Just a bit of AU thinking that got out of hand after a night of Butterbeer and Felix cocktails. Was originally one way and morphed into something else, kinda like a Metamorphmagus. I have taken a lot of liberties with the way that the legal system works in this universe (especially from a child's point of view) and if you have any questions, ask me, but the answer may very well be "MAGIC", "unreliable narrator" or "I have no earthly idea, I'm making s*** up as I go."
Anyway, I own nothing and never have. Wotcher and enjoy. Thank you.
Dudley Dursley was in shock. He glared at the backs of the heads of the men who were seated in the front of the van.
He didn't know why his tantrum wasn't working. He had screamed himself blue, refused to walk when the men in suits wanted him to, hit his cousin and his mother and the men. He'd even been sick on purpose.
Nothing had worked. The men in the suits had simply put him in the back of the transport van. They even had to buckle him in. Then, they'd put Harry in the seat next to him. They had loaded a few suitcases, slammed the doors closed, and then, they drove Dudley and his cousin off, leaving Dudley's house and his sobbing mother far behind them.
He started to kick the seat in front of him. The men didn't even notice. Or they were pretending not to. He kicked extra hard. Still nothing. He stopped kicking.
Dudley, arms folded and in a bad mood, glared across the way at his cousin. This was all his fault. He knew it was. Harry always ruined everything. Harry couldn't even look at him, just stared out of the window.
Dudley slumped down in his seat and returned to kick the seat in front of him.
Yes, Harry ruined everything. He had even ruined school.
Dudley had been having a great time in his first year at primary school. He was getting good marks on his papers - gold stars. His mother helped him with any homework he'd had and he was the King of the playground. He always made sure that he had the best swings or was first down the slide, and if he wasn't, his gang made sure that he was. And he personally made sure that nobody in his class or the other classes liked his cousin. Harry was weird, and if his parents hated him, they had to have a good reason.
Everything had been going great. Until that stupid family tree assignment.
Their teacher was Ms. Plumridge, a pretty young woman with brown hair that kept flopping out of her bun into her eyes (his mother had made comments about how she never looked as tidy as a teacher should). For a project, she'd given them all a sheet of paper with a tree on it and had told them to fill it out with the branches of their families. Dudley had come back with a gorgeous tree, outlining his family all the way back to the 1700s. All the Dursleys and their great contributions to society.
Harry didn't have such a tree. Harry turned in a sad tree with just two small dots labeled "Mum" and "Dad". He'd tried to add Dudley and his family, but Petunia made Harry erase that from his branches. Dudley had even laughed at Harry while his mum had stood over Harry as he was erasing.
What happened next, though, hadn't been funny.
The next week, men in black suits and men in funny looking clothes had both come to school and had the headmaster pull Harry out of class. Dudley had seen them through the windows, escorting Harry to the front office. Dudley was curious, but Ms. Plumridge was good at distracting the class with fun worksheets.
That night, he had told his Father. Vernon Dursley's face had paled. He demanded to know what the men wanted to talk to Harry about, and when Dudley had shrugged and said, "Who cares?", his Father had boxed him about the ears and sent him to get Harry from his cupboard under the stairs. Dudley had socked Harry, before making him go to his Father.
The yelling that came after that had made Dudley feel slightly sick.
Things happened very fast after that.
Suddenly, Harry was in his second bedroom, with his extra toys and things and his Father was making Dudley repeat that Harry had always had the second bedroom and that he was his cousin's best friend.
His Father had been very scary when he had told him this, getting purple in the face and his mustache bristling with every consonant. Dudley said the script just right when the men in the black suits had come to visit, but something had gone wrong.
He just knew that Harry had screwed it all up. He always screwed everything up.
Now he was sitting in the back of a van instead of his room, the echoes of his Mother's sobs still ringing uneasily in his ears.
The men drove for a while, before pulling into a quiet street. The van pulled up beside a small white house with a neat yard and blue shutters. There were big trees in the yard and flowering hedges along the fence. The men got out before pulling open the van's doors.
