A/N - Here's my next one. JKR has said that Dudley saw himself as he really was when the dementors came near, so that is what I've used here. Hope you enjoy!

April 1996

Dudley Dursley was thinking again, something he'd been doing quite often since those dementor things had attacked him and his cousin last summer. It wasn't an activity that Dudley particularly enjoyed either, especially when he was thinking about what he was. Normally, he could get up and go down to the gym and punch the bag for a while. Once he got into a rhythm, concentrating on his movements and the placement of his punches, the thoughts would stop. But lately, it hadn't been working, even when he was covered in sweat and panting from exhaustion. And Dudley wasn't sure that he liked it, in fact, he knew that he didn't like it at all.

Dudley was used to getting what he wanted, his parents had always given him everything and what they didn't give him, he simply took. His cousin had always been one of his favorite targets, mostly because Harry was so much smaller than him and his parents never said that he shouldn't. In fact, they almost seemed to encourage it, something else that didn't really seem to sit right with Dudley any longer.

A lot of his friends had siblings and when Dudley visited their homes, he had never noticed that his friends' parents treated their children so differently. Sure, Piers' mum acted different around Piers that she did around his sister, but Priscilla was a girl so that made sense. And she still got on Piers when he teased Priss too much. Dudley's mum never cared what he did to Harry. Harry wasn't his brother, Dudley understood that, but Harry had lived with them for so long sometimes it felt like he was.

Dudley was confused, something else that he didn't like to be. He wondered if maybe his parents had been wrong all those years for treating Harry like they did and letting Dudley do the same. And Dudley couldn't reconcile this in his mind because weren't parents supposed to be the ones to teach kids right from wrong?

Harry had started to fight back though, ever since he'd gone off to that school. Right before those things had come, Harry had been making fun of Dudley for picking on younger kids. He'd all but called him a coward and a bully. Dudley had been so angry he'd wanted to pound his cousin into the dirt, but one wave of that, that stick of his and Dudley had shuddered in fear.

And then those things came, the dementors. Dudley had never told anyone what he'd saw when they had been so close to him. His mum had asked him more than once, but Dudley just couldn't say. He couldn't tell his mother that he'd seen all the kids he'd ever beat on, crying and begging him to stop. He couldn't tell her that he saw Harry, fear naked on his face, as he ran from Dudley and his gang. He couldn't tell her because it made him feel ashamed, something he had never felt before, not ever. And Dudley didn't like it.

Sometimes, he wondered what his cousin saw when those things were around. He wondered if Harry saw some of the same things Dudley did or if the things Dudley's dad did were more prominent in his mind. Dudley knew that his dad often crossed the line with Harry, not too far, but he crossed it all the same. Harry had never been beaten, at least not as far as Dudley knew, but the backhands across the face and times they sent Harry to his cupboard without eating or even keeping him locked in his room, Dudley didn't think those things were right. Nothing like that ever happened to him and Harry never really did much wrong except sometimes doing well, the 'm' thing. And Harry said that was an accident and Dudley sort of believed him because a bunch of times he'd done things before he started going to that school.

Dudley remembered the time his mum had cut Harry's hair, nearly shaved his head, and the next morning it had grown back and looked exactly the same. Harry got punished something fierce for that, but when Dudley had dumped an entire canister of flour all over the kitchen just because he wanted to, his mother had smiled indulgently and patted his cheek saying something about curious boys and then made Harry clean the mess up.

His friends all thought it was funny, the things that Dudley did to Harry and to other kids. But sometimes he wondered if they were only his friends so that he didn't do to them what he did to all the others. That one kid last summer, Mark Evans, he was Gordon's neighbor and he'd seen Gordon take a step forward before Dudley had laid into Mark. And then Gordon had shook his head and stepped back and Dudley had thrown the punch he'd checked for just a second.

Piers was the only one that Dudley knew was not his friend out of fear. Lately though, Dudley was starting to wonder if Piers was his friend for another reason, because he somehow got some kick out of the things Dudley did. Dudley had caught Piers with that girl a few months ago over the Christmas holidays, the one that had been crying and whose shirt was torn. Her face looked kind of red too, but Dudley hadn't been sure if it was because she was embarrassed or because maybe Piers had hit her and Dudley didn't ask. Piers hadn't been happy that Dudley had interrupted them, but the girl had run as soon as Dudley had shown up. When Dudley had asked Piers why the girl was crying, the look on Piers' face was absolutely gleeful and a little horrifying. Dudley hadn't asked him anything else after that.

Dudley sat down on his bed and put his face in his hands. He had never been so confused before and he wasn't sure just what to do about it. His friends would never understand, he'd been this way for so long they might think he'd gone mad if he told them what he was thinking. And his parents, he could never tell them. His boxing coach just fueled Dudley's aggression more, telling him to use his anger on his opponents. He respected his coach too, so maybe the things Dudley did weren't as bad as he thought. Maybe he was just doing things that all boys did.

But there had been that little voice nagging in the back of his mind lately, one that had never been there before. It was the voice that was making him question all of these things and he thought that maybe if he could just get the voice to shut up somehow, everything would get back to normal. Everything he'd tried so far hadn't worked though, and he wasn't sure what else to do. Maybe he should try changing and see what happened to the voice then.

That thought made Dudley sit up straight on his bed and gasp. Change? Him? He'd been this way forever, certainly changing wasn't what he needed to do. Was what he did to those kids really that horrible? Every kid got beat on sometimes by other kids; it's just how the world worked. Dudley had seen it time and again everywhere he went. Even here at Smeltings there was a hierarchy that everyone knew about. As long as everyone kept their place things were fine. It was when kids tried to be something that they weren't that things got ugly.

No, Dudley couldn't be the one that needed to change. Everyone else just needed to remember their place and then he wouldn't have to beat anyone up. It was simple, really. Mind made up, Dudley got up and grabbed his things for the shower. He didn't need to do anything differently. 'Or do you?' the little voice said.