A/N: Back after a long break. Hope you enjoy this glance at the lives of some not very nice people!

Chapter 3: About that Cupboard

23 June 2020. 7:34 a.m.

His daughter was giving him the puppy eyes. "But Daddy!" she wailed. "You're supposed to be in bed! We were going to bring you breakfast!"

"You could pretend this table is a bed," Dudley said. He put his head down on the table and snored.

She and her brother both laughed, then wailed, "Noooo! Go back to bed! It's meant to be a surprise!"

Dudley flopped heavier on the table, letting his arm drop to his side. His children started pounding him. He pretended to awaken with a jerk of surprise. "Wot is this? When did my bed get so hard?"

"Get in BED, Dad, it's not FUNNY!"

Dudley staggered around the house imitating a cartoon version of a sleepwalker until his children managed to herd him into his bed.

August 1997. Just after breakfast.

"It was cozy," Petunia was saying, with that little sniff she let out when upset. "He loved it. Always kept crawling into it and giggling to hide. And he hadn't slept there for years, anyway."

"Quite right," Vernon nodded, vigorously. His fingers were twitching, which Dudley knew from playing poker with Dad and Aunt Marge was one of Dad's many tells.

"The boy loved that cupboard," he went on. "Practically begged to sleep in it." His fingers twitched some more.

Dudley always had a harder time reading Mum. She had only been willing to play poker once every few years or so, because she hated all the peanut shells and dust that spilled on the table, and the way Aunt Marge let her chips get a bit slipshod, and of course, Ripper's drool. But when she played, Mum tended to win, raking in chips that she quickly stacked into neatly arranged piles.

Perhaps, thought Dudley, that's the real reason Mum didn't play – maybe Aunt Marge and Dad didn't like being shown up.

Aunt Marge always let on that she thought Mum a bit weak and silly for her brother.

Mum would flinch when Ripper barked, and her voice got squeaky rather a lot.

But you never really knew with Mum.

There was a lot she'd managed to keep to herself over the years.

Whether she was holding a full house or high ace, or whether Harry had really slept in the cupboard because he just adored the way the light filtered through the slats – you could never quite tell with Mum.

Dad, on the other hand…

He was definitely lying.

Dudley tuned out the conversation between Hestia and his parents. It was about Harry's early childhood, which Dudley only vaguely remembered.

Dudley tried to remember his life in the early 80's, before things had got weird.

His memory filled with pictures of toys, his first Atari, the fun way his scissors gouged up his desk in school, that odd gummy feeling of paste between his fingers. The paste was interesting, because if you tried to get it off while it was wet, it made a huge mess, but if he let it dry, he could roll it off in little bits and scuff it into the carpet. What color was that carpet, anyway? Blue?

He wondered if after all this was done, if he should go back to the school and see if the same carpet was still there. Cheap bastards probably hadn't changed a thing.

"Dudley? DUDLEY?" Hestia's voice brought him back to earth.

Dudley looked up at her.

"Well?" she demanded, sounding rather angry.

This was all quite familiar to Dudley, as for most of his life, adults had been glaring at him expectantly, asking him to give answers to questions he hadn't heard.

As he had so many thousands of times before, Dudley bulged out his eyes and partially bit his lip. He shrugged in an attitude of helplessness and tried to shuffle behind his parents.

It had tended to work better when he was a kid.

"Dudley," Hestia persisted, "your cousin – Harry Potter, in case you've forgotten his name – apparently slept in a cupboard for much of his childhood."

She tapped angrily at the newspaper folded on the table.

His parents flinched and looked away from The Daily Prophet. They didn't like seeing weird stuff, like pictures that moved.

Dudley had been trying to get a copy of the paper all week. The pictures were the closest thing to television he could find.

At this point, he was so bored, he'd be happy to get a pig tail or a massive tongue again in exchange for 5-second, soundless television.

Dudley continued to goggle at Hestia.

The goggling usually worked. Many a teacher, headmaster, and counselor had given up trying to make Dudley talk and had started giving their own speeches when faced with Dudley's bulging eyes and blank stare.

The problem was, Dudley thought later, that all those other adults had limited time. They had other students to yell at, other meetings.

Hestia had ten more hours with the Dursleys before Dedalus would show up for his shift.

Time was not on Dudley's side.

The witch's cheeks were very pink, as they usually were after talking with his parents a few minutes.

Hestia picked up the paper and shoved it at Dudley.

"Read that!"

"Behind the Madness of Undesirable #1: Monstrous Muggles."

Dudley skipped over the tiny text and went straight for the photos. The moving photo for the front-page article showed wizards poking about Number 4, Privet Drive. But there were more, showing a bed crammed into the cupboard under the stairs, though it had been used for storage for years. Another photo showed a witch examining the discs from the food processor, with the caption "Instruments of Torture." Dudley snorted.

"To think, of those freaks invading our home!" Petunia complained.

"This was your plan all along, was it?" Vernon said. "Get us out of the way, waltz in, make up a pack of lies, confiscate our property."

