Dedicated to Dudley's broken teacup.
Harry hadn't been home for two days before the nightmares began again. Dudley remembered them well from last summer, but the topic had since changed.
Nearly every night, right around two in the morning, Dudley would be abruptly awoken by noises coming from the room beside his.
Harry's room.
Sometimes it was cries, sometimes it was pleas.
And exactly three minutes later, without delay, his father's heavy footsteps would pass his open doorway and come to a halt outside of that room. Listening closely, he could hear each lock open, and then the door would creak.
Depending on how Harry woke was up to his dad. Sometimes Harry would be brought out of sleep by the door creaking open, while other nights it would take being slapped across the face to silence him.
After nearly a week of this, Dudley began to feel a bit unsettled. When those Demented things had tried to kill him, he had had nightmares the rest of the summer. Much to his embarrassment his mum was the one who would wake him up and calm him down. A few times she put on some tea, but mostly she would just hold him, comfort him until he fell back to sleep. Eventually the terror faded, and he could go weeks without waking up feeling sick to his stomach.
Of course no one in his family could ever treat Harry that way, he was the freak. After his cousin had gone off to that school, his mum had told him not to bother with him anymore. No more Harry hunting, no more locking him in the cupboard, because who knew what sort of unnatural things that boy might do to them when he came back?
Dudley looked over at the clock on his bedside table when he heard the muffled voice of his cousin. Next was the sound of his dad turning under the sheets in his bed. Whatever his cousin was saying was steadily getting louder. It was only a matter of time before those footsteps would come.
But this night, when Vernon entered Harry's room and slapped him awake, he didn't immediately leave. Curious, Dudley got up from his bed and made his way towards the hall, avoiding noisy floorboards as he went.
The door to his cousin's room was wide open; the moon barely illuminating the figures under the window. Vernon loomed over his nephew, fist clenched in the collar of his shirt, whispering something. No doubt threatening his very existence if he continued these nightly charades. Harry on the other hand lay passively in his dad's grip, trying to blink the sleep away.
When it appeared that nothing was getting through Harry's sleep-fogged brain, Vernon released the shirt and instead wrapped his hand around the boy's wrist, twisting cruelly. Harry bit at his lip to stop any noise from escaping, but that didn't stop Dudley from hearing the pained whine.
"You better not wake me or anyone else up one more night, boy, or I swear to you, you won't like what happens," Vernon hissed.
Dudley raced back to his bed and ducked beneath the covers, feigning sleep. Vernon stuck his head in the room seconds later before going back to his own room and closing the door behind him.
The next three nights went by in complete silence; Dudley was finally able to sleep soundly. But every morning when he would get up, Harry would already be downstairs eating a small breakfast. That's when Dudley noticed the bags under his cousin's eyes, and how they were growing darker by the day.
It was two weeks after Harry's arrival when his mum and dad went up to Aunt Marge's to visit for the weekend. He had begged them not to make him go, and finally they relented. He had wanted to spend the weekend with Piers, but he and his family had already left for holiday. So he was now forced to 'babysit' Harry. His dad had told him to keep a close eye on the other boy, to make sure nothing funny went on.
That night, at three-thirty in the morning, a shout pierced Dudley's deep sleep. Jumping out of bed, he cautiously made his way out into the hall, expecting an intruder. Another shout, much shriller than the last, echoed from Harry's room. Huffing, Dudley stomped towards the closed door, flicking the hall light on, and began the tedious task of unlocking all the locks. Before Vernon left he had told both boys that Dudley was in charge while they were gone, and that he was to be the only one to decide when Harry's door was opened. That was when Petunia cut in and reminded her son of the cat flap installed many years ago.
Throwing the door open, Dudley stormed in, startling Harry out of his own sleep. "Quiet, you! Or I'll tell my dad you kept me awake!" A disheveled Harry stared back at the blurry form of his whale of a cousin.
"Now, go to sleep!" And with that, he slammed the door shut behind him. Not bothering with the locks, Harry noted.
Harry gave up on sleep after an hour of staring up at his ceiling and decided to just stay on the sofa for the remainder of the night, since he could finally watch some telly without the Dursley's around. And that's where Dudley found him five hours later.
"What's wrong with you?" was the first thing to pop out of the Dursley boy's mouth. He leaned back into the sofa, keeping a reasonable distance between his cousin and himself.
"Sorry?"
"You're not sleeping. You've had nightmares before, but nothing like now. Can't one of your friends help you?" Dudley asked while stuffing his mouth with sweets.
Harry stared at his cousin, "Why do you care?"
"I'm tired of losing sleep!" Dudley pushed himself off the sofa, facing his cousin. "If I had known I would have to deal with you during this summer again, I would've just stayed with my friends-"
"You think I want these bad dreams, do you? You think I wouldn't rather be staying with my friends?" Harry demanded, getting in Dudley's face, or at least trying to with their height difference. "I don't know how many times you've been knocked in the head during a match, but you've lost it if you honestly think I want to be here." Harry shoved his way past Dudley and out the back door.
