Warning(s): Wrestling (ie lots of camp insults and a little bit of writhing half-naked men).
Author's or Artist's notes: This is just a bit of silliness, inspired by my son's new favourite TV show (well, apart from My Little Pony, that is).
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated characters and settings remain the intellectual property of JK Rowling and her associates. We are very grateful for permission to play with them.
Dudley grasped his opponent by the thighs and over-balanced him, landing carefully with his feet either side of the guy's body. There was an impressive slamming noise and powder rose from the surface of the ring. Then Dudley stood upright and the crowd roared. He launched himself into the air, bending his arm as he rose, then slammed back down with his elbow in his opponent's face. Well, close enough.
The man below him took hold of his own face dramatically and thrashed his head and then whole body around. Dudley stood; the referee approached. Then there was the countdown. The crowd went wild – even noisier than they'd been before. Dudley did some posing. There were photos. There were screams. Dudley gave his trade-marked polite bow (he was English after all, that was the gimmick) and then he swept his cloak back on over his shoulders and marched from the ring, through the audience, to his theme tune. There was some pantomime behind him concerning his supposedly injured rival.
"Lord Dee is victorious once again!" came over the loudspeakers.
As Dudley strode through the backstage corridors towards his dressing room, wiping sweat off his face with the towel one of his team had passed him, he became aware that a dark shape had appeared behind him.
First, he took a deep breath; he didn't like the unexplained. He liked rational and logical. His childhood had taught him to fear anything else. "Perfectly rational explanation," he told himself silently. It was his coping mantra. Then he turned.
"Hello Dudley!" said the figure in the black cloak, pushing back the hood to reveal messy black hair, glasses and a lightning-bolt-shaped scar.
Dudley broke out in even more sweat. His heart was beating nineteen to the dozen. "How on earth did you get here?"
"I was watching," Harry indicated the crowd at some point behind them both. "You were magnificent. You are magnificent."
"Er. Thanks. But how did you get backstage? Past security?"
Harry dismissed the question by waving his hand. The end of a dark stick was poking out of his sleeve. Instinctively, Dudley put a protective hand to his bottom. Then he remembered. He put his other hand over his mouth.
"Dudley," Harry said seriously, looking right up into Dudley's eyes. "I need you and you owe me."
"Huh?" Dudley asked.
"Is there somewhere private we can talk? Do you have an office?"
"Got a dressing room." Dudley wished he hadn't said that. That was not going to get him any closer to getting rid of his freak cousin.
"Let's go then!" Harry said enthusiastically.
Dudley thought about calling security, until he realised how many awkward questions they were going to ask about how Harry had got past them in the first place. The only possible explanation was You Know What – Harry's unmentionable special thing. Mind you, if Harry started spouting off about it then maybe they'd lock him up in a loony bin. There were always fans being carted off for psychiatric assessment, particularly the ones who annoyed wrestlers backstage. But then, it wouldn't take much for Harry to prove that the magic was real, maybe even teleporting out the way he'd come in. Who could tell what sort of a can of worms that might open up? Nor how it might affect Dudley?
"This way," said Dudley, and Harry put his hood back up and followed him.
They got into the small, windowless room and Dudley locked the door. He went to the fridge and took out a cold bottle of water. There was a china tea set on an ornamental table in the centre of the room, but that was only for show. It was for the benefit of fans who got brought back to meet him, part of the Englishness, part of the image. He never used it and only rarely drank tea in America. They had no idea how to make it here.
He turned round as he unscrewed the bottle and saw Harry looking at him expectantly. He probably wanted Dudley to offer him a drink, which wasn't fair as he'd invited himself. Dudley was nervous about the You Know What stick in his sleeve, though, so he asked, "Want something?"
"Yes I do, Dudley." Harry sounded horribly keen. "I want your help."
"Huh?" Dudley sat on the only chair in the room. Then he stood again quickly. "Do you want the chair?" he asked.
"No, no. That's fine, you sit down. You deserve it."
Dudley sat down.
"I'll get my own," Harry added.
