Dudley knew something had permanently broken in his family. It wasn't the fact that for the first time in his life he was forced to cook, it wasn't that this was the longest his mom had gone without giving him a hug. No, the thing that really shouted it at him was the fact that he had to get a taxi to London as his parents didn't even want to look at him. So, for the first time in his life, Dudley was forced to steal money from his Mom's purse.
As he rode in the taxi, he was deep in thought and watched the traffic go past. Somehow just seeing the cars speeding around reassured him. Maybe it was the normality of everything, or maybe it was seeing how mundane other people's lives were. He was a wizard, better yet, he had shattered everyone's assumptions by being the first muggle born Slytherin since the 1700's. He would prove himself to the magical world. Right now he had two goals, the two were sort of intertwined: to find the Diadem of Ravenclaw and heal his Aunt Marge. He had to undo the damage he had caused to her, which meant a study of mental health in both the magical and Muggle worlds.
As the taxi pulled up to King's Cross, and he paid for it, it was 10:40 am and the station was packed to bursting. This was probably the most people he had ever had to push past in his life, he knew he was in a vulnerable situation. Alone with all of his school stuff, anything could happen.
That anything was the appearance of a smiling Theodore Nott. He put his arm across Dudley's shoulders, as if they were the closest of friends.
"You should know Draco and Blaise have been plotting against you for the whole Christmas break. I would recommend a display of power, but you probably don't know enough about magic for that." He paused for a moment, looking thoughtful, before his face lit up.
"I know, take this book. It's full of obscure spells that would definitely scare them off." With that he left as suddenly as he appeared.
The book was titled 'Weapons for the Weak' which was a bit insulting, but Dudley was thankful for the gift.
While he was sat on the train, Dudley was getting bored, so he decided to try all the spells he knew so far. He had just finished the spells his friends had taught him and was eager to use more magic. He opened the book Theo had given him, and found two blindness spells. One was meant to be temporary, but the other one was permanent, this was some scary magic. He decided to try the temporary one out, the wand movements were fairly simple and the Latin didn't look too difficult.
"Tempus Tenebrae" he intoned and a black light shot out of his wand and hit the wall.
"That was surprisingly easier than anything else I've cast. Maybe I'll have to look into that as well." He went back to casting all the spells he knew, it helped to pass the time.
About an hour before the end of the train ride, Dudley left his compartment to go to the toilet. It was on the way back that things went south. As he was a few doors away from his compartment, he was grabbed from behind and pulled to the floor, hitting it hard. After a moment of disorientation, he saw four wands pointed in his face.
"Potter and Peeves aren't here to help you this time. I'm going to enjoy this. Pertificus Totalus!"
Blaise hit Dudley with the body-bind charm, and a malicious grin spread across his face. It was at this moment that Fate, having already interfered many times before, intervened and sent a handful of Hufflepuffs over to help him.
"It isn't very fair fighting him four on one, I guess some Pureblood families don't value honour anymore. A real shame…" The mystery saviour trailed off.
"Stay out of this, it doesn't concern you." Blaise seethed, furious that he was getting interrupted again.
"You see, I want to be a prefect next year, so I kinda can't let you do this." The mystery saviour raised his wand level to Blaise's face. "Walk away." Was all he said, to which the four Slytherin bullies left, not wanting to be out-numbered. The Hufflepuffs looked down at Dudley before the main one cast "Finite Incantatem" and Dudley could move again.
He accepted the hand that was offered to him and got back on his feet. His mind was spinning with how quickly everything happened. "Thanks" was all he could muster to say to his mystery saviour.
"I hate Bullies, they make me sick. If you need my help in the future you can always ask. I'm Cedric Diggory, and you are?"
"I'm Dudley Dursley."
"Well Dudley Dursley, I hope the rest of your day isn't as… unfortunate as this."
With that Dudley re-entered his compartment, deciding he was sick of being attacked, he added dueling to his future research.
The first thing Dudley did after returning to Hogwarts and enjoying the welcoming feast, was run up to Harry .
"You won't believe what happened over Christmas, so there I was, eating Christmas Dinner, when all of a sudden my Aunt Marge knocked her glass off the table, I caught it with magic, but she freaked out. I panicked and accidentally wiped her memory." Dudley paused to breathe as that was all in one breath.
"Now she doesn't know who she is, she was taken to the Hospital, but they couldn't help. I'm going to ask Madame Pomfrey if she knows anything about the healing of the mind." Once Dudley had finished his rambling he looked up to see Harry staring at him, looking concerned.
"How is it you haven't been thrown out? Did you at least get a letter from the Ministry for Magic? Harry questioned with disbelief written all across his face.
"Urm… should I have? If they knew I did it maybe they can fix it. How long does the letter take to arrive?" Dudley asked in rapid fire. Harry, for his part, had no idea and expressed this with a shrug of his shoulders.
