Narrator: Dudley Dursley

I bolted awake in my bed, sweating. My eyes were wide. The humongous floating face of Harry Potter was still a little to the side of my view. It was translucent. It was more of a faded outline. More of a presence. It had followed me from my dream. It was the only thing that I remember from it even though I had been immersed in it only moments before. I tried to look past it, to look at the wall in front of me. (I was in my bedroom.) But the visual idea of his roundly-rimmed glasses and the lightning scar on his forehead pierced my consciousness.

I shook my head instinctively and found out that that worked. It was still there but was now drifting more and more into the background of my mind.

I got out of bed and to run away from that visage even more, I decided to shadow box. (Shadow boxing and hitting the bag were hobbies of mine.) I kept throwing the same one-two (jab-cross) combination over and over. I kept trying to steel my mind towards focusing on something else that doesn't have anything to do with Harry Potter and his world.

Then I peeked upward. It was my co-worker. (I was a security guard for an old theatre that used to stage plays. My employers were now using it for movie sets and staging areas for movies. My job was to guard entrances or exits.) The visual of him was hazy, like only the idea of him was there and not the real him. His opacity level was only fifty on a scale where the opacity of a real person standing in front of you would be a hundred.

He was giving me a queer look.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

He had a tired-of-nonsense look on his face.

"Nothing," I said.

Then I threw another one-two.

"Are you supposed to be doing that?" he asked, annoyed.

"What? I could do it. I'm in my own home." I responded.

Then I threw a one-two at his chest. He didn't flinch or react in any way.

"Look. At least don't do that at me." he said.

"Okay. Where are you?" I asked.

"Right in front of you," he answered impatiently.

I turned around a full one-eighty and threw another combo.

"Hey! What did I just say." he barked.

I looked up and he was standing right in front of me looking testy.

"What? I thought that you were behind me." I replied, pointing with an outstretched arm in that direction.

He narrowed his eyes at me.

"Okay. You are right here." I said pointing in front of me. "I will do it in this direction." I said, pointing to my right.

I turned to my right and did it. I peered up and there he was in front of me with an exasperated look on his face.

Then I swept my eyes around my surroundings and saw that I, indeed, was in my bedroom. Then in my peripheral vision, I glanced the bright green of a part of a digit on my clock. I took a peek at it. It said three o'clock. I was supposed to be at work! My shift had started an hour ago!

I plopped down on my bed. I had to call my boss. But what should I say to him?

Then I remembered my dream and all of my attention became absorbed in my thoughts about it.

After Harry's seventh year of going to that school, my family never saw him again. He sent us a Christmas card the year following that seventh year but we didn't reciprocate and neither side had contact with each other ever since, as far as I know. That was twenty years ago. Over the years, I started feeling really bad about how we treated the little bloke, locking him up in a cupboard under the stairs and all. We treated him like a dog. We were angry about having the burden of caring for him being forced on us and we took it out on him. It wasn't his fault. I always wanted to apologize to the git and make amends but was always scared to ask dad about his whereabouts. And now this dream, I had, which was probably a guilt-trip. It was probably meant to teach me about what I should have done. I should have just barreled ahead and did the right thing. I had the mind to do it for the past month now but I guess I was never able to muster enough from the jewels to complete the task. And then this dream . . .

In the dream, I had stood behind dad while he was reading a newspaper on the couch. I had stood there for ten minutes looking around, peeking at different spots of the living room always avoiding the back of his head. Then finally, my legs, as if of its own volition marched right up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. He looked at me with naive eyes and I plowed ahead with it.

"Dad. The real reason why I came over today was to ask if you knew where Harry was?"

I expected him to have had absolutely no idea and to look at me as if I was crazy to think that he had. But all he did was look down for a few seconds, look back at me, look down again for a few seconds, then get up with a sigh. We went into his room wordlessly and he handed me a piece of paper from inside a desk drawer.

"Where did you get this?"

"A friend of his gave it to me about five years ago."

I had surprised look on my face.

"You know, George? Next door, George? Yeah, that's who gave it to me." he chuckled.

I arrived at the address written on the note. It was just a trailer home on cinder blocks. There were no wheels. There was an abandoned-looking plastic kiddie slide sitting off to the side, a tree that looked derelict and three tires strewn around. I was looking around at the debris-riddled place when I suddenly felt a presence to my side. It felt as if he had been there the whole time just silently observing as I took a step, here, took a step, there, wandering around the place with my eyes.

I looked over to my left and it was Harry.

"What is it? What do you need?" he asked anxiously.

