Chapter 11 - Cousin
"You are gonna love this" Harry laughed. The sound made Petunia shiver and Vernon frown. They felt quite sure they wouldn't.
"Two paintings left – who could they be, dear Aunt, dear Uncle?" Harry wiped some drool from his chin and limped over. This painting was dead center of the room, directly across from the Dursleys. He tried to say the words to bring the painting to life, but he had to keep stopping due to fits of the giggles.
Finally the deed was done and Harry stepped back to give his relatives a full view. He leered at them, glowing with anticipation.
"Duddums?" Petunia and Vernon gasped in unison.
"Mum? Dad?" Dudley awoke to find himself in the cupboard at home. How he ever fit through that door was beyond him. It was cramped, smelly, and semi dark – one tiny bulb lit the small space. He was lying on a dirty mattress that was way too small, and the only objects in the room were a ratty blanket and a few broken toys. His back was turned to his parent's portrait and he was facing the wall. "Did my stupid cousin put me in here – boy is he going to get it."
The obese boy saw light coming from in back of him and turned around the best he could. He gaped stupidly at the glass that made up the wall where the door should have been. Across the room from him was not the parlor of Privet Drive, but a stone wall. And on that wall hung a painting or a fancy framed window. And in that window his parents stared back with horror.
Petunia screamed, Vernon shouted, Dudley cried and Harry smiled.
"Welcome to eternity, Duddlykins" Harry leered at his fat panicking cousin. "Let me catch you up on current events. You are dead. Your dear parents are dead. Actually, three-quarters of Britain is dead. When your meathead of a father threw me out of the house, the protective wards keeping you safe fell, and Voldemort killed you all."
Dudley stared at Harry, his dull eyes showing that nothing made it from his ears to his brain yet.
"I commissioned this magical painting – an exact replica of my cupboard – for you to live in. You aren't really alive, but you can't tell the difference. You will starve, you will thirst. You will see your parents going through the same. But you can never leave, and you will never die. You will feel everything I felt for those ten years – without the broken bones, cuts, bruises, and beatings. I was nice – I even left you two arms. That's more than dear Uncle left me." Harry leaned back, smirking.
"Mummy! Get me out!" Dudley threw a fit like a two-year old, pounding the floor and walls, screaming on the top of his lungs. Petunia sobbed in impotence, Vernon glared at his nephew.
"What's the matter, Duddlykins? Don't like the accommodations? It was good enough for me all those years" Harry glared at the hysterical boy. "I had the artist bring you back as an eleven year old again. Just so your 'mummy' could see how precious you were at that age, and so you could see just how well an eleven year old fits in a cupboard on a crib's mattress." He drank deeply from a glass and smiled with satisfaction. "A bit cramped, isn't it. Especially for a 'big boned' boy like yourself."
After watching the Dursleys hysterical ravings for a while, Harry stood once again. He waved his arm, muttering spells.
"What are you doing now, freak?" Vernon sputtered. Hadn't the boy done enough already?
Harry shrugged. "I put permanent silencing spells on both your canvases. You can hear everything going on around you – noise from the other paintings, Dudley's voice and mine. But now the other paintings don't have to hear your whining and crying. Just like you never heard mine."
He turned abruptly from the Dursleys and limped over to the many inhabited paintings on the wall. He spoke a bit with Ginny and then went to his cot, and Petunia noticed that her nephew fell asleep smiling. That made her very uncomfortable. She looked over at Dudley, who was still sobbing. How she longed to take his pain, hold him and kiss him like that Weasley woman comforted her sons.
"Suck it up, son!" Vernon called over to Dudley. "Let's show these freaks what men the Dursleys are!"
"I can't even see the freaks!" Dudley bawled. "All I can see is you, and you are boring!"
'All I can hear is you' Petunia thought privately. 'Were you always this whiney and self-centered?'