Chapter 3:

When Dreams Come True


Dudley was dreaming again.

He was older now, just like in most of the horrific dreams he'd been plagued with for the last week. He was likewise paralyzed, an observer in his own body. Though he still felt every movement of muscle and fabric on his skin as he stomped through the dark, cramped tunnel.

"Pooling fallout ahead. Gas masks and radiation shielding." A young woman's voice called out ahead of him. He couldn't see her but had been in the same company for all of these dreams and recognized it as Gabrielle's.

He felt the plastic cover slide over his face and the clear visor displayed a series of numbers. One told him the time left on the new filter, a good thirty minutes. A trio of numbers on the right kept him informed on radiation level for each type, gamma beta and alpha. With the press of a button on his glove a soft glow enveloped him.

A magical protection, he knew.

Seconds later they reached the pool Gabrielle had warned them of. It sat beneath a cave-in and absolutely bubbled with radioactive heat. Falling in would mean a slow, agonizing death later, if not an immediate and relatively painless death from any unnatural creature lurking within it.

They couldn't walk through it, or risk going around it for fear of being grabbed by some wretched thing forced to adapt to such an environment.

That left the skylight. Long slabs of asphalt hung from it, and with a quick activation of sticking charms on their gloves and boots they leaped up onto said slabs and climbed up like a pack of oversized geckos.

In the light of the nearing dawn he could see his companions. The older, red-haired man with the dragon tooth earrings named Bill was his second in command, the 20 year-old part Veela Gabrielle was his unit's point-man, his friend Piers and a black-haired Veela name Andramora were the firepower.

They were unit zero of the Veela Corps. Whatever that was.

"This is unit zero. Target is eight clicks north of us. Any enemy activity in the area? Over." Bill called over the comm.

The comm beeped to announce an incoming response.

"Unit three here. Not much to report outside if a small pack of lichenthropes. Over." Malcom called.

"Unit five reporting. Similar activity on our end. Over." Pandora, another full-blooded Veela, called.

"Same for unit nine. Except we've passed two smaller packs. Be advised on possible herd formation. Over." Gordon called.

Well shit. Best to get a move on to avoid being torn apart by an unorganized battalion of were-lions, were-tigers and were-bears.

"All units continue towards the target." He heard himself say. "Remain hidden and do not spook any packs or, god forbid, a herd.

The captains of unit three, five and nine all confirmed his orders with a rugged "Rodger" and Dudley continued to lead his own team onward

Removing their masks and canceling their radiation shielding they crawled out of the crater whose bottom formed the pit they'd just climbed out of and got their first view of Tokyo, or what remained of it.

Shattered towers of glass and steel hovered like space debris above the scorched concrete and mutated flora below. Most of the Japanese skyscrapers still stood to this day, though the nuclear carnage, hellfire and blasting winds had turned them into willowy sculptures of melted modernism.

The city looked like a blown-up version of a Disney haunted forest.

"First to step foot here in almost eight years." Piers pointed out. "Part of me wants to feel reverent to a beautiful culture the world will never see again, but if there's anything left of the Japanese people I pray we don't encounter it."

The others let his statement hang in the air as they pushed forward.

They didn't encounter much resistance, save for a few deer and rabbits still doing whatever it is they do in waning green light of the moon. Yes. The moon was green now. Green and blue actually. Dudley couldn't quite figure that one out, best he could guess is someone saw fit to terraform it in this strange future.

"Alert. Stormhead inbound." A woman's voice echoed into his helmet.

"What? You're only seeing fit to tell us now?" Someone, Malcolm by the sounds of it, screamed over the comm.

Fleur's tired and wheezing voice carried over the airwaves again.

"Satellite imagery shows it only just formed. If it were a natural typhoon you would have known about it in the mission briefing."

That didn't sound good.

"What do you mean if it was natural?" Bill broached the question on everyone's mind. "Are you implying it's artificial? How is that possible?"

Fleur's response wasn't promising.

"We don't know. We're as disturbed by this new development as you are."

Somehow, Dudley sincerely doubted that. He barked a quick order to cut down the chatter and get back to the task at hand. As usual his team reached the target before the other units even arrived at the city limits.

