Disclaimer: I do not own any of this, really. These are the copyrighted property of another; may all props go to JK Rowling, who has blessed the literate world with a body of fiction so rich and so beautiful so as to defy belief. Let this humble work serve as an homage to her brilliance. I certainly will not make any profit off of this tale. It exists in part to aid me in learning to write, and largely only for my own amusement.
Dark Days: Dudley Dursley
September 6, 1997.Dudley Dursley sat at the kitchen table, eating a horrible sandwich and drinking one of his father's beers. Petunia Dursley was at in the living room, watching a late movie and finishing her sixth glass of Zinfandel. Vernon Dursley was likely out at the club, likely already drunk, and likely there with his secretary (as he was constantly accused of by his wife).
Dudley glanced up at the clock at the wall, and grumbled with obvious dissatisfaction. It was only 9:30, which meant that Mr. Polkiss would be home for another half hour before he left for work, the grave shift at a nearby convenience store. Mrs. Polkiss had departed earlier in the year for Paris, without Mr. Polkiss, but with Mr. Saunders, her personal trainer at the local gym. All things put together, Dudley and his crew found the home of Piers to be the best place to hang out in the late hours.
Dudley took another bite of the stale sandwich, his face contorted in chagrin. Things clearly were not right. The floor was dirty, his shirt had not been pressed in recent memory, and he had had to make his own sandwich with unsatisfactory bread and old ham.
He knew who's fault all this was; that skinny little freak. Ever since… ever since that day, things had taken quite a turn for the worse.
* * * *
July 1, 1996. He knew that things were different from the moment Harry sat down at the kitchen table. There were clues abound; the stony look in Harry's green eyes, the nervous glances exchanged by the elder Dursleys, the heavy silence hanging in the air. The single most striking fact about Harry's entrance was his choice of where to sit – in Dudley's chair.
Dudley came to a sudden halt where he stood in front of the refrigerator. The dark-haired orphan regarded him coolly. He had just gotten up to refill his glass of lemonade and turned around to find that menace in his seat. Dudley's normally pink face flushed red with indignation. "That's my chair," he stated simply, not clearly directed at anyone in the room.
The skinny freak broke into a small smile. "You didn't call seat-check," he replied.
"I don't have to call seat-check," Dudley retorted hotly, breathing in deeply and flexing his muscles in what he hoped was an impressive show. "It's my chair."
The weirdo locked gazes with him. No one spoke for a second. "Not today," it replied, maintaining eye contact.
Dudley started at these words. How dare he? Just because all of those sickos in the train station had made those awful threats, it did not mean that he ought to lose his chair. Dudley mulled about his options for a second before resolving not to hit the Potter-child with a chair. Yet. "Dad, tell him to get out of my chair."
"Dudley, don't make a fuss-" Petunia began, before her husband cut in.
"Boy," he growled, distaste evident in his voice. He had been pouring himself a cup of coffee, but he paused for a moment to dress down the unwanted guest in his home. "Get out of his chair, now."
Dudley bristled with glee. His father would set things right, he always did. His father knew how worthless that boy was, and that deviant had never got the better of them yet.
The other youth seemed to ignore the statement altogether. He finally broke eye contact with Dudley and turned those awful eyes on the patriarch of the Dursleys.
"Have you ever seen someone die?" he asked quietly.
Vernon Dursley's reaction was immediate. He set down his coffee mug with difficulty, as his hands were shaking with violent rage. "What?" he gasped indignantly. "What did you say to me?"
"Have you ever seen someone die?" the boy repeated, this time more loudly and slowly, with an edge of malice in his voice.
"What does that have to do with-" his father began, but the impudent boy interrupted.
"Have you?"
"As a matter of fact, I…" his father's voice faltered. Dudley could tell that he was casting his mind back to find an instance of death in his recollection. Something uncomfortable was filling the room. His mother had stopped arranging dishes on the shelf, and was now watching the unfolding scene in utter dismay. His father seemed to be losing his nerve, and Dudley felt his own nervousness rising."My grandmother, er, although I didn't actually see that, but what has that to do with-"
"Have you ever seen s a body go from living to dead, in the span of a breath? Have you ever looked into the vacant eyes of the recently dead, searching for some sign of life? Have you ever felt a body start to go cold in front of you? Tell me, uncle," this word the wretch pronounced with an ugly sneer on its even uglier face. "Have you ever seen death?"
