The other side of the coin
Everybody is glad when a new baby arrives. Aren't they?
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A/N: With thanks to Tiny Teddy Bear, who sent this plot bunny all the way from Australia.
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"Right. Uh. Thanks." Dudley Dursley put the telephone down with a rather stunned clunk.
"Who was it?" demanded Petunia, popping out of the sitting room where she had presumably been listening in vain for any clues from his sequence of 'Oh' s and 'Right's. Telephone calls at seven o'clock in the morning were not normal. The last one they'd had at that hour had been two years ago, when Aunt Marge had had what they were carefully calling 'a funny turn' and the doctors had called 'a stroke.'
"Er-" Dudley couldn't remember who it had been. The woman had given her name, but that hadn't been the bit which had stuck with him. "Er- someone – from Harry."
His mother's lips thinned.
"Who was it?" Vernon's voice echoed from the kitchen. Petunia turned, and marched down the hall.
"A wrong number," she said tersely, and shut the kitchen door behind herself as if to shut out any unpleasantness.
A wrong number? Dudley stared about the hall in bewilderment. When his dad retired next year, they were going to move to a nice bungalow nearer to Aunt Marge, while he, Dudley, was going to get a nice flat somewhere much, much further from Aunt Marge and nearer to a very nice girl by the name of Daisy (though he hadn't broken that piece of news to his mother yet.) But for the moment, they still lived here. Number 4, Privet Drive – where Harry had lived too. Dudley took hold of the bannisters for a little support. Harry had been such a part of this house, this hall even. There was the cupboard Harry had used to sleep in. There was the letter box they had nailed up to try and stop all those strange letters coming. There was the creaky step where Harry had used to hover, whenever they had visitors for whom he must be present. There was the doormat where Harry had dumped him the night he'd been attacked by those – awful voices. And now–?
And now someone had phoned – a nice, normal phone call, no nasty birds or shrieking letters – to say Harry had asked for all immediate family to be informed that James Sirius Potter had arrived safely about twenty minutes ago, and while Dudley was still goggling over Harry counting them as immediate family, his parents were going to pretend it was less important than a wrong number?
Dudley realised that his hand was shaking on the bannister. A wrong number? It wasn't half-past seven in the morning yet, and his day was going all odd and wrong and quite beyond what he conceded was his rather limited capacity to grasp. He wasn't quick, he wasn't smart like Harry – but he was pretty certain that when a member of your family phones to say he's had a son, you don't just push it aside!
The clock in the sitting room struck the half hour, and Dudley felt as if the noise had released some spring inside him, like the signal for a boxing round to begin. He lumbered down the hall, and slammed open the kitchen door. "Going out!" he announced. And leaving both his mum and dad gaping, he turned on his heel, snatched up his jacket and marched out of the front door.
Dudley turned left out of the driveway, and started to jog up Privet Drive. Jogging wasn't really a regular part of his training scheme, it didn't really develop the right muscles, besides being horribly boring. But sometimes, when he just needed to try and think, it wasn't bad. Past the alleyway where – it – had happened; past the lamp-post where Harry had used to loiter; up Magnolia Drive towards the play park where Harry had used to sit on the swings. How could his parents just say 'Wrong number?'
This was so unanswerable Dudley turned in at the play park gates to jog on the softer grass, where his brains might feel less bumped by tarmac pavement and better able to work. So Harry had counted them in immediate family, to hear as soon as possible that he and whats-her-name? Ginny, that was it. He and Ginny had had a son. Dudley stopped. His own cousin – his younger than him cousin – was a dad. No wonder a chap felt stunned. And sort of hollow, though perhaps that was because he had skipped breakfast. Dudley sighed. He hadn't seen Harry for – years, really. He'd meant to go to their wedding – Harry had invited them all – but he'd had a nasty bump in the car the day before, and had spent that day in hospital with doctors observing him for whiplash and his mother fussing nineteen to the dozen that her darling diddikins (Dudley shuddered) was injured.
So that meant... Dudley racked his brains … that meant he hadn't seen Harry since his, Dudley's, twenty-first birthday bash. They'd had it at the big functions room at the gym, with all his mates there, and Harry had quite unexpectedly popped in, with a crate of bottles of some simply amazing drink he wouldn't tell anyone the name of, no matter how hard all Dudley's mates had simply begged for it. Harry had just laughed, and had another one himself and then clapped 'Big D' on the shoulder as if they'd grown up the best of mates, and gone.
Dudley sighed again, partly at the memory of that gorgeous drink. If... if he had grown up the best of mates with Harry, he'd know what the stuff was and where to get it. But more importantly, he wouldn't be standing here, before eight o'clock in the morning, leaning on the frame of a swing in Little Whinging play park, because his cousin had got a son. He'd be home, eating his breakfast.
No... Dudley reconsidered. If he and Harry had grown up the best of mates, he'd be at home, grabbing a few spoonfuls of yoghurt and a bottle of fruit juice out of the fridge, while his mother rushed about wanting to be off and his father complained loudly about having to go to work and miss the fun. Then they would have driven off, and he would have done just a little over the speed limit (say eighty, maybe), so they'd get there faster. And he would have dropped his mother outside the hospital while he found a parking spot, but she'd have waited for him on the steps, and they'd have gone up the sort of endless shallow stairs all hospitals have, together, and found the ward, with Harry peering out of the door waiting for them. And he would have slapped Harry on the shoulder just like Harry had at the birthday bash, and said 'Congratulations!' so loudly a near-by nurse would have said 'ssshhh!', and his mother would have said-?
'A wrong number.' The memory of her voice sounded as loud and clear as if she stood beside him. Dudley's imagining shattered into a thousand, irreparable pieces. How could they? He traced a sort of pattern in the woodchip of the swing pit with his trainer toe. Harry had got that woman to phone them. Name began with an 'H', Dudley recalled slowly. Her-something. And Harry sent them a Christmas card each year. And Dudley sent him one back, each year, out of a sneaking suspicion that his mother mightn't bother.
Perhaps that was it. Perhaps today was like the Christmas cards; something for Dudley to do, to make up for all those years. But what? He re-examined the shattered picture of what should have been, but all of it seemed to rely on having someone with him. He couldn't just rush off to London, if that was even where Harry and Ginny were. He didn't know where the hospital was.
There had to be something...
Dudley rubbed his forehead slowly, and tried to recall the time he'd given Mrs Polkiss a lift to see her niece in the maternity hospital over in Great Whinging, when Piers had had his driving licence suspended for too much speeding. They'd rushed off in a hurry, and he'd dropped her at the front steps of the hospital – ah! They'd stopped at the florists on the way! And florists would deliver things, too!
Wait – would they deliver flowers to a hospital you didn't know the address of?
The Interflora woman looked across the counter at the large, blonde young man clutching his wallet rather anxiously. "A large bunch of roses," she said reassuringly, "to … Harry and Ginny Potter?"
"Yes," said the young man, almost as a gasp. "My cousin and his wife."
"And this St Mungo's?"
"It's –- it's a private hospital. Er – London, somewhere."
"Where?"
"Er – dunno."
"Postcode?"
"Dunno."
She tried not to frown at such a vague address, and turned to the computer instead. Anywhere had a postcode, and all postcodes could be found on a drop-down list.
The computer hummed. The young man shuffled. And then the all-wise drop-down list had the answer. Deus ex machina, as it were. "Ah! Doctors Purge and Dowse? Just round the corner from Harley Street?"
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