Hello everyone! This chapter is a little gift to VannahSkye, who was confused by a reference inside the last chapter. I hope this helps clear things up.

This chapter is set in January of 2013, so less than a year since Ginny's death. I hope you'll have fun with it!

The Boy inside the Wall

"This is it, Sir.", Nguyet, Harry's driver and CPO, informed him quietly, as she parked the car at the curb of a slightly rundown looking street in Islington. Harry looked up from the tablet he'd been studying and smiled at her.

"I don't know how long I'll be, but go get yourself a coffee or something."

"You don't want me to come with?", she asked, her left eyebrow raised in disapprovement, as she turned around in the driver seat to look at him.

"No one knows I am here.", Harry smiled at her, "Not even I knew I'd be here today."

She still didn't look too happy, but he was the boss, so she just nodded and got out of the car to open the door for him.

"I'll be over there.", she pointed towards a cosy looking café next to the entrance Harry was heading for.

"Thank you, Nguyet.", he smiled at her and made his way to the entrance, studying the names next to the doorbells.

He found the right one and pressed it carefully. He still wasn't sure, if this was a good idea.

The buzzer sounded and Harry opened the door, without anyone actually asking for his name. He walked up to the third floor and stopped in front of an open door.

There was a blonde boy, about eight, standing in the doorframe and looking at Harry with obvious disappointment.

"You're not Mum.", he stated.

"Indeed, I am not. I am a Dad, yes, but as far as I know, not yours.", Harry answered with a slightly teasing smile.

The boy looked at him, like he was crazy, then turned around and screamed at the top of his lungs "Daaaaaaaaaad! It's not Mum!"

Ah, the beautiful sounds of a child, Harry thought and winced.

"Thank you, Griffin.", a tall, blonde man sighed, as he came into view, "Why don't you hurry back to the TV, finish your movie and wait for your Mum, mh?"

Griffin gave Harry one last, distrustful look and scampered off.

"Hello, are you Mr Dudley Dursley?", Harry asked carefully.

"Yes. I am."

"My name is Harry. I'd… like to talk to you for a moment, if that is okay."

"About God?"

"What? No! About your parents."

"My…?", Mr Dursley opened the door a little wider and beckoned him inside.

"Griff? We'll be in the kitchen.", Mr Dursley informed his son through the open door and let Harry through another door. The kitchen was neither big nor overly clean. There were dirty dishes, open packaging that needed to be thrown away… a little like Harry's kitchen had, back when it was only him and Teddy.

It was silent for a minute, before Mr Dursley said: "So. You wanted to talk about my parents?"

"What? Oh, sorry. I was lost in thought for a moment. Apologies. I… I fear I am responsible for your parents' death.", Harry blurted out and then groaned, when he realized what he had just said.

Dursley just blinked at him.

"What now? Mr… Harry… you don't look old enough to even have known them, let alone killed them."

"No! That's not what I…", Harry stopped trying to collect his thoughts, "I… I don't know where to start."

Dursley looked at him with a mixture of curiosity and dread.

"Did you know your mother had a sister?", Harry then asked carefully.

Dursley looked at him for a moment then blinked in surprise.

"No. No, I did not know that."

Harry carefully reached down into his jacket and pulled out a laminated picture of Petunia and Lily as children. Before Hogwarts and the divide between them. It was one of the rare pictures his Dad's private detective had been able to unearth. He handed it to Dursley, who held it in his hand like it was the most surprising thing in the world. There was a look of pure awe on his face.

"I don't have many pictures of my Mum.", he told Harry quietly, "My Dad, yes, but not my Mum."

Harry nodded in understanding. He knew the problem.

"What… what's her name?"

"Her name was Lily and… she was my mother. My biological mother. I was adopted after her death."

"Your… You're my cousin?", Dursley face shot up, his eyes wide in wonder, "Griffin and I have more family?"

He looked so hopeful, Harry felt immensely guilty. He hadn't really come here to connect with the man. He had wanted to tell him about his parents, nothing else.

"Yes. There is me… and my five kids."

"Five?! Sorry, I didn't wanna sound so surprised. But that makes me and my one kid pretty boring. Wow. That's great. I…"

They were interrupted by the loud ring of the door.

"That'll be Mandy this time.", Dudley explained gesturing for Harry to sit down at the table, as Griffin's loud steps echoed through the flat, "I'll… be back in a sec. Sorry for having to run."

"It's no problem.", Harry smiled at him and reached for his phone. He would check messages in the meantime.

Harry was just looking at a picture Emmy had send him. Of Sirius laying open mouthed and sleeping on a garden chair and Lily sitting on his legs, smiling triumphantly.

'Lily 1, Sirius 0' the caption read and Harry smiled brightly. That, he thought, would go up on a wall.

"Hi Mum!", Harry could hear Griffin outside.

"Hey Baby, did you have a nice afternoon with your Dad? Hello Dudley."

"Yes!", Griffin declared simply.

"Hullo Mandy. And we didn't just have fun. We did the homework already, too. So Griff would have the weekend off.", Harry could here Dudley confirm quietly.

"Even better! Got your bag? Perfect. Say bye to your Dad."

"Bye Dad!"

"Bye Guys!"

The door closed and half a minute later Dudley was back inside the kitchen behind Harry.

"How about we continue this on the couch?", Dudley asked him carefully, then headed for the fridge, "I can offer you a beer."

