Chapter 4
Dudley's third year at Smeltings brought some unexpected changes, while he still had his gang, thought they were down to four now, one of the newer boys had transferred to Stonewall, two major issues arose.
The first was the school nurse. Apparently she had decided that he was unhealthily overweight and had taken to sending letters home to his mother starting that he should start dieting immediately. It was insulting. Who was she to say that he needed a diet? Just because she was thinner than his mother… but it wasn't that bad till the stupid woman opened her mouth in the middle of the hallway and then the rest of the school knew about it. Older kids starting teasing him and even his gang stopped hanging out with him as often. It was awful and his mom even gave in and started enforcing the diet which just made everything worse.
The other issue that arose was his literature class. Since his gang was avoiding him he wasn't bullying as many people and therefore had no one else to do his literature homework for him at the moment. Even worse, their teacher was forcing them to read King Arthur he would have refused to do it but the series work packets on the book were a large part of his grade. His mother had told him that the lower his grades where the longer his diet would last, (She insisted that he had to at least pass his classes so she wouldn't be ashamed when talking with the neighbors) which meant that he actually had to do it himself.
As he slowly forced himself to make his way through the book, it was written in old English (they lived in England so why did he have to read something in old English and why was old English so different from current English anyway?) which was kind of hard to understand at first but he eventually got the hang of it, he decided that the knights and King Arthur were interesting and the magic they mentioned didn't seem that bad. Partway through he realized that one of the characters was named Merlin; which sounded oddly like the name of the being his cousin had started cursing to, that time Dudley had mixed up the labels on the paint cans he needed at the beginning of summer. Suddenly it hit him. Merlin was a wizard. Merlin was a wizard his cousin (who was also a wizard) cursed and prayed to. Did that mean that Merlin was real?
His shocking revelation started a change in him that his family would never have been able to imagine, suddenly he wanted to know. All those things that had been forbidden to know of, see, or hear as a child, fairytales, certain movies, shows, even books - anything that dealt with magic was sought out.
He was very careful to make sure that his new interest was hidden from his parents. He made sure to act as he always had when in front of others. And for the first time he was glad his gang was avoiding him as they wouldn't like his new interest in reading during his free time.
Summer couldn't come quickly enough, he was eager to corner his cousin and ask him about everything. But when it finally did he found himself caught up in his fears and worries about his parents finding out or Harry reacting in some strange horrible way, like by sticking his newfound criminal of a Godfather on him. So Harry returned and started his usual chores and in the end Dudley couldn't bring himself to ask, but he watched his cousin's every move with an odd intensity.
Harry was small, but he was strong. His form was lean with muscles from his chores and possibly some sort of sport, and the bother boy had always been a fast runner. His cousin's messy black hair was growing out and now brushed the edge of his jaw, standing out in sharp comparison to his pale skin, which didn't seem to darken at all even under the bright summer sun. Then there were his eyes, they all but glowed, like bright emerald jewels that lit up when filled with emotion.
Dudley had done many things as a child and still did today, just to get those green orbs to focus on him, shining with heat. Now that he had a reference Dudley liked to think that his cousin resembled or was one of those types of people who had once inspired the tales of the fey. Small, pale, and too beautiful with jeweled eyes- even if he hadn't known about his cousin's magic Dudley thought he might have mistaken him for one of the Seelie.
While his studies of his cousin made him more aware of Harry's presence it didn't answer his questions. Harry never talked about his school or what his life away from Number 4 was like, not that it would have been permitted even if the boy did have a friend around to talk to (his parents would have seen to that), so Dudley couldn't just eavesdrop on him and now that Harry was allowed to keep his magic things up in his room Dudley couldn't just break into the cupboard under the stairs and look through them on his own like he'd originally planned.
Then Harry was leaving and the family of magical red-heads came to pick him up.
Traveling through the fireplace was another surprise Dudley hadn't expected. Very few of the magical tales he had read/watched involved traveling through fire, and he had made the mistake of eating what was obviously a magical candy one of the twins had handed him that had lengthened his tongue for twenty minutes. But as odd as the whole affair was he didn't really regret it and, secretly, he couldn't wait for the next summer and his cousin's return.