Disclaimer: Harry Potter, its characters and settings belong to J.K. Rowling and her publishers; no money is being made.

How Dudley Did Something Useful With His Life

It was on a Saturday afternoon in January that Dudley Dursley moved back in with his parents. He was twenty-one years old and had just been fired from his job as a warehouseman for starting a fight with his gaffer – a fight that had involved fists and ended with the guy falling into a pile of pallets. Dudley didn't even remember exactly why he'd done it, and maybe he wouldn't have, had he not been suspended form his boxing club for "unsportsmanlike behaviour" for three months, starting six weeks ago. Ever since then, he'd felt tense and angry, and finally he had just blown up. The gaffer was a stupid idiot and had deserved it anyway, but of course, that hadn't helped him.

It was the third time in almost as many years that he had lost his job, and he had decided that a break was in order. He knew that his parents wouldn't object. On the contrary, he still vividly recalled his mother being anything but pleased when a year and a half ago, he'd informed them that he would move out. He'd been glad to escape her coddling and silly nicknames, but had soon found out that there were more disadvantages to living alone than he'd have imagined. With nobody to clean the flat, do the laundry, or cook, he had been living in something that could only be described as disaster area, and his meals had mostly consisted of something from the local takeaway, or convenience foods that had demanded no other skills than the knowledge of how to use a microwave.

After his mother's perfect housekeeping, that had been quite a change, and now the idea of several months without the constant bother looked more than appealing. He would take a break from all the stress, let his mother pamper him to her heart's content, and after some time, he would set out to find a new job – just not immediately.

As he had predicted, Petunia was overjoyed to have her "Duddykins" back for a while, but to his chagrin, his father thought differently about the matter. Dudley hadn't even unpacked everything yet when Vernon came up the stairs and into his room and started lecturing him. That he couldn't understand how Dudley could have lost another job already, and if he thought that this was some kind of game instead of a serious matter, and how Dudley could ever hope to provide for a family if he didn't settle down and do something respectable, and that at his age, he, Vernon, had already been climbing up the career ladder at Grunnings and earning enough to buy this house for his wife and future children. And how disappointed he was that everything they had done for him apparently didn't seem to have brought any fruit.

After a while, Dudley demonstratively stopped listening and started setting up his computer, and after some more time, his father turned and stomped down the stairs like an angry elephant – doubtlessly to express his frustration to his wife, who would be a more willing listener.

Dudley had no idea what had gotten into the man. He'd never behaved that way before. Yes, he had been worried when Dudley had been fired from his first job, and that hadn't changed the second time, but he had always maintained that Dudley's employers had simply not been able to appreciate his skills. This outburst was a complete novelty, and it didn't sit well with his son. He had expected support, not reproaches.

It was for this reason that dinner was a rather quiet affair. Dudley shovelled food into himself without really tasting anything, his father looked up every now and then to shoot him an angry glance, and even his mother was unusually quiet and looked as if she'd bitten into a lemon during the whole dinner.

"What a great start," Dudley thought sourly when he managed to escape to his room after dessert.

.-.-.-.

On a Wednesday two months later, Dudley's world came crashing down around him.

He'd spent his time at home mostly in his room at his computer, or in the cellar, where he'd hung up a punching bag, trying to escape the weird atmosphere between his parents. They seemed both tense and restless and were ready to snap at each other much more easily than they had ever done before. He wouldn't have dreamt to ask them about it, though – he wasn't an agony aunt, after all.

Now that his suspension had ended, he went to boxing training almost every day. He had a lot to catch up with: there was this annoying new guy, Dan, for example, who for some unfathomable reason seemed to think that he was the greatest boxer to ever have walked the earth. He'd already gathered a considerable amount of admirers from the club who shared this opinion. Well, Dudley thought as he entered the house through the kitchen, the duffel bag with the sweat-soaked sportswear over his shoulder, he would have to teach that Dan a lesson that he wouldn't forget.

It was with this still in mind that he sauntered over to the living room to switch on the TV and maybe watch some thriller or, if there wasn't anything else, some of the old cartoons they showed in the afternoon. In the living room, however, he found his parents sitting on the couch, and every thought of Dan, or watching TV, vanished from his mind immediately.