They stood at the precipice of a gaping wound in the earth, one that could easily be mistaken for a rock quarry or coal mining operation were it not perfectly cylindrical in shape and lined with concrete. It was an entrance to the legendary flood tunnels beneath Tokyo. So vast and expansive were these tunnels that an entire magical city, the Las Vegas of the magical world, once sat comfortably within its embrace.

All attempts to reach out to potential survivors of the tungsten-cobalt warhead had failed thus far, and any hope of finding any now came with an immense amount of fear. Fear of they must have become in order to survive.

It's a good thing they weren't here to find any such survivors.

"Stairs look surprisingly intact." Piers pointed out.

And indeed, they did. Like a mile long fire escape it descended into the chasm. It would be an arduous climb down, and Dudley wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible.

"Let's not risk it." Dudley said. "Wings."

At his command all four of his companions sprouted honest to God wings from their shoulder blades. Leathery and bat-like with only small tufts of feathers. He felt his own body shift and a blistering heat scorched his back. Dudley knew that he too had sprouted the new appendages.

They glided down with all the gracefulness of soldiers parachuting into enemy territory and landed with a series of five splashes in the shallow, stinking mud that had pooled below.

The Geiger counters exploded into noise, but a cursory glance at the side of his visor revealed it was only alpha radiation. Their regular clothes could protect them from that without the need to re-activate the magical shielding. But they put their masks back on all the same, in order to at least protect their face and lungs.

Their journey through the underground swamplands was miserable, not least of which was because their masks couldn't keep the smell out. The strange glowing plants and fungi hanging from the ceiling and massive pillars illuminated their path and they tried to navigate through the islands of rock and lichen. They encountered a few mutant insects and a particularly gnarled murtlap, but they all fled at their warning shots. The ten meter tall murtlap took two, but thankfully it also fled from the strange new invaders.

They were being followed by what they thought was a poor sea-serpant stranded in the underground, but it turned out to be a run of the mill anaconda some irresponsible owner had likely let free even before the war. They debated with each-other if it was so large due to radiation or diet. Regardless, they managed to waylay it through parseltongue recordings made just for such occasions as this.

"Map says we're approaching Vertic Alley." Bill informed him.

Dudley nodded. If everything went well they'd be inside the Gringotts branch and back out with their prize just as the other teams arrived.

"Zero!" Gabrielle hissed back from the corner she just peaked around.

They all crouched low on reflex, only to have the rancid mud reach their shoulders, and in Andramora's case, her chin. Dudley heard his older self internally swearing to do unspeakable things to the young woman if she had alerted them for nothing.

"Sir." Gabrielle whispered as she backed up towards them. "I think we should abort the mission."

The seriousness in her voice was proof enough that the situation called for it. There were very few developments that warranted aborting a mission. The chattering and gargled groans of pain coming from around the causeway corner was one of them.

"Shit. Superius." Dudley hissed to the others behind him.

That was all they needed to know before turning tail and running. They had to get back to the flood tunnel entrance so and radio the others to retreat. The thick stone earth surrounding them made getting a signal all but impossible, but Dudley kept pressing the signal scan button regardless all the while.

They could hear the stamping of formerly human feet following in their wake as they sloshed through the tunnels back the way they came. Their earlier trip in the other direction had left a deeply cut trail to follow, but being a double edged sword this trail also served to guide their entourage directly to them.

At long last they caught sight of the entrance and the brilliant morning sunlight spilling through.

With another press of the "refresh" button he got full signal and his visor informed him that two of the other teams were waiting at the entrance mouth hundreds of meters above them.

Good. They hadn't descended yet.

"Alert! Do not enter the flood tunnels. Mom is here! I am ordering a full retreat." He managed to gasp out between painful panting.

The speakers in his helmet erupted with choice expletives in no fewer than four languages. The only one to respond to the news with anything close to a calm countenance was Fleur.

"No sign of Recusers anywhere near the Japanese galapagose, but all backup units have been informed and are coming in for evac."

Small blessings are always appreciated.

"We are nearing the entrance. Malcolm. Pandora. We have superi(sue-peer-ee) hot on our tail." Bill informed the other team leaders.

"Roger zat." Pandora confirmed.

"Preparing to provide covering fire." Malcolm added with the sound of safeties being turned off and chambers being loaded as background music.

