He knows the moment that he sees the balls levitating over Sophie's crib. His daughter, barely six months old, is giggling, her hands reaching up to touch the bright red, blue, and yellow balls. He takes one look around, one desperate glance for someone, anyone wearing strange, out-of-place, floor-length robes, anyone wielding a stick of wood, anyone who can give him an alternate explanation. His cousin Harry, maybe his cousin Harry has paid him an unexpected visit, or one of his cousin's friends. There's no reason, of course, for anyone from Harry's world to come into his, but he hopes for it anyway. He wouldn't even care that it's just past midnight, and that they would have broken into his house. He'd forgive them, for giving him an alternate explanation.
There is no one. He knew there would be no one before he looked.
Sophie gurgles and giggles again, one of the balls dipping. Reflexively, Dudley grabs it and keeps it from hitting her in the face.
They had baby-proofed the house. Before Sophie had come, he and Vicky had gone through the whole house, looking for anything that could possibly harm their precious rainbow child. Baby gates had gone up in front of all the stairs, for all that Sophie couldn't walk yet, and every electrical socket had been shut behind a hard plastic cover that the sales representative had sworn six ways from Sunday would be unbreakable by a child.
But if Sophie is magical, then all bets are off. Dudley doesn't know how to baby-proof a house if Sophie is magical.
It takes a week of scrounging through the papers scattered in Vicky's craft room to find the envelope. Vicky doesn't throw anything out, especially not when it comes to Sophie, and thank God for that because Harry's card is stashed in a box holding a hundred other congratulatory cards. The envelope is a pale pink, the front with Harry's too-neat handwriting with the looped ys reading Dudley Dursley & Family. The card simply appeared one day, probably the work of an owl, but Dudley had told his wife that Harry had passed it off to him on his way to work.
It isn't that Dudley hasn't kept in contact with his cousin over the past twenty-odd years. Indeed, the fact that Dudley is the only one to keep in contact with Harry from the Dursley family says quite a lot. But he and Harry aren't close—they exchange cards at Christmas, they get together for an awkward coffee every once in a while, usually when Harry happens to be in Surrey and wants to catch up. They simply have nothing in common, nothing but old and often disturbing memories.
He has no one else to ask, and it's a second of work for him to yank the glitter-and-sequin-studded card from the envelope. The card is bright pink, thankfully normal, even if the glitter will never come out of the carpet on the floor. The front reads Congratulations! and there is a cartoon princess crown. The inside, which is what Dudley is really aiming for, includes the information that Dudley's been searching so desperately for.
Harry's latest phone number.
It takes him no less than seven tries, at random hours throughout the day, before Harry picks up the phone.
"Harry Potter speaking," his cousin's voice comes through. "And I swear to God, if this number has gotten out to the media already—"
"It's Dudley," Dudley cut in, his cousin's last sentence barely registering on his radar. Harry is somehow famous in the magical world, that much he knows, but he doesn't know the details.
"Dudley!" Harry sounds surprised, and then pleased. "How are you doing? How is new fatherhood treating you? Is she sleeping through the night yet? James didn't sleep through a night almost until he was eight months old, but Al slept like a rock."
"No, I—I mean, I'm fine, but I need to talk to you," Dudley replies, his words all coming out in a rush. He sounds panicked, and he hates sounding so panicked, but he doesn't know what else to do. "I need help."
"Okay…" Harry says, his cousin's tone showing his confusion. "What's up, Dud?"
"How did—how did you know you had magic?"
There's a long pause on the other end of the phone. "Er—I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Dud."
"It's Sophie," Dudley babbles, thankful that he's calling Harry from the office near the end of the day, thankful that his office door is closed, thankful that he invested in good soundproofing. "I think—I think she's magic."
To his very great relief, Harry doesn't tease him. Instead, there's a shifting noise on the other end of the phone, as if his cousin is moving the phone from one ear to the other. "All right," Harry says, and his voice is soothing. Harry works in some sort of police outfit in the magical world, Dudley remembers suddenly, and he realizes that this is probably how Harry handles himself at work. "Now, I'm inclined to say that every father thinks their daughter is magic, but somehow I suspect that's not what you're getting at. What happened?"