"Let's go, boys," the one with a bad comb-over said, gesturing for Dudley and Harry to exit the van.
Dudley refused to move.
"I want to go home!" he shouted back, crossing his arms stubbornly over his chest. The man sighed and literally pulled him out, unbuckling his seatbelt as he did so. An unusually pale and quiet Harry followed, standing quietly on the street.
Dudley started up a screaming fit again. "I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go HOME!" The man with the bad comb-over seized his upper arm and half dragged, half walked him up the stone walkway to the front door.
Harry followed behind them, with the other man starting to get the luggage out of the van. The man rang the doorbell as Dudley kicked and screamed. The door swung open and the woman standing there shocked Dudley into silence.
It was his teacher, Ms. Plumridge.
She smiled warmly at them and opened the door all the way. "Hello!" Today, she was wearing a floral frock right out of the 1950s. Dudley thought it made her look frumpy.
The man escorted Dudley and Harry inside the house.
Dudley's first impression was that it was really simple. No lace on the tables or ornate ornaments on the walls. She had simple pictures of birds in the entryway. She led them into the living room where lemonade and biscuits were waiting on the coffee table. The man deposited Dudley on the couch and Harry sat on the far side, as far from his cousin as he could get while still being on the same piece of furniture.
"Where do you want the luggage, ma'am?" The other man called from the front door.
"I'll be right there!" Ms. Plumridge called back before smiling at Dudley and Harry. "Help yourselves to the snacks," she said with a smile. "I'm going to go help with the luggage. I'll be right back!" She bustled off.
Dudley immediately started stuffing his face with the biscuits. Harry didn't move to touch them. Dudley glared at him. He swallowed slowly.
"This is all your fault," he said, his mouth still full of crumbs. Harry jumped slightly. Dudley felt a savage sense of pleasure at seeing his cousin scared of him. "It's all your fault, I don't know what you did, but you'll pay for it."
"I didn't do anything," Harry said, his hands gripping his oversized hand-me-down jeans. "I just told the truth."
Dudley snarled, lifting his hand to curl it into a fist. Harry flinched backward just as Ms. Plumridge re-entered the room.
"Dudley!" She scolded, hurrying forward. "What is going on?"
"Nothin'." Dudley snapped, grabbing another biscuit.
Ms. Plumridge's eyebrows arched and Dudley had the feeling that she hadn't bought that lie. Still, she didn't call him out.
Instead, she sat in a small armchair opposite the couch and looked at them. "Are you guys doing okay?"
Dudley didn't say anything. Neither did Harry. Dudley wanted to punch that look off of his cousin's face. They wouldn't be here for long, he had to go home at some point.
"I understand that this might seem really scary and different, guys. But I'm really happy that you'll both be staying with me for a while."
Dudley felt something cold grip at his insides. What?
"I've got a bedroom set up for both of you," Ms. Plumridge continued, smiling at them, "with beds and dressers and lots of nice things. I've put your suitcases in your rooms. Harry, you're in the one on the right. Dudley, you're in the one on the left."
Dudley felt anger or fear or sick rising in his stomach. He felt like he was going to be sick again, this time not on purpose.
"I'll be working with the Child Protection Services and the MoM to adopt you both, in time."
Dudley didn't understand. What did she mean, adopt?
"I know it'll take a while to settle in and everything, but I'll do my best to be here for both of you."
Dudley didn't know where this was going. What did she mean? Why couldn't he go home? Before he knew it, the feelings welling up inside of him burst forth in a huge, screaming fit. He kicked and flailed his arms, real tears flying from his eyes as he screamed himself hoarse.
Ms. Plumridge let him scream for a moment or two, but then she was kneeling in front of him and had her hands on his shoulders, forcing him to stop flailing his arms. He screamed in her face. She actually raised her voice at him.
"That's enough, Dudley!"
Dudley stopped screaming to get a breath to keep screaming but stopped at the look in her eyes.