Vernon Dursley was silent. Dudley stared at his father, aghast in silence. He turned to regard his mother, who was beginning to cry, looking in horror at the boy in her only son's chair. Dudley, in a state of panic, turned back around to the pest.
"I thought not," it continued in a low voice that everyone could hear plainly. "After what I have seen, uncle, I don't think you can ever call me `boy' again."
This settled the matter for Vernon Dursley, who stared in silence for a moment, then picked up his coffee mug again as if nothing had ever happened, trying to figure out why his hands were shaking so much.
Dudley watched his father, a sense of disgust with everyone in the room pervading his thoughts. His mother had failed to defend his right to his own property, and against a beastly outsider. His father acted like a scared child in the face of the skinny runt that had been so much trouble to him for all of Dudley's life. And the villain still sat in his chair. Trying to ignore the fear he felt, manifesting itself as a tremor in his legs, Dudley banged his glass down on the nearest side of the table, splashing yellow liquid onto the top.
"Get out!" he yelled.
"Dudders!" his mother yelped, as if struck.
"Shut it mother!" Dudley roared over his shoulder. He gripped the edge of the table with both hands, employing a force so great that his knuckles went from pink to white. He leveled his gaze at the quiet brat that absorbed all of his loathing.
"Dudley, I don't think…" his father interjected quietly.
"Father, if you won't handle this, I will."
The Potter child looked a little amused by this, but got to his feet, and regarded Dudley almost whimsically. "And what do you intend to do, Dudders?"
The taunt did not fail to register with Dudley. He began to shake with a curious mixture of anger and fear. In his hands, the table quaked forcefully, an amplified show of the feeling in his heart.
"I'm going to break your neck," Dudley pushed the words out of him with all the air in his lungs. As the wind left his body, he felt all of his strength go with it. His confidence suddenly dissolved, and the boy across the table only smiled; a sinister, gruesome smile.
"You'll do what now?" he hissed. "I've run from you and your friends for years, Dudley. I've dodged your blows, listened to your angry words patiently, and put up with your unending threats. But today, I have had enough. Today, I say we see how it goes. Today, I say you do exactly as you've been threatening to, and go ahead kill me."
Dudley didn't remember letting go of the table, or even taking a few long strides away from his enemy. He just found himself pressed against his mother's side, her arm draped limply across his collarbone. "But… you can't use magic. They'll kick you out!" he protested.
Harry just shrugged. "That may be. But I'll tell you a secret, Duds, a big nasty secret from MY world. You know; the one you and your parents try so hard to ignore. And the secret is this: I don't care anymore. I'm so fed up with the death and the fear and the anger, I'm ready to let it all go. If anyone pushes me, just a little bit, I'm ready to go over the line. If the bullshit doesn't stop right here, if I am not treated like a human being in my own home, I might just snap. So, to answer your question, I would get in a world of trouble for using magic, it's true, but that fact won't help you in the least by that time."
The words hung heavy in the air. Dudley was not sure how much time passed, he simply knew that he could find no words to pierce the feeling of overwhelming terror in his mind.
"So, what I'm going to do now is sit down here, in your chair, and wait. You have exactly two options, Dudley. You can either find out exactly what I've learned in the magical world so far, or –" Harry paused, his voice breaking into a genuine laugh. "-Or, you can bring me a sandwich."
Dudley stared, not comprehending. "What?" he managed at last.
"Bitch!" Harry exclaimed, his eyes going wide. "Get me a sandwich!"
After the longest four seconds of his life, Dudley retrieved a sandwich from the refrigerator and placed it in front of Harry.
"Thank you, Dudley," Harry said, and began thoughtfully chewing on his dinner.
Later that night, an owl flew in the open living room window, enraging Dudley and horrifying his mother. The skinny freak was not even bothered, striding purposefully over to the bird and taking the letter, as if defying any of the Dursleys to make a comment. He scanned the note quickly, running his free hand through his mop of a hairdo. He looked up, announcing that his weird people would be there to pick him up in half an hour or so. Without so much as another word, he went upstairs and presumably began packing.
Finally.
* * * *
Dudley finished his sandwich with one last impressive mouthful. He looked up at the clock, and realized that twenty minutes had passed without his noticing. He got up, and walked over to the phone. "Hey, asswipe!" he shouted cheerily when his mate answered the phone. "You heading over to Piers'? Why the hell not? Grounded?!? Pussy! No, I just wanted some company on the walk, ass hole! Call me scared again and we'll see what I do to you. Yeah… pussy!" He hung up the phone, cursing loudly.