"Don't try to change the subject," Hestia said. "Yes – the Death Eaters have taken over everything. We knew your home would be vulnerable as soon as Harry turned 17 and outgrew the blood wards – that's why you're here in the first place. If you'd have stayed..."

"Ruddy things, blood wards," said Vernon. "Make no sense at all. If the boy's mother died to protect him, and set them going in the first place, then why shouldn't they keep going forever? She must have done it wrong. Sloppy, I call it, but you could see that about her first thing. No thought for detail. Hair blowing everywhere, chipped nails - no wonder she bungled the ward thingies."

Hestia pulled out her wand. "You will keep your mouth shut, Vernon, or I will shut it for you."

Vernon harrumphed a bit and rolled his eyes. He was much less scared of Hestia than he'd used to be.

"Dudley, have you finished reading that story yet?" she asked.

"Yeah," he lied.

"Well? You know, we've been together for some time now, and I haven't once heard any of you express concern about Harry, or how he might be doing. How did you treat him, anyway? And don't you see that it was all terribly wrong?"

Petunia sniffed. "We took him in. We saved his life. Which is more than I can say for you. And as for the cupboard, as I said – it was a cozy place for a small boy to sleep. When he outgrew it, he had a perfectly nice room upstairs."

"With the cat flap? That room? And what about those bars on the windows?" Hestia was outraged.

Dudley wasn't sure what the witch wanted from them. Harry had been … weird. Very weird. He'd gone from being the cousin it was fun to hunt and beat up to something else entirely. Ever since those owls had started pestering them with letters, Dad had done lots of mad things to try to keep their family normal. Harry had made a cake float in the air and smash everywhere, for no reason. He'd hurt Dad's business. Of course, he'd have to be locked in his room, after something like that.

"And how many orphans have you raised, hmmm?" Vernon yelled. "You lot dump him on the doorstep with a note, don't come round for years, make wild threats at a train station, and then – when he's finally grown – break into the house for a look round. If that's your attempt at Child Services, you're even worse at that than you are at dressing sensibly. And where do you get off acting so concerned about child welfare, after all the attacks you lot have set on Dudley?"

Mum shook her head at Dad with a warning look.

Hestia waved her wand, and Vernon's voice just stopped. Little "ack-ack" sounds came from his throat, and his lips moved, but he couldn't speak. He slammed the table with his fist and ripped the paper from Dudley's grasp. He crumpled and tore the paper.

Hestia fixed it and levitated it over to the counter.

"I'm giving you three detention," she said. "You can write an essay each, explaining your treatment of Harry over the years and why it was wrong."

She conjured parchment, little pots of ink, and feathers.

Mum shuddered.

Dudley dunked his feather into the inkpot. He wrote "Hitting other ki—"

The feather was out of ink already. He dunked it again. "—ds is wrong beca—"

This was going to take forever.

Dudley knew all that he wanted to write down. That part was easy. With the number of times he'd been punished at Smelting's for bullying, he'd gotten very good at explaining why hitting, attacking, dunking, grabbing, tripping, kicking, and knocking down other children was wrong. It hurt them. It scared them. It distracted them from their studies.

The feather thing was going to take forever, though. Frustrated, Dudley dunked it again. When he tapped it down onto the page, a massive puddle of ink spattered out and got all over his fingers.

"May I fetch a pen, please?" he asked Hestia. He showed her the feather. The tip was split and the feather itself was splintered by his grip.

"You can use a quill, like everyone at Hogwarts does. That's how detentions work." She repaired the feather. "Use a lighter grip. Happy writing, everyone. I'll check back in an hour."

An hour later, both Dudley and Petunia had written a brief page. She'd taken well to the quill-and-ink and had written steadily the entire time. Dudley's page was full of blots and smears.

Dudley had, at first, enjoyed reminiscing about happier times spent Harry Hunting with Piers. He wondered what Piers was up to now. But as he'd written his halting, nondescript essay, he'd felt more and more glum. Ashamed, even. Harry had always been that weird kid he'd had living underfoot (literally and figuratively), and now he looked back with regret that they couldn't have been better friends.

Magic, under Hestia and Dedalus' roof, was interesting and exciting. Beautiful, even.

Dudley remembered the only time he'd seen Harry actually use his wand. The silvery stag had rocketed out into the oppressive darkness, the darkness that had pressed in on Dudley and set him shivering, like falling into a frozen-over lake. He hadn't been able to see what was after them, but he'd felt hunted. He and Harry had been fighting just before the chill and dark set in, so of course he'd blamed Harry for what he thought was yet another weird attack. He'd felt hopeless, pointless, and forgotten. Half-heard snatches of conversations flitted over his brain, memories of teachers, coaches, and even his own parents commiserating about how he was failing at… well… everything.

It was only much, much later, that he'd been able to learn from Mrs. Figg what Harry had done to save them both.