His mother seemed to have been crying, because her eyes were red and swollen, and his father looked grimmer than he'd ever done since Dudley's cousin had left the house at the age of seventeen.

"Dudley... we have to tell you something," Vernon said, but he didn't say anything more, and in the end, it was Petunia who spoke, her voice slow and toneless.

"I have cancer. It's not looking well. They say I might very well die."

Dudley stared mutely, the duffel bag slumping to the floor. Finally, he just turned and left for his room. Behind him, he could hear his mother beginning to cry again.

.-.-.-.

During the next weeks, Dudley felt as though he had walked into a nightmare, and he couldn't help but keep hoping that one morning, he might simply wake up and realise that nothing of it had been real. Unfortunately, it hadn't happened yet.

His mother, it turned out, hadn't been feeling well for quite some time before he had come home again. She had lost her appetite and grown thinner, she had been feeling unusually tired, and she'd had infrequent abdominal pains that had eventually spread to the back as well. It had been at that point that Vernon had been able to convince her to go to the doctor, who had first suspected gallstones. There hadn't been any, though, and while Dudley had happily played computer games and beaten two punching bags to pulp in the cellar, his mother had been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer.

With this knowledge in mind, he'd been able to make sense of his parents' weird behaviour during the last weeks, but that wasn't very comforting. It didn't help either that, as time went by, their quarrelling only seemed to increase, and as a result, Dudley either holed up in his room even more, or disappeared for training all day long. He didn't know how to deal with this, and so avoiding it seemed like the best idea.

Petunia needed to go to the hospital for treatment every day – Dudley had caught the word "chemoradiation" once when they'd been talking, but he didn't have a true idea of what it meant and refused to Google it. During the first two weeks, Vernon had taken a holiday and driven her himself with the car, but when he had to return to work, Petunia was forced to go by public transport.

She didn't take it well, because, as she said, how could anyone expect from her to take the bus if she was feeling sick to her stomach after each of those awful treatments? Once, she'd even had to rush out of the bus at the wrong bus stop and had thrown up into a flower bed in front of half a dozen people!

When she came home, Dudley could often hear her cry in the living room, but he had no idea what to do about it. Finally, he resorted to increasing the volume of his current computer game and tried not to think too much.

His father seemed to have similar problems, because on more than one evening, Dudley heard the same scene playing in the living room from the stair-head: his mother's sobbing at first, then his father's voice, then his mother again, who was now screeching rather than crying, and finally his father was growing loud as well, and everything ended with Vernon storming out of the living room and slamming the door behind himself – which resulted in more crying from inside. It was at that point that Dudley usually fled into his room again.

And there was the housework. Dudley knew that his mother had always prided herself on her impeccable household skills, and they had been one of the reasons he had returned, after all. Now, however, he more and more often saw her resting on the couch instead of bustling around the house. The dishes and laundry started to pile up, and one evening, when he had come home from training at the same time that Vernon returned from work, they had arrived to find dinner getting burnt in the kitchen and Petunia deeply asleep in the living room. It was the first of many times that Dudley and his father ended up ordering pizza, and they ate it in brooding silence in a kitchen that smelt of burnt food.

Finally, on a Saturday ten weeks after the diagnosis, a young woman appeared at their doorstep. She claimed to have read the ad searching for household help that Mr. Dursley had put in the paper. She had quite a lot of experience in that field, she said, and she was sure they would be satisfied if they gave her the job. Also, she was not a bad cook by any means.

It was unfortunate that the person to open the door had been Petunia, who stared at her silently for some seconds before slamming it in her face. After that, his parents had the worst fight Dudley could ever remember. In the end, after much yelling about how she was not incapable of taking care of her household and family, his mother was sobbing hysterically, while his father was mumbling apologies in a resigned voice.

Dudley had listened from the kitchen, where he had been having a second breakfast. His hunger, however, had vanished completely by the time his father entered and slumped down at the table. It was awkward and they didn't speak, and only when Dudley had decided to leave did Vernon say something, and it wasn't something that Dudley wanted to hear.

"I don't think...that I can do this much longer."