"I caught her levitating balls," Dudley rushes to explain. "It was late at night, and Vicky had already gone to bed, and I'd just heard her giggling so I went in to check on her, just to make sure she was all right, and her balls were levitating above her crib. The ones that she likes, the ones that we always catch her sticking into her mouth. And I mean, I think the balls are fine. That's fine, right? They're small, they're hollow. She can't hurt herself on those."
"No, she can't," Harry agrees, comforting. "If she's levitating them, she probably just wanted to play. Lily did things like that all the time. It'll be fine, Dud. If she's magic, she's magic, and there's nothing you can do about it."
Despite his calm and even words, Dudley hears a soft warning. He squeezes his eyes shut—Dudley isn't stupid, whatever people might think, and he's nearly forty years old now. He knows that his parents' treatment of Harry was abuse, though he's never said it aloud, and he knows that he played a part in it, though he was too young for most of his childhood to know any better. He knows that what steps he tried to take for forgiveness, when they were seventeen, were too little and too late.
'I—no, Harry, I'd never. I'd never. You don't understand." Dudley pauses, and the words, when they come out, are short and difficult. "Look, Harry, Vicky and I didn't delay having children. We just—we struggled. Sophie is eight years and thirty thousand pounds and four miscarriages and three rounds of IVF. There's nothing in the world that would make me hurt her. It's just—I did everything. The baby gates, the electrical socket covers, the corner guards, clearing everything below three feet of stuff that she could put in her mouth and swallow. We were going to be perfect parents, everything was going to be perfect, but how can I—how do we baby-proof a house when the baby can do magic?"
There is another long pause.
"Why don't I come over?" Harry says.
When Harry shows up at Dudley's house in Surrey, he looks much as Dudley remembers. His hair, which always drove Mum mad, is still messy and curled up at the back, and he's still rail-thin and scrawny though Dudley knows that it's been decades since he's gone to bed hungry. Where Dudley is blond and wearing the lobster-red sign of a skin burn, Harry is dark and tanned. Harry's wearing plain jeans and a t-shirt, looking about ten years younger than Dudley knows him to be. They don't look like cousins, even if that's what they are.
"Nice house," Harry comments, looking around cheerfully. "So, where's, erm—"
"Vicky?" Dudley smiles weakly. He can't remember Harry's wife's name either. Started with a J, he thought. Something like Jennifer, maybe. "I told her to take the night off and see some friends, she's been on baby duty almost twenty-four-seven for months."
"And she hasn't noticed anything strange?" Harry glances at him, his green eyes questioning. "If Sophie's already levitating balls, normally there are other signs earlier. Lights, or sounds, or slammed doors. And Vicky hasn't mentioned anything? She's not a witch, right?"
"No, no—if she had been, I think she'd have said something." Dudley shakes his head. He and Vicky have been together for more than a decade, and he's never seen any hint of the magical on her. And he, unlike most people, actually knows how magic looks. "Anyway, I don't know much about your world, but we get your cards with your name on it, and I think… I mean, you're supposed to be famous, right?"
"Yeah, you're right, she would have commented if she had been magical." Harry tilts his head one way and the other, thinking. "Well, Hermione says that often in Muggle families, the signs get written off. You say it's just the wind, or you were tired and imagining things. Let's see her, Dud, and I can magically baby-proof your house for you if she's magical."
"I know what I saw, Harry," Dudley protests, but he leads her up into the family room, which is dominated by a large play pen. Sophie is sitting in the pen, insistently shoving a square block into a triangular hole. Dudley would have thought her determination cute, if it wasn't for the fact that the square block was slowly turning into a triangular one in her hands.
Anyone else in Dudley's acquaintance would have written it off as poor integrity in the blocks, shattered or molded by repeated banging.
"Ah," Harry says, and he even sounds amused. "Basic Transfiguration. She wants to put the block into the hole, so she's going to make it fit. Cute."
Dudley glares at him.
Harry shrugs, flashing him a grin. "James had a phase like that too."
"She's supposed to learn from the blocks," Dudley says stubbornly. "She's supposed to learn her shapes, not that she can turn one thing to another thing."
