SEVENTEEN

Stories of the next generation as they come of age.

Disclaimer: © J.K. Rowling, not me. And if you choose to sue, just know I only have 43.65 in my bank account and chances are the legal fees will be greater than the amount of money I can give you.

ONE

Elizabeth Dursley (Eliza and the Dragon)

Elizabeth Petunia Dursley was the first and only born to parents Dudley Vernon Dursley and Margaret Fitzpatrick Dursley and doting grandparents Vernon Humphrey Dursley III (although as Vernon Humphrey Dursley I had been a most notorious felon of the worst sort, Grandfather Dursley was loath to use the full name) and Petunia Evans Dursley. Her first few months of life were typically that of very ordinary babies: her blonde hair grew, she squalled, fussed, and was fed and throughout it all her Grandmother Dursley (Gram Petty, as she called herself) cooed over her endlessly. In fact, Eliza Dursley's first distinct memory was not until the twelfth month of her existence. Her Grandma Fitzpatrick (who preferred to just go by Gran) was dangling a brightly colored stuffed animal over her, cooing, "Here, sweetums. A very special gift Gran brought just for you…goo goo gah gah?" Eliza happily reached for the bright object, intending to sink her slowly growing teeth into its plush scales, when a high pitched scream drew away her attention (admittedly, it was easily done in those days, but granted, she was only one) and the orange-red object that she was reaching out for was torn from the grasp of her Gran's outstretched hand.

Gram Petty was gasping, flushed, and hysterical, and Eliza's Grandaddy Vernon rushed into the room, bellowing, "Where is it? I'll kill it!" Gran was looking puzzled and when Eliza's Mummy and Daddy burst into the room shortly afterwards, it was on a strange scene. Gram Petty was holding the plush at arm's length, looking as though it might bite her, and with a great look of disgust on her face. Grandaddy Vernon's expression was similar and he was slowly turning a deep shade of violet. He was the first one to speak.

"What is that ruddy- ruddy thing doing in here? Petunia, I thought we agreed-"

It was at this point Gran spoke up. "Is there something wrong with it? I understand some toys have toxic chemicals and such these days, but I checked very carefully to make sure little Eliza wouldn't be harmed—it's from a very respectable company, with a safety guarantee."

Grandaddy Vernon was puffing like a choo-choo train. "Ruddy… Dragon…"

Gran looked confused. "What's wrong with a dragon?"

Daddy stepped in to save the situation. "Helen, it's nothing, I was just rather scared of them when I was young, that's all. My parents are just used to keeping things like that away from me." He exchanged a significant look with Mummy, something Gran didn't seem to be able to decipher. Mummy stepped forward and pulled the dragon gently out of Gram Petty's grasp.

"Here," she said gently, giving the dragon to Eliza, who instantly picked it up and began gnawing on it happily.

Mummy gently pulled Gran and Grandaddy Vernon out of the nursery ("A nice cup of tea will do everyone good, I think"), but Gram Petty stayed, looking fixated on Eliza and the Dragon with an expression of utmost terror. Daddy paused as he followed everyone out the door, looking at Gram Petty.

"Mum? Are you coming?"

She pulled him back in and closed the nursery door rather loudly.

"Dudley, it's a dragon! You know you shouldn't be encouraging that sort of thing." She shuddered. "You know," she hesitated, "magic." Daddy laughed.

"Mum, it's a just a toy. It won't make any difference-"

But Gram Petty was advancing towards Eliza with a fierce determination, muttering, "won't stand for that unnaturalness a third time around… it's unhealthy, it is, and embarrassing, besides…" She reached towards Eliza and attempted to tug the plush dragon from her grasp. Eliza clung on tightly. Gram Petty pulled harder, and with a scream from Eliza, the dragon was pulled out of her small grasp.

For one second it looked like the incident might be over, but Eliza's scream had seemed to animate something within the dragon. Its soft scales became hard as iron, its eyes became strangely lifelike, and a bit of fire seemed to spew from its now breathing nostrils. Its wings spread, and it flew out of Gram Petty's hands as she let out yet another scream and bolted from the room, leaving a smell of singed hair behind her. The dragon flew back to Eliza, Daddy's eyes watching closely the entire time, where it slowly became soft and plush again, and Eliza pulled her arm tightly around it while she drifted off to sleep. In her dreams it was still there, and in her dreams she called it Weatherby.

Elizabeth Petunia Dursley was one when she first discovered she had magic.

Dudley and Margaret were whispering quietly, trying not to wake Eliza, who was napping in the nursery next room over.

