The boy who sat at the other end of the table looked nothing like the cousin Chloe had grown up with for nearly eleven years. For starters, where he had just moments ago been rotund, there was now barely anything to him. It was if he had been a great balloon that someone had soundlessly deflated. Dudley's face was still vaguely recognizable, but Chloe thought that might be because he looked more like Aunt Petunia than he had before. If one were to take Aunt Petunia and make her look a bit more boyish, that's what Chloe thought Dudley resembled.

"What happened to Dudley?" Chloe muttered to her Aunt out of the corner of her mouth. While Dudley had likely heard her, he didn't say anything. He sat quietly with his hands folded politely in his lap.

Petunia looked at her son with raised eyebrows, not looking particularly confused but just a little surprised.

"I wasn't really sure what was going to happen to him, to be perfectly honest." She responded. "I never wanted to have a child with Vernon Dursley, understand, but he could be rather... persistent at times." She scowled for only a moment before she turned her gaze on her son.

"How are you feeling, dear?" She asked him.

The new Dudley gave a quirk of a smile. "Fine, thanks for asking, mum. Good supper, I'm absolutely bursting. May I be excused, please?"

Aunt Petunia smiled and nodded, waving him off. He grinned cheerfully at his mother and cousin before scampering from the kitchen. Chloe listened for the familiar creaking sounds of Dudley going up the stairs, realizing belatedly that they would never come.

"Normally, he likely would have disappeared along with your Uncle, once I'd gotten rid of him. So I would suppose, anyway, but I knew as soon as I held him in my arms after he was born that I couldn't let that happen. It took me a couple of years of studying in secret, but I finally found a combination of spells and potions that would protect him and keep him alive once the spell that made Vernon had ended. You won't remember, of course, but one of the potions made him terribly sick when you were around two, the both of you. At any rate, without Vernon having existed, he couldn't have fathered a child, and so the magic appears to have reconstructed Dudley using me as a base. It seems to have done him some good both physically and mentally, not saying that I think I'm a classic beauty or anything."

"You've been doing magic all this time, and none of us ever noticed?" Chloe's eyes widened. Except for the strange things that always seemed to happen to her specifically, she'd never noticed anything out of the ordinary around the Dursley home.

"Oh, surely not. I'm sure it's obvious I wasn't good at making people with magic, and Vernon Dursley was about as bad as you could get. If he had found me out, I would have had to end the spell that made him exist too early, and we would have been in a real pickle. I couldn't very well alter his memories, as they weren't actually real. The magic I did on Dudley, almost nine years ago, was my last until today. I'd magic all of the dinner dishes clean right now if I didn't think any of the neighbors would see, I'm just itching to do a good spell." Aunt Petunia glanced around before flicking her wand. The blinds on the windows closed. With another motion, the dishes flew to the kitchen sink with a minor amount of clattering. The water faucets turned of their own accord. Before long a soapy sponge was cleaning each dish before it floated into a drying rack on the counter.

Chloe watched with more than a small amount of amusement. She would have happily kept on watching until all the dishes had washed themselves, but she was hit by a great yawn only halfway through the automated chore. Apparently watching people get banished from existence was tiring work.

Aunt Petunia placed a hand on her shoulder. "Go up to bed, dear."

Chloe nodded mutely, stifling a smaller yawn with her hand before shuffling to the stairs and then up to the hallway on the second floor of the house. As she walked past the door of Dudley's room, he pulled it open and tugged her lightly inside. She gave him a wide-eyed look, unsure of what this new Dudley might do. He certainly didn't look as if he were going to pick on her, like the old Dudley would have. All the same, she prepared herself for some kind of biting comment.

Instead, her cousin smiled at her and pulled her over to the corner. "I think we've time for a video game before bed."

He gave her an excited smile and handed her a joystick before taking a seat on the floor in front of his small television set. She sat next to him, no longer feeling quite as tired as she had been just minutes earlier. Even though they had lived together virtually all of their lives, she had never once been invited into Dudley's room for any reason, let alone to play with his expensive video game equipment. Not being a Dursley had done wonders for Dudley's personality.

They played until Aunt Petunia told them to get ready for bed. Chloe had just won another round, bringing her to a draw with Dudley. She suspected he had let her win so that they would be on even footing by the time they had to stop playing.

Days in the Dursley house were more cheerful after that than Chloe could ever remember them being. It wasn't even really the Dursley house anymore, for Aunt Petunia had taken back her maiden name of Evans and Dudley already thought that that had always been his name, for he had no recollection of his former father.