"I'm not sure… I do however have good news of my own." He paused and looked around. Satisfied that nobody could hear him, he leaned in and whispered. "Don't react loudly, but I was given a gift on Christmas." At this Dudley was unimpressed.
"You mean besides the one I gave you?" He had given him an old stuffed animal of his. It was a black dog. "I hope it was alright, I've had it my whole life, and I thought that you may not have had any growing up." At this he got embarrassed. "You can throw it away if you want."
Harry put his hand on Dudley's shoulder and an odd look popped upon his face for a moment before vanishing. "Dudley I promise you, I do appreciate it. More than you know. That's not what I meant though." He got out his wand and cast privacy charms before he finished with. "I got a cloak of invisibility for Christmas." Dudley had an awed look on his face, sure he had heard of disillusionment charms but an invisibility cloak… that was a game changer.
"I know what our first job with it will be. We're going to stop Quirrell." He finished with determination lacing his face.
Dudley was enjoying the snow alone, just letting it fall into his hair. He had learned warming charms that made this experience even sweeter. As he was sitting there he saw two adults and a girl, maybe a few years older than him, arrive looking annoyed, on the parent end, and with amazement written on the child's face. 'Probably parents' he thought as they disappeared into the castle.
Not even half an hour had passed before the younger of the three re-emerged from the castle and started walking over to him. Dudley watched her approach with curiosity and apprehension, when she finally arrived he noticed before anything else that she was very pretty. Believing that she is a Pureblood, he had read a book called 'Proper Pureblood Politeness Protocols' that told him what to do in this situation, he kissed her hand and lowered to a single knee and introduced himself.
"Dudley Dursley, it is my pleasure to make your acquaintance." He felt silly, but this was what the book said to do. At this she giggled and he felt even sillier.
"That is how you greet your betrothed for the first time in an arranged marriage." She giggled again and Dudley noticed he was still holding her hand and dropped it, like it was cursed, and scrambled to his feet.
"Urm…. Uh…" was all he could mumble out before she took pity on him and smiled again.
"I don't recognise the name Dursley from any magic families, however my little brother won't stop talking about you. I swear it's like he has a crush on you. Anyway, you don't have to greet me with such formality, I'm a squib so apparently that means I'm not worthy of it." She sounded angry at that and Dudley was worried he had offended her. Almost as if she had read his mind, she continued, this time with a much calmer tone.
"Don't worry, you didn't know. I'm Nora Zabini, I know you know my brother, but rest assured I don't hold to his stupid belief that 'all muggle borns stole magic from purebloods', except he doesn't use the word 'muggle borns'." She wrapped up, this time feeling awkward herself for a moment.
"It's nice to know one member of your family doesn't hate me." He joked in reply and they both laughed. Once they had finished, Dudley was confused about something, so he asked her a question. "Why are you here? Like your parents as well?" He blurted out, unsure of how else to ask.
"Ah, that, first off let me say I'm so sorry for my brother's actions and that they don't reflect my beliefs in any way." She started strongly. "We're here because of Blaise's constant attacks on you. Come to think of it, shouldn't you be in the meeting as well?" She finished with a small smile on her face. In response to this Dudley paled a little before replying.
"Yeah… you're probably right… it's just been nice to chat…" Dudley was very embarrassed at this time, blushing profusely before falling silent.
"I too have enjoyed this chat, maybe you could owl me upon occasion…" The rest of her sentence fell off, never to be said.
Entering into Dumbledore's office, Dudley felt incredibly awkward, and all heads turned to face him.
"It took him long enough to get here. Now that we're all here you can tell us what you're going to do to my son." The Countess Zabini started when her sixth husband opened his mouth, only to be silenced by a glare from The Countess. "I understand that he has been harassing this boy, what I don't understand is why the complaints never came from him. Why did another student have to report it? Well boy, speak up!" She finished glaring at Dudley, who was still near the door.
"I didn't want to make things even more difficult in the dorm rooms." He simply said.
"What on earth could you mean? You would accuse my son of attacking you in bed?" Countess Zabini demanded, her finger pointed in Dudley's face. Angered by her tone and general attitude, he decided to add to Blaise's troubles.
"I wasn't going to mention this, but your wording reminded me of something." He glanced over at Blaise who looked even more worried about what was to come. "On my first night he attacked me in my bed, writing Mudblood on my head with a quill and leaving cuts there." He kept eye contact with Blaise at the end of his reveal.
"Is this true Mr Zabini?" Dumbledore asked him calmly, peering over his half-moon spectacles right into Blaise's eyes.
"Well… you see… what happened was…" he tried and failed to reply to the accusations.
