Disclaimer: I'm only going to do one of these for the entire fiction, and not at the beginning of every chapter. I do not own any of the characters in this fic relating to Harry Potter, all rights reserved for J.K Rowling.
A/N: Shameless self-insert yes, but something different (I hope). I don't have a beta so please pardon any spelling and grammatical errors, thank you.
Pairings: None at the moment, but I'm a fan of slash (male/male) relationships so there could be both slash and het pairings in the later chapters.
Life as Dudley Dursley – Chapter 1: Life before Dudley Dursley
I must admit that in my first life, well, the first life I have memories of, I was an avid Harry Potter fan-girl. Many times when I read the series, I wished to be a character in the book so that I could change the fate of my favorite characters, for I was so certain they do not deserve the deaths nor suffering that J.K Rowling have sentenced them to. Of course, that was when I was still a naïve, young girl, and that was a phase I soon passed. Though the thoughts of escaping the mundane life I had (sleep, eat, work, pay bills, eat, sleep… well you get the drift) were never far from my mind. In fact, even when I grew older in my first life I was still captivated by fantasy-related stuff such as animation, role-playing games and books.
By now you must be wondering, why do I keep saying "my first life"? The answer, which you smart readers have probably already guessed is, yes, I have been through a few lifetimes, each time with the memories of my previous life intact. I'm not sure why or how that happened, for each time I passed from my previous life to the next, it was a foggy process that never seemed to make much sense. There wasn't any voice explaining anything like what some people described in their near death experiences. All I encountered through each passing were some blurry light, the feeling I have been run over by a bus, and disorientation.
Funny the first time I died, I was really ran over by a bus. An unfortunate accident, not something I expected but I didn't mind very much, for my first life was as boring as watching paint dry, something I don't really want to go into much details. Now, my second life however, was much more interesting, and dangerous. The stuff of a fantasy role-playing game, but not one I have played or read about before. In fact, I still recall being convinced I was in a coma when stuck in my second life the first few months. For how could I not when I was reborn into that fantasy world not as a hero, princess or even the side-kick, but as a monster? And not even the boss monster that the hero usually gets to face at the end of his journey. No, I was just a run-of-the-mill, ugly, and not very powerful monster wondering around lost in a forest with others of my own kind. Fortunately, my kind of monster were not the heartless, cannibalistic type that kills their own, but rather, they are fiercely protective of their own pack and rather nurturing, I would say. I'm not sure what's the name of our species, as monsters are really not all that concerned with names, but we are the four-legged sort with vicious claws and sharp fangs. From a normal working class woman to a monster was an adjustment that took a while to make, but it was either be flexible and adapt to my new life, or go crazy. Life as a monster was not as long as that of a human, especially when you are hunted for your fur, claws, fang and whatever else the hunters wanted to kill us for. I was in that life with my pack for about 5 years before getting killed by a hunter. It was a short 5 years and I still miss my pack, but I learnt a lot from that life. For some strange reason, besides memories of my previous life, the skills I learnt do get added to my next. I guess that's probably why I managed to survive with my sanity intact as one of the skills I picked up was mind magic, or in Harry Potter terms, Occulmency and Legilimency. That's what I learnt in my third life as a mutant, actually that's my specialty in that life. I could protect my mind from invasion, as well as invade the minds of others. Suffice to say, I learnt a lot from that life, being able to pick up knowledge from any mind I came across was a very handy skill. Unfortunately, mutants weren't a popular and commonly accepted bunch in that world I was in, much like being the minority of muggles, with the majority being people with Voldemort type of prejudice towards muggles. Hmm, now that I think about it, the setting of that world was somewhat similar to that of X-men, if you have ever watched that movie you will know what I mean.
Again, with the odds against a mutant, even with my awesome skill of mind magic, agility and monster-like instincts (sensing danger, for example) that carried over from my second life, I didn't last long in my third life either. Mainly due to the fact that I wasn't physically strong and there wasn't any other mutants I encountered who were willing to stand with me once they knew about my mind reading skills. I don't blame them, as I didn't know how to turn off my mind reading, and it is an invasive thing that most people wouldn't be comfortable, much less mutants who were in general a paranoid bunch. It was about 12 years into my third life before I was captured and sentenced to death by the government of that world. The only good thing that came from living to that age was I didn't need to go through puberty as a teenage mutant girl.
At that point of time in life, or lives, I was pretty much wishing I could have some peace, or if I have to restart my life again as someone else in another world, to at least have a normal kind of setting. I could have kicked myself for wishing that, for who else but the Dursleys were as obsessed with wishing to have a normal life? That's the only reason I could think of when I was reborn as Dudley Dursley.