By the time Dudley finally got back to the compartment, a trolley had apparently been and gone. The only evidence of Harry's sandwich was the empty package and there were a few sweet wrappers on the seat between him and Ron.
"Where'd you go?" Harry asked around a mouthful of chocolate.
"Nowhere," Dudley said stupidly. "I mean, I was just looking around. You've not seen a toad around anywhere, have you?" He asked, struggling to come up with something to say and remembering the loud girl in the corridor. Ron rolled his eyes.
"No. They've already been 'round to ask," Harry explained. "Oh! And you should probably put on your robes," he added. "We'll be there soon."
"Right," Dudley said. He felt sick. "I'll just be putting my robes on, then."
"Firs' years, over here!" The Giant man, the one with a pink umbrella who'd smashed down the door of the shack on the rock in the sea all those years ago, and given Dudley a pig's tail that was painful to sit on and even more painful to have removed, and taken Harry away to this place. Dudley slipped in the mud as he stepped off the platform and very nearly took down a whole slew of eleven year olds with him.
"Ye alright there? Come along then!" The Giant called out to him, meeting Dudley's eyes. Dudley froze for a long moment - struck again with the sudden absurd fear that he'd been discovered - before nodding mutely back and letting himself be shoved along down the narrow, steep path. Dudley kept his head down, pretending to concentrate on the path hidden by darkness until Harry grasped his arm tightly and a loud "Oooooh!" rang out from the surrounding children.
"Oh, Dudley, look at it," Harry whispered excitedly, voice edging into a wistful sigh that Dudley had never heard from him before.
The path had opened onto a huge lake, the surface black and smooth as glass in the darkness, but that wasn't what everyone was looking at. In the distance, atop a mountain was a huge castle, glittering in the dark as if its windows were filled with millions of candles. It was perfect - the castle every child had in mind when they dreamed of being taken away for adventures in someplace extraordinary. Exactly the sort of place Dudley would have imagined, if he'd had any imagination as a child. Now, though, it looked like just the sort of place a horror movie took place in. The kinds where young women were married off to wealthy bachelors only to find bodies in locked away in the cellar, or where someone suddenly came into an unexpected inheritance only for them to find out the mansion was filled with murderous ghosts. The kinds of stories that never ended well.
Quickly Dudley was ushered into a rickety little boat, along with Harry and Ron and a girl with blonde pigtails, and then back out of it again once they'd passed into some sort of underground river. He had noticed that the boat, all the boats, had moved along at a nice clip seemingly of their own accord. Everything felt as if it was melting round the edges, like a lit candle, or an ice cube dropped into a cup of hot tea, each moment smudging into the next until it was all one big smear of sound and color and too many people packed too closely as they passed into some sort of underground tunnel and clambered back out of the boats.
"Oi, you there! Is this your toad?" Hagrid called, and suddenly everything was too clear, brilliant and shining in sharp relief even in the dim light as the round faced boy scrambled up to the front to claim his toad and they set off across the slippery grass.
"Dudley, are you alright?" Harry asked as Dudley was nearly bent double with laughter edging into hysteria.
"Yeah, Harry, I'm fine. I'm brilliant," he returned with a grin so wide it hurt. Harry sent back a smile tinged with anxiety as they began up the castle steps. Dudley turned to face the front, pretending not to notice when Harry slipped his sweaty hand into Dudley's. It was a habit Harry had outgrown a few years back, once he'd learned it was considered 'uncool' to be constantly hanging off Dudley, but apparently this new place and these new people were enough to overthrow the moratorium on all hand-holding. Dudley's laughter subsided as he squeezed the clammy palm in return, and the great oak door swung open, casting them into light.
Ever since the letter had come, Dudley had had moments like this one - moments where he thought to himself this is it, this is your last chance, there'll be no turning back after this, and each time he'd screwed his courage to the sticking place and forced himself to let it pass. They still kept coming, though - when they'd gone to get their supplies, at the train station, when they'd reached the boats, and now, here, in the little room off the entrance hall with the loud girl from before nattering on under her breath about all the spells she knew and Ron nervously trying to reassure himself and Harry that his brothers had probably been joking about how painful the sorting was. As if when Professor McGonagall came back to retrieve them, Dudley could just raise his hand and say, "Hello, excuse me, see, I think there's been a mistake, if I could just go and get back on the train and be out of everybody's hair . . ."