"So that's two times you have attacked Mr Dursley at least. It's possible he isn't telling us every instance, but we can't force him to do so if he doesn't want to. I think it should be up to Mr Zabini to choose between the two punishments I offer. The first is a temporary suspension from Hogwarts for a month, this will go on your permanent record and may hold you back in the future when it comes to employment. The second choice is to serve detention for 2 months, this won't go on your permanent record, but won't be the most pleasant detentions, you see you will be helping our Mr Filch with his cleaning. So, what will it be?"
"I'll take the detentions, sir." Blaise had his head bowed in shame and muttered his response.
At this point, Dudley was wondering why it was even necessary for him to be here, a question that grew louder when he was excused immediately.
As he left the Headmaster's office, he saw Nora and smiled, and walked towards the Slytherin common room.
While Dudley was walking back from Dumbledore's office, Harry was sitting on a sofa in the Slytherin common room. He was currently thinking about the mirror, and what he had seen in it. He now knew his aunt's face, it was more than he had hoped for here at Hogwarts. Just as he was thinking about his family, Dudley entered and walked over to him and sat down.
"What you thinking about Harry? I can see it written all over your face." He asked immediately upon sitting down.
"I saw them. My parents, I mean, In a magic mirror. You'll never guess who else I saw, I saw my Aunt's face." He stopped there, picturing the face in his head. "I could show you if we can get our hands on a Pensieve." He finished, waiting for Dudley to reply.
"Sure, we can borrow Snape's. I have to go see him anyway." He was about to carry on when Harry immediately began.
"No Dudley, we can't. It's too private for him to know. Please don't say anything to him. We can sneak in at some point soon." Harry pleaded with him.
"Relax Harry, I won't ask him. I have a separate matter to talk to him about." He assured the raven-haired boy. "You also won't guess my news. I met Blaise's sister and we really hit it off. She asked me to owl her." He sounded smug at this and Harry was happy for him, but had to ask.
"Aren't you worried she's just trying to get close to you to allow Blaise to hurt you?"
"I don't think she would do that, I can't say for sure but I don't think she's like that. Anyway I have to get to Snape's office before dinner starts."
Knocking on Professor Snape's doors was always an intimidating affair, today it was doubly so as he had to call the Professor out on something.
"Enter." Was called out less than a minute after he knocked and so he did just that. Closing the door behind him, he walked right up to the Professor and looked at him for a moment. The Professor hadn't looked in his direction yet, and he knew better than to start talking before he looked over. Finally he put down his quill and examined Dudley, who took this as a sign to start to accuse.
"I have to know, you knew about the incident between Blaise and I, why didn't you inform the headmaster, sir?" He asked politely. At this the Professor's eyes narrowed.
"Did I or did I not punish Mr Zabini for his attack?"
"You did, sir."
"So why would I have to inform the Headmaster? I believed the matter officially resolved. That was until I was called up to Professor Dumbledore's office to greet Mr Zabini and his parents, a meeting that you were late to, before I agreed with whatever punishment he wanted to lay down upon Mr Zabini. I left once it became clear my presence was no longer needed. Has that answered your question, Mr Dursley?" He finished with a no-nonsense finality to his voice.
"Yes, sir." He replied, having remained respectful throughout the whole interaction.
"Well then I suggest you leave now, Mr Dursley."
Today was 'New Year's Eve' eve and Harry was exploring Hogwarts, not really looking for anything in particular, when all of a sudden he heard a very familiar voice talking to himself. He sounded angry. Deciding it would be fun to annoy him, he decided to follow Draco Malfoy down the empty corridor and listened for a moment, what he heard made his mood go from mischievous to malicious.
"I'll get that Filthy Mudblood Bitch, if it's the last thing I do. Once I'm done with her, she won't want to stay at Hogwarts for even a second longer." He seethed quietly, but loud enough for Harry to hear him.
"Oh really?" He called out when he was directly behind Draco, his wand gripped in his hand. "I don't think so, Draco. I'm sick of you and Blaise being so hostile to my friends. I'm going to show you the level of fear they live in and maybe that will show you the light." Harry's face split into a very evil grin and his eyes flashed red in the fire of a torch.
Hours after dark and after all the students were asleep, two first years were creeping about the school. Hidden from the eyes of all in the castle, they were free to wander to their heart's content.
They were on the ever-changing grand staircases when they finally saw another person walking around. It was Professor Snape, leaving the third floor, looking annoyed and almost homicidal. He was walking towards the doors of the Castle and they decided to follow him. He was muttering about 'catching him', Harry had a pretty good idea who this 'him' was, and how he was 'doing it now'.
It wasn't until they were outside the Great Hall that Snape mentioned how stupid it was for him to go for the Stone now. Harry's heart fell, Quirrell was stealing the Philosopher's Stone. He had to stop him.
Please review. As per usual all chapters, except the first two, have been Beta'd by LimeSon.