And covering fire is exactly what they provided. Bullets and fireballs rained down around them as they made a mad dash to a hundred flight fire escape. The onslaught kicked up guysers of mud and stinky, stinky steam behind them. None too soon either.

Dudley's team had ascended three whole flights of metal stairs by the time a superius managed to breach the wall of bullets and spellfire and climbed up the stairs after them. It all but swam up the mesh exterior.

He was a hideous thing. As emaciated as an inferi, but with ribbons of copper and steel jutted out of it from all angles. Blades and writhing whips of stainless steel slashed at them through what little protection the mesh provided.

Piers placed a magnum round right between it's eyes.

The next two came in a pair and had once been women. Their stomachs were now fitted with what he could only assume was the inside of a power transformer. Blue streaks of electricity arced between their bodies and the highly conductive cage their group found themselves in. Dudley thanked whatever god who might still be around that their armour was insulated.

Gabrielle and Bill hit them with simultaneous blasting curses, sending them plummetting back to the mud below in pieces.

And on their treacherous climb went until the horde was absolutely flooding upwards from below. At that point they gave up on trying to combat them one at a time and chose to simply blow the bottom half of the giant stairway off the wall. It took the combined spellfire of Bill, Gabrielle and the five other wands that had run down to meet them, but the bottom fifty flights of stairs soon collapsed into the steam cloud below, taking with it a hundred or so superi.

Everybody who had em threw grenades down after them for good measure.

The five new members from the other units had to practically carrie Dudley and his team up the rest of the way up. They were completely wiped from sprinting the five kilometers back while waist deep in filth. Dudley was pretty sure he pulled both calve muscles and ground his knee joints to dust in his dash up the stairs.

One of the witches from unit three, Morgana he recalled, got the bright idea to clean the muck off of them with some quick cleaning charms and they were able to walk/stumble on their own after that. A few flights later they sprawled themselves on the hard ground in exhaustion.

Gabrielle was the first person to interrupt their heavy breathing competition.

"So. Did any of you remember to get mum any presents?"

They all groaned at the attempted humor. Even Fleur from where she lay at head command.

"That joke wasn't funny the first time I heard it." Bill complained as he sat up from his sun bathing. "And that was nine years ago."

Malcolm helped Bill to his feet and the rest of his unit helped the rest of Dudley's do the same. There was no real point in standing up, as all they had left to do was wait around for evac. Maybe shoot any superi that managed to claw their way up.

"Uh, guys." Gordon's panicked voice erupted over the comm. "We have a problem here."

They all groaned. Again.

"Please don't tell me a Recusar just dropped in." Dudley all but begged.

"No sir."

He let out a sigh of relief. It was short lived.

"But um, remember that stormhead we were warned about?"

Now that Gordon mentioned it, Dudley could see the dark twirling clouds fill what little of the horizon he could see between the skyscrapers around him. On closer inspection it was filling up the sky at an alarming pace.

"Yes?" Dudley asked encouragingly.

"It has a face."

As if to accentuate his point the wind chose that moment to pick up and a great purple bolt of lightning streaked across the building storm clouds. The noise was enough to spook the lichen packs littering the rest of the city and their frightened howls joined the cacophony.

"Fleur! Honey. Talk to us here. What are we dealing with?" Bill pleaded with his wife.

The comm went silent for a moment, the fifteen Veela corps members readied their weapons and watched the stampede of anthropomorphic animals all around them. A were-rat got a little close but was more inclined to flee from the coming storm than pick a fight with them.

Soon enough the background noise of computers humming and life support systems beeping returned.

"We have unsubstantiated reports from the U.N military forces..."

"You mean the U.S military forces?" Malcom interrupted with a sarcastic grin.

"The U.N's bitch's military forces detailing similar entities all across the Americas. We could not verify them and took it to be Urban legend." Fleur explained.

By now the winds were near gale-force and the thing approaching them had blocked out the rising sun.

"Babe. What is it!?" Bill pleaded as they all hesitantly raised their weapons at the coagulating mass descending upon the husk of a city.

"The concentrated energies of radioactive fallout with the magics of the wilderness, given sentience by it's own power."

With another streak of lightning the body within the clouds was partially illuminated.

It's face was segmented into sharp mandibles and had as many eyes as teeth. That is to say, many. Dudley could only make out the general outline of it's body, which resembled that of a human with an accuracy almost meeting that of the superi they had faced earlier. The proportions were indescribably wrong.

