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Dudley Dursley clears his throat as he stands in front of the sprawling home in the middle of nowhere, fist poised just inches from the door as if deciding whether to knock or not.
His youngest and only daughter, Delilah, stands stock still by his side, her usually inquisitive nature silenced by the fear that comes with meeting relatives for the first time. Despite the fact that she had watched her cousins grow up in strange, moving pictures attached to Christmas cards, she had never met them before, and neither had her father. But today was the day on which she’d find herself in possession of three sort of new cousins, two older boys and a girl her very own age, and she was quite excited.
Although, Dudley thinks, it may just be the excitement of being outside after a five and a half hour drive. They’d been in the car since the morning, trying to make tea time without being significantly delayed, and thanks to Dudley’s meticulous nature, which had suddenly made itself known after they’d left Number Four after his seventeenth birthday, they’d arrived with time to spare. His mother, Petunia, had sent them on their way with sandwiches and Dudley had shoved one in his mouth and eaten it without using his hands just to prompt a laugh from his daughter. The irony of the pig tail gifted to him at eleven strikes him in fits and starts, but never more than that moment.
“Delilah, dearest, you’re making your shoelaces dance.” Dudley remarks softly, amused as always by his daughter’s little displays of magic. It was a nervous energy kind of thing, he’d realized, something you could only hope to control occasionally. He’d been unbearably rude to Harry as a child, but, as an adult, Harry had understood his fumbling attempt at an explanation. He’d written a panicked letter to Harry in the middle of June this year, when Del had been sent home from school for turning her teacher’s toupee bright pink. It becomes entirely different if it’s your own child, versus a relative who you were not close with by any metric, and Harry had invited them over for tea in a heartbeat.
“Daddy…” Delilah sighs before skipping forward and knocking at the door, the ends of her shoelaces still dancing merrily. “Uncle Harry seems nice. No need to worry.”
“You’re right, Del.” Dudley clears his throat loudly, steeling himself. “Your good old dad could beat just about anyone in a fight, yeah?”
“Not anyone.” She shrugs, all the flippancy of adolescence already having taken full root at eleven. Dudley often found himself puzzled by this, but he’d worked out that he’d been quite the spoiled brat as well, so it was likely his own fault for indulging her so often. She was his only daughter, after all, and she’d gotten most of what she’d wanted without question. “But most people, sure.”
A tall woman with bushy brown hair tied into a ponytail opens the door a few seconds later, looking them both over inquisitively. “Are you here to see Harry?”
“Dudley Dursley.” He introduces himself, stretching his hand out in greeting, and the lady gasps in recognition. Dudley frowns, searching his memory, because he could have sworn that Harry’s wife had been a redhead with ridiculous amounts of freckles. She seems to pick up on this question, and immediately introduces herself.
“I should have known you from the photographs! You’re Harry’s cousin, and that must be the daughter he mentioned!” She chuckles. “I’m Hermione Granger, his sister-in-law. Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
Two teenagers, whooping loudly, run past right behind her. The boy, the taller of the two, stops in his tracks upon seeing Dudley, fixing him with green eyes that Dudley remembers from his own childhood. This boy is the very image of his cousin at thirteen, stick thin build and all, and the voice that issues from his mouth when the boy begins to speak only cements the fact that this boy could be no one’s but Harry’s.
“You must be Uncle Dudley, then.” He says, measured and calm, before offering his hand to shake. “I’m Remus. The middle one.”
Dudley shakes it, wondering how this level of gravity could have come from a boy that was screaming wildly just seconds before, but chalks it up to adolescence again, as he’d been much the same way when at Smeltings. Harry had said that Remus was quite the dramatic artist type for throwing a fit over being grounded for two weeks about something involving a “charmed Bludger”, and Dudley wonders if that is because Harry had never quite been a normal teenage boy himself. Dudley remembers throwing plenty of tantrums over things ranging from the size of his grapefruit section to the number of birthday gifts he’d gotten, at that age.
“Must be odd”, Remus pipes up, “to be called Uncle Dudley. I don’t imagine you get that a lot.” He frowns just slightly, looking exactly like Harry had as a child, and Dudley chuckles despite himself.
“No, I don’t.” Dudley shakes his head, and Remus grins. “That would be reserved for you and your siblings, I guess.”
“They’ll be about somewhere.” Remus waves a hand carelessly toward the sitting room. “Dad should pop up momentarily.”