It took some time for Dudley to understand what this meant, and when he did, he was too angry to reply. Instead, he got up so abruptly that his chair fell over and stormed into the cellar, where he began thrashing the punching bag so thoroughly that it started spitting sawdust after not too long a time.

.-.-.-.

On a Sunday evening four weeks later, Dudley watched his father's car drive away from #4 Privet Drive for the last time. It was cram-full with Vernon's things – clothes, the stereo, records, papers – which Dudley had refused to help packing.

The idea that his father was indeed leaving was still unbelievable. Oh, he had tried to explain, but Dudley hadn't wanted to hear it. He hadn't wanted to hear about how difficult his mother was becoming – even though he knew that it was true after the episode with the household help – or how helpless Vernon was feeling at facing the fact that he couldn't help his wife. He had been too enraged to be able to listen, and whenever his father had entered the room, he had simply stopped whatever he was doing and left. It had become completely ridiculous at some point, because his father just didn't seem to understand that Dudley would not change his mind.

Even more disconcerting than his father's behaviour, though, had been his mother's. During the two weeks between the announcement that her husband would leave and his actual departure, she had maintained a perfectly calm attitude. As far as Dudley could tell, there had been no crying like before, no ugly scenes with yelling, no arguments, nothing. It had almost been eerie, and only for a moment, he had found himself wondering if she was going to lose it.

With hindsight, he supposed she had just tried to pull herself together so she wouldn't completely break down. And being left by her husband because he couldn't deal with her terminal illness was reason enough, he had to admit. He knew that the doctors had said that the chances for recovery weren't well. The tumour had spread too much for them to control it, and she would almost certainly die.

After a final glance at the now empty street, Dudley went back into the house. In the corridor, he heard a sound from the kitchen, and when he carefully peeked through the door, which was only ajar, he could see his mother sitting at the kitchen table. She was clutching her headscarf in both hands, her bald scalp perfectly visible in the hard light of the neon lamps, and she was crying.

Dudley slowly backed away from the door and climbed the stairs to his room, where he turned on the stereo and flopped down on his bed. The music was loud – loud enough, he hoped, to prevent him from thinking. It worked for some time, but not long. The image of his mother appeared before his inner eye again and again, however much he tried to shoo it away like he had done during the last few weeks. In the end, he had no choice but to face the unpleasant insight that if he kept behaving like this, he wasn't any better than his father. He didn't like that idea much at first, and thinking it over didn't make it any better.

She needed someone to help her, that had become perfectly clear during the last few months, and he surely hadn't gone out of his way to do so. To be honest, he had completely ignored his parents, because he'd been too scared of what would happen. But now that Vernon was gone, he couldn't afford that any more, could he?

After several more minutes of thinking, Dudley turned off the stereo and reluctantly made his way downstairs again. Petunia seemed to be where he had left her, since he could hear from the corridor that she was still crying. Taking a deep breath, Dudley opened the kitchen door. His mother looked up at him in surprise when he sat down next to her and awkwardly put an arm around her, but she didn't resist.

Later, after she'd cried enough and he'd held her enough, he tried to cook dinner while she was having a nap. The noodles turned out too soft and the sauce too salty, but she ate and didn't mention it.

.-.-.-.

It was on a Monday afternoon in August that the attending physician at the hospital told them that there wasn't anything left to do other than giving Petunia medication for the pain and waiting for her to die. That evening, like all the others during the last two months, they ate their poorly cooked dinner in silence. When they had finished, she asked him to pack her bag for the hospital.

Seeing her in a hospital bed was worse than he had imagined. She had become even thinner and looked small between the white sheets. The idea that this was the place where she would stay until her death filled him with frustration, but it wasn't like he could do anything. Only when, three weeks later, he watched a nurse help her get up from the bed and sit down in a wheelchair so that he could take her to the garden did he realise that he'd been wrong.

She had clenched her fists and pressed her lips together tightly, and it had reminded him of a fight she had had with his father. Vernon had sat down next to her and wanted to comfort her, but she had flinched and snapped at him not to touch her.

"I've had three complete strangers touch me at the hospital today! I can't stand it any more! Just leave me alone!"

Now, watching her wrap her arms around herself as the nurse pulled back, and thinking about how she'd soon need help with dressing, bathing, and going to the loo, Dudley knew that there was only one thing he could do if he didn't want to feel like a piece of shit.

