Interlude:

The smell was intoxicating, inviting, and torturous. He could feel his mouth start to water, like that dog Mr. Chambers went on about in class yesterday. Not that he listened. He really didn't like dogs, and he really didn't like Mr. Chambers. His dad always told him science was a load of tosh, meant for crackpots and conspiracy theorists. It always did make him feel better when his teachers would test him on things that didn't make any sense.

Why does Mum do this to me? He wondered not for the first time since the buzzer had gone off for the oven. They'd definitely cooled off by now. His school work was long forgotten at this point; his attention stolen by the golden brown rings of goodness that smelt like the heavens. Only a few years ago, half the tray would have been gone at this point… but that was a few years ago, and things were different now.

He didn't like thinking about the past.

For whatever reason, his Mum always baked cookies on the weekend. Today was no exception, despite her and dad going off to some fancy dinner party. Their house was supposed to be on a diet, and they usually ended up just throwing them out—unless dad managed to sneak a handful before bed—but she continued to make them anyway. It was tradition. He saw her crying once while mixing the dough and figured she'd had a row with dad, but thinking back on it later, he didn't remember them having a fight. He left it alone, knowing mum didn't like talking about things that made her sad.

Pushing thoughts of melted chocolate cookies from his head, he tried to focus on the mountain of schoolwork he had to finish.

I wonder if his homework is any less dull, or if it's just like ours? He thought, chewing at the end of his pen.

An enormous CRACK shook the house to its very foundations. His stack of papers was knocked into a hopeless mess, the chandelier in the dining room was swinging wildly overhead, and picture frames tumbled off their shelves to the floor. Dudley was frozen in shock.

He heard the front door burst open, and had the sudden urge to relieve himself. It didn't matter that he was standing in the middle of the kitchen. There was a burning sensation pulsing through his arse, right where there was a piece of scar tissue from the operation he'd had to remove his tail. That meant only one thing. Magic.

Was the house under attack? Hadn't that Dumbly-bloke told his parents that evil wizards were about? Of course they'd told him to bugger off and to never come back… but maybe they shouldn't have.

Footsteps creaked from down the hall, and he could hear heavy breathing.

Dudley was at a loss as to what he should do. Fight? Run? Cry? He didn't want to find out what their sticks were capable of.

A shiver ran down his spine. What if it was a Dementor? The thought was paralyzing. Shaking uncontrollably, he closed his eyes, and prayed he wouldn't feel the cold close around his throat.

"Dudley?"

He knew that voice. But could he trust it? Those magic folk were a tricky people.

"Dudley, why are you standing in a puddle of your piss?"

Had he soiled himself? There was a warmth trailing down his leg, that gave him his answer. He'd hardly noticed.

He felt brave enough to peek through one of his eyes, and when he did, all thoughts of wetting himself were forgotten. God, what happened to him?

His cousin stood in front of him—he was sure of that now—and looked as if he'd just fought a war. His face was half-burnt, his shoulder was bent into an unnatural position, and more blood than he'd ever seen was caked onto the weird dress he was wearing.

"Did you… kill someone?" It was the first thing to leave his mouth, and he wasn't entirely sure why he asked it, or if he wanted to know the answer.

"Yes."

"Oh."

"Are your parents home?" Harry asked, looking around the room as if expecting Vernon and Petunia to walk in at any moment. He had taken to leaning against the wall to keep himself upright. Dudley cringed upon seeing a touch of blood smear across the pristine wallpaper.

"No…"

"Good," Harry said. He turned and left the kitchen, leaving Dudley standing foolishly on his own. "Come on then, I need your help."

There wasn't much else for him to do other than follow.

Dudley found Harry in the bathroom upstairs. It wasn't all that difficult, he'd only needed to follow the trail of blood from the kitchen. How much blood has he lost? It didn't appear as if it were affecting his cousin.

"Do you have any bandages?" Harry asked. His head was burrowed into their medicine cabinet, knocking pill containers to the floor in his blind search for something.

"I do in my room… I kept some from boxing."

"You're still doing that?" said Harry, not pausing in whatever he was looking for.

Dudley nodded with a bit of pride. He was fairly good at the sport, and enjoyed it far more than his failed attempt of trying out football. In a way, boxing had changed his life.

"Alright, then we'll be doing this in your room." Harry quickly stood and pulled them into the larger of the two bedrooms once owned by Dudley. The floor was littered with dirty clothing, but Harry hardly seemed to notice the mess. Dudley found the bandages Harry had asked for under his bed after only a moment of searching. But Harry was nowhere in sight when he turned back around, and he was forced to follow the blood again. This time it was only one room over.