"But she can turn one thing into another thing," Harry replies innocently, but he laughs when Dudley splutters. "I can put a spell on the blocks to stop her Transfiguring them if you want. And on the rest of the house, to keep her from messing too much with it. But I recommend we leave a few things that she can use her magic on, just because it's good for kids to spread their wings a bit."
"Not—not literal wings, right?" Dudley can't help but be suspicious, even if he's never once seen Harry sprout wings. He has no idea what's possible and what's not.
Harry bursts into laughter. "No, not literal wings, it's a metaphor. I'm not saying there aren't spells to give someone wings, but they're all high-level Transfiguration spells, nothing that a kid could do by accident. Accidental magic is all very immediate and desire driven. She wants to play, so she levitates balls. She wants to shove a square block in a triangular hole, so she changes the block to fit. She wants a shiny object, so she levitates it to come to her, that kind of thing."
"She could want to fly, and then she could fly," Dudley replies suspiciously, his mind exploding with the possibilities. Who knew what small children wanted? "Then she could fall."
"Err—" Harry pauses, thinking. "Well, I'd say there's a certain concreteness to the desires that will result in magic happening. Like, flying is actually a fairly abstract concept, so she's not likely to want to fly, not in a way that would actually result in flying. I'll spell most of the house, and just keep an eye on her, Dud. And just think, tons of kids with magic survive, even with non-magical parents. It'll be fine."
"You say that," Dudley complains, putting his head in his hands. "But how do I—how do I make it fine?"
There's an even longer pause, and Harry rests one hand one his shoulder. Harry is half a head shorter than Dudley, and at least three stone lighter, but somehow Dudley feels comforted anyway. Harry's a father, he has three children if Dudley remembers right, and Harry is a wizard and he can tell him how to do everything right. Especially if Sophie is a witch.
"I hate to break this to you, Dud," Harry says quietly, "but you can't. No parent can. All we can do is give our kids the best start in life we possibly can and do our best, and hope that it's enough."
"I hate that answer," Dudley mutters, but he sighs and looks up at his white, spackled ceiling. "Okay. All right. My daughter is going to be a witch. She's probably not going to kill herself accidentally with her magic. And—and then what? Are there magical preschools to give her a head start? What about primary school? You didn't start at magic school until secondary, so what happens before then? What about, I don't know, kiddie magic camps and programs and things? Kiddie magic football league?"
"Er—" Harry says, a helpless sort of expression on his face. "Well, er—I mean, I guess there are some programs, but let's back up a second, Dud. Have you told Vicky yet? You're going to have to tell her, because at some point she is going to notice something, and better to be ready for it than not. And what about your mum and dad?"
Dudley looks away. "I'm not sure how to tell Vicky yet. And as for Mum and Dad… well, they adore Sophie, of course they do, and if they knew…"
Harry nods, so Dudley doesn't finish the sentence. "Well, I'm not going to tell you whether to tell them, but children don't have a lot of control over their magic, so you might want to think about how you'll react if they find out. I'll magically baby-proof the house, and then we can talk, all right?"
Dudley sighs, and nods. "Can I make you some tea?"
"With sugar, please." Harry smiles, and pulls out his wand. Dudley runs for the kitchen.
"Vicky," Dudley says, fiddling with his smartphone one day a week or so later. He and Harry had talked, and Harry would help with this part. Vicky would never believe Dudley otherwise, he thinks. Who believes in magic, who hasn't seen it for themselves? Who above the age of fourteen, at any rate? "Do you have a moment?"
His wife has deep bags under her eyes. Sophie is sleeping through the night—sometimes. Last night had not been one of those times, but his wife still has a look of deep contentment to her as she walks in a circle with their daughter, bouncing her up and down. "Of course, Dud. What is it?"
Dudley clears his throat. "I'd like you to meet my cousin. This weekend. There's something… well, it's hard to explain."
His wife is smarter than he is—that was why he had married her. Tired as she is from the responsibilities of caring for an infant, she still understands more from his few words than Dudley has said. Her blue eyes are sharp when she looks at him, and a worried crease forms between her eyebrows.
"Your cousin," she says quietly. "You said you weren't close to your cousin. Harry Potter, isn't it?"
