"Don' worry 'bout Snape, he doesn' like anybody."

Dudley tried not to look as stiff as he felt while Hagrid poured the tea. Harry was still a bit sore about their potions class. If Dudley remembered properly, Harry had been quite looking forward to that class over the summer, constantly skimming the class text and poking Dudley about what sorts of things he thought potions would be useful for.

Snape had been horrid, but in the way some of Dudley's "muggle" professors had been - he'd learned that was the accepted term, muggle, and that witches and wizards tended to not take kindly to him referring to them as the "normal people". Snape wasn't like McGonagall, who turned furniture and people into various animals at the drop of a hat, or like Sprout, who seemed to think that murderous plants with faces were cute, or Binns, who was an effing ghost. He'd been rude, and prejudiced, and an all-around foul git. But Dudley couldn't deny the amount of relief he'd felt, following directions to the letter and doing nothing more magical than chop, dice, or mince - which, he'd been taught the hard way, were all very different things, apparently. And in the end, it wasn't terrible - sure, he was a complete arse, and obviously had some sort of chip on his shoulder concerning Harry. But the entire class, the most magical thing that had happened was Neville's potion melting through his cauldron - and subsequently, onto the floor and through people's shoes. Hell, Dudley'd been in chemistry classes in uni that had ended worse. At least no one had ended up naked in the emergency shower in front of all their classmates.

Harry had been nervously ranting about the treatment since class let out, all the way to Hagrid's hut. He obviously still held enough respect for teachers in general to feel somewhat guilty, but not enough to bottle it up entirely.

"Yeah, Fred and George have lost tons of points from him, he's a complete git," Ron jumped in, rubbing dog slobber off his ears. Hagrid's dog (a massive blood hound ominously named Fang) had some sort of strange fascination with them.

"Yeah, I guess," Harry said in deference to Hagrid, fiddling with his tea mug, which was nearly the size of his head. They'd all been awkward around the adult in the room, but Hagrid was friendly enough, even if Dudley thought he might've found a toenail in the rock cakes they'd been served.

"Anyways, yer father was jus' the same, always gettin' inta all sorts of trouble," Hagrid said to Harry, moving to refill their mugs.

"You-you knew my parents?" Harry asked, as if this wasn't exactly what he'd been waiting for, a strange look on his face. Dudley ducked his head. He'd made sure that his parents hadn't mistreated Harry, exactly, but he hadn't been able to make them like him. Harry had always felt that his aunt and uncle hated him. Dudley felt secretly guilty, sometimes, thinking of that afternoon he'd seen Lily, exhausted and beautiful and soft-looking, watching an infant Harry so carefully. Like he'd stolen something from Harry by remembering, when Harry never would.

"Sure, I did. Been here since before they was firs' years, themselves!" Hagrid exclaimed, before jumping into a series of stories about Harry's parents, and then after a bit, Ron's parents, and then his brothers. Dudley just focused on disassembling his rock cake enough to make appear as if he'd eaten some.

When they finally left, near dark, Harry looked dazed with all he'd heard - for years, practically all his life, he'd lived in a house where no one would even say his parents' names, and then suddenly there was an adult who gave stories about them freely.

"We'll come back, Harry," Dudley promised, tugging on his sleeve. It was getting dark, dinner would be over soon.

"Yeah," Harry said vaguely, staring back at the hut. "Okay."

"Come on, then!" Ron yelled from just ahead of them. "I want to get some roast beef before it's all gone." Harry blinked before turning back to the castle.

"Yeah," he said, seeming a bit more focused. "Yeah, I'm starving," he added with a grin, jogging a few steps to catch up with Ron. Dudley shoved his hands in his pockets and followed after them.

{This is good,} his shadow promised him, swirling into being beside him. {This is what we want to happen.} The sunset was poking holes in it, brilliant orange light seeping through the cracks. Looking at it made Dudley's head ache. For a moment he remembered the young woman it had once resembled, before it had molded into what it was now, indistinct and horrifying even in broad daylight. He looked away.