"The Marines took to calling them..."

She was cut off as the thing roared like a bobcat through an air tunnel, and with it's opened maw it descended upon the edge of the city, consuming all in it's path.

"Titans."


Dudley awoke in a cold sweat. A sensation he was growing uncomfortably a customer to.

For several mornings now the first thing to come out of his mouth was the word "What" followed closely by the words "the fuck!" Only to then projectile vomit all over his bed covers.

He had fortunately caught onto this trend and started skipping dinner and sleeping with a mouthpiece, the kind you use with teeth whitening gel. So not only did it keep him from screaming like a maniac in his sleep, but it also improved his dental hygiene. Hooray for small victories!

As with most mornings he rushed to his desk where a pen and pad of paper waited for him. His memories of the horrific dream was fading fast, and most mornings he could only remember the strange words or phrases. So he put those down first.

Titan.

Superius.

Veela(again).

He managed to scratch out a paltry description of the living storm cloud and the cybernetic zombies from his dream before the rest of it slipped away. What he wouldn't give for a dream recorder. Perhaps the magicals had something of the sort?

He shook his head and made to the bathroom where he spat out the mouth peace and brushed away the gunk from his teeth. A quick cold rinse in the shower and he was ready for his morning jog.

Six laps around the block later he took another cold rinse, this time using soap and shampoo, and returned to his desk. He had a difficult enough time thinking as it was, trying to do some brainstorming while groggy would be a waste of time. With his body fully awake from the prolonged increase in heart rate and duel showers he was ready to crack open Harry's old books.

Starting after his run-in with the dementors he'd begin salvaging Harry's belongings whenever his mother tried to trash them. She did it every year as soon as his cousin went off to that Hogwarts place.

He'd learned about exactly what kinds of spells he was taught there, and worse, taught to defend. Unforgiveables, cursed objects, reminded him.

"Let's see. Ess, ess, ess." He hummed to himself as he searched through the index of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

He had no luck. Then again, the book didn't detail vampires, werewolves or Veela either. He'd had to hunt down other references to the first two in his cousin's defense books. Ironically, pretty much everything in pop culture about the two dark creatures was completely true according to the books. Well, almost everything.

Veela he couldn't find any mention of in the stolen tomes. He'd had to search through the folklore section in the public library, and was surprised to find they were a thing. They were essentially Slavic sirens. Not much interesting there.

He spent another ten minutes searching for ayt reference of Titans, but the best he could find was in the history of magic book which simply said they didn't exist. It had an entire chapter on creation myths of different cultures and what might have inspired them.

Finding out Zeus was a real life person who could shapeshift into any animal was surprising. Learning that the Greeks and Romans enjoyed shapeshifting to have sex in their animal forms was not. Hence centaurs and mermaids and the stories of Zeus's depravity. All true apparently.

He didn't have any luck searching for superius either. The closest thing he found was the inferi, which he'd already obsessively read on.

Zombies. Actual zombies. His only solace in the knowledge of their existence was that they had to be reanimated one by one and not through infection. Load off his mind.

He couldn't help noticing similarities between the inferi of the book and the superi of his he'd dream. Perhaps he'd have better luck reasoning it out?

He took out another piece of paper and compared the two.

Infer = below or lesser / Super = above or greater

So the word inferius means the below ones and superius means above ones? Not much help there. Maybe superi are just advanced inferi? No, that was something a book describing how to defend yourself from zombies would mention. Maybe inferi made from living people instead of the dead? That would explain the naming convention.

He shivered at the concept and kept exploring that train of thought. Inferi are undead, so maybe superi are their opposite? What would that make them? Unliving?

"That doesn't make any sense!" He groaned before crumpling up the latest piece of paper and tossing it in the rubbish bin.

He didn't know why he was putting so much credence in these dreams. At first he thought it was just his overactive imagination being given ideas by his reading of magical books, but then he saw things like Veela and Titans and knew he didn't have the imagination to come up with things like that. He considered sharing his concerns with Diggle or Hestia, but even after all these months living with the pair he couldn't bring himself to trust them.

Maybe he could broach the topic of myths and ask if some creatures existed or not. Like dragons and unicorns, then shift the conversation to asking about Titans and Veela. That could work.