Four days later, he had arranged everything, and in the early afternoon, a taxi brought him and his mother home again.

A few months later, on a Sunday morning in early January, Harry Potter was alone at home. His wife Luna had gone to visit her father, but Harry had still some unfinished work for the following day. Not for the first time did he think that he must have been insane to accept this job, but whenever he complained about it, Luna would just laugh and tell him he shouldn't whine, since it was obvious that he liked it. Which was right.

He would never have thought that personal assistant of the Minister of Magic would be a position to ever interest him in the slightest, but he had soon found that it wasn't half as horrid as he had always believed – at least not with the right Minister.

He was now sorting through the mail Luna had brought to his study earlier – it was always astonishing how many owls were addressed to his private home instead to his office at the Ministry – when he noticed one letter that, differently from all the others, looked like an ordinary Muggle letter, stamp and all.

He curiously opened it and began to read. When he had finished, he let it drop onto his desk and whispered, "Shit!"

Harry,

I'm sure you're wondering why I write you. Mum died from pancreatic cancer two days ago. She didn't want me to tell you while she was alive – she got furious when I mentioned it – but now I think you should at least know about the funeral. If you want to come, it's next Tuesday at 2pm at the St. Andrews graveyard. Some neighbours will be there, and some of her friends from the gardening club. We'll have tea at home after that. I know it must be kind of awkward for you, but I guessed you'd want to know about it.

Dudley

.-.-.-.

It was indeed awkward, and Harry was grateful for the heavy rain that blurred the sight and forced people to hide under umbrellas. Luckily, nobody seemed to take much notice of him during the funeral. Dudley and Mrs. Figg had shaken his hand when he'd arrived, but nobody else had even tried to talk to him. That included Vernon, who was much to Harry's astonishment standing at the periphery of the assembled party just like himself, and not with his son, where Harry would have expected him.

What made the whole affair even weirder was that while everyone offered their condolences to Dudley, only a few of the guests present did the same with Vernon. Wondering what might have happened to cause this, Harry didn't notice how the guests slowly began to wander toward the exit of the graveyard. Only his cousin and uncle had stayed behind, and Harry was torn out of his musings by the sound of Vernon clearing his throat.

Looking over to them, he saw that Vernon had approached his son, who was still staring at the grave in silence.

"I should..." Vernon broke off, his voice shaking. He seemed to think for some moments before he reached out and touched Dudley's arm. "I should have been there."

Dudley didn't look at his father, but simply pulled his arm away.

"Yes," he said; then he turned and left.

.-.-.-.

Later that afternoon, Harry was sitting in his old bedroom, which had apparently been changed into a guestroom after he had moved out. The walls were painted freshly in white, the old wardrobe with the broken door was gone, and there was a new bed as well.

He had managed to sneak away from having tea with the other guests after an hour and a half, and this had seemed the best place to think in peace about what Mrs. Figg had told him between a cup of Earl Grey and a piece of strawberry pie.

That Vernon – who hadn't come for tea any more – had left had been the first big surprise. Harry had always looked at the Dursleys as a perfect unit: united against him, united in their desire to be normal and decent and content. That this unity could be broken apart, he had never conceived of in his wildest dreams. And as much as he had disliked his uncle and aunt, it had always seemed clear to him that they loved each other.

Hearing that Dudley had taken care of his mother at home until she had died had left him completely gobsmacked. Actually, he'd choked on his tea and asked Mrs. Figg to repeat herself, convinced that he must have misunderstood. But she hadn't said anything different the second time, and now Harry was lying on his back on the blue sheets of the guest bed, trying to reconcile this new knowledge with the Dudley he remembered.

He didn't succeed.

The Dudley he had known when they had both been seventeen had been a bully and an egotist, someone who picked on weaker people for fun and wouldn't dream of helping anyone if he couldn't get out something for himself in the process. He'd been lazy and arrogant, spoilt beyond belief, and letting his mother coddle him and cater to his every wish like a personal slave.