"That's enough of that, Dudley. You don't want to make yourself sick, do you?"
Actually, he did. Very much so. But she was pressing his arms down and looking him in the eyes. He didn't feel like he dared.
"That's better," she said with a small smile. "Dudley, the first rule in our home is the same as in our classroom. You need to use your words and your inside voice."
Dudley swallowed and let off a loud hiccup. Ms. Plumridge released him. She handed him a glass of lemonade. He gulped it down, but that made his hiccups worse. He thought he heard Harry chuckle, but knew that Harry didn't dare laugh at him. Not if he wanted a punch.
"What's going on?" Dudley demanded through his hiccups, glaring at Ms. Plumridge. "I want to go home!"
Ms. Plumridge's smile faltered. "Dudley, this is your home right now," she said, trying to have him meet her eyes. "I'm your guardian."
"But I want to go home!" Dudley screamed. It wouldn't be long. His tantrums always worked.
Dudley lay on his new bed. The entire summer had gone by and he still wasn't home. He had slowly stopped throwing tantrums every day. They just weren't working. Ms. Plumridge always stopped him and made him use his inside voice. He glanced at his window and saw that the sun was starting to go down. He kept lying on his bed.
Lately, he hadn't felt like doing anything. Not playing computer games, or going to the park. He didn't even feel like eating. Ms. Plumridge kept trying to tempt him with treats like chicken and ham pie or treacle tarts, but he just threw everything away and said it wasn't like his Mother's. He wanted his Mother's cooking. Ms. Plumridge always looked sad when he threw his food in the trash.
Good.
He heard Ms. Plumridge call that dinner was ready. Dudley heard Harry jump up and run down the hall.
He grumpily turned over in his bed. A few minutes later, he heard Ms. Plumridge's footsteps coming down the hallway.
"Dudley?" Ms. Plumridge called gently, knocking on his bedroom door. "Aren't you hungry?"
He ignored her, pretending to be asleep. She sighed and went back down the hall.
Dudley rolled over and sat up, reaching underneath his bed. He pulled a backpack out with his favorite things stuffed inside of it and put it on his back. He walked over and after climbing onto his desk, opened his window. He was going home. He paused, hiking up his too-big pants. He wanted his Mother to take him shopping. None of his clothes fit anymore.
He jumped down into the side yard, somehow managing to fall on his bottom. He scrambled upright, trying his hardest not to make a sound. There was just enough light to see by. He snuck out of the side yard along the hedges, tiptoeing his way to the sidewalk.
Just as he set his foot onto the sidewalk, the front door opened.
"Dudley!" Ms. Plumridge called after him, starting to hurry across the yard to him.
He felt the briefest inclination to run. But that didn't last long. He didn't like running, he never lasted long and it wasn't fun. He just sat down on the cooling concrete and started to cry again.
Ms. Plumridge quickly caught up. "Is everything okay, Dudley?" she asked as she tried to pull him into a hug. He shoved her away and ran back to the house.
He wanted to go home.
Dudley sat in the corner, glowering at the brightly colored living and dining rooms that were festooned in balloons and streamers. The house was filled with people - a lot of them were teachers from the school, as well as an old couple who were Ms. Plumridge's parents, and a strange little man in a violet top hat.
They were here for the adoption/birthday party.
Ms. Plumridge had come home a few days ago, beaming from ear to ear. "The paperwork has been signed and approved!" she shared with them. "I've officially adopted you!"
Harry had shouted happily and tackle-hugged Ms. Plumridge while Dudley just sat in his seat.
Why hadn't his parents stopped the papers? Why hadn't they stepped in to say that he was theirs? Why weren't they coming for him?
While Harry and Ms. Plumridge had celebrated and planned the party, Dudley felt sick and hollow.
Where were his parents? Didn't they want him anymore?
"Come on, Dudley!" Harry shouted happily, coming over to him. Dudley glared. He thought Harry looked stupid with a party hat on his head. "Let's blow out the candles!"