But it would have to wait for later. He was meeting with Piers in ten minutes.


The doorbell announced his friend's arrival by the time Dudley had his gym clothes on.

He greeted him with an overly complex handshake and half hug.

"What's on the training regimen today, commander?!" Piers said with a mock solute as they got to the sidewalk.

Dudley gave him a half-hearted shove. When he explained to his friends that he believed a war was on the way and that he didn't have time to hang out anymore he couldn't very well tell them why he believed it. But Piers had stepped up to the plate and joined him in his self-imposed training regimen.

Malcolm had tried but could only make the trip up from London once or twice a week. Piers was the only one with a car, and offered to drive the others, but Dennis and Gordon couldn't be bothered to join them except on days he went to the shooting range with his father. They hadn't been particularly supportive of his boxing career either, save for pointing out how it could help them bully more money out of others.

That was water under the bridge now. It didn't matter anymore, because he still had Piers.

They went for an hour-long jog through the back roads, opting for back alleys and scenic views in place of the crowded streets. The suspicious and hateful glares of nosey old women was a terrible nuisance, especially since he didn't used to get them back when he and his gang honestly deserved them. Back before the dementors showed him things. Made him see his such a disgusting thing. Himself, as he was. A spoiled bully who tormented those weaker than himself

With their warmup finished they rested in a park for a time before putting on gloves and practicing boxing katas.

Piers actually had a real flare for the sport when he applied himself. He didn't have the power behind his punches Dudley had, and certainly couldn't take a punch as well, but damn it all if his friend wasn't fast as hell. He could land a good four body shots before Dudley could get one in.

They switched it up with wrestling when they got tired of cardio and here too his best friend excelled, especially since Dudley lost all that weight. He still had fifty pounds on Piers but his technique and maneuverability just weren't comparable. He would twist around every grapple and get Dudley into the most uncomfortable holds.

They broke for lunch after that, some chicken and veggie kebabs from a vendor, and walked for an hour to the gym. Weight training was the same boring affair as ever and by the time they finished another set of boxing and wrestling rounds it was getting dark.

Damn winter and it's shorter days!

"Dinner at your place or out again?" Piers asked as they made their way back to the safehouse, not that Piers knew it as such.

"Sorry man. I'm not allowed to have guests over anymore. And I'm eating in today." Dudley said.

It was true too. He played it off as his parents finally getting strict on him, a falsehood that he couldn't believe anyone bought, but it worked as a cover story. They'd all gotten so used to lying by now that it was almost second nature.

"Well, I'll go get some junk food then. You enjoy your healthy eating man." Piers said before they shared another complicated handshake and half hug. "We're on for next weekend, right?"

"Yup. I'll see you all then, my man."

"Later Big D."

"Later."


Something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong.

The safehouse lights were all on. That was his first clue. For one, he never left his own bedroom light on. For another, they had to conserve as much electricity as possible to survive on what little funds they had left until they could come out of hiding.

Dinner was normally lit with magic. Yet all of the non-magical, electrical, lights were on.

His second clue was the lack of greeting from Hestia. She should have been on duty by now and she would always wait near the fence gate with a security question. She wasn't there.

The third clue came as a wave of magical euphoria flowed through his body and a mental command echoed in his skull.

"Go inside." The voice said. "Your mother needs your help stuffing a pig for dinner."

Yes. That sounded nice. They hadn't been able to afford any of the usual fare for either Thanksgiving or Christmas, opting for Chinese in the latter case. A honey roasted ham would be amazing.

"Yes." He heard his voice whisper. It sounded so distant. "I'd love to help."

Almost against his will his feet took him towards the front door, even as he waged an internal war against his captor.

Dudley knew what this was. He'd read about it along with the other unforgivables. But how did the book say to break it?!

"Mum. Dad. I'm home." He heard himself say as he entered the threshold.

"In here sweety." He heard his mother's voice call from the dining room. It was dreamy, as if she were in a trance.

Damn. They had her under it too. What about his dad? Did they get him with the mind control magic?

His answer came with the sight of his father, naked and tied down to the kitchen table with an apple stuffed into his mouth. Thick cords of rope dug deeply into his inflamed skin and wrapped around the legs of the table. Seated all around him were dirt covered men and women in dark robes.