"Why not?", Harry got up and took the beer Dudley had quickly opened for him, before the two of them went next door. The small living room looked just as chaotic as you'd expect from an unannounced visit to a home with a child. There were candy wrappers everywhere. The TV was still on. Empty juice bottles were laying on the couch. Harry, generally unperturbed by mess made by children, simply used one hand to shovel himself a place to sit and plopped onto the couch. Dudley looked surprised, before he probably realized Harry was a Dad as well.

"Okay", Dudley sat down across from Harry, "Let's start this again. Our Mums were sisters and I have never heard of her or you because…"

"They… didn't get on well. Very different life philosophies.", Harry replied meekly. He really should have thought this through more. Damn him and his hot head.

"Didn't get on.", Dudley frowned, looking at the happy looking girls in the picture he was holding again.

"As I understand it… my mother got accepted by a pretty fancy boarding school up north and your mother didn't. She felt… left behind, I guess."

"That sounds like a tiny thing to fall out over, doesn't it? But… I don't have much family. I always feel like more family would have been nice.", Dudley explained wistfully.

"True.", Harry agreed wholeheartedly, "I have a brother. Tony. For a long time it was just me and him. I have a hard time believing we'd ever let anything come between us."

Really?, that tiny, nagging voice in his head asked. It had been there for a while now and Harry found it harder and harder not to listen.

"That sounds great.", Dudley smiled, his eyes still glued to the picture, "But what happened to her? Lily?"

"She died. Her and my father were killed when I was still a baby."

Dudley's eyes shot up again. "Like mine?", he asked suspiciously.

"Yes.", Harry told him bluntly. Get out with it, he thought, that's why you came here.

"Why?"

"It's… I'm sorry, there are some things I can not tell you. For security reasons. But… Lily and James worked… fought against a domestic terrorist. He came after them and killed them.", Harry tried to work in as much of the truth as he could, "I… survived and the man that killed them… didn't. I was sent to live with you and your parents for a while, until I was adopted."

"You lived with us? You…", Dudley's eyes turned cloudy, his gaze unfocused, "You are the boy in the wall."

Harry froze, a sudden memory of cold and dark and alone and…

"I… I remember you.", Dudley continued, "His speech getting faster and faster, "You lived inside the wall. After my parents' death, after I was sent to live with my aunt… she told me I was afraid of my room. I wouldn't sleep there. I was convinced that there was someone living behind my closet door, I…", he stopped, when he saw Harry's ashen face.

Harry felt sick to his stomach. He knew, of course, he remembered, but…

"Oh my God.", Dudley looked at him in shock, "Aunt Marge told me that as a joke. That I was afraid of that. It's… it's true. I don't… what… why were you inside the wall, Harry?", his voice took on a slightly desperate tone, his eyes returning to the picture of the smiling girls.

"That doesn't really matter anymore.", Harry responded, his hand clasped so tightly around his bottle that he was afraid it might break.

"It does. All my life, my aunt told me how great my parents were. How much they loved me… and now here you are… I never could make sense of it! All the things she said… and then they took me away from her and I… it didn't fit. None of it did."

"They took you away?", Harry asked, trying to stir his new cousin away from that dangerous part of the story.

"When I was eight, my aunt had a stroke. I went to live with a foster family, but… I didn't fit in. My aunt told me how smart I was, how special… all the time. Nowadays I know I was a spoiled idiot. But back then I didn't understand. I bounced around a little. When I was eleven I started boarding school. My parents' estate paid for that. I didn't get on there too well either… Honestly, I was a jerk.", he admitted, his eyes glazed over again.

"What changed?", Harry asked and Dudley gave him a weary smile.

"Thanks for that. I got in a lot of trouble. Then I met Mandy and she got pregnant. Wasn't planned, really. At all. I told her I'd do the right thing. She said no."

"No to what? Marriage?"

"No to me being in my kid's life. 'You're a bully, Dudley.', she said, 'I don't want that for my kid'. She asked me what I'd do, if Griffin didn't turn out the way I wanted him to. If he was into books or… guys.", Dudley smiled meekly, "If I'd say shitty things about him, too. It was an eye-opener. I vowed to get better. For Griff, you know? Now I look at him and remember all the shit I did to kids his age and I just…", he stopped, "I could never make sense of it. How could I trust anything my aunt had said, when I now know how I turned out?"

Harry stared at Dudley in shock. His eyes were now definitely misty. It looked like he had gotten years of worry and self-doubt off his chest.

But there had been no one around to ask these things, Harry realized, Dudley didn't have a big brother to talk to. Apparently no friends of his parents. No one. Gravely he thought about his own issues he had with the differing way he and Tony viewed their Dad...

"I am sorry this has happened to you.", Harry told Dudley carefully, thinking how easily he could have had the same fate. What would have happened to him, had his Dad never found him?

"So you understand then? Why I need to know the truth? Why I need to know who they were?", Dudley almost begged, his voice tiny.

"I was locked inside a cupboard.", Harry blurted out, he didn't have the strength to sugarcoat anything anymore, "That's why my Dad took me away."

Dudley let out a long, wheezing breath.

"I need another beer.", he declared and left the room. Harry grabbed his phone and send a quick message to Nguyet to go home. This, he knew, would take longer. Dudley didn't return with a beer. Or even two. Instead he pressed a glass of whiskey into Harry's hand, poured himself one as well and set the bottle down between them.

"I have two more, if we need them."