"I'm going over to Piers'!" he shouted to no one in particular. He opened the refrigerator and took a couple more of his father's beers, heading out the back door. He ignored the concerned voice of his mother, who likely only wanted to hold him up with something trivial at the last minute. Useless woman.
The night was overcast and very dark. The street lamps had been out for several weeks in Little Whinging, lost in some explosion the previous week. These explosions had been occurring with alarming frequency of late; power plants, bridges, and more gas lines than Dudley could count. The papers were abuzz with rumors of organized terrorist attacks but nothing had been found yet.
Dudley tipped his head back and finished the first beer, silently cursing his father's penchant for lite brews. He cast the bottle over his shoulder, listening to it crash to the ground behind him with some satisfaction. Just then, a cold breeze picked up, and Dudley shivered. Nights like these, when it was dark and a little chilly, he had trouble not remembering the time Harry had attacked him two summers before. The little freak had put some crazy jinx on him, and he felt worse for ten minutes than he ever had in his life. The memory of that night still haunted him when he walked alone after dark, and he usually tried to get someone else to walk with him. Not for the first time, he wished that he had beaten the Potter Boy to the death when they were kids, before that giant showed up with his nonsense and his evil umbrella.
Within a few minutes, he arrived at the Polkiss residence, stopping at the trash bin in front just long enough to deposit the second empty bottle. He walked around to the back door, and banged heavily on it until Stewart answered the door. Stewart was a skinny kid, a year younger than the rest of Dudley's friend. He had just joined the group recently, and as such was the bottom rung of the hierarchy.
"Goddamnit, what took you so long?" Dudley growled, giving Stewart a half-playful shove in the chest that sent the younger boy against the open door. "Been waiting nearly 2 minutes!"
"Sorry, Dudley," Stewart apologized, looking down at his feet. He stepped into the house and then made room for Dudley to pass him.
"Heh. Jackass." Dudley let his voice trail off as he walked into the house. The Polkiss residence was in a state of disrepair to say the best, although "shambles" seemed a little more appropriate. Laundry, both dirty and clean ("clean" being a relative term in this household), was scattered about, hanging over open doors, rumpled in piles inside baskets, or just strewn loosely about the floor. Every trashcan was overflowing, the contents spilling out into a wide arc around the bin. Every surface visible in the house was covered in a hodgepodge of random items; bits of paper, empty beer cans, old photographs, and so on. My wife will do a much better job of keeping the place tidy. And if she ever tries to run off on me? It'll be the last mistake she ever makes.
Dudley entered into the living room of Piers' family, where the usual gang had collected. They were, predictably, lounging about on the couch, watching television. The living room was just as trashed as the rest of the house. Dudley could remember this room before Pier's mother had left. Where paintings of the family had previously hung were only bare walls, with an odd few unsightly stains breaking up the monotony. The television was the only light source in the room, casting the whole room in a shade of electric blue.
There had also been more chairs previously – now all eight of the youth were crammed onto and around a beaten up sofa. There was a pile of nearly thirty beer bottles sitting beside the edge of the coffee table, and most all of them filled with cigarette butts and ash-filled beer dregs.
Dudley waded through the mass of bodies until he reached the center of the couch. Once there, he reached in and yanked Piers to his feet, taking his spot.
"Hey! I live here!" Piers protested.
"That'll teach ya!" Dudley cackled. "Somebody get me a beer. Stewart!"
"Teach me what?" Piers demanded. Stewart, meanwhile, turned around and went back to the kitchen to fetch the desired beverage.
"To be smaller than me, slapdick." Dudley and his other cronies began laughing at this. Piers was forced to perch on the armrest at the side of the sofa.
"What's all this on tv?" Dudley asked, annoyed.
"You didn't hear?" Rufus said incredulously.
"Hear what? I just got up!" Dudley retorted.
"The Prime Minister is dead!"
"What?"
"Yep. They found his body this morning."
"Was he… killed?" Dudley asked, oddly fascinated.
"They don't know. They think he was poisoned, but they haven't found any evidence of it yet. It's like he… just stopped living, somehow."
"Bizarre…" Dudley breathed, smiling widely.
