Dudley Dursley smiles contentedly as he turns his car into the quiet street where he lives. It is a perfect evening, he had been able to finish work early and the spring sun has not yet set but is falling on flowering daffodils and primroses in the neat front gardens in front of the neat houses. The whole street is an affluent British suburban street where every house radiated prosperity, order and absolute normality and Dudley Dursley wants it to be exactly that way.

With a sense of pride, he turns into the garage belonging to his house. He had been living here with his family for 3 years. Overall, life had been good to Dudley. After that exciting year in hiding, Dudley Dursley had decided he never wanted to feel so helpless again and had joined the army against his mother's wishes. To his own surprise, he not only liked it there, he realised he was developing ambition. Over the years, Major Dursley had been promoted again and again. He had completed a number of deployments abroad, had been decorated and had earned the respect of both the lower ranks and his superiors. Then, after the birth of twins four years ago, he had spoken to his career advisors and had been offered a position as a military academy instructor. This meant that for the first time he was able to give his wife and their now four daughters a permanent home.

Today, however, he would have to have a word with his wife, because there is something that could threaten his perfectly harmonious family, namely his eldest daughter Poppy. A conversation that he had been dreading for years and had always postponed. But now Poppy's eleventh birthday is coming up and things need to be spoken.

The evening was turbulent as usual in a house with four children and a dog, but at last all the children were in bed or at least in their room, the dog had been walked and was also asleep. Now Dudley can take time for his wife. He turns to her "Melody please sit with me, I need to talk to you." His wife, still busy with the last of the washing up, turns to him and looks unusually pale and tense. Nervously, she brushes her hair out of her face." Me too, but you start." She carefully places the rinsed pan on the draining rack and then joins her husband sitting on the sofa.

"I need to talk to you about magic," Dudley begins awkwardly. "Magic?" asks Mrs Dursly in an unnaturally squeaky voice, but before she can say more, her husband cuts her off. "I know it all sounds like nonsense now, but magic really does exist. My aunt and cousin are wizards - that's what these people call themselves. There are lots of them, they have their own whole government and shops, sports, schools and everything. And I think our Poppy is one of those too." The words had just bubbled out of Dudley in his effort to get it all over with quickly.

His wife stares at him in surprise for a moment and then puts her hand on his knee. To his not small astonishment, she even smiles. "I know, darling. I probably even know more than you. My family are wizards. But I don't have an ounce of magical talent - a squib is what wizards call someone like that - and it's been a terrible shame for my parents. You have to know, wizards put a lot of importance on lineage and bloodlines and there are just old, powerful families like mine. My parents were so disappointed in me, they sent me to a boarding school for non-magical children and never wanted to see me again. That's why I always told you that my parents were dead and I never talked about magic. I didn't want you to think I was a freak who believed in unicorns. But all these years, I was afraid that Poppy could work magic. There were too many unexplained accidents when she got upset."

Now Dudley smiles too and pulls Melody into a hug. "There we have been lying to each other for 12 years instead of sharing our worries about Poppy. Honey, we should never keep secrets from each other from now on." Then he becomes more serious again. "My cousin got a letter on his eleventh birthday telling him to go to a magic school. I don't know if that's the custom, but what do we do when Poppy gets a letter like that?"

"Yes, the Hogwarts letter. In wizarding families, it's a big celebration day and everyone is very proud of the child. That's why our eleventh birthday is always something great. At least when you get the letter..." she fell silent, remembering that horrible day. Of her mother's ice-cold voice calling her a deviant loser, of her father shouting that such a person had no place in his house, of the sneers of her sisters Daphne and Astoria, of the shame she herself felt.

Dudley senses her tension and strokes her back. "It'll be fine, we have each other and we'll be fine" Then he comes up with the question that is burning him the most. "Should we really send Poppy there? Is it safe then? My aunt and her husband were killed by an evil wizard and when I was 17 there was a terrible war and when we were younger my cousin's friends put an evil spell on me. I don't want anything to happen to my princess."
"I don't know, But I think it would be worse for Poppy if she keeps going through the world like this without knowing what she is and all these bizarre accidents keep happening to her. I think she needs to learn how to deal with that."
"But how do you do that? What do you have to do? Can you ask someone?" "No" Melody almost shouted, "I don't want anything to do with my family! They'd even still look down on our daughter because she's not from one of the pure-blooded old wizarding families! I don't even want Poppy to know who she's related to. These people have lost every right to our wonderful daughter. But what about your cousin?"

Guiltily, Dudley slams his eyes down. "I'd rather not ask him for help. See, my parents treated him very badly because they hated his magic. I let myself be caught up in it and teased and bullied him wherever I could as a child. Today I'm ashamed of it, but I don't want to ask him for help. Besides, I wouldn't even know where to find him." All right, the last argument sounds lame even to him, but he would rather bite off his tongue than ask Harry, of all people, for help.

Understanding, Melody nods. "Well, maybe nothing will happen and we just imagined it because we were so worried that Poppy would be able to do magic and everything would stay normal..."
"Yes" echoes Dudly "perfectly normal."

And they both know it's not going to happen like that.