He slipped the unmentionable stick-thing out of his sleeve and into his palm. Dudley sat bolt upright, steeling himself. Then Harry waved the blasted thing and a ruddy chair appeared. Dudley squawked with surprise and fear. It was a white-painted, wooden kitchen chair. There was no mistaking the fact that Dudley had just witnessed it materialising out of thin air. He stared at it. Then Harry sat on it and Dudley looked away in case that staring was rude.
"You owe me, cousin," Harry said earnestly.
"Yeah?" Dudley replied, but he wasn't sure that the question mark came across.
"You bullied me for the whole of my childhood."
Dudley thought about it. That was true, but did it mean that he owed Harry money? He wasn't sure, but after the chair trick he was willing to pay any amount to get rid of the scrawny weirdo.
"I can forgive and forget," Harry continued. "I've got good at that recently."
"Great. Is that it?" Dudley made to rise. He wanted to shake Harry's hand and have him out of there.
"I saw what you can do. I sat out there and watched it. I'd seen it on the telly back home, but it's even more impressive up close. You are amazing, Dudley."
"Erm. Thanks."
"A truly impressive fighter."
"Thank you."
"And that's exactly what we need."
"What?" Dudley asked. "We? Need? What?"
"The wizarding world. We need the knowledge that you have." Harry looked deadly serious. "You owe me this much at least, Dudley. You owe the wizarding world. We've protected you and your parents -"
"Yeah, you saved my life from the Demandy-thingies." Dudley nodded.
"Dementors," Harry corrected, but he did it with very little energy or concentration because they both knew by now that Dudley was never going to remember the right name for them, and they both knew that it didn't matter much whether he did or not.
"I don't quite see what...?" Dudley left that hanging. He wasn't getting any of this.
Harry ran his hand through his hair, making it even scruffier, and Dudley resisted the urge to slap his wrist the way Mum had always done when Harry had done that as a kid.
"Right. From the beginning," Harry said. "So I was round at Dean's place and he's got a TV 'cos his mum's living with him now."
"Uh huh," Dudley said, none the wiser.
"And she was watching the wrestling on it. Your wrestling, this new American thing-"
"Not really new-"
"Whatever. Anyway, we were impressed. Charlie said he'd like to have a few of your lot on his dragon reserve. To bring down escaping beasts, I suppose. Or maybe he'd just like having you – them - around. To look at. Whatever. Anyway, we were just saying that the Auror apprenticeship could do with a bit more training in hand-to-hand fighting to go alongside the spellwork and protection charms, when I recognised you!" Harry looked at Dudley expectantly. "You see?"
As had often happened since Harry had gone away to that freak – not freak: magic – school, he had wittered on as though what he was saying was intelligible, while leaving Dudley in the dark. He knew what dragons and spells were, though he preferred not to think of such things, but "Aurors" was just a couple of syllables and put together Harry's speech was all gobbledegook. Dudley said as much to Harry, who replied that it wasn't pronounced "or or" and that Gobbledegook was actually quite different and that someone called Bill could speak it. Then, however, he got into explanations which meant something.
Apparently Harry was some kind of frea- magical policeman. He'd just finished training. Because they had their sticks and spells they tended to rely on them and they didn't do much actual, physical fighting apparently. Harry and a bunch of his mates thought they'd like to know a bit more about Self-Defence. He said wizards didn't expect to get punched and that the element of surprise would be useful.
Then things started to get properly weird.
"You have a powerful knowledge, Dudley. I watched you vanquish that agent of evil in the wrestling ring tonight and it was an impressive vision. You must teach us your secrets! Where is the point on the neck which makes the enemy flail as he did?"
"On the-?"
"You struck him with your elbow in a treacherous and secret place. We need to have this knowledge. You must come to the Ministry and train us."
Ministry? Dudley had heard some conspiracy theories in his time, but the idea that the British Government was training up sorcerer cops quite threw him.
"Where did you strike him with your elbow?" Harry asked.
A couple of centimetres away from his body was the honest answer.
"Why did he thrash about in such agony?"