"I'll just take your word for it, then."


The weeks passed quickly, more easily than Dudley would have imagined. Some small part of him still twisted at being constantly surrounded by everything he'd hated growing up, but the rest of him just . . . adjusted. He woke up, went to meals, spoke to classmates, went to classes and did his work. And if he laid awake for hours every night, watching his shadow leak and fade in the darkness, or flinched at loud noises, and sudden motions, or could barely stomach food - well, that was just the way things were now. He was fine, and Harry was happy, even, and to be honest he just didn't quite give a shit about anyone else. So he adjusted.

He was, however, quickly realizing how much work actually went into this whole magic thing. The essays assigned for homework invoked a strange mix of relief and dread. When Professor Binns assigned a foot and a half of parchment on Broderick the Disemboweler, for example, Dudley had the perfect excuse to lock himself in the library and pretend he was too busy to try out magical games or candy with the other boys. Unfortunately he then had to actually write a foot and a half on someone named "Broderick the Disemboweler."

He and Neville seemed to be the only ones in the dorm who actually spent any time on schoolwork. Harry breezed through the essays easily and Ron didn't seem to care enough about his grades to put forth anything more than minimal effort; the other boys in their dorm, Seamus and Dean, were thick as thieves within a day and got up to who knows what.

Dudley, on the other hand, felt as if he spent most of his time in the library trying to get it all done.

That was how Dudley ended up getting to know Hermione Granger, in the end. He'd taken to using the library as an escape from everything, and Hermione practically lived there, it seemed.

They'd built up a sort of silent camaraderie, sitting beside each other if they were at the library at the same time, exchanging pleasantries or bland jokes like middle aged office workers. It was both the most awkward relationship Dudley had ever been in and also somehow incredibly soothing. He didn't have to fake anything around her. She was more like a tiny adult than an eleven year old most of the time, and seemed to welcome the company with a sort of desperation that spoke of years of friendlessness. They seemed to be the only first years still hovering around the periphery, not quite part of the student body just yet. Outsiders who'd somehow been caught in the middle of it all, as if they were there by accident. Sometimes Dudley wondered if she wasn't ever meant to be there, either.


"Are you working on the essay for Potions or the one for History of Magic?" Dudley asked her as he slid into the seat across from her late one afternoon. Her hair was even bushier than usual from her tugging at it as she pored over the slim text in front of her.

"Neither," she replied without looking up. "I've already finished both." She seemed somewhat stressed.

"What's got you so tense, then?" He asked as he pulled out his parchment. "What are you reading?" He nodded to her book.

"Nothing." Her head whipped up as she slammed the book closed and folded her hands primly over the title.

"Something dirty, then," he decided, just to see the horror in her expression. "Didn't think you were the type, Hermione," he added as he flipped open his potions text and kept his face as straight as possible.

Her face immediately went bright red.

"I- no, that's - Dudley, you're disgusting!" She spluttered, practically throwing the book at him. He only barely managed to catch it before it hit him in the face.

"I - it's about flying," she settled on, sliding back into her seat and smoothing her skirt nervously. She seemed to be avoiding his eyes.

"What, like on a broom?" He asked. He may not have kept up much with what sorts of unnatural pastimes were most popular in the magical world, but it had been hard to miss the whole flying broomstick thing. He flipped to the contents section of the. The chapters were all titled things like '101 Things That Can and Will Go Wrong,' and 'The Importance of Maintaining a Proper Grip.'

"This sounds like loads of fun," he told her dryly, sliding the book back across the table. "I don't think that's the way to go about it, if you're wanting to learn. Not that I want to learn," he said, turning back to his books. "Trains and cars are just fine for me, thanks."

Some of the tension had leaked out Hermione's shoulders at his declaration.

"You don't want to learn? What about Quidditch?" She said edgily.