"There are… reasons for that," Dudley confesses, looking away. "My cousin is a little different."
"Different how?" Vicky asks, her voice a gentle demand, one that Dudley imagines that she wields in her boardroom as well as she does at home. "You're going to have to be more explicit, dear."
Dudley sucks in a deep, steadying breath. "Harry is a wizard."
The words hang in the air, and Dudley doesn't dare look at Vicky. He can imagine the emotions flickering across her face already: confusion, suspicion, worry.
"A wizard, like… he does magic tricks at a carnival?" she asks, her tone dry.
"No." Dudley sighs heavily. "I mean, like magic is real. And it's like—well, I'm not magic, but I know a bit about it because Harry is magical, and we grew up together."
"You grew up together." Vicky's voice is even more dry, now. "What do you mean, you grew up together?"
"I mean that my parents took him in after his parents were killed in a magical war," Dudley says finally, looking up at his wife. He knows he's dropping a lot on her—he knows that he's never really said much about Harry, other than the fact that they're cousins and that they aren't close. He's never suggested that they grew up in the same house, and of course Harry's name is verboten any time they visit his parents. "He was a year old when that happened, so I guess—in another family, we might have grown up like brothers. Not in mine. My parents knew he was magical, and they spent our childhood trying to beat it out of him. Literally."
Vicky's face is still as stone. "You've never said this before."
"I'm not proud of it, Vic," Dudley replies, and it's as much of an explanation as he'll ever be able to give. "I didn't do anything about it. In fact, I got Harry in trouble a lot when we were kids. And my parents haven't—well, there's a reason Harry never talks to them anymore. Don't mention him to them, please."
"So, your parents abused him," Vicky says, and her voice is cold, her grip on their daughter a little tighter. "Why are you telling this to me now?"
Dudley looks at Sophie, who gurgles and smiles. He smiles back at her. "Because Sophie has magic too."
Vicky doesn't believe him, but she humours him. A week later, they're at Twelve Grimmauld Place in London, and Vicky is staring wide-eyed and open-jawed at Harry's son and daughter, who are dive-bombing each other in the backyard on brooms. Grimmauld Place is far more chaotic than Dudley's house in Surrey, though with three children, Dudley can't say he blames him for it. God knows that their own house had lost some of its neatness when Sophie had come along.
"It's real," Vicky says, and she sounds stunned. "Magic. It's real."
"We like to keep ourselves out of Muggle society," Harry's wife, Ginny, says with a small smile, tucking red hair behind an eye as she keeps a sharp eye on children. "It's better that way, we think."
"Have you thought about telling your parents?" Harry asks, directing his question solely at Dudley. For all that the question is mild, Dudley can hear the worry lying underneath his cousin's voice.
"I don't think so," Dudley admits, looking away into Harry's backyard. It might be cowardly of him to say so, but he doesn't want his parents to treat Sophie the way that they treated Harry. Right now, his parents shower Sophie with presents and affection, the way that they did Dudley; Dudley doesn't want that to change. Even if that makes him a coward.
Harry nods. "I understand."
Here is the thing about secrets: they have a way of getting out.
The next few years are easy. They get through the baby years, a thousand pictures saved on their phones and uploaded onto their home server, then the Terrible Twos and Threes. Sophie goes to the preschool that Dudley and Vicky picked out before she was even born, one that guarantees a leg up in the primary school system, and they sign her up for all the dance lessons and art lessons and music lessons that they had planned. Harry thinks their parenting style is a little much, commenting more than once that Sophie is three. Or four. Or five, but then he seems to appreciate the finger painting that Dudley gives him anyway.
They get closer to the Potters—Sophie is quite a lot younger than any of Harry's children, almost ten years younger than Harry's youngest. But it's good for Sophie to be in that environment, especially at the holidays, so that she can see and get a feel for magic herself. Sometimes, Harry's other family members from his wife's side come too, and even if Dudley feels awkward and more than a little nervous, Sophie soaks it in with wide eyes and an even wider smile.
It all comes out, over the Christmas holidays when Sophie is six. Lily has been telling Sophie all about Hogwarts, where Sophie will go in only five years. And Sophie, being six, says something just a little too loud about it at their traditional Christmas visit to his parents' house the next day.