Harry couldn't imagine that Dudley caring for a terminally ill person. He couldn't imagine him being patient and attentive, willing to put his own needs aside for Petunia's. He couldn't imagine him keeping an eye on her medication, helping her with dressing, eating, bathing, and eventually with even more private things when she couldn't get up from bed any more. Yet, Mrs. Figg had claimed that he had done all those things, and Harry had no reason not to believe her.

With a lingering feeling of surreality, Harry finally headed downstairs again, where Mrs. Figg just seemed to have walked the last guests out of the front door.

"Dudley is in the kitchen," she said, taking her own umbrella and handbag from the wardrobe. "I think he could need some company." With these words, she stepped outside into the rain and closed the door behind herself.

Harry hesitated, wondering if he shouldn't just leave as well, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. So he went to the kitchen instead, where he found Dudley, hands wrapped around one of the teacups still littering the table together with empty plates and crumbs of cake, staring into it as if there was some kind of wisdom or comfort to be found in the remaining tea.

He had noticed before that Dudley had lost some weight, but only now did he see how tired his cousin was looking. He looked older, too. It wasn't astonishing in itself, considering Harry hadn't seen him in almost five years, but that wasn't everything. It was like the look he had seen on too many faces after the war, and he would never have dreamt of associating it with Dudley.

"So..." Harry said. He felt rather stupid. "Mrs. Figg told me what happened."

Without looking up, Dudley waved into the direction of a chair to indicate that Harry should sit. "She helped me with the funeral – the tea, the cakes and everything. I guess it would've been a disaster without her."

"That's very nice of her." He sat and wondered what would happen next. It was a weird situation, and he didn't know if he was ready for some kind of heart-to-heart with Dudley, of all people. But his cousin said nothing and just kept staring down into his cup.

"I'm sorry about your father," Harry finally murmured. For some odd reason, it disturbed him more than the fact that Aunt Petunia was dead.

Dudley shrugged. "I guess he was scared. He didn't know what to do. Leaving was easier."

"Maybe, but that doesn't make it right. And you didn't leave."

There was more silence, Dudley's grip on the teacup tightening.

"I couldn't leave here in the hospital. She didn't like being touched by strangers."

They sounded trivial on the outside, but it was these two sentences that made Harry understand that this was indeed not the Dudley he remembered. He wasn't at all like the annoying prick he used to be.

"Well, I didn't have exactly much time for that between holding her hand and wiping her ass!" Dudley suddenly snapped, and Harry realised he must have said the last part aloud.

"Sorry."

Dudley just shook his head and got up, beginning to clear the table and put the dirty dishes into the sink.

"It's not like I don't understand how Dad felt," he said after a while, his back turned to Harry. "You want to do something, but nothing really helps, and you feel like an idiot for trying."

Harry didn't know what to answer. There were no good answers for such situations.

"You could've told me, you know. If I could have done anything to help the two of you –"

"No." Dudley's hands had been busy scratching leftovers from a plate, but now they stilled. "I asked her, but she didn't want you to know. She didn't want your pity."

He could even understand that, Harry had to admit. He would probably have felt the same. But it didn't make things less awkward, and it seemed like a good point to leave.

Slowly, he got up. "I need to go. I still have work at home."

Dudley didn't turn. "Thanks for coming anyway," was all he said, his voice tight, and suddenly, Harry found himself talking and hoping without knowing why.

"Listen, I'm married now, and my wife...she's pregnant. The baby's due in three months. It's a boy and, well, there's no family, just Luna's father, so...he could need an uncle. You could just, I don't know, come for dinner sometime during the next weeks."

"That's exactly what she meant." Dudley turned to get the last cups and saucers, his expression defiant as he looked at Harry. "You don't have to do that."

"It's not pity! I just thought..." Harry didn't know how to go on, because he didn't know what he'd been thinking. This was about the first time that they had been having something like a normal conversation, and it was bizarre that it only seemed possible after Petunia had died.

"I don't know." All of a sudden, he felt frustrated and as tired as Dudley looked. He had given up on having an even remotely normal relationship with any of them years ago, and he shouldn't feel disappointed now. "Maybe I just thought we could get to know each other."

Harry started to walk to the door and had almost reached it when his cousin's voice stopped him.

"I'd like that."

When he left, he did it with Dudley's promise to stop by for dinner on Sunday.