"Blow 'em out yourself," Dudley snapped sourly. "And you look stupid."
Harry's smile fell, but he shrugged and turned away, running back to Ms. Plumridge who picked him up and stood him on a dining room chair.
A few people looked towards Dudley and gestured for him to join Harry at the table.
He glared at them and wedged himself more firmly into his seat. Ms. Plumridge shook her head at them and said something quietly. They nodded and sighed. Dudley huffed to himself. He didn't want to join them.
He wanted his Mother's birthday cake made just for him and his mountain of presents. He wanted his old room back, he wanted his cousin back under the stairs. He hated it here. He hated it.
He glared as he watched Harry take a big breath and blow out the candles on one of the cakes on the dining room table. He let the other candles simply burn themselves down until they were puddles of wax on top of the frosting.
Dudley had run away again.
This time, he had run away while he was at school. Ms. Plumridge couldn't stop him while she was teaching her class. He had a new teacher this year, and she didn't pay as much attention to him as Ms. Plumridge did. He just said that he had to go to the loo and took the hall pass with him. He had walked past the loo, past the front doors and kept walking. He had started running once he was past the front gate. He had run for a block or two, just to put a lot of room between him and the school. Once he was fairly sure that no-one was following him, he had slowed to a walk. He had even stopped in a convenience store and gotten himself a bag of crisps and a chocolate bar.
He walked through the town, trying to follow the path that he thought that his old school bus had taken, trying to retrace the path to his old house - Number 4, Privet Drive. He didn't want to admit it, but he was horribly lost. He didn't recognize anything. And when he asked a dog walker if she knew where Privet Drive was, she shook her head. So he kept wandering in the direction that he thought was the right way. He'd find it eventually.
It was nearing dusk when he finally spotted a landmark that he recognized. The park. From there, it was a simple matter of taking the sidewalk and he'd be home in no-time.
He felt his heart lift for the first time in months when he saw his house.
It was lit up like Bonfire Night, bright gold and red from the setting sun. He thought it looked beautiful. He ran up the less than neat walkway and hammered his chubby little fists on the front door. He fully expected his Mother to throw open the door, spot him and start crying with joy. He'd go in, she'd have dinner ready and his Father would pat him on the head and everything would be as it was before.
No answer?
He knocked again.
Still no answer.
With a sickening feeling, his heart started sinking. He walked over to the front window, as if in a daze, and looked in. It was dark. He could barely make out the shapes of the furniture sitting there. There were no lights anywhere in the house. Then, he spotted it.
"Rooms for Rent, Inquire at - " read the small white sign in the corner of the window.
It hit him like a lightning bolt.
His Mother wasn't home.
His Father wasn't home.
This...wasn't his home...anymore.
He stumbled away from the house, reeling from the shock. He sat down on the sidewalk and screwed up his face. But the tears and the screams wouldn't come. What once came so easily was absent now. He kicked his feet, pretending for a moment that he was crying, then stopping when nothing came out again. He slowly stood up, looked back at his house which was now dark and dismal, then turned away and started to trudge up the street.
He didn't know how long he wandered about in the dark, but suddenly there was a police car there and the policeman was stopping him, kneeling in front of him, asking him if he was okay.
Dudley didn't know.
He was put in the front seat of the police car and heard the policeman call into his station that he had found "the missing boy". Dudley didn't know that he was missing.
The policeman drove him back to Ms. Plumridge's house. She came running up from the house, in jeans and a pink nightshirt. She fell to her knees in front of Dudley and pulled him into a bone-crushing hug, sobbing into his shoulder.
"Dudley, oh Dudley, I've been so worried!" She suddenly pulled back, gripped his shoulders and glared at him. He was startled by the fierceness of the glare. "Don't you ever do that again, young man! You are grounded. For a month. Maybe more!" Then her eyes welled up again and she pulled him back into a hug. "I'm so glad you're safe!"