Two had unusually hairy faces, a sign he recognized as that of a werewolf, and they twitched horrible. That's not good. They had the cannibal shakes, a symptom associated with those who got to the point that they craved human meat even without a full moon. There was also a woman in cleaner black robes and a skull mask and an impossibly emaciated man with pale skin, a beak-like nose and bloodshot eyes.

He spotted Hestia, equally naked, crucified to the wall and gagged. He could still hear her pained moans as she leaked blood into an aluminum pan placed beneath her feet.

She was alive! That alone gave him hope. If he could somehow break the enchantment on himself and get her wand to her, that might be enough. But where was Diggle?

"Be a dear and help your mother carve the roast won't you?" The masked man who had him under the Imperius asked as he stepped around to join his peers.

Yes! What a wonderful idea. After all, the guests were waiting on him. They must be hungry, and there were so many his mother couldn't hope to serve them all in a timely manner by herself. Right?

No! They aren't guests! The Dursleys couldn't have guests. They're invaders! Murderers! Cannibals!

He had to fight it.

"Yeeeees." The groaned word came out of his mouth even as he raged at the world, god and all of his creations.

Even as tears streamed down his face his body moved at the wizards command. He gripped the meat fork in one hand and cleaver in the other. He stabbed his father's thigh with the first and sawed through it with the second.

He convulsed and screamed through his gag as his blood sprayed onto Dudley like a hose, and yet Dudley couldn't stop, couldn't fight it. When the blade reached bone he forced on, sawing through that too.

He didn't stop when he heard the roar of an engine. He didn't even stop when a massive motorcycle crashed through the bay window. He did stop when that very same motorcycle rammed the two masked assailants through the dining room wall and into the living room.

"Aaaaaaaah!" Dudley screamed in abject terror as the Imperius curse finally broke it's hold on him.

His mother started screaming too, but the pale man tore her throat out with a swing of his arm before she could finish her wail.

Dudley retaliated by leaping over his still spasming father and bearing down on his mother's killer with steel fork in one hand and cleaver in the other. His aim was true and the emaciated killer was rewarded with a meat fork through the eye, which Dudley buried into his skull all the way to the hilt. The momentum from his leap took them both to the ground but before Dudley could bring the cleaver down onto his foe's neck he was flung bodily against an adjacent wall.

To his horror the pale man rose from the ground with the tip of the meat fork sticking from the back of his skull. He grasped the handle and with a stomach-churning squelch he pulled the weapon out of his face, leaving an empty eye socket behind. Black, necrotic blood seeped from the wound and down his face.

In his shock and horror at the undying thing Dudley found himself rooted to his spot on the ground.

"Lumos Solem!" A familiar voice yelled and before Dudley's very eyes the house filled with warm, invigorating sunlight.

His mother's killer vanished in a thick black mist as he fled from the light.

The obvious werewolves and pair of wizards in the dining room had recovered from the crashing motorcycle and fired an array of green and red lights through the new door provided by his savior. The sunlight immediately faded under their onslaught. Dudley returned to the present and bore down on the nearest one with the cleaver still clutched in his hand, only to himself be enveloped by that same black mist from before.

It lifted him effortlessly and pinned him against the ceiling before the one-eyed man's face materialized in front of him. His mouth, full of serrated teeth, bore down on him and dug into his shoulder blade.

Dudley bit his own tongue so hard it bled, but had the presence of mind to strike out at his attacker with the cleaver. He didn't know what he hit, but he hit something. The force holding him up let go and he dropped like a rock onto the mass of fat that was his still bound father.

He rolled off of the injured man as quickly as he could and charged through the door to the kitchen. Peeking around a corner through the living room doorway he spotted Harry using a toppled motorcycle as cover while exchanging spellfire with the killers in the next room. They locked eyes and Harry, reaching into the side of the vehicle, produced a sleek shotgun which he slid across the floor to Dudley.

Dudley took the shotgun, and the hint.

Still hidden from the quartet in the dining room, Dudley lifted the weapon and gave a single pump before pressing it against the thin drywall separating them. He pulled the trigger, praying the wide spread of pellets would clip one of them through the drywall, but the shotgun didn't spray run of the mill pellets.

