SIXTEEN YEARS LATER

Dudley Dursley returned home from work at the architecture firm to his house on Howard Lane. The house was red brick with yellow shutters and a door; a squat, one story affair that he loved dearly, not because of what it looked like, but because of who was inside.

"DAAADDD's home!" The delighted yells of Dudley's children greeted him at the door and he stumbled and laughed as their small bodies slammed into him.

"Hey boys, how was your day?" he set down his briefcase and then turned around to hoist his two sons up, one over each shoulder. Then he carried them into the living room and plopped them on the sofa. Wes immediately jumped up for another go but Art, the elder of the brothers, stayed seated staring at his knees.

Dudley frowned at this rather abnormal behavior and then threw Wes over his shoulder again before wandering into the kitchen. "Sarah, my love!" He greeted his beautiful wife. He set Wes down and sent him scampering before walking the rest of the way to Sarah and kissing her enthusiastically. "How was your day?"

"Your son set his teacher's wig on fire." Sarah gave him the look, the you-know-what-this-means look, and then turned back to the stove to stir the spaghetti.

Dudley lowered himself into a kitchen chair. "Art set Mrs. Gerber's wig on fire?" He rubbed a hand across his face, trying to process that.

"Not that anyone saw him do it, of course, but he confessed immediately." Sarah sighed and swung her long blonde ponytail over her shoulder. "They didn't even ask him if he did it, the school councilor came in to ask if anyone wanted to talk about what happened and Art started crying and saying he didn't mean to." She pressed her lips into a line and continued to cook supper. She loved all her children with all her heart, but sometimes she wished she hadn't brought Arthur up to be so honest.

"So they don't think he did it?"

Sarah shook her head. "No, they think it was a freak accident. The councilor did suggest that we send him to a child specialist to see if they can figure out why he's confessing to all these things that he didn't do."

Dudley ran a hand through his hair. "Arthur, son, could you come in here?"

Both Art and Wes came to the kitchen, Art trudging and Wes dancing around, pleased that his older brother was finally in trouble for something.

"Wes, why don't you go play in your room while you father and I talk to Art. Play quietly though, Hilly's still asleep!" Wes scowled at his mother, but headed towards his room.

Sarah turned the stove down and went to sit at the table by Dudley, pulling her oldest son into her lap while she did so. "Art, kid, I don't know what to say."

"Why don't you tell us what happened Arty." Dudley kept his voice quiet, and made sure to look his son in the eye, letting him know he wasn't mad.

Arthur snuggled into his mother's embrace, "I didn't mean to," his voice was miserable and small, "She was being really strict with all these rules about how we couldn't do this and we weren't supposed to do that. It's just a math problem Dad! I don't understand why I got a zero on my homework if all of my answers were right! And she wouldn't explain why we had to do things her way and so I got really really mad and…" he gulped a bit and then his voice became almost inaudible. "her wig caught on fire. And I'm really really sorry."

Dudley took in a deep breath of air, readying himself to tackle the problem, but Sarah beat him to it.

"Art, honey, sometimes life is epically unfair. Sometimes we have really strict teachers who make up rules that don't make any sense to us. But you know what?" She squeezed Art extra hard, "School is like a game. You have to follow all the rules and you have to do all the work. I know that sometimes it stinks, and you don't want to, but for now, kid, you just have to play the game." She looked at Dudley, her eyes telling him that it was his turn.

Dudley did not know what to say. So he said the first thing that came to mind. "Arthur, son, sometimes things happen that seem like they're our fault, but they really aren't. It's not your fault that Mrs. Gerber's wig caught on fire. Now I'm going to tell you something completely contradictory to everything you've ever heard before." Art perked up a bit, leaning forward like he was about to be let in on a really big secret. "The next time something like this happens, please don't tell your teacher or councilor that it was you. If you didn't actually physically do it, don't admit to it, okay son?"

Sarah rolled her eyes. She sometimes had no idea how their children had managed to survive past infancy.

Dudley shrugged. All in all, he thought they we're doing this parent thing really well.

(((RAMONAinBLUE)))

Later that night, after the children were finally all asleep and Sarah had gone to bed, Dudley found himself unable to fall asleep.

So instead he sat at the kitchen table with a cup of good, strong coffee, and thought.

Dudley thought about his life, how perfect it all seemed, and how lucky he was. He had a job as a partner at an architecture firm as an engineer, and with his job he was able to provide for his wife and children. Sarah, beautiful girl that she was, had agreed to marry him and together they had lived through ups and downs, somehow managing to stay madly in love.

Then Dudley thought about his four children, each one of them dear, and none of them remotely perfect.

His youngest daughter, Helena (or as she had been affectionately nick-named, Hilly) was almost two, and very loving. She loved hugging and laughing and had the most charming smile. She was an unexpected happiness, as Sarah had said, and Dudley had agreed.

Next oldest was Wes, and at eight he was caught between hero worship of his father and hero worship of his brother. He had the always happy attitude of a kid who knew that he was loved, would never go hungry, and would always have friends. He also had the boundless energy that Dudley was beginning to recognize as a trait that ran through all his children.