"What the hell is Quidditch?" He asked, dipping his quill into the inkwell. "If God wanted me to fly, he'd have given me wings."

Hermione seemed reluctantly amused at his declaration. "I suppose you're not too excited about flying lessons, then, either," she said. Dudley jerked his head up again.

"What?"

"Flying lessons, on Thursday. Required for all first years. Hadn't you heard?"

Dudley groaned.


Their flying lesson was to be shared with Slytherin, apparently - by the time Dudley and the rest of the Gryffindor first years had made it to the field, there were already about a dozen students with green ties milling about the brooms laid out on the grass, each trying to pick out the best one.

"Do I look like I'm meant to fly?" Dudley grumbled to Hermione under his breath as Ron dived into yet another rendition of his hang-glider story. Dudley would have doubted its validity, if not for the fact that none of the other wizard-born students had any idea what hang-gliders were.

"You're being ridiculous, I read that brooms are one of the safest forms of magical travel there is," Hermione replied easily. For some reason his reluctance to fly seemed to have served to calm Hermione down about it all.

"What the hell kind of travel is available if flying through free air at tremendous heights on bundles of twigs is considered safe?" Dudley groused back. He'd never even been on a plane. He had never flown in all his life, and he didn't see why he should start now, with brooms.

"My gran's never let me near a broom," Neville said morosely. "Said I was more likely to break my neck than anything else."

Dudley sighed and clapped the boy firmly on the shoulder. He often felt oddly sorry for Neville.

"I've never even touched a broom before," Harry reassured Neville, cutting across Ron. "I'll probably make a fool of myself, but at least we'll be together?" He tried with a grin.

"You are sickeningly optimistic," Dudley replied, picking across the field and trying to find the broom with the fewest twigs bending the wrong way. Harry just laughed cheerfully. It was truly obnoxious, how positive and upbeat Harry was most of the time. Dudley struggled to remember if Harry had always been that way, and simply reserved this attitude for times when Dudley and his friends weren't beating him up, but he somehow doubted it.

"Come on, maybe if we all try hard enough we can 'accidentally' crash into Malfoy," Harry grinned. Ron laughed and Hermione looked disapproving, but Neville just turned pale and shook his head.

"I don't want to crash at all! Especially not into Malfoy!"

"Malfoy's all talk, Neville, don't worry about him," Dudley replied as he recalled the boy who tended to drop by Gryffindor table for the sole purpose of needling his classmates. Just that morning he'd been giving Neville shit about a package some well-meaning relative or another had sent him. Neville just made a nervous sort of noise, like a horse.

Dudley shrugged as he inspected a particularly ratty broom, wondering if he might be excused from the lesson if his broom refused to fly. It would probably just explode instead, though, with his luck.

"Well, what are you all waiting for?" the teacher, Madame Hooch, barked as she stepped onto the field and up between the two rows of broomsticks. She had short grey hair and eerie yellow eyes that glinted in the sun. "Everyone stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up." The first years quickly sorted themselves into two tidy rows, and Madame Hooch got about the business of teaching them how to fly. Apparently they needed to begin by commanding the brooms into their hands - which Dudley decided was absolutely ridiculous, but so was practically everything about this place.

"Up? Up, please?" Neville was saying nervously on his right.

"You have to sound like you mean it, Neville," Harry advised cheerfully - his had lept into his hands the first chance it got.

Dudley didn't think that was quite right either, though, as Hermione had been imperiously commanding her broomstick "Up. Up. Up," since the beginning, and that did not appear to be working any better.

"Up, you," Dudley tried, but his broom just rolled over sluggishly. "This is bullshit," he muttered under his breath. The broom swung up and whacked him in the shin. Ron laughed heartily, until his own broomstick began beating him about the head.

Eventually everyone was situated properly, and Hooch had corrected their grips - Hermione's was, predictably, textbook perfect, though Hooch had to remind her to loosen her grip more than once. Dudley could see her knuckles shining white as they prepared to take off.