Several screams erupted from the children around Dudley, yanking him forcefully from his thoughts. He jerked his head up to where the fingers were pointing, and saw dozens of ghosts serenely pouring into the room from the wall opposite, pearly white and slightly transparent and apparently deep in conversation.
"- I say, what are you all doing here?" One ghost broke off abruptly, peering down over the edge of his enormous ruff at the gathered students.
"First years," Dudley bit out automatically, some sort of reflex left over from nearly two decades in primary school over the course of both his lives. This is it, Dudley thought calmly. I've finally gone insane. His brain was frozen, on autopilot - nothing could surprise him now.
"Oho!" The same ghost called excitedly. "About to be sorted, then? I suppose you'll be in Gryffindor, my house, of course," he winked down at Dudley. Gryffin-what? Dudley had already forgotten the majority of McGonagall's speech from before. He swallowed.
"Move along now," McGonagall's voice rang out as she swept back into the room. "The Sorting Ceremony's about to start."
She swiftly herded them into a line, and out into the entrance hall and through the double doors into the Great Hall, a room the size of a cathedral and filled to the brim with floating candles and people and sky. Dudley barely noticed anything else in light of the open night sky floating just out of reach, sparkling brightly with stars. He felt as if he was a breath away from floating out into the ether and disappearing from this place.
Dudley snapped his head forward again as he felt Harry's hand grasping the back of his robes, preventing him from crashing into the sandy-haired boy in front of him as they came to a stop.
McGonagall was placing a ratty, pointed hat on a little four-legged stool before them, and there was only a moment of silent anxiety before the hand seemed to move, and suddenly there was loud singing echoing forth.
From the hat, Dudley realized, because the effing hat was singing.
Dudley felt as if his ears were ringing, drowning out the rusty voice, but his mind kept snagging on words here and there - chivalry - hufflepuff - toil - until the song ended and applause rang out from the four tables behind them.
McGonagall stepped forward with a long scroll in hand and began calling out - names, Dudley realized, yes she'd said that a moment ago, hadn't she? - and he realized with a start as "Abbot, Hannah" and "Bones, Susan" were sorted off into Hufflepuff to encouraging cheers and "Boot, Terry" and "Brocklehurst, Mandy" into Ravenclaw to polite applause that the names were in alphabetical order.
"Brown, Lavender" was shuffled off into Gryffindor to uproarious applause and friendly catcalls, and Dudley's mind excused itself to go offline again as the next half-dozen or so names were called, until (far too early on for his comfort) -
"Dursley, Dudley," McGonagall's voice rang out. It was only with Harry's encouraging slap on the back that Dudley remembered Oh right, that's me - and managed to step forward.
He ignored McGonagall's pinched smile as he took his time making his way to the stool and settling himself onto it, still surprised, somehow, that his name had been called at all.
Suddenly it occurred to Dudley that if he was meant to be protecting Harry, and if he recalled right, he'd only really get to spend time with those in his own house, that perhaps he should know where it was Harry would be sorted. Shit, he thought to himself as he dropped the hat onto his head, something with red and yellow, right? He scanned the tables desperately for the half-second it took the hat to fall over his eyes.
"Shit," he whispered under his breath. Shit, shit shit shit shit-
Sudden laughter in his ear broke off his inner dialogue.
"Oh, you'll do well," the hat was saying around laughter, "You'll be excellent." Dudley's ears burned. Why the fuck did everyone keep saying that? He'd never been brilliant at anything, ever.
"Oh, don't think that, you'll be excellent," the croaking voice in his ear reassured him. "Don't worry, I don't have any reason to stand in your way, so might as well be GRYFFINDOR!"
The last word rang out through the entire hall, and Dudley shakily doffed the hat to the cheers and cries erupting from the Gryffindor table - the ones sporting red and gold ties, Dudley was relieved to see.
He stepped off the platform, taking measured breaths. It was fine. It was all fine.