A forked bolt of lightning spewed forth through the kitchen wall with such sound and brightness that it knocked Dudley flat on his ass.

"Oh sweet Mary, Joseph and baby FUCKING JESUS YES!"

He leapt back to his feet and pumped the shotgun a second time, expecting it to discharge the used shell and chamber a second. He noticed that instead of doing so it turned a revolving chamber near his grip. He'd never even heard of a shotgun using a revolving chamber before, let alone practiced with one at the range, but he didn't have time to consider the strangeness of his weapon as the man of the black mist seeped into the kitchen from the yard door.

Just as the man began to materialize Dudley pulled the trigger and this time a great orange inferno burst forth. The force of the blast blew his enemy straight through the yard door. The kickback blew Dudley straight through the living room door.

At this rate the shotgun was as likely to kill him as it was his enemies.

He pumped the gun again and like before it turned the revolving cylinder, this time away from a cartridge with a red flame design, to one with a white crescent moon design.

... Did he even want to know?

The man must have rematerialized outside because he stomped through the now burnt yard door, cleaver and meat fork in either hand. Dudley decided that yes, he did want to know.

For a third time Dudley pulled the trigger on his shiny new shotgun and for the third time it produced a new miraculous result. A great white shape flew forth, bathing the room in warm, uplifting light similar to... similar to that stag Harry had used to drive away dementors.

Unfortunately this wasn't a dementors and the mass of light passed right through his target without leaving a scratch. It snarled at him for the effort though, so he had that going for him.

"Dudley!" Harry called from his side.

He chanced to turn in time to see his cousin snapping a pool que in half on his knee before tossing one half to him, which Dudley caught effortlessly.

"Vampire!"

Oh.

Dudley ditched the shotgun and gripped the wooden stake with both hand, tip pointed at the vampire's chest. The nosferatu grinned, his smile exactly like that of a shark, and stalked towards him with his former weapons.

Dudley wouldn't consider himself fresh, but he was uninjured. His opponent, on the other hand, was missing an eye, had a sucking stab wound in his chest, and was scorched all over from both the sunlight spell Harry had used and the fireball shot. So surely he had the advantage, right?

He charged forward, intent on putting down the unnatural creature of the night, leaving Harry to finish off the wizards in the kitchen.

He roared at the vampire.

The vampire hissed back

The clash never came. The coward faded back into smoke and passed right through him. Before Dudley could spin around to strike out with his spear the vampire slashed his face clean open with the cleaver.

He disappeared again and again, each time delivering a shallow cut or stab with the cutlery. None were deep enough to hit an artery and Dudley realized his opponent was playing with his food. Death by a thousand cuts.

Deciding enough was enough, Dudley settled on a plan to cut off his foe's avenue of attack.

He grasped the handle to their cheap, used fridge and with a mighty heave ripped the door off its hinges. He lifted it up as a shield while the rest of the fridge came tumbling to the floor, spilling it's contents all over the kitchen.

When the blood-encrusted meat fork next pierced his makeshift shield he bashed out with it and, hitting something solid, tackled the vampire to the floor. They lashed out at each other with their respective weapons. The vampire stabbed him in the shoulder with the cleaver. Dudley stabbed him through the heart with his stake.

It let out a high pitched scream as it, impossibly, shrank further into itself and became even thinner.

Before it could breath in the last of the black mist circling them a wand and hand entered Dudley's field of vision from the dining room door and his cousin delivered the second killing blow.

"Sectumsempra!"

And like that the vampire was staked and beheaded.

Dudley collapsed to the side of the vampire with a pained groan. He was breathing so hard and fast that he wasn't sure if he'd ever get enough oxygen again. Fortunately the stab to his shoulder hadn't been deep enough to leave the blade embedded in bone, and it was nowhere near the most painful of his injuries. Unfortunately Harry couldn't let him rest.

"Hey Big D." Came the belated greeting. "I'm sorry to say it's time for you to join the war."

With that he offered a hand to Dudley. It was black and rotting from what must have been a horrendous injury, but to Dudley it looked like the most beautiful hand to ever grace a human arm. A hand offering salvation.

For fourteen years he had tormented this man, this warrior, standing over him. And now was his chance to begin fourteen years of making up for it.

"What took you so long to recruit me?" He huffed out as he grasped that withered hand, before promptly passing out.


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