The policeman chuckled and helped Ms. Plumridge to her feet. "Everything's alright ma'am. Take him inside now, I think the lad's peckish." Dudley's stomach chose that moment to growl, causing Ms. Plumridge to laugh as she wiped her eyes.
"Let's go, Dudley. I've kept your dinner warm."
She was as good as her word; the meatballs and onion sauce over mashed potatoes were warm from the oven. She even let him eat in the living room, on the couch, while watching the telly. Harry was nowhere to be seen.
She sat next to him on the couch, her hands gripping a mug of coffee with some sort of cream that she had said was for grown-ups stirred in. He ate in silence. She sipped her coffee, watching the telly with him.
He burst into tears.
"Dudley, what's wrong?" she asked, immediately putting down her cup and wrapping an arm about him.
"W-where's my MUM?!" Dudley wailed, burying his fists into his eyes to try to stop the flow. "Where's m-my DAD? W-Why weren't they t-THERE?!"
Ms. Plumridge hurried and got tissues from the kitchen and as she sat there, dabbing at his eyes and nose, she slowly explained things that Dudley didn't quite grasp. But he learned things. He learned what phrases such as "emotional and mental abuse" meant and why his parents weren't there.
Vernon Dursley had been arrested the day that the government officials had pulled Dudley and Harry from the house. As far as Ms. Plumridge knew, he would be in jail for a very long time.
"S-So, it's all H-Harry's fault!" Dudley snuffled. He knew it! Ms. Plumridge took him firmly by the shoulders and looked him dead in the eyes. He knew by now that he had to listen to what she had to say when she did this.
"No, Dudley. It is not Harry's fault." As Dudley opened his mouth to protest, Ms. Plumridge went on, "Harry did not ask for nor did he deserve the way that your Mother and Father treated him. They were abusing him, Dudley. And they were abusing you." Dudley's mouth opened and closed like a fish. "You both had to be pulled from there. It was deemed by two organizations to be a toxic environment, unsuitable for you two." Dudley's mouth closed. He had stopped crying.
"So...I'll never see my mum or dad again?"
"Not necessarily," she said gently, letting him relax against the couch. "There are ways that your mother can set up a visitation schedule with the courts in a few years. She just can't right now. Do you understand?"
No, Dudley didn't understand. But he pretended that he did and nodded. "Okay, Ms. Plumridge."
"Call me Miranda," she said with a smile. Dudley nodded again and returned to watching the telly in silence. Miranda let him lean against her, her arm still wrapped about his shoulders. He slowly fell asleep as the telly talked about the strange animals in the rainforests in Brazil.
It was getting close to their third year of primary school.
Miranda took both Dudley and Harry shopping for new clothes. Dudley's were still too big for him and Harry's were too small. They both got new uniform trousers and shirts with their blazers bought ahead of the cold months. Miranda also treated them to new jeans and shirts to wear at home. Dudley picked out t-shirts with telly superheroes or cartoons emblazoned on them. Harry picked out mostly plain shirts but also got one that had owls all over it. Dudley thought it looked stupid, but he told his cousin that the birds were cool.
Dudley was determined to turn over a new leaf this year. Start all over. His marks last year had been atrocious and Miranda had taken to tutoring him in her classroom after hours. Dudley didn't want to be the big dummy everyone thought he was. He also… he didn't want to be a bully anymore. His Dad had been a bully...and now he was in jail. Dudley didn't want that to happen to him.
So, when school started, Dudley sat in the middle of the class. He paid attention to what the teacher was teaching and even took notes. He asked questions when something didn't make sense. He didn't get the best marks in the class, but at least he wasn't at the bottom anymore.
Harry still attracted trouble. Pierce had picked up where Dudley left off. Dudley's old gang, lead by his old friend, bullied Harry for anything. For looking different, for having glasses, for being smarter than them, for anything that they could think of.
Dudley watched them and felt just sick. Had he been like that?