Dudley stared after his young cousin, wishing he hadn't lost his head like that.
He had done a lot of thinking over the past school year, of his home life and of his cousin's home life. And the big difference between the two. That's when the first wave of shame had swept over him. And the more he thought about his family, the stronger that wave crashed down on him.
Dudley chose to spend the rest of the day out of Harry's sight, away from the Dursley household.
The waning moon was high above Privet Drive by the time Dudley came stumbling back to number 4 after an exhausting day of working out. Slipping out of his shoes at the foot of the stairs, he grabbed a fag from his back pocket and lit it. Dudley practically collapsed on the kitchen counter, drinking straight from the sink faucet.
Tossing his dirty clothes into the corner of his room, he fell straight back on his mattress and groaned in pleasure. He was fast asleep in minutes. It wasn't long after when he heard Harry's voice calling out for someone.
At first he just ignored it, after all that was one thing none of the Dursley's had ever tried. And for a few minutes all was silent in the house. But then, what had just been calling, turned into desperation. As if Harry was fighting to get to someone but couldn't. There was a certain sorrow to the tone now that Dudley had never heard before and he felt that familiar wave of shame come over him.
This wasn't Cedric anymore. This was much worse.
Running his calloused hands over his face, he reluctantly got back up.
Maybe if he could just get Harry through the nightmare they would finally stop? They always woke Harry up from the dream, instead of easing him out of it, like mum had done with him last summer.
Tonight, for the first time in years, Harry had slept with his door open. Vernon surely would have seen it as an act of defiance. But not Dudley, at least not anymore. That open door signified Harry not wanting to be alone, locked up and forgotten.
Or maybe he was just spending way too much time with Malcolm.
Shaking away his thoughts, he instead focused on the situation in front of him.
"Don't. Don't go- please, I'll be like him. Just like him."
Dudley stepped into the dark, bare room. A room that hadn't been his now for five years.
"Please don't leave me." His cousin's voice cracked with emotion on the last word. Dudley started to doubt if this was such a good idea. He could just yank the covers off Harry and shout at him, like his dad. Then Harry would never know what he had just been contemplating.
But as the pleading became more heartbreaking, Dudley could no longer find the malice within himself to do that to his cousin.
"Let go! Need him to come back." Harry's entire body was twisted up in the single bed cover he had been allowed to have over the years. Dudley began to unwind it from the squirming form. Finally unraveled, Harry calmed down, but just slightly. "Come back?" He implored, fists twisting in the soft material.
Dudley knelt down on the hard wooden floor beside the bed. Harry was curled up on his side, face pressing into the pillow as if he were trying to hide from the world.
"Shhh, everything's all right," he tried to whisper in his softest tone, but having never used his voice to attempt to comfort someone, he wasn't all that sure he was doing it right.
"He's gone. Sirius is gone." Harry choked out, a single tear slipping down his face.
And in that moment all those fears and jealousies that had ruled every thought Dudley had ever had towards Harry just disappeared. After so many years of hearing his parents put down Harry, and spreading around the delinquent rumors, Dudley had actually began to believe those things about his waiflike cousin; the very same boy that used to rescue spiders from being squished by Dudley as a child.
"Just a dream, Harry, he's not gone," Dudley said, unsure if this was true, but willing to go along with it when he saw Harry's hands release their death grip on the blanket. "You just need to rest, now-"
"Sirius." The way Harry whispered that name, it sounded so eerily like the howl of a dog. Dudley remembered back when he and Harry were very young, Aunt Marge had brought along Ripper on a visit, but his mum wouldn't let her keep the dog in the house, so it had been left in the garden all night. And during the night Dudley had been awoken by howling beneath his window. Never in his life had he heard such a lonely and somber sound. Until now.
Before he even knew what he was doing, his hand was reaching out. He managed to stop it just as it hovered above his cousin's back. He held his breath and stayed like that for several minutes, his brain fighting with his heart on what he should do.
And then Harry let out a great cry of pain, as though his very heart had been ripped out of his chest. The power behind that sound had Dudley jerking his hand back and his blue eyes widening in surprise.
"I'm sorry," Harry pleaded, another tear following the path of the last; his face pushing even farther into the pillow.
Dudley couldn't stop himself this time, and his hand landed gently on the clothed back and began moving in slow circles, just as his mother had done to help him sleep when he was a tot.
Instantly Harry quieted down. For a moment Dudley was worried his cousin had finally woken from his bad dream, but then Harry sunk deeper into his mattress and let out a sigh. He kept at it for a short while longer, until his hand and the rest of his body began to feel lulled by the steady motion, as well.
Standing up, and rubbing at his sore knees, he whispered, "Night, Harry," and left the door open just as his cousin had wanted.
When Harry awoke the next morning, feeling refreshed and comfortable for the first time in his history at the Dursley residence, he found a warm cup of tea on his bedside table.