"Are you sure about this, Dudley? You haven't seen or even talked to your cousin since he was seventeen. How do you know he'll help? You didn't even get along growing up."

"He'll help, Maggie. He made sure we were protected while he fought that Dark Lord thingy, and besides, if it's just a toy his kind made, he can take it with him and we can tell your mum it got ruined in the wash."

A knock on the door sounded. Both of Eliza's parents jumped, but slowly moved towards the door.

"Remember," Margaret hissed, "we spent three years tracking him down, and only got him by putting his name without an address on an envelope. Be nice."

Four year-old Eliza slowly stirred as Dudley opened the door to two men.

"Dudley," the dark-haired man with glasses and a funny scar said, holding out his hand. Dudley gulped and shook.

"Harry? This is my wife, Margaret," "-Maggie", Margaret interjected, and Harry shook her hand, "and my daughter Eliza is in the next room…" Dudley's eyes alighted to the other man. "You look familiar."

"George Weasley," the red haired man said, briskly shaking his hand. "We met once while… my family was picking up Harry."

Dudley stared at him for a moment. "What happened to your ear?"

George looked at him inscrutably. "We weren't all sitting in a guard-protected safe house during the war, you know." Dudley flushed, but invited the men in.

Once everyone was seated with large mugs of tea, Harry turned calmly to Dudley. "So what seems to be the problem? You said you thought you had an enchanted object? Why didn't you just throw it away?" Dudley flushed again. "Well, the stuffed dragon won't let itself be thrown away, and Mum won't visit while we have it." Harry nodded. "Can you bring it out? George here makes stuff like this all the time, so if anyone can figure out how to break the charm, it's him." Eliza sleepily allowed the dragon, which gave only a sleepy snore, to be removed from her arms, and Margaret brought it out and laid it in front of George, who began poking a wand at it, muttering softly. Dudley didn't even flinch—he had lived under the protection of wizards for nearly a year, as George had pointed out, and was nearly accustomed to it, but Margaret flinched a little bit as gentle puffs of steam blew out of George's wand.

Finally, he looked up. "There's no charm on here." George seemed to be speaking exclusively to Harry. "Either someone's secretly charming it to fly, or…" he nodded his head in the direction of the room with Eliza in it.

"Little Eliza?" Harry looked sharply at George. "I see." He looked thoughtfully at Dudley and Margaret for a moment. "Well, this is a muggle household, so the Ministry would be aware of any controlled use of magic. I think we can rule that out."

George nodded. "Just leaves the girl."

Dudley could contain himself no longer. "What does this have to do with my daughter?"

Harry looked almost amused. He directly spoke to Dudley this time. "Has anything else out of the ordinary happened around her? Any other strange things that you couldn't explain?" Dudley felt a sinking in his chest.

"Yes." Margaret spoke suddenly. "There was one time when one of my friends tried to pick her up, and her dress suddenly was full of brambles, and one time when she fell of the slide, she bounced-"

Dudley interrupted, "Does this mean what I think it means?"

Harry looked at him and nodded. "Yes. She most certainly has magic." He turned to Margaret. "Are there any wizards in your family?" Margaret slowly shook her head, dumbstruck. "Then it probably comes from your mother, Dudley. Her sister- my mother- was a witch. She'll almost certainly get an invitation to Hogwarts if she's showing this much magic." The Dursleys stared at Harry. In the awkward silence, George cleared his throat.

"I'll just take this back, shall I?" He waved the dragon and walked into Eliza's nursery while Harry started reassuring the Dursleys. "She'll keep having these little incidents up until the time she gets her Hogwarts letter, and maybe a little into her first years of school if she has strong emotions—remember Aunt Marge, Dudley? But just don't worry about them, if there are any problems with muggles, the Ministry of Magic will modify their memories, if you have any questions I'm sure you could contact my brother-in-law Percy…" George placed the dragon back into Eliza's bed, where she murmured, "Weatherby," and put her arms around it. George snickered, and Eliza opened her eyes as he tiptoed out of the nursery.

Dudley and Harry were shaking hands; with a polite nod to Margaret, Harry started putting on his cloak and George moved forward. As Dudley shook his hand, a bolt of recognition seemed to hit him. "Weren't you the one- the day- my tongue?" He gesticulated wildly. "But weren't there two of you?" George ignored the question, a dark look passing over his face.

"Your daughter is actually on to something, I think." He said at last. "Protective plush dragon toys. How about that, Fr- Harry? You think parents will love them?" Looking rather sad, Harry nodded, and with a final "best wishes" and "let me know if you have any questions," he and George rather hurriedly went out into the night.