Harry was bent over next to the ratty old bed he had slept on for years. There was beaten trunk in front of him, that Harry was staring at as if it were a particularly difficult maths problem.

"How… how did this get here?" Harry whispered, and Dudley could barely make out what he was saying. He found himself thinking the same thing. That trunk hadn't been there this morning. When Harry left each year, his dad would make sure to clean the house of anything magic. It was impossible that something of that size would have escaped his notice for so long. "Dobby! Kreacher!"

What's a Dobby? What's a Kreacher?

Two pops answered him, and Dudley felt faint. Two of the strangest beings he had ever seen seemingly appeared out of thin air. They had to be monsters… aliens at least. Dressed in rags, with huge bat-like ears, and eyes the size of tennis balls, Dudley was certain he wouldn't be sleeping for a week.

"Harry Potter, sir, Dobby was so worried!"

Dudley jumped, and his head swam. They talk… of course they talk. What is this freakishness? Make that two weeks.

"Master calls for Kreacher?" It was the older looking one—the one with the hunched back—that spoke this time.

"Master?" Dudley said, not being able to hold his silence any longer. "Are these… like your own servants or slaves or something?"

"No!" Harry shouted, his face set into a deep frown, just as the two aliens simultaneously said, "Yes!" Their enthusiasm felt entirely out of place for such a designation of status.

"They're my friends…" Harry said indignantly. Though he trailed off uneasily when looking at the uglier one.

It was an odd sort of group to be calling friends to be sure, but Dudley kept quiet. After all, he'd been the one who spent most of his childhood hanging out with Piers. His mum and dad never said it, but whenever Piers and the gang from Stonewall High came over, his parents looked at them in a manner similar to how he looked at the strange bald animals standing in front of his cousin.

"Dobby, do you know how my stuff got here from the castle?" Harry asked. Whatever was going on with his suddenly appearing luggage, it appeared to be bothering him. An odd mixture of hope and sadness was written across his dirtied face. Dudley was forced to look away quickly, it was too vivid a memory of how things used to be in this house.

"Harry Potter's barmy old codger told Dobby to brings your things back to this bad house before he's dies." The smaller one glared at him with such disgust that Dudley actually felt sweat build along his spine. Definitely a monster that one, he thought uncomfortably.

Harry's face fell instantly. Like the darkness of a terrible storm, it clouded over him and brewed with danger. What had happened, and when did Potter get so scary? He said he'd killed someone earlier. It was hard to think of the scrawny boy he used to pick on as capable of murder. His dad had certainly thought he was, and would surely feel vindicated in his belief if he ever found out.

"Kreacher!" Harry snapped, and started picking out his trunk the strangest assortment of items he'd ever seen. His eyes nearly bulged out of his skull, when he started shoving them into a small leather pouch around his neck. Was that a necklace? A sack of gold? How does that fit in there? Where does it all go? That has to be damn useful, he though in awe. "I have an order for you, and you must follow through without exception. No loopholes, nothing. Dobby… you aren't bound to me, but I hope you can do the same."

"Dobby will do whatevers Harry Potter asks of him."

Harry smiled, but it looked pained. His entire being looked as if it were being torn in two. How could a person feel so many emotions? A thousand battles screamed in one great war that was being waged across from him. Something snapped in the air, and his cousin came to a decision, but not one he looked all too happy with.

"You are forbidden from mentioning anything about me to anyone who might ask. If they do, you will say you don't know what happened to me, that you don't feel anything from me, and you will leave them before they ask any more questions," he said, his voice choked with emotion.

"Yes Harry Potter sir, Dobby will do as he's told, though he doesn't likes lying very much."

"Kreacher is bound to serve the House of Black and his half-blood master."

"Thank you, you may leave." An invisible weight lifted from Harry's shoulders, sighing heavily as the two creatures popped out of existence. Dudley hoped they wouldn't be coming back.

"Come on Dudley, I need your help now," Harry said, while lifting up a huge black metal pot. What could that possibly be for? His answer came only moments later when Harry stacked up some of his unused textbooks as a make-shift table and sat the pot on top. "I need you to brew me a potion."

Dudley's heart fluttered. "I…you…me—what?"

"I need you to brew—"

"I heard you the first time," Dudley babbled.

This couldn't be real.

"You want me to help you do magic?"

"I…" Harry paused. "I suppose you technically would be… so yes, I would like your help."