The girl, a redhead who has not spoken up until now, resembles both Hermione and that redheaded boy in the pictures Harry used to bring home more and more as Dudley considers her features. Ron, he recalls, from his cousin’s letters. That’s her father’s name. Apparently, the one Harry had thought Dudley would get on with best, considering their common interest in beer, rugby and law enforcement. He wonders if Harry finds it ironic, that Dudley now assists the police in the care and placement of abused children, after years of making his life a living hell, but judging by his cousin’s enthusiastic reply when he’d first explained his career, he supposes Harry holds little against him.
The girl, whose name he can’t recall, and Remus are both wearing scarlet shirts, emblazoned with golden lions, and Dudley recognizes them as Harry’s house colors, from the few times he’d snuck into Harry’s room as a kid, wanting to see what made him special. Gryffindor, he remembers vaguely. Quite a funny name, but after all, wizards did many things oddly.
“You’re Delilah, right? Remus' cousin?” She asks, stepping up to Delilah, whose shoelaces drop suddenly. She catches sight of their intricate dance before it stops and grins. “And you’re magic, too! Brilliant! So are we!”
“Introduce yourself…” Hermione chides, before going off to find Harry.
“I’m Rose.” She says, motioning for Delilah to follow as she and Remus run up the stairs. “Come along! We’ll find you Lily and Hugo, they’re about your age.”
“Wicked!” Delilah slaps her hand over her mouth, sheepishly looking up at Dudley, who had asked that she be as polite and ladylike as possible. “I mean, uh—“
“Go off and play.” Dudley smiles, waving his hand. “Would do you good, to find out how these types of kids work.”
“Brilliant!” Delilah is chasing the two older children up the stairs before he can formulate a response, but Harry runs in, closely followed by the lady Dudley remembers from the Christmas cards. She has Remus' nose, he notes, or rather, he has hers. This must be Ginny, his cousin’s wife.
“Harry, Ginny, pleased to meet you.” He offers his best smile, suddenly nervous, and Harry claps him on the back.
“None of that, we’re family here.” Harry grins, a fleeting image of what he must have been like at school evident, despite the fact that his once vibrantly black hair is graying at the temples. It’s the circular glasses, Dudley muses, which make him look like an overgrown school boy despite the fact that Harry, just like Dudley, is nearly forty now. “How’ve you been? How’s… Marcella, right?”
“Yes, Marcella.” Dudley nods. “She’s fine. She and the boys are out shopping for school today.” He lets his chest puff out a bit, because his children are his pride and joy. “Oldest is nearly done with Smeltings and the younger one’s eager to leave.”
“What’re their names?” Harry grins sheepishly, scratching the back of his head as he’d often done when he was nervous, back in days that seem like eons ago, now. “Girl’s Delilah, I know that one, but…”
Dudley doesn’t take it personally, seeing as he hadn’t remembered much of Harry’s children, save that two of the three, the oldest and youngest, were named for Dudley’s maternal aunt and uncle, who he barely remembered at all. His mum had hidden all the pictures of them after they’d died and Harry had come to live with her, only finding them to show Dudley after his father’s passing and Delilah’s first signs of magic.
“David and Dorian.” Dudley says proudly, and Ginny raises an eyebrow.
“Fan of D names?” She asks, and he blinks owlishly, never having considered that before. “David, Dorian and Delilah. Not the kind of thing that happens by accident.”
“Except it did.” Harry chuckles as Dudley speaks. “Magic, almost.”
“Could be.” Ginny offers a grudging smile, and Dudley can tell by the look in her eyes that Harry has told her everything about their childhood together. She’s hesitant to like him on that count, and Dudley agrees. He likely wouldn’t have had a single word with himself as an adult, if he’d known himself as a child. “She’s off with Remus and Rosie, I’d assume. They tend to suck others into their games.”
“Yes, she is. I was surprised to see her take to him that quick, honestly. Her brothers are a fair bit older than her and they don’t get along much.” Ginny sighs and he knows they have a common point there. “Dave and Dory are very much into football and rugby and Delilah… isn’t.”
“That’s us as well, except it’s the first one that would rather sit the match out.” Harry sighs, shaking his head as if he doesn’t know what he did wrong. Dudley chuckles, knowing the feeling of wondering how your child could do anything but share your interests well, and offers an affable smile when Harry looks up. “Although it’s Quidditch here, rather than football.”