Dudley got himself some new friends. They hung out at the playground and did things like play football or charades. He liked them a lot. It was a surprise to him that more and more kids wanted to join in the games or hang out with him. His circle of friends grew and grew. They really take his suggestions into deep consideration and a lot of them came to him for advice. If he said something was stupid, it was stupid. If he said something was cool, it was cool. He found himself with birthday parties to attend almost every other week and his friends were constantly inviting him to come to do something with them.
He liked this feeling of popularity. It suited him.
It wasn't until the summer after their fourth year that Dudley began to notice funny little things happening.
They weren't big things, otherwise, he probably would have noticed them sooner. Funny little things, like snakes that always appeared in the garden when Harry was around. And the fact that Harry's hair was always thick and spiky and flopping into his eyes, even after a trip to the barbers. The biggest thing, though, was Dudley's glass of water.
Dudley had taken to getting a glass of water and keeping it in his room while he did his homework at his desk. Sometimes, he left it just out of reach by accident, but it would suddenly be just within reach when he noticed it next. He simply thought he wasn't remembering where he left it and had always had it really close. But, one day, he left it on the edge of his desk before he started his homework. A few math problems in and it was right back in reach. He hadn't seen it move. He hadn't grabbed it. But there it was. Right where he could reach it.
He picked up the glass of water and carefully took it over to the dresser and placed it right on the top. "There," he said to himself. "Let's see you move now." He turned and went back to his desk. He hadn't even started his math problems when he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and his glass of water was sitting there, the water still quivering. He let out a loud yelp and when Miranda came running, said that he had spotted a bug. He had gotten it though. She smiled.
"Dinner will be ready soon, okay? And make sure you clean up the bug."
Dudley nodded. He could already smell the sausages. Miranda closed his door and he looked back at the glass of water. It's official. Ghosts.
He didn't leave his glass of water out of arm's reach again.
Dudley felt himself getting more and more excited as his eleventh birthday approached.
Miranda had been hinting heavily at a joint surprise this year. Because his and Harry's birthdays were so close together, only five weeks apart, Miranda loved to throw them a joint birthday party. One year, it had been space-themed with a planet craft (Dudley still had his Saturn somewhere in his closet), one year it had been a large scavenger hunt across the neighborhood, last year it had been a trip to the movies with two of their friends. A few years, though, it had been as simple as two cakes and an afternoon of games in the back garden. Dudley understood that Miranda didn't have a lot of money, but she really tried to make it special for them.
Dudley was grateful for that.
June 23rd was relatively quiet. He had his usual birthday breakfast of waffles, bacon and fried tomatoes. He opened his presents at a small party with the family that night. Miranda's parents had gotten him that remote control toy truck he'd been wanting for weeks. He and Harry spent the evening playing with it on the sidewalk. Harry built up ramps and obstacles while Dudley steered. He even let Harry have a go with it.
Late that night, however, he lay awake, looking at the moon through the slats in his blinds. He wondered why he still hadn't gotten a birthday card from his Mother. She'd always made sure to send it before his birthday and it always had a small cash gift that he would add to his piggy bank. But it was late this year.
He couldn't help feeling disappointed.
About the midway point between his and Harry's birthdays, Miranda announced one day that she'd be taking them on their joint birthday trip the next day. He and Harry had both shouted for the Zoo at the same time, so they were going to the Zoo the next day. The cheering had made Miranda laugh.
Dudley and Harry LOVED the Zoo. Dudley's favorite animals were the reptiles, and Harry loved the lions and tigers.
The next day dawned bright and clear. The late summer weather was out in full force by the time they got to the Zoo and it was HOT. After they got their tickets and entered, Dudley convinced Miranda to let them stop at the ice-cream cart. He bought himself a chocolate ice-cream from his allowance money, and Harry got a lemon ice pop with his allowance money. They ate their ice-creams as they wandered and spent a fantastic morning looking at the monkeys and exotic birds, reciting their scientific classification names as far back as they could go.
Dudley could do species, genus and sometimes family.
