A/N: Written for the
Diversity Writing Challenge, k1 - ficlet collection with ficlets 501-1000 words
Pokemon Trading Card Collection Challenge – Houndour (gold) – an aggressive dog (plot/action)
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droughty days
1. the short matter of Dudley's new pet dog
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To the Dursleys at least, it's out of the blue when Dudley requests a dog for his thirteenth birthday.
Harry knows it's because Aunt Marge is coming to visit, and Aunt Marge dogs share the common trait of chasing Harry up the nearest tree and chasing Harry happens to be a favourite pass-time of Dudley's as well.
The bright side is that Dudley lacks the knowledge, patience and sense of responsibility to be able to care for a dog long term, which means the pup will wind up a stray, given to someone as an ill-meant gift, or on a one-way trip to the pound. But Harry dreads the days before that. The puppy will be a menace. Aunt Marge won't bring anything less for Dudley but the most well-bred, most hideous, most vicious specimen.
Why couldn't it be a quieter animal instead? Those tended to cosy up to Harry but not dogs, definitely not dogs.
He resolves to practice his climbing whenever he has a free moment. Even getting caught up on the school roofs again will be worth avoiding getting mauled by another dog.
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He still wears the scars of Aunt Marge's first dog. It's before Ripper and Harry calls it Scar because all he remembers of it is its appearance – so much like Scar from The Lion King – and the scars it's left on his body. The name is oddly appropriate in that sense, but nobody else remembers. Part of the reason is because most those scars aren't exposed… Not like the scar on his forehead where glass cracked his skull, in that accident that had gravely injured him and killed his parents too.
There mightn't be an Aunt Marge if his parents still lived. Aunt Marge was Uncle Vernon's sister after all. His mother was Aunt Petunia's sister. The distant relationship becomes far closer when there's a layer out of the picture and, judging from the way Aunt Petunia reacts whenever he brings up the topic of his parents, he mightn't have seen much of them either.
But the what-ifs don't matter. His parents are twelve years dead and nothing in the world will change that. Aunt Petunia is his guardian and will be until he turns eighteen, and until that day he has to put up with everything: the endless chores and how he never measures up to Dudley in his aunt and uncle's eyes, the way his parents are a topic of taboo, Dudley's Harry-hunting, and Aunt Marge's dogs as well.
But although Dudley has laid a hand on him many a time (until Harry got fast and slick enough to outrun him, anyway), it's only the accident of his childhood and Aunt Marge's dogs who leave their scars.
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Dudley's new puppy is every bit the terror Harry imagined – and one thing he'd forgotten. When Dudley fails to fulfil responsibilities that are rightfully his, they fall to Harry.
Thank goodness his friendless days of primary school are over and he has Ron and Hermione. And thank goodness Ron's mother makes healing balm even better than what Aunt Petunia buys from the chemist so he gets through alright. And when Dudley decides he doesn't care for a dog anymore and Uncle Vernon decides he's had it with the barking at night, the dog's off to a new home and Harry, and his hands and ankles especially, can breathe a little more easily.
Because Dudley is a terror in himself, but dogs are another story and he doesn't know how he hasn't managed to develop a phobia of them.