“You played, didn’t you?” Dudley asks, vaguely remembering a broom that Harry always kept leaning precariously against the bedside table. He’d left a tub of broom polish on his table one year and Dudley had sniffed it experimentally. It smelled like wood, unsurprisingly, and he’d capped the bottle tightly and never thought about it again. “When you were at school?”
“I did, yes.” Harry examines him for a second, disbelieving, and Dudley imagines that this is how he looks at the criminals he chases down for a living. But he is long used to that, having survived years with Vernon and Petunia Dursley as parents, and grimly faces his cousin down until Harry relents. “How did you remember?”
“I noticed a lot more than people gave me credit for.” Dudley says, and it ends up vaguely bitter in a way he didn’t mean it to be. Harry looks as if he is far away, for a second, and Ginny shakes his shoulder quickly to bring him back to attention. They have been in a war, Dudley remembers, and the past is harder for them than others. “But enough of the past.”
“How’s your mum?” Harry asks, grateful for the topic change, and Dudley shrugs.
Petunia Evans, who had gone back to her maiden name after the death of her husband, had never quite adjusted to living on her own as he’d hoped. They had sold Number Four a few days short of six months after his father had passed away, his mother being worryingly prone to nervously tiptoeing past the cupboard under the stairs as if there were someone still in residence there, and she’d packed all of her belongings into five cardboard boxes and a suitcase. Dudley remembers bringing at least fifteen boxes and half that many suitcases, when moving out for university, and wondered how she could have compartmentalized her long life into just a few boxes. Too many memories, he supposes. Some of them had to be left behind.
“Organizing my kitchen while I’m out, probably. Poor woman got driven stir crazy by grandkids. Wants her quiet, I suppose.” He shrugs again. Despite the good son Dudley claims to be, he doesn’t know his mother all too well. “She sends her best wishes. Would like to meet the children, if you’d like.”
“She did always like her quiet.” Harry says, carefully avoiding the invitation to introduce his children to their great-aunt, and Ginny coughs loudly to break the tension before offering Dudley a seat on one of the many armchairs and couches that litter the room.
The sitting room is painted a soothing shade of blue, but the various pieces of furniture that fill nearly every inch of it make no effort to match the décor. In fact, the aesthetic of the room seems to just be “mismatched soft things”. It’s comfortable, homey and perfect, Dudley thinks, nothing like the severely austere place that was Number Four, chock full of things you could not touch or smell or jump on. Growing up here must be a gift.
“Dad? Mum?” A voice Dudley doesn’t know calls from the upper floor, accompanied by loud, thundering footsteps down the staircase behind him. He turns to catch sight of a very familiar face, although Harry's green eyes were noticeably absent.
James, Dudley remembers, named for the uncle Dudley met only twice, both times as a vaguely beach ball shaped baby.
He remembers nothing but a warm smile and many pats on the head, if he thinks very hard about it, but the features he remembers seeing in the Polaroids from the attic exactly match the boy he sees now. The slightly crooked rectangular glasses, entirely buttoned up shirt and jeans all clearly match Harry’s descriptions of his solemn, nervous oldest son, as well as the man in the old, slightly creased pictures from the attic. Although, if his mother’s descriptions were to be believed, the elder James had hardly ever made an effort to appear respectable when Dudley’s grandparents hadn’t been present. “You said to be down a few minutes ago and—"
He stops as soon as he notices Dudley looking curiously over at him, his words dissolving into awkward stammering, and Dudley stretches out a hand in greeting.
“Nice to meet you, James.”
James looks surprised that Dudley would remember his name at all, but graciously accepts the offered handshake. He practically vibrates with nervous energy, just like his father had at that age, and Dudley smiles to himself as he internally quips that maybe that’s why Harry’s hair is always standing on end. “Nice to meet you too, sir.”
“No need for all that sir nonsense.” Dudley shakes his head, but James doesn’t relax at all. He remembers Harry at sixteen, stretched thin by problems he couldn’t even begin to imagine, and easily equates James’ tendency to survey his surroundings as if expecting something to jump out and eat him to problems he wouldn’t understand. “I’m your uncle, not some recruiter.”
“I suppose so, s—, um, sorry.” James smiles, timid and cautious, and Dudley nods, thankful that he’s gotten the boy to relax at least slightly. James chooses the end of the couch that Ginny is sitting at, balancing himself precariously on the armrest, and she pats her son’s knee. He’s much like David, Dudley thinks. Very much his mother’s boy despite looking overwhelmingly like his father.