Because that was how he'd been told to do it in practice. Dudley wasn't supposed to discuss that with the public. He'd never needed to: Harry was the first adult Dudley had ever met who'd been taken in by the theatrics.
"Do you have a guru you need to ask permission from before you can divulge your techniques?" Harry asked.
Well, technically, that would be the publicity department, but they'd say no.
Harry was gazing at Dudley with admiration and Dudley realised that he'd never done that before. Fear, yes. Resentment, yes. Disdain, certainly. More recently there had occasionally been a modicum of acceptance, but that was as good as it got. This was new. It made Dudley feel good. Then it made him feel bad. Then he had to extinguish it because it was the right thing to do. It still didn't come naturally to Dudley, doing the right thing.
"Look, Harry. I need to tell you something. Would you like a cup of tea while I go into this?"
Dudley spasmed with shock as Harry whipped out his stick again and sent the tea things flying through the air towards them. Then the teabags floated up into the teapot, Harry's wand spewed out a load of water into the pot, and finally, Harry tapped it with his stick and steam came out of the spout. Then he noticed Dudley's reaction.
"Er, sorry," Harry said. "Automatic."
"Don't do that stuff in front of me, Harry. Please." He took some deep breaths. "Is that even going to be safe to drink?"
Harry nodded. "I can't believe you're still scared of magic, when you are such a brave warrior in the face of such impressively-built men."
There was his opening. "No, Harry, that's just it. You and I know that I've never been brave. I was a bully and it may be a cliché but it's still true that bullies are all cowards. I've never picked on anyone my own size. That's one of the reasons I got out of boxing. I loved being allowed to hit someone, it was when they hit me back that I didn't like it."
"But I've seen your opponents-"
"Blooming big blokes, right? Yeah, there's no way I'd go anywhere near them if there was a chance they might hurt me." He paused. "And there is no chance of that. Nor am I going to hurt any of them."
"I saw you on telly a couple of weeks ago and the one in the green leotard smashed your head into that post."
"Not hard."
"You were clutching your head and rolling around -"
"Play acting."
"What?" Now Harry looked as confused as Dudley had felt earlier.
"Play acting, Harry. Pretending. It's all rehearsed before-hand. We work out our moves and follow a practised pattern."
"Right." Harry was crest-fallen. "Like dancing."
"Not like pansy-boy dancing, no!" Dudley caught sight of himself in the full-length mirror and saw that he had gone that horrible purple colour which his father did sometimes. That realisation stopped him. "I mean, it's more manly than that," he muttered.
Harry sniggered. "Manly?"
"Yes!"
"Have you seen what you're wearing?"
Dudley looked down to the red, white and blue lycra hugging his groin. "Hmmm. That's, erm, that's sportswear."
"Are you wearing makeup?"
"No."
"You are."
"It's the lights. You have to. It bleaches out your features otherwise."
"That's body glitter."
"Yeah, yeah. All right. And fake tan."
"And where's your body hair? None of you wrestlers have any body hair. We were wondering if it was removed because it was some kind of block to some power-source or something."
"The ladies don't like hairiness."
"Really? Mine does."
Dudley looked at his smooth chest. "I don't know, we do what Marketing tells us to do. All right?"
Still sniggering, Harry turned round and tapped the teapot, which poured out two cups of tea. All the crockery was still floating about in mid-air. The milk jug had a little fly around, too, and then tipped into the cups.
Dudley wasn't about to risk drinking the tea he was handed. He put it down on his dressing table. It might be all right for Harry's lot to drink things made out of magic, but Dudley was normal and proud of it. It wasn't going to agree with his nice, normal innards.
"I'm sorry I can't help you, Harry. I know I owe you payback. I've got money now, if that helps any. But I don't know what I could tell any of your auroras about fighting."
"Aurors," Harry corrected. They both knew that wasn't going to be the last time he had to do that. "It's ok. I get it now. Dean's mum said you wouldn't know any secrets, but I didn't believe her." He took a sip of the tea. He pulled a face. "That's vile!"
"Yeah," Dudley said. "American teabags. They've got no idea."