip some food to his undernourished friend. On the third visit, however, Malcom wanted his turn at the punching bag. Peeking his head into the cupboard, he saw what had been happening.

"Hey, he's not hurting Harry at all!" he called to the other boys.

Dennis protested. Harry didn't deserve what he got, but Dennis didn't want to lose his only friends.

"I was just tired," he said. "Look." And he proceeded to kick Harry in a moderately hard fashion, completely ignoring the pleading look the other boy.

Knowing Dudley's gang would get suspicious, he never spoke to Harry again. He knew in a year and a half, Dudley and friends would be sent to Smeltings, a private school which they bragged about whenever possible. He did not believe the Dursleys would pay the tuition for Harry, who seemed destined for Stonewall High. Dennis' parents, who were rather poor, were sending their son to Stonewall as well.

"I'm sorry, Harry," he whispered so softly that he didn't think the boy would hear. "I'll talk to you later."

But when later came, Harry was mysteriously sent off to Saint Brutus', a school Dennis had never heard of. He was never able to make it up to the escaped convict.