"Hogwarts?" Dad's voice is too sharp. "Dudders—you're not—she's not—"
Dudley breathes out slowly, trying to remember the plans. There had never been any plans, he realizes—for all that Harry warned him to have a backup plan, he had never come up with one. His plan had simply been, never let Mum and Dad know about Sophie's magic. But at the same time, he can't deny what Sophie has said.
Sophie is five. She's already a budding witch, which they know from the bursts of accidental magic that still happen whenever she is upset or when she wants something particularly badly. They take it in stride at the Dursley house, the way that Harry said they should, and Harry's only a quick phone call away if something happens that they can't fix on their own. Just like Harry had said, most of Sophie's accidental magic happens for a reason, to meet an immediate, intense desire or need, and most of these incidents don't cause any trouble at all. They've gone out of their way to make magic normal for Sophie, because magic will be normal for Sophie. As normal as it is for Harry, and for her second cousins.
Sophie is looking at him, her eyes wide and scared. She's frozen in stillness; she knows that she's broken a rule somewhere, somehow, and for a second Dudley's world spins back to his childhood, to a very similar expression on his cousin's face. He can't breathe, his memories flashing scenes of his Mum aiming a soapy frying pan at Harry's head, of his Dad red-faced and screaming at Harry.
He didn't do anything, then. He laughed, then.
Vicky touches his hand, a silent question as to whether he wants her to handle this for him. She could, he knows. Vicky would use her even corporate boardroom voice and would tell his family that yes, their daughter was a witch, and that she would be going to Hogwarts for secondary school, which was said to be the very best school in magic. His parents would blame her, even if Dudley is pretty sure that the magic runs latent in his genes, not in hers. His parents already blamed her for the many, many years that they had had no grandchildren at all.
They could have had grandchildren in those years, he realizes. Harry had three kids, and his parents could have chosen, so long ago, to make Harry a part of their family. And they hadn't, because Harry had magic.
Back then, Dudley had been a child. He hadn't known any better. But he isn't a child anymore, and this time, it's Sophie that has magic. It's his daughter that is magical, and Dudley doesn't want her to be ashamed of it.
"Yes, Sophie has magic," Dudley says, clearing his throat. His question, when it comes out, is sharp as a knife. "Will that be a problem?"
It is a problem. They don't see the Dursleys for years afterwards.
The years come, and then they pass. Sophie is seven, and then she's eight, and before Dudley knows it, Sophie has finished primary school and they have a parchment envelope in hand for her acceptance to Hogwarts. Harry and Ginny have taken a day to take them all shopping for Sophie's supplies, and his daughter is weighed down by a great steamer trunk filled with robes, books, parchment and quills and a million other things that she's insisted she can't live without.
Harry said that she could live without most of it. Dudley bought it for her anyway.
Harry's instructions for getting onto Platform 9 and 3/4s are clear enough, and even if Harry's offered to come along, saying it would be no trouble at all, Dudley wants to share this moment with Sophie for himself. Sophie will be alone at Hogwarts—all of Harry's children are out of school by now, making their own way in the world, and the generations just don't line up. Sophie has jumped between excited and terrified all summer.
He leans against the wall that Harry had described, and he feels it sag behind him. He swallows, reminds himself that he survived a trip to Diagon Alley, and steps backwards into Platform 9 and 3/4s. Vicky and Sophie come through only a second later.
The grand, scarlet Hogwarts Express dominates the room. Steam curls up from the stack at the front of the train, and there are a hundred families crowding the room. It's loud, the air thick with people calling hello to each other, people saying goodbye, the hooting of owls and the yowling of cats.
Dudley winces at the noise and looks down at his daughter. She's staring at the train, her eyes wide in wonder.
"This is it, kiddo," Dudley says, leaning down to look at her, since Vicky has her hand. "Write to us when you get there."
Sophie stares at the train, taking one deep breath in, and letting it out slowly. It's a motion that Dudley recognizes from Vicky, and sometimes even from himself. "Yeah—yeah, I will. Love you, Mum. Dad."
"We love you too, princess." Dudley grins. "Go on, get to school, and we'll see you at Christmas."