"Now, on the count of three, I want you to kick off gently, hover for a few moments, and then touch back down. Ready? Three, two- Mr. Longbottom! Come down at once!"

But it was too late. Ten, twenty, thirty feet into the air - Neville had shot up from the ground faster than if he'd been shot from a cannon, and he didn't show any signs of slowing. Instead the broom began shaking, hard, and then Neville's face turned white and he slipped off the broom. Dudley froze for half a second - should I do something? Why isn't the teacher doing anything? He'll die, but if I try to catch him I'll be crushed - such a stupid, fat pig, too selfish to even try to do anything for anyone but yourself -

but then his shadow, having become nearly invisible in the bright sunlight and wide open stretch of grass, sprung into being and billowed about his body until he struggled to breath from the weight of it crushing down on him: {Hold your peace, Dudley, The boy will live,}

- and Neville was on the ground, still white as a sheet and clutching his wrist but seeming mostly intact. Madame Hooch was quick to get him to his feet and hurry him off into the castle, leaving the rest of them standing around in a state of shock.

That was, until Malfoy and his goons began guffawing loudly.

"Did you see his face? What an idiot," he snorted out.

"Shut up," Dudley grunted in his direction.

"Or what?" Malfoy grinned. "You'll make me?" He might have continued, but something glinting in the grass caught his attention first.

"It's that stupid thing Longbottom's grandmother sent him," he said gleefully, snatching it up before any of the Gryffindors could. Harry glanced nervously between Dudley and Malfoy - he'd been here before, he knew that Dudley was the one who dealt with bullies - only then Malfoy was snatching up a broom, too, and before Dudley could work up the courage to follow his specter was near suffocating him and he couldn't think.

{Let Harry take care of this,} it commanded. {You'll make him weak.}

And before Dudley could quite suss out what that meant, Harry had snatched up a broom for himself and streaked after Malfoy with more ease than Dudley would have imagined. He suddenly recalled that Harry had returned from first year with a sleek looking broom in tow - one that, according to the school rules, Harry never should have had.

{Good boy,} the shadow pulled back a bit. {Some things you have to let happen.}

Dudley would have replied but the shadow's presence was making his head throb.

"He's going to get us all expelled!" Hermione was screeching, part worried but mostly enraged. Dudley swung round to face her and the rest of the first years.

"Not if you all keep your mouths shut," he threatened. The Slytherins' eyes were quick to slide away from the scene, and the Gryffindors nodded hurriedly. No one here was eager to get themselves or anybody else in trouble.

He turned back in time to see Malfoy landing nearby, and Harry streaking towards the ground after the glinting glass ball. Dudley kept his eyes on Harry long enough to make sure he wouldn't break his neck, and then started towards Malfoy's smug face.

"Wipe that smirk off," Dudley told him.
"I'd like to see a filthy little mudblood like you try," he replied. Hermione gasped.

Dudley was ready to haul off and punch him, but before he could, Professor McGonagall appeared and dragged Harry off the pitch, his face white with fear. He'd never really been in trouble - it had always been Dudley, before, who'd broken the rules that were shit and gotten into fights with the idiots in their school. He briefly wondered if he should intervene - there'd been something in McGonagall's eyes, Harry wouldn't be getting into much trouble - but his specter was silent.

Everything is fine, Dudley reassured himself, it's all going accordingly.

Malfoy's face was gleeful. "He's going to get expelled," the little prat gloated.

"Shut up," Dudley spit back, but Hermione began dragging him back up to the castle before anything could start.

"He's not worth it, Dudley," she half-begged him as she hauled him up the castle steps.

"No," Dudley allowed. "I suppose he isn't."

{We'll need him later, Dudley, he'll be important,} the shadow was promising as it kept pace with them. Dudley didn't bother to reply. His head was aching again.