"Why…?" He was almost afraid to ask. This was entirely mad. He should have accepted Piers' offer to hang out and smoke some fags in the park, instead of choosing to try and catch up on school.

Harry raised one of his arms in the air, and he frowned. "I only have one of these right now," Harry explained, and Dudley looked to the other arm that had yet to move. "Making potions is mostly a two-handed process. And the one we're trying to make is supposed to help me re-grow my bone."

Dudley gulped.

Potions! Re-growing bones!

He had the sudden urge to itch his scarred arse. He'd yet to have any sort of positive experience with magic—was terrified of it in fact—and now his cousin was asking him to perform some. Was that even possible?

Crystal water, cleaner than any he'd ever seen before, came sprouting out the end of Harry's wand and into the pot. "Dudley, will you find these ingredients for me?" Harry asked, as he threw him a book.

"You can do magic…" The book hit Dudley dumbly and clattered to the ground. "I thought… the letter… you couldn't…"

"The rules don't really apply to me anymore."

Dudley nodded as if it made sense to him. It didn't. He simply did as he was told, and began assembling perhaps the most sickening ingredient list he'd ever scene. Puffer-fish, Scarab beetles, Chinese Chomping Cabbage…

"Why's it called Chomping Cabbage?" It looked exactly like a normal cabbage.

"Watch out for your fingers."

"What—"Dudley yelped, and pulled his fingers back just in time from the snapping green teeth that grinned back at him from the cabbage. They'd grown out of nowhere.

How had he gotten himself into this?

"You're supposed to eat all this?" Dudley asked. He couldn't imagine ingesting any one of the strange ingredients he'd collected.

"Magic changes it when making the potion—don't ask me how. Still tastes awful mind you, but it does its job well enough if done right." Harry's shirt was off, and he was rubbing a strange paste on serious looking burns on his side.

He tried his best to follow the instruction in the wrinkly old book Harry gave him; weighing, chopping, and mixing as written out. It was much more difficult than he'd expected, the ingredients jiggling and jumping and doing strange things in his hands. The stench was another matter altogether. His stomach had never been as strong as his jaw, and he turned to Harry to distract himself before he retched. Much to his horror, Dudley found himself staring at something far worse. Harry was performing self-surgery on his own ankle.

"What are you doing!?"

"Watch the potion Dudley!" He could hear the pain through Harry's grit teeth.

"Oops! Yeah… sorry." In the few seconds he took his eyes off his task, he'd nearly added one too many beetles. It was as if the potion wanted him to get it wrong. How did Harry's kind do this? Two crushed Dandelions, chopped Rosemary, stir seven times, five leaves of peppermint, Puffer-fish eye… He listed the steps off trying to find a rhythm, and to keep his mind away from what he'd just seen. Harry tapped the cauldron and muttered some funny words under his breath every so often, which only made the whole process even harder.

"Merlin, didn't you take chemistry at school?" Harry said from the side.

Dudley's face flushed bright red. He hoped Harry couldn't see that from where he was sitting. How did his people know about chemistry? "I err… failed out of it this year," he mumbled. Mum always told me I was made to make money, not play around with chemicals, he added in his mind, not daring to say it aloud.

Silence reigned awkwardly over the two of them for the next while. He'd only just managed to chop a handful of that cabbage without losing a finger, and the instructions now told him to wait five minutes.

"Do you still have the ashtray Uncle Vernon kept for whenever company came over?" Harry asked and Dudley nodded. He thought he heard the words 'Ah-Choo ashtray' but wasn't given the opportunity to think any further on it, before ducking out of the way of a whizzing piece of metal. "Don't touch that, I don't want it to spread."

Harry threw what looked to be rotten flesh into his father's ashtray, and Dudley didn't need any more reason than that to keep his distance. Fresh blood was still dripping from its dying edges, where Harry had cut them from his ankle with a knife. The bandages were definitely a good idea.

"What happened?" Dudley asked. Harry looked shocked that he cared enough to ask.

"I was attacked by Inferi, and one of them bit my ankle," Harry answered. He must have seen the confused look on Dudley's face, because he explained further. "They're magical zombies."

"You're not going to… you know… turn into one are you?" Knowing zombies were real was the scariest thing Dudley had ever heard.

Harry smirked. "It doesn't work like that. They're controlled and created by dark wizards." Without warning, he shot fire out of his wand and burnt the contents of the ashtray, causing Dudley to nearly jump out of his skin. "I'm going to need you to pour some of that alcohol for me."