"Hey, isn't that what happened to that old lady in our neighborhood?" Stewart spoke up suddenly, returning to the room, Dudley's beer in hand, which had been freshly raided from Mr. Polkiss' collection.
"You mean Mrs. Figg?"
"Yeah. I was there the day the ambulance picked her up," Stewart said in a small voice. It was evident that he was not accustomed to speaking so much. "Said they couldn't find anything wrong with her. Said she just died."
Dudley appeared to contemplate this for a second, then reached up and cuffed Stewart sharply on the back of his head. "Dumbass! Mrs. Figg was old! She probably just, y'know, fell over and broke her neck."
Stewart rubbed the back of his head to ease the stinging. "She wasn't that old," he muttered.
"What's that?" Dudley asked, not hearing.
"I said she wasn't that old. Besides, something like that would have left a mark, a sign of struggle, some kind of clue!"
"I said she was old, nitwit!" Dudley exclaimed.
"I'm not a nitwit," Stewart mumbled.
Dudley could hardly believe his ears. This little twerp, all 110 pounds of him, was defying him. It was bad enough that the little freak who claimed to be his cousin would defy him but this new kid would have to taught some respect. "WHAT?" Dudley got to his feet and towered over the younger kid, chest poked out and face turning red with rage. All of his cronies started making oohs and aahs, seeing a thrashing coming, and thankful they would not be on the receiving end.
"I'm not a nitwit."
The imbecile clearly lacked the sense to shut up. "You are, if I say you are." Dudley cuffed him upside the head again.
"Stop that," the kid muttered.
"What are you going to do about it?" Dudley asked, slapping the kid on the other side, this time on the ear.
Stewart's fist shot out suddenly from his side, burying itself in Dudley's ample midsection. Dudley exhaled forcibly, all the wind rushing out of him. He doubled over in pain, and then lunged for the neck of white-faced, scrawny Stewart. Stewart tried to dodge, but could not get away completely. Dudley's fingers caught on the tail of Stewart's shirt, and he started to pull the smaller youth toward him. Stewart resisted for a moment, then changed his mind, and slammed his body against Dudley.
Dudley, already off balance, toppled over on his back with a loud cracking noise. Stewart was on top of him, throwing weak punches to Dudley's face. Horrible, sickening, pain streamed up Dudley's back. He tried to cough, but only choked up a mouthful of blood, which ran down his face.
Stewart's face contorted at the sight of that much blood, and he rolled off of Dudley, scraping his knee on a piece of broken glass on the floor. Dudley, though, got the worst of it. He had had the horrible misfortune of landing directly on top of the pile of beer bottles, which had been smashed completely by his bodyweight. He struggled to a sitting position, shards of glass poking out of his entire back and the underside of his arms. Blood flowed profusely from thousands of gashes in his skin, and before he knew it, he passed out cold, right back on top of the pile of broken bottles.
* * * *
September 20, 1997. "WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?" Vernon Dursley's voice boomed across his yard.
Great timing, Pops. Just in time to see them cart me off. Dudley was, in fact lying face down in Petunia's scorched front lawn. In truth, the landscaping in general had suffered from the departure of that dark-haired menace, but Dudley welcomed the change. It was an unremarkable Saturday in Dudley's life; five minutes previously he had been sprawled out on the lawn chair, drinking a beer and calling to the girls that happened by. He had not had much luck with them, no matter how often he whistled or made a cat call. Girls make no sense.
All of a sudden, a squad car had arrived on the scene and two eager officers bounded out, pointing their guns at Dudley and barking orders. He was laid out on his front quickly, and they were pulling his arms behind his back for the cuffs when his parents burst through the front door.
"Your son is under arrest for the murder of Stewart Fitzsimmons," came the reply from one of the officers; the one not occupied by cuffing Dudley.
"That's preposterous!" Vernon declared, shaking his fist at the cop.
"We have eight witness who saw an altercation between them several weeks ago, and three witnesses who say he was planning to do it," the cop answered, apparently concerned that Vernon would in fact hit him.
"Dudders wouldn't hurt a fly!" Petunia shireked, tears beginning to stream down from her eyes. Stupid woman.
"The Fitzsimmons buy was found this morning, stabbed seven times, twice in the back," the second officer countered.
"It can't be…" Petunia sobbed. "Dudley, what have you done? Dudley, why are you laughing?"
Don't you get it, woman? Stewart thought he'd had the last laugh; but now I do.