Privet Drive was quite empty when Dudley emerged from the house, lighting his cigarette with hands that shook slightly. He took a deep drag and shoved the half-empty pack and his lighter back into his pocket, fancying that he felt a slight squirm from the magical photograph that already occupied it. He pushed the thought away, firmly. The photograph was just a photograph, and he had at any rate seem much stranger things in the past few years. Harry was generally a decent sort and he, Dudley, didn't think his cousin would really go out of his way to send something nasty.
Still, though...he patted his pocket again, and sighed when he found it reassuringly motionless. He settled onto a bench in the front lawn under a large tree, quite aware that his mother was watching him worriedly through the kitchen blinds. She'd been like that ever since he'd come back from school, and he couldn't decide what to make of it. Oh, she'd always been the hovering sort, he was used to that although he did his best to hide it from his mates - but this was something different, and he was quite baffled as to its cause.
He flicked a bit of ash into the tall grass - his father had fired the boy who came to mow their lawn once a week, and hadn't got around to hiring anyone else - and leaned back, staring up into the green canopy overhead. It had been a long week, and it was almost surreal to be back at home with his mum and dad, as though the year before last had never happened and his strange cousin had never existed. Dudley had thought he'd be delighted to have Harry out of the house at last - his cousin's sharp wit always made him feel slow and thick, and the unexpected things that had always happened when Harry was around were downright frightening - now that it had happened, things were...well. Strange.
His eyes, which had slid closed of their own accord, snapped open as his father's car pulled into the driveway. He glanced around for a place to hide the cigarette, but it was too late - the car door was opening, and his father had already spotted him...
The remonstration he was half expecting never came. Vernon Dursley shut the car door behind him and lifted a hand to his son with a weariness that was only half-feigned.
"Ah, Dudders," he said ponderously, "don't suppose you could spare a smoke for your old Dad, could you?"
Dudley gaped for a moment, but his father just smiled wanly. Two years and a heart attack had wrought quite a change in him, and he seemed like a pale, thin imitation of the roaring giant of Dudley's childhood. Dudley thought about mentioning that the doctors had said that he wasn't to smoke anymore, then thought better of it, closed his mouth, and dug into his pockets for the cigarettes and lighter.
Vernon lit the cigarette, turning his back deliberately to the kitchen windows. "Best not to let your Mum see," he said in a conspiratorial whisper.
"I already told her I was out here. She's been a bit..." Dudley trailed off, and tapped his left temple to indicate loopiness.
His father nodded. "Ah, well, she's just worried about you going off on your own, you know. Going to be left with just me for company." He chuckled at his own joke.
Dudley nodded. They finished their cigarettes in silence and went back inside, ignoring the tearful glances that Petunia kept throwing in their directions.
That night, after they got home from dinner, Dudley pulled the crumpled bit of paper out of his pocket and stared at it for a long time before getting out a sheet of notebook paper and beginning, painstakingly, to write.