The coming weeks passed by quickly. Aunt Petunia was happier than she'd ever been, free of Vernon Dursley. Dudley was nothing like the ill-tempered boy he had been. Chloe had grown quite close to him in the month since his birthday.

Aunt Petunia had been telling them stories about her experiences going to a school for wizards called Hogwarts, as well as stories about Chloe's parents while they were in school. It seemed that Aunt Petunia hadn't really cared for James Potter, Chloe's father, but they had learned to get along for Chloe's mother's sake.

Aunt Petunia was two years older than her sister, so she had started her third year of school when Chloe's mother first started. They had both been in Gryffindor, one of the Hogwarts school houses. They had gotten along better than most other siblings at the school, at least according to Aunt Petunia's stories. Apparently they had grown apart slightly after Lily had met James Potter, but Petunia didn't begrudge her sister her romantic entanglement. She explained that she likely would have had a boyfriend herself back then except she had been almost painfully shy.

It was a week before Chloe's eleventh birthday. Aunt Petunia had just been telling them one of her school stories, about some of the pranks Chloe's father and his friends used to pull. Chloe heard the sound of the mail flap on the door. It was strange, as they had already received the post that day. Chloe went to investigate with some encouragement from Aunt Petunia, who had a knowing smile. There were two heavy parchment envelopes on the doormat, the one on top was addressed 'Mr. Dudley Evans,' the second 'Ms. Chloe Potter.'" Followed by the address of their home.

Chloe went back into the kitchen and sat down in the seat she'd vacated hardly a minute earlier. She handed Dudley his letter and placed hers on the table, examining it curiously.

"Ah, your Hogwarts letters. I was wondering what the hold up was with yours, Dudley. I suppose the spells I deactivated on your birthday were interfering. There must have been some left over magic floating around, but I expect it's cleared off now." Aunt Petunia looked between the two of them. "Well, go on then. Open them!"

Chloe and Dudley looked at each other for a moment before opening their letters by breaking the wax seal on the flap. There was more heavy parchment inside.

"Dear Ms. Potter," The letter began, as she supposed all letters addressed to her would, unless she got married someday. "We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

The letter went on to inform her about the start of term and also included a list of necessary equipment for first year students. Chloe read it all through and then read it a second time. She was really going to go to a magic school!

After Aunt Petunia had started talking about it, Chloe had thought it might be leading up to her being told that she would also be going to the school, like her mother before her. She hadn't been sure, though. After all, they had been living as muggles for years, and Chloe hadn't been sure if that was going to change even though Uncle Vernon was gone.

Dudley seemed pleased as well. "Do we really get to go, Mum?"

Aunt Petunia nodded. Chloe and Dudley grinned at each other. If anyone were to ask either of them, they would have said the two of them were friends. Chloe was happy that they wouldn't be separated for most of the year. The boy had become her only friend. It was ironic considering that he had been in part responsible for her not having any friends to begin with, as he had been quite a terrific bully. People thought befriending his cousin might make him go after them.

Chloe glanced again at the list of school supplies. "Aunt Petunia, where in the world do we get all of this stuff? It doesn't look like anything you could buy in a normal store, or even some of those new age shops..."

Aunt Petunia simply beamed at her. "You'll see."

That was the last Aunt Petunia said about it, no matter how much Chloe and Dudley begged her to explain. She just said that they would be going shopping on Chloe's birthday, to get their school supplies and a present for Chloe. Since seeing where witches and wizards shopped seemed like a rather exciting adventure, Chloe didn't complain a bit about having to think about school on her birthday.

Just after lunch on the last day of July, the three of them got into what was now Aunt Petunia's car and Aunt Petunia drove them to London. She parked the car on the side of a street. Chloe felt silly for feeling immediately disappointed when she didn't see a magical mall upon stepping out of the car. What she did see was a rundown pub. She also saw that the other people walking past it didn't seem to see it at all, like it was so rundown that it wasn't worth looking at. Aunt Petunia started toward the door of the pub. Chloe looked at Dudley, who shrugged. They both followed Aunt Petunia into the dimly lit interior of the building.

Aunt Petunia gave a polite nod to the man behind the bar, who returned the gesture. Other than that, nobody in the bar paid attention to them. They left through a door in the back of the room that took them to a small grass yard enclosed by a brick wall.

"You're going to like this." Aunt Petunia said, smilingly pulling her wand from her handbag and tapping it against a spot on the brick wall.