Harry's ankle was a gaping wreck of a wound, weeping black tears that looked more like the ink of a pen than his own blood. Dudley felt his stomach turn just by looking at the torn flesh, while Harry gazed on completely unconcerned. How is he not freaking out over this? It was as if his cousin had other matters on his mind that were far more important than missing half of his ankle. A normal person just didn't react like that. "You want me to pour this on that," Dudley said, the bottle sloshed around as he waved it in the air. "Do you have any idea how much this is going to hurt?" It stung more than enough when he poured it on a small cut after a fight.

"It's either you pour this on and I scream, or I'm forced to cauterize it with my own wand and I scream longer." Harry's gaze was hard.

Oh.

"Are you ready then?" Dudley unscrewed the cap and was looking to Harry for confirmation. Harry gave him a tight nod, and Dudley thought he caught a glimpse of hesitance in his green eyes.

Half the bottle was gone, and Harry's scream certainly caught the attention of every middle-aged gossip within two kilometers. "Again…" Harry panted, picking up Dudley's pillow and shoving it in his mouth. The bubbling white foam on his wound had only just started to disperse when he poured again. The scream was muted, Harry threw up, and Dudley most definitely needed to buy a new pillow.

He thought he heard Harry say something from where he was collapsed against the wall. "Potion…" Harry repeated himself in a whisper. Sure enough, when Dudley turned back to his work, the liquid was a dark purple color that the book said was time to add another beetle.

"So… uh, why did you fight those zombie things in the first place?" Dudley asked, making sure to count the number of his stirs.

"War," Harry answered. He pulled out a small glass that was filled with something as red as blood, and downed it one go. Long strips of bandages were floating in the air, and wrapping themselves tightly around his ankle. "I need to kill Voldemort."

Voldemort? Is that the man mum was telling dad about?

Harry was looking at him queerly, and suddenly burst out laughing. Was he missing something? It took a long moment before his cousin regained his composure. "Sorry…" He was breathless. "It's just that you're a muggle, and his name doesn't scare you at all."

This was all too strange for Dudley. Was this some sort of wizard humor?

"I… uh, think this is done," Dudley said. A gentle smoke was continuously rising from the dark mixture. It was a good thing Dudley kept his window open, though he hoped the neighbors wouldn't get the wrong idea.

"Good. Pour me some, I've already vanished the bone."

"You can make bones disappear?" Dudley asked, passing over the cup he'd filled.

"Yeah, but it's a tricky thing to get right. I'm not sure if I got it all." Harry grimaced and coughed as he drank it all down, and for a second Dudley thought he'd made a mistake. He couldn't do magic, there was no way he got this right. Had he just poisoned Harry?

"Hey, Dudley… good job."

Relief flooded through him hearing those words. But more importantly, he felt a strange sort of pride receiving praise from Harry of all people.

Harry stood on wobbly feet and made to leave the room.

"Are you sure you're okay to do that?"

Harry eyed him strangely. Why did his cousin make him feel so small? Being bigger was something he'd always been, even through childhood. "I need to leave as soon as possible."

Dudley felt an odd sense of relief and disappointment. The sooner Harry left, the sooner he'd be clear from the funniness of his magic. But loathe as he was to admit it, he'd actually had some fun, as weird as it was. "Do you want to grab the rest of your things?" Dudley asked.

"No, I've taken all I need. Uncle Vernon can burn the rest, I'm sure he's been dreaming of that for years."

Dudley just nodded. It was true.

"Are those cookies?" Harry asked. They were back in the kitchen now.

"Yeah, mum made them before she left."

"Can I?" Dudley shrugged, Harry looked as if he deserved one. He ate the first one quickly, and finished a second even faster. Dudley stood and watched as Harry took about eight more and put them in his pockets.

"I guess this is goodbye," Harry said. He turned and stood across from him. The air was awkward as they held prolonged eye contact. They were at a distance where moving for a handshake would be strange, and an embrace was never something that would have been shared between them.

Was this the last time he would ever see Harry?

"Uh… Harry," Dudley said, breaking the silence. "Good luck." He felt like an idiot saying it, but for once it felt like it was the right thing to do.

"Thanks Dudley," Harry said with a soft smile. "I think you should tell your parents when they get home that a long vacation would be good right about now." He twisted and disappeared without a sound.

Dudley nodded to himself, alone again in the kitchen right next to the mixed puddle of Harry's blood and his urine. He would tell them exactly what happened. Reaching for the last two cookies on the counter, Dudley enjoyed them with a guilty pleasure, knowing he could blame it on Harry just as it used to be.