“So, Delilah’s off to Hogwarts this year.” Harry begins, fingers tapping a rhythm absently against the armrest of the brown, threadbare couch he’d chosen to sit in, directly opposite the cushy orange armchair Dudley is in. “You’ll have an empty house for the first time in a while.”
“As will you.” Dudley grins slightly. “Feeling old yet, Potter?”
“Somehow, I get the feeling I’ll be a lot more gray after this term.” Harry sighs ruefully. “What’s she like?”
“Quite the dreaming sort, which is why she’s no good at sports or games.” Dudley says, thankful for the opportunity to talk about a familiar topic. “First sign of magic was making her shoelaces dance. She does it a lot, when she’s nervous.”
“She’ll get on well with James, then, at least.” Ginny says, nudging her son’s arm, before he stands up. “Lily might be a little scary at first, but thankfully she’s here on a Hugo day.”
“My nephew.” Harry clarifies as Dudley nods. “He’ll be off to his first year with the girls in September, as well. Tends to have a bit of a calming effect on Lil. Should get along famously with Delilah, really.”
“Dad, you wouldn’t believe what I’ve found!” A whirlwind rushes into the room and all Dudley catches sight of is a red plait swinging behind the girl before she pauses in front of Harry, veritably bouncing up and down as she details her adventures. “Remus, Rosie and Del were hunting through the attic with me and Huey, and we found the coolest thing!”
“Say hello to your uncle first, Lil, and then tell us.” Harry suggests, and the girl turns to Dudley, green eyes nearly boring holes in him.
“Hello, Uncle Dudley. I know you’re about to say I look just like my grandmother, and I’m quite aware, thanks.” She says, rolling her eyes, and Dudley barely keeps himself from flushing bright red. “Dad says people used to call you Big D when you were a kid. Is that actually true?”
“Well, I was rather large and my friends weren’t the learning sort.” Dudley shrugs and Lily laughs uproariously. “One letter was more than enough.”
“Ooh, Dad, don’t piss him off. I like him.” She claps her hands. “Anyway, so we found a bunch of stuff from before Grandpa Potter was born! Did you know that Great-Grandpa Potter was friends with Grandma Minnie?”
“No, I didn’t.” Harry nods, surprised. “That’s interesting. How about you find a fair bit of albums and stuff and bring it downstairs? I’m sure Dudley wants to know more about his family.”
That’s right, Dudley realizes. This is his family too, as weird as it is, especially since Del’s going to be around her cousins nearly nine months a year. He should do his best to make things right, with this second chance he’s been given, and he takes a deep breath before throwing himself headlong into this new world and new story, because Harry, although Dudley rarely gave any indication of it as a child, is worth the effort.
They settle into an easy pattern of banter over the next two hours that has Dudley agreeing to visiting for dinner the next weekend with the whole family, just so the Potter kids can meet their cousins in person for once. Ginny jokes that his poor Muggle wife will be horribly confused by his eccentric relatives and Dudley places a bet that it’ll likely be the other way around. She grins, almost predatory in nature, and he allows himself to hope that he’s won her over.
And Del returns just in time for tea, the rest of her cousins, both by marriage and blood, trailing behind her, dusty and disheveled. Her dress has given up the ghost and been stained beyond any detergent’s saving power and the only reason Dudley is willing to believe that it was once white is because he had been the one to buy it.
“Can we keep her, Daddy, please?” Lily begs, throwing an arm around Delilah’s shoulders, and for once, Dudley’s notoriously contact averse daughter doesn’t shy away. Hugo, the only one Dudley has not met, stands awkwardly at Delilah’s other side, smiling softly when he notices that he’s being watched.
“Ask your uncle, darling.” Harry laughs as his daughter does just that, turning to Dudley.
“She’s brilliant, Uncle D. You don’t even know!”
“I bet I don’t.” He chuckles, nodding. “You’ll be seeing a lot more of each other, between this summer and school, now.”
“Brilliant!” Lily says, eyes alight, and Dudley figures that brilliant is likely her favorite word. “We’re going to be the best of friends!”
“Yeah!” Delilah echoes, giving Lily a good run for her money as the three youngest run back up the stairs.
After staying through dinner and Dudley splendidly hitting it off with Ron just as Harry had predicted, Dudley and Delilah buckle themselves into their seats, Dudley driving down the bumpy old road to the expressway as they prepared themselves for the five and a half hour ride home.
“Did you like them?” He asks, before looking to his left and finding Delilah curled up in the seat, fast asleep.
“Yeah.” He says, for the both of them. “I really liked them too.”