I stood there, paused, probably with my mouth open for a while before I answered: "Harry. I just want to let you know that I am sorry for how my family treated you all of those years when we were children. It wasn't right."

"That's okay," he said quickly. "Who sent you here? Did you see anyone suspicious on your commute. Was anyone watching you or following you?"

"No-o. No one." I said looking at him curiously. I examined his face but it was unmoving except for the breeze that kept pushing his bangs to the side.

Then he spoke at last.

"You've been cursed," he mouthed the words softly as I was studying his eyes.

When he said that, I was hit by how barren this neighborhood suddenly felt. It seemed like the entire landscape here was devoid of people. The normal noise traffic of people was non-existent.

Then I heard a faint pop as he morphed into a warped confusion of the colors of his skin, hair and clothes before disappearing right in front of my face. I looked over to my right and scanned the area in that region to see if anyone had saw that, if not people then animals - birds, a stray cat or maybe insects - did.

Then I looked over to my left side and did the same.

Then I felt the momentary and seemingly unmistakeable presence of the same swirling and warped colors on my right side so I turned towards it. When I did, Harry was standing there.

"Dudley, do not tell a soul about anything you see here."

Then he did his gobbledygook again and disappeared.

I blinked several times to put all of the weird visuals of Harry doing those things out of my mind. When I had stopped blinking, my eyes were wide open.

I was at work. I looked at the familiar surroundings of the back of the theatre. I was in the alley looking at the parking lot where the equipment trucks were parked. There were several cables running from the back of one, across the alley and into the open entrance that I was guarding. I was sitting on a milk crate even though I wasn't supposed to. I was supposed to be standing. I suddenly felt a little nervous about that. Then I became aware of the weight on the left side of my chest: my usual badge. The weight came from it being made out of metal.

Then it dawned on me: there was no one out here. I could see cars driving by on the road that was on the front side of the parking lot. I was facing the back side of it. One side of the alley was blocked off by a wall but the other side opened out onto a road that was perpendicular to it but was a long ways down since the alley stretched past seven buildings. There was car traffic on that road. The desertedness was unusual because the area was normally bustling with workers traveling in and out of this entrance, coming out to get something or going in to bring something in.

Then I heard the footsteps of a solitary figure walking out. It allayed my uneasiness a little. Then I stood up alarmed, thinking that maybe it was a co-worker checking up on me.

It wasn't. It was a guy who was dressed in all black. He wore a black jacket over a black turtle-neck. His slacks were black and he wore leather dress shoes. When he came out of the entrance, he paused and stared at me with a stern expression.

Then he smiled and his eyes softened.

"You see that truck over there," he began as he pointed. "That's craft services (snack area) over there. Go ahead and get yourself some lunch."

I looked over at where he was directing me.

Then all of a sudden, I felt a tuft of my hair being grabbed. Then everything became a swirl of black and blue and gray with curved streaks of white. I felt the movement of traveling through a tunnel. After a very brief time, the warped colors and the racing-through-something feeling abruptly vanished and I was splashed onto a scene that seemed very foreign to me.

The environment felt very cavernous. It felt hollow yet densely populated. The place was lit with lanterns that were sitting on stands. There were several people surrounding me. They looked to be wearing dark-colored cloaks with cowls over their heads.

There was one standing in front of the pack. He raised his hand while holding a stick in it.

"Immobulus!" he said with a flourish.

It was followed by a bright blue jet that smashed into me.

My head and body stiffened and I keeled over onto my side like petrified wood. I was frozen with a startled look on my face staring at shoes and the lower parts of people's cloaks. I could still hear, see, feel and smell.

"Levicorpus!" the same voice said with relish.

I was hit with a flash of green. Then I felt myself flung upwards by invisible forces then dangled upside-down. Then I felt myself gravitating away from that cabal. The more I moved away from them the more I was approaching an area that was lighted that was ahead.

Then I stopped.

"Finite," the same person said and I was able to move around again but was still hanging upside-down.

I looked around and I was in the frame of an opening. It looked to be sand on the ground. I looked to be in the mouth of a cave.

Then I looked to my side and saw a person in the same floating upside-down predicament as me. What was different was that he had gashes all over his face and arms. His shirt had been ripped in places revealing cuts. His eyes were closed.

I immediately recognized him. It was dad.

Then I heard the walking of someone from behind me and I turned and it was the same hooded person that had been yelling those singular words earlier.

When he halted, it gave me chills.

"Potter! I bet you a hundred galleons that this one will squeal louder than the last!" he bellowed.