Dudley didn't even know how to start on all that, but he'd written, "When we got attacked by dementors, Harry saved us, but I blamed him and got him in trouble with Dad." This phrase was wedged into a few stock phrases about the wrongness of bullying. Still, it was something Dudley wished he could take back.

Dad, meanwhile, had written nothing. He'd sat with his arms crossed, muttering about "ruddy abductors" the whole time.

When Hestia returned, she wasn't pleased. "This wouldn't pass muster for a Third Year essay at Hogwarts," she told Dudley. "And as for yours, Petunia, it's mostly a list of complaints."

"Valid complaints," Petunia sniffed. "Not that I expect you to care. But – I think a grown man attacking Dudders when he was just a kid is despicable. We had to get that pig tail removed on our own. Poisoning him with magic candy so his tongue swelled up. Breaking up our living room. Disrupting our lives. Threats. Violence. Attacking Diddykins with dementors – he ought to have had better protection. Sticking us in this hole with no modern amenities. If you ask me, you lot have no leg to stand on when it comes to looking out for children's best interests."

Hestia rolled her eyes. "Any competent wizard could have had that tail off in a second. You were just too stubborn to ask Dumbledore for help. And as for the other stuff – I heard about some of that from Molly Weasley. Arthur set things to rights just fine. The dementors were sent by one of our enemies, and Harry took care of it. That's nothing to do with how you treated your nephew his whole life!"

"You have your rules, we have ours," Petunia said, crossing her arms. "You think it's fine to skulk about and set spies on us and accost us however you want, as long as someone fixes the spell a few moments later. We thought it was fine to keep my sister's child from disrupting our lives as little as possible. We kept him alive, which is more than you lot have ever managed to do."

"So you think there was no problem, do you?" Hestia asked.

Vernon just snorted.

"Fine." Hestia waved her wand at the wall. Three small doors appeared under the now-enlarged staircase. "Then you'll have no objection to sleeping in cupboards yourself tonight."

"Our cupboard was REAL!" Vernon protested. "Those things'll collapse in on us the second we step inside. Trapped in a wall, that's the plan, eh?"

He stood up. "I've had enough of this! You say we're here to protect us, that Lord Voldy-thing is out to get us, and we haven't even seen proof of this war! You could be printing out that paper yourselves. No television – no radio – no outside news that you lot don't bring in. I don't believe a word of it!"

He flung open the front door and stomped outside.

Petunia and Dudley sighed. He'd done this before. Dozens of times a week. Morning, evening, night. When he thought their captors were sleeping. It didn't matter. Dad would stomp away, then he'd come back again, confused and thinking he'd forgotten something. His confusion would last around twenty minutes or so, and then something else would set him off.

"We're not sleeping in those things," Petunia said. She rose and started working on the breakfast dishes.

Hestia was red-faced. She blasted one of the plates out of Petunia's hand. Petunia squeaked and dove under the counter, cowering.

Dudley watched Hestia with interest. She reminded him somewhat of his fourth form geography teacher – someone who cared very much, and wanted the students to care too, and got hilariously flustered when they cared more about throwing paper and scratching up the desks. She'd had a fit one day when student after student had given wildly stupid answers about the capitals of European countries. She hadn't come back after the summer.

"Get in the cupboard! NOW!" the witch screamed.

"I WON'T!" Petunia shouted. "Stop it!"

"Petrificus Totalis!"

Petunia's legs locked together in their crouched form. Her arms locked into place around her head, and she fell on her side.

Breathing heavily, Hestia levitated Petunia's body across the room and into one of the cupboards. Then she turned on Dudley. "Are you going to get in the cupboard yourself, or do I need to make you?"

He blew out a puff of air and walked away from the table. Stooping down to see into the cupboard on the right, he saw it held a four-poster bed. Whatever wizard had faked up Harry's cupboard for the paper had crammed in a much larger bed than he'd ever had. Dudley pressed on the mattress. Comfy.

He stooped through the doorway and crawled up onto the bed. Hestia slammed the door and locked it behind him.

The cupboard ceiling was high enough that Dudley could sit up on the bed. He leaned against the wall and pondered what he should do next. The bed took up most of the room, but…

He wriggled off onto the small space between the bed and the door, then wedged the mattress up so it leaned against the wall. There was no boxspring, just a simple mattress on a wooden frame. Dudley had no idea how a simple wand gesture could have created three rooms along with furniture and blankets. He'd seen Hestia and Dedalus do plenty of magic, but the appearance of objects was still the most mind-boggling. The bed slats weren't bolted down, so Dudley wiggled enough of them free that he could climb through the bed frame onto the floor.

There was enough room that way for him to do pushups.

Pushups.

Sit-ups.

Knee-lifts.

He worked through his routine, puffing into a sweat.

He'd prefer to be doing his morning workout in the little gym Dedalus had whipped up for him, but this space worked. It was better than what Harry'd had, anyway.

He felt a pang of pity for the little boy stuck in the cupboard. Good thing Harry'd eventually gotten that other bedroom.

It was the first time Dudley had felt anything other than resentment and outrage that his second bedroom had been confiscated.