Then there was Arthur. Sometimes Dudley Dursley was perplexed by his oldest son Arthur. Arthur was quiet, brilliant, and not a trouble maker. And he had a habit of confessing to misdeeds that logically it was impossible for him to have committed. One didn't even have to ask about why exactly there was a kitchen chair on the roof or who had dyed the dog green, Art simply approached his parents and apologized. Sometimes Dudley wondered to himself if it was possible to raise a child that was too honest.

This behavior also confused him because it was the exact opposite of how his oldest daughter, Ramona acted. Granted Dudley and Sarah had been much younger and less experienced when they were bringing up Ramona.

Ramona was wild. Sometimes Dudley tried to think of it as a bad trait, one that had to be curbed, but it the end he couldn't. Ramona's wildness wasn't really a bad thing, though it wasn't necessarily a good thing. It just was. The sky is blue, the grass is green, and Ramona is Wild.

(Sarah's mother had joked that Ramona was a flower child, born to float freely and protest for human rights and join the Peace Corps, and Dudley's mother agreed.)

Unlike Arthur, getting Ramona to admit to her misdeeds had been like pulling teeth. And Ramona's misdeeds were very obviously her own, one didn't have to ask how she had died her baby-sitters skin blue, or how exactly she had managed to end up dangling upside down by a sock from the ceiling fan. One simply found Ramona sporting a shit-eating grin in close proximity to a disaster.

(She was, as Sarah's father had cheerfully stated when he found Ramona switching book jackets at the library, a hell-raiser. Dudley's father agreed.)

From the moment she could walk, Ramona ran. From the moment she could talk, she babbled incessantly, and when she wasn't talking she was scheming. She argued until her opponent caved in or got so confused they began arguing her point without meaning to.

Sarah was at her wits end, and was about to give up trying to control her entirely, when something amazing happened.

Ramona found music.

Ramona found music and for once she wasn't babbling, she was listening. Carefully. And when she was talking she was asking questions. Suddenly her insatiable need for trouble was turned into an insatiable need for music. More accurately it morphed into an insatiable need for piano music. And then it became a need to master the piano.

Dudley and Sarah Dursley were astounded when they listened to their seven year old daughter play in her first recital. Dudley himself was not musical, had never been musical. Sarah swore up and down that the year she had spent in the elementary school band had been the worst of her life. And yet Ramona, trouble maker, hellion, and full of boundless energy, was (as the piano teacher had tearfully exclaimed) a piano prodigy.

After that the trouble making seemed to fade away. Ramona still caused chaos, but the chaos itself was less destructive than it once had been. Instead of mixing all of the breakfast cereal together, Ramona wore mismatched socks. Instead of clipping out certain specific words from every page of every newspaper, Ramona painted her room with a myriad of violently clashing colors.

When Ramona turned eleven, her passion for playing piano turned into an outright goal, one that shone through in her eyes at all times. I, Ramona announced, am going to be a concert pianist. And that was that. With one sentence Ramona had yet again completely changed the world.

Dudley sighed. His coffee had turned cold, and despite its strength, was failing to keep him awake.

"Dudley?" He turned around to see Sarah standing in the kitchen in a very large tee-shirt that she wore as pajamas, her hair tossed and slept on, her eyes sleepy. She walked over to him and situated herself on his lap, laying her head on his shoulder. "Dudley, you know what we have to do now, right?" She was speaking, of course, about the Arthur situation.

He nodded.

"I know you wanted to wait, to be one hundred percent sure, but babe, I don't think we're going to get surer than this. It's time to write your cousin. If there's anything we can be doing to help and support Arty, then I want to do it." Sarah looked at him intently and again Dudley nodded.

"I'll write Harry in the morning then, shall I?"

"That would be good. Oh, and Ramona called. She says, and I quote, don't believe anything the dean of students tells you, Gideon and I were not caught having sex, we were researching the history of the ritualistic, sacrificial killing of humans." Sarah chuckled. "Whatever that means. Have you gotten an email from the school administration lately?"

"Only that her scholarship was being extended to cover her text books. Oh, and that she's not allowed to go to Prom. Do you think that has something to do with whatever she and that boy were caught not doing?" Dudley Dursley had long since stopped worrying about the emails that he received from the administration of his daughter's boarding school.

"Probably." Sarah sighed. She had been reluctant at first when Ramona announced that she wanted to attend a high school for the arts, and oh, it was in Montana. But at the academy Ramona had found true friends and a niche to fit herself into that let her be as wild and passionate as she wanted. And Sarah had to admit, her exuberant oldest daughter seemed more calm and responsible these days. She looked back to her husband, noticing that he looked exhausted. "Okay. Let's go to bed. In the morning you'll write cousin Harry, and then we'll decide how to proceed from there."

"Of course, love."

Dudley began composing his letter to Harry, the cousin he hadn't seen in person in nineteen years, almost immediately.

Dear Harry,

I write bearing odd news. The world is a strange place, and my wife and I find ourselves in need of your assistance. Our son, Arthur, looks like he's going to be a great whopping wizard….