Dudley was looking forward to the Christmas holidays. Ron had invited him to come to the Burrow to spend Christmas with him. The others had also been invited, but Hermione and Dean were going to visit their own family and Neville said he always spent Christmas at Uncle Algies.

Their last lesson of term was Defence Against the Dark Arts, they had an uneventful lesson by Lupin's usual standards as they just spent it doing a general review of what they had learned so far that term. After class, they planned to head to the common room where Fred and George were planning a "Christmas Holiday Feast" with food smuggled from the kitchens and an indoor fireworks spectacular.

"I'll see you up there," Dudley said, taking a diversion to go to the toilet.

He had just finished his business when the door opened. He froze, catching sight of who it was in the mirror—Draco Malfoy, followed by Vincent Crabbe, Gregory Goyle and Theodore Nott.

Dudley spun around, his hand reaching to his robes to pull out his wand.

"Expelliarmus!" Malfoy shouted. Even before Dudley had fully raised his wand, Malfoy's spell hit him, sending his wand spinning across the room.

"I have waited all year for this," Malfoy snarled. All four of them had their wands out, levelled at Dudley.

"Back off, Malfoy!" Dudley replied. "I'm warning you. Mess with me and I'll kick your teeth down your throat."

"You tried to send my father to Azkaban. Because of you, he's on the run," Malfoy snarled as they approached. "You turned all the school against me. What? You thought I wouldn't react? I've just been biding my time ... Big D ..." Malfoy sneered.

Dudley charged forward, fist raised. He intended to at least hit Malfoy before the others jumped him.

Crabbe's curse flew over his shoulder, smashing the mirror. Malfoy however hit him with the conjunctivitus jinx in the eyes. Dudley cried out, lashing out blindly as Nott's stinging hex hit his arm.

He felt a satisfied crunch as his fist connected with someone's nose before a sledgehammer like hand smashed into his own ribs.

"Pound him!" Malfoy ordered.

Dudley covered up helplessly, holding his arms to protect his head as Crabbe, Goyle and Nott laid into him with kicks and punches.

"Move!" Malfoy shouted.

There was a seconds of calm before Dudley felt foot connect with his mouth. His head fell to the floor—his whole body ached where Crabbe and Goyle had hit him and his lip was bleeding from Malfoy's kick.

"Let ..." Dudley gasped, trying to raise his head. He still couldn't see because of the conjunctivitus curse.

He felt a strong hand roughly grab his hair and force his head upwards.

"You're lucky you're not getting worse!" Malfoy spat in his ear. "My dad's going to kill you for what you've done."

Nott gave one more kick in the ribs. Crabbe or Goyle stamped hard on his hand—Dudley cried out as his fingers crunched under the impact.

"What is going on here!" a voice shouted. Someone, it seemed had heard the commotion. It was a female voice.

"Get away from him, Malfoy! I'm warning you," a second voice said.

"Coward—four on one!" It was the first voice again.

"We're finished," he could hear Malfoy sneer. "Come on boys."

Dudley was vaguely aware of Malfoy's gang leaving.

"Alicia, go and get McGonagall, he's been beat up pretty bad,"

"I'm fine," Dudley snarled, pushing himself up. His head was spinning, he could taste blood in his mouth and his eyes were swollen shut, but he could still move.

"You should take it easy, McGonagall is on the way ..." he recognised the voice now, it was Angelina Johnson of the Gryffindor quidditch team.

"Out of the way," McGonagall barked. "Let's have a look at you Dursley."

He felt a rush of energy and his eyes cleared up. He could see again. He could see McGonagall—she looked anxious.

"How is it, Dursley? Spinett said you were attacked."

"It's fine," Dudley said. "Well ..." he felt his swollen lip with his tongue. "Maybe it hurts a little."

"Where?" asked McGonagall.

"Mouth, ribs, hand, head ..." Dudley said.

"We'll get you to the hospital wing, Johnson, Bell, Spinnett, come with me—I want you to tell me everything that happened."

A few hours later, Dudley was sat in his bed in the hospital, telling Ron, Dean, Hermione and Neville what had happened.

Madame Pomfrey had healed his injuries pretty quickly, but wanted him to stay in the Wing for a few hours while his two broken fingers got injured.

"All in all, it seems you got off lightly," Dean said.

"A busted mouth, broken fingers, bruises to his ribs ... you call that lightly?" Hermione said.

"Dean's right," said Ron. "If Angelina and the other showed up, who knows what Malfoy would have done."

"What did McGonagall do?" Dudley asked.

"They have a detention, every saturday night until the end of the school year and 50 points each from Slytherin."

"Wow, so that's ..." Dudley tried to do the maths.

"200 points down, Dud," said Dean.

"So what are we going to do about it?" said Ron.

"Ron! Dudley's not going to do anything. Professor McGonagall has handled it!" said Hermione.

"Come off it, Hermione—Dudley can't take this lying down."

"I'll get him," Dudley said. "But I want it to be one-on-one. It's time I proved to that wannabe Death Eater that I'm 10 times the wizard he is."