Margaret had been rather quiet this whole time. "So she's magical, then?"

Dudley had a rather stupid look on his face. "Harry… said… brother-in-law. He's married?"

Eliza's Hogwarts letter came exactly three months after her 11th birthday. An owl flew in, swooping over top of Gram Petty's head (she and Grandaddy Vernon were over for Sunday lunch), causing her to shriek and once again bolt out of the house, and after Grandaddy Vernon's puce face shouted himself hoarse at his son about his "lack of decency" by "having contact with those people", he too fled the house. Eliza read the letter and supply list from "Congratulations!" to "Deputy Headmaster Filius Flitwick" so many times in the next few hours the paper began to tear, and around 10:00 next day, a knock at the door introduced a Professor Longbottom.

"I'm here to give you any information about Hogwarts you need to know, and show you Diagon Alley so Miss Dursley can find her school supplies," he explained kindly. "That is, if you consent to let her attend, of course," he added, looking at the Dursleys, who looked at Eliza, jumping up and down in excitement, and nodded resignedly.

Eliza stared at the welcome feast, looking around dazedly, and checked to make sure Weatherby the dragon (which she kept close on hand as a talisman of sorts) was securely in her pocket. The day had flown by so fast she could hardly believe it—her Gram Petty, who hadn't spoken to her parents or her after they had announced that Eliza was going to Hogwarts, finally showing up a minute before she left for King's Cross, a small, jumpy owl in tow ("Now, Eliza, be sure to send me a letter with him straight away if you decide you want to come home from that awful school") that she named Dragon. Eliza still wondered how Gram Petty had known where to find an owl in the first place. Then, as her parents had been saying tearful goodbyes to her at the barrier, her dad had bumped into a man he had introduced to Eliza as his cousin Harry, which still baffled her, because as far as she knew, her dad had never had a cousin before this. She had sat with a girl named Gertrude Boot on the train, who was shy, but had a dragon almost just like Weatherby, and who had asked her if Weatherby came from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes too, and from there had told her all about the magical world. She had seen the castle on a lake, just like something out of a fairytale, and ridden in a boat there like a princess in a fairy tale. Then came the hard part—sitting in front of all the people she didn't know and waiting for the hat to place her, all the while wondering if all hats could talk and if all the rest had just never bothered to say anything to her before (at which point, the hat yelled, "Hufflepuff!" and she fell off the stool.)

Now, as she gazed up at the ceiling (that didn't look like a ceiling, only she was told by an older student with a shiny badge that it wouldn't actually rain), she noticed that the other members of her table were all nearly out into another hallway. She raced after them, but tripped just as she was about to catch them, and resisting the urge to cry, looked up and realized that she couldn't see anyone—anywhere. She slumped down in the hallway, trying not to cry.

Eliza didn't know how long she'd been sitting in the hallway, head between her knees, longing for the bed in the location she didn't know, or better yet, to be back at home with Mum and Dad and even Gram Petty. She squeezed Weatherby in desperation, but he remained plush and motionless.

"Why are you out of your common room?" She jumped, startled, and turned her tearstained face to a tall boy with messy dark hair and kind brown eyes. "He peered at her more closely, lighting his wand. "You're a first year?" He sounded alarmed. "Are you lost?" She nodded hopefully. "Which house?" he demanded. She managed to stutter out the answer, and he took her hand and began pulling her along a rather creepy dark corridor full of moving paintings and suits of armor. She could hardly breathe. Seeming to sense this, he tried to put her at ease. "So what's your name?"

She whispered, "Eliza Dursley".

He stopped. "Dursley? Really?" He studied her rather closely. "Are you related to Dudley Dursley? Or Petunia and Vernon?

"They're my parents. And my grandparents." She looked at him curiously, surprised to see him smiling broadly at her.

"Well, then we're cousins, do you know? My dad Harry's mum was your Grandmother's sister. Her name was Lily. My dad grew up with Dudley. He said you would be at Hogwarts soon."

"But… I don't…" she stuttered. "Wait! My dad said something today about his cousin Harry!"

"See?" the boy grinned at her, chucking her underneath her chin. "You're my cousin, and my brother Albus's and my sister Lily's too. I'm going to call you…" he studied her with mock scrutiny, "Liza-bean."

His brazen, cheerful manner shocked her out of her shyness. "That's awful!" she cried.

He gave her a lopsided grin. "Too bad."