Around lunchtime, Miranda treated them to a sit-down lunch at one of the restaurants and he and Harry both picked something new to try. What fun was eating out if you just ate the same thing all the time? They even were able to split a knickerbocker glory and they made Miranda laugh at their antics with whipped cream.
After lunch, it was time for the reptile house. It was their tradition to go after lunch and spend an hour or so in the cool shade of the reptile house. When they entered, he and Harry quickly found their favorite, the huge boa constrictor.
"Boa," they recited together, "boinae, boidae."
"Very good, boys," Miranda smiled. "You'll be regular zoologists at this rate."
They beamed at her compliment. Dudley and Harry watched the boa for a little bit, but because it was the middle of the day, the boa wasn't very active.
Dudley wandered away and started looking at other species. He was watching a funny green iguana climb a branch in its enclosure when the people close to the snakes started screaming and running for the exit.
Dudley looked towards the commotion and wondered what was wrong with the picture that he was seeing. Then it hit him.
His cousin was in the boa constrictor's enclosure.
Both the glass and snake were gone.
Miranda made a cup of strong tea for the Head Zookeeper, who sat in his office, trembling. "Where did the glass go?" he kept saying, gripping his cup. Dudley didn't know how she did it, but she managed to talk them out of that situation, and they were on their way home an hour later.
The car ride was very quiet.
"Is the boa going to be okay?" Dudley eventually asked. Harry nodded.
"Yeah, it'll be fine."
"I wonder where it was headed?" Dudley wondered, looking out at the passing world as they drove down the road towards their house.
"She was going to Brazil," Harry said with a smile. "She'd never been there before."
Dead silence filled the car. Miranda pulled a little too quickly into their driveway and as she threw the car into park, she and Dudley were staring at Harry.
"How do you know that?" Miranda asked quietly.
Harry shrugged. "We had a conversation. She likes talking to me. We always talk when I visit."
Dudley felt his jaw drop a little. He stared at his cousin, crazy thoughts of insanity or overactive imagination racing through his mind. Was Harry dangerous? Was he okay? He just couldn't find anything to say.
"Well, you certainly have an active imagination, Harry!" Miranda laughed. "I almost believed you for a second!" She continued laughing.
Eventually, Dudley started to chuckle too and then Harry joined in. They all sat there in the car, locked in the hysterical laughter that comes from an adventure like that. Dudley reached over and gave Harry a playful punch on the shoulder. Harry pretended to fall over, dramatically twitching. Dudley clutched his sides, tears leaking from his eyes, laughter just filling the car.
"Come on, boys," Miranda said, grinning back at them. "We have an afternoon ahead of us! Who wants to play some computer games?!"
"I do!" Dudley and Harry chorused together, leaping from the car and racing each other up to the front door. They threw open the door to find two envelopes on the welcome mat.
"Mail!" Harry shouted, grabbing up the two envelopes. Dudley pulled at his arm, wanting to see who they were addressed to. He was still hoping that his Mother's card would come. His heart fell slightly when he saw that one was addressed to "Mr. H. Potter...The Second Bedroom...Number 7 Primrose Way...Little Whinging, Surrey" in glimmering green ink. He sighed.
"That's a weird way to write an address," he muttered, pushing past Harry a bit, moving into the entry hall.
"Hey, wait a second!" Harry said, looking at the second envelope. "D, this is for you." He held it out. Dudley quickly turned around and grabbed the envelope.
The first thing he noticed, with a sick feeling, it wasn't his mother's writing. It was the same glimmering green that was on Harry's envelope. He looked quizzically at the address. It was addressed to "Mr. D. Dursley...The First Bedroom...Number 7 Primrose Way, Little Whinging, Surrey."
"I wonder who's writing to us," he murmured, turning the letter over and over in his hands.
"I was wondering when those would come," Miranda said from behind them. They both turned and looked at her. Miranda stood there, smiling mysteriously. "I think we'd better go into the living room, boys. We're going to be having a long talk."