"Well, fine then!" She huffed. "I'm going to call you…" She paused, realizing she was missing something. "What's your name? You never even told me."

"James. James Potter. My brother's Al and my sister's Lily and my parents are Harry and Ginny. You probably should know all this, since you are related and all."

"Okay." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Prince Jaime."

"Prince Jaime?" he wailed melodramatically.

She giggled. "You rescued me."

"Oh, fine." He huffed. "Well, if I'm really going to rescue you, I'm going to have to get you to your bed, aren't I?" And with that he tugged her along the corridor. Eliza felt much better.

After they had walked along for a few minutes, James, (or Prince Jaime, she thought, giggling to herself), teasing her mercilessly all the while, another bright light shined in their faces. Headmistress McGonagall and Professor Hornby (who Eliza had been informed was the head of Hufflepuff House) were looking at Eliza and James with relief on their faces.

"There she is," said McGonagall, whose face lightened for a moment, "You gave us quite a scare when the prefects told us one of the first years had never made it up to the dormitory." She turned her stern gaze to James. "And Mr. Potter, thank you for assisting Miss Dursley. However, I don't even want to imagine what you're doing out in the corridors the first night of term. Remember your responsibility to set an example as Head Boy and return to the Gryffindor common room immediately." There was a small twinkle in her eye. "And warn Mr. Weasley and Mr. Weasley that I will be watching very carefully for any mischief this evening that you three may have planned."

"Yes, professor." James saluted her as she turned away.

Professor Hornby turned to James. "Thank you for helping Miss Dursley, Potter. Muggleborn, I take it?"

He shrugged. "No. Well, technically, yes, I guess, both her parents are muggles, but she's my second cousin."

Hornby looked confused. "More Weasley relations? I thought we had the lot of you already."

James grinned. "No sir. Other side, actually. Remember that my dad grew up with his muggle relations?" He saluted Eliza. "Night, Liza-bean. Goodnight, Professor."

Professor Hornby looked rather dumbfounded and muttered to himself as James sauntered off. "Related to the Potters… in my house… Oh!" He turned to Eliza, who was barely able to stand on her feet. "We'd best get you into bed, Miss Dursley." Eliza suddenly had hope that this magic thing would not be so bad.

Three months later, Dragon (the owl, not to be confused with Weatherby the dragon, which Eliza had had James and one of his other cousins, Fred, charm to fly around better than the dragon of Gertrude Boot, who had also been sorted into Hufflepuff), flew into the living room where Dudley and Margaret were quietly going about their evening. He dropped a thick letter on the table beside Dudley's tea and proceeded to peck at the biscuits, ignoring Margaret's attempts to shoo him away. Dudley opened the letter from his daughter:

Dear Mom and Dad,

Hogwarts is great! Professor Longbottom says I'm doing great in Herbology, which is good because Gram Petty can't have too many problems with taking care of plants and using them to make stuff, can she? I mean, some of them really are quite dangerous, like they strangle you and stuff, but we don't do those until much later. Transfiguration is still really hard, though. The other day I met the Care of Magical Creatures teacher Hagrid, who says he once had a baby dragon as a pet. How fantastic is that? He says if I'm really good in Care of Magical Creatures when I start third year, I can go work with dragons for a career once I finish school. That's much better than being an accountant or secretary or something, isn't it? I could be a dragon tamer! And Al and James say their Uncle Charlie (who is not related to us) is a dragon tamer. Maybe I could meet him someday. Speaking of them, Gertrude has a big crush on Al, since he's the son of the wizarding world's hero Harry Potter and looks just like him. It's quite funny. And it's weird to think that I should really call him Uncle Harry. And you grew up with him while he was doing all sorts of dangerous things and defeating a Dark Lord. How come you never told me about him?

James and Al and Lily say they can have me over during Christmas Holidays, which would be amazing! Imagine, I would get to see a real wizard house, and stay in the same place as them, since they're all in Gryffindor and I'm not. And do you think I could get a broomstick for Christmas? All of the Potters and their cousins the Weasleys (who we're not technically related to, though) are crazy about Quidditch. It sounds really fun. If I do go see them, they're going to take me to Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, which is supposed to be the best joke shop ever. Everyone's quite mad about it.

Give my love to Gran and Gram Petty and Grandaddy Vernon.


Love,

Liza-bean. (That's my new nickname, James gave it to me. I used to hate it, but I don't mind now. Don't tell though!)

Margaret smiled softly. "She sounds happy."

Dudley nodded. "She is happy." He suddenly groaned. "Bugger. My mum and dad are going to hate this."