Chapter Text
So, just so you know – dying sucks. Most people don’t know that, understandably, so I’m volunteering. For me, it sucked because I was alone. It was not painful, though. Miraculously, I had been untouched as the building I was working in collapsed. No boulder crushing my legs or arms, no steel, pointy thing sticking out of my chest. I just had no oxygen, and I died.
Never felt pain. Just drifted off to sleep.
I barely had time to be scared, but I wish I wouldn’t have been alone.
Then, nothing for a while. Just drifting off in nothingness. There was no stimulation for my senses, but I couldn’t even feel boredom. I existed, and that was it.
Until there is someone before me.
She gives an aggravated sigh and looks at me as if I’m a particularly annoying task to do. She even has a clipboard in her hand. The woman is very beautiful, ethereally so; her long black hair is flowing behind her and she has a magnificent dress on. Light blue, embroidered with black and gold. She has a long nose that gives definition to her face and stern black eyes.
“Are you quite done gawking?”
I blink.
“Uh, yes?” I reply tentatively.
“Good. We have things to go over. Name please?”
“Jane Pierce,” I reply, not knowing why I feel as if I am in a line in some administrative building while I’m supposed to be dead. “Is this the afterlife?”
“Don’t ask questions. Oh, that’ll have to go. Jane Pierce. It just screams Muggle-born, and that’s not ideal.”
What?
“What?” I say dumbly.
“Do not ask questions, I will answer later,” the woman sighs. Some chair appears out of nowhere in the glowing white-ish void we’re in, and she sits down, nibbling on her fountain pen.
“Jane… Jane could become Jean. It’s more British-sounding. As for the surname… Ugh. Yes, this is going to be a problem. Are you up for a mixed heritage? It can be tough to live with, especially in the nineties.”
“What the fuck are you on about?” I finally snap. “Can you please explain what’s happening?”
The woman, whose eyes have been trained on me in an interrogative manner, frowns. “There’s no need to be rude,” she tuts. She then sighs and crosses her legs at the ankles. “But fine. I hate this part.”
I wait expectantly, but she stops talking. Apparently, she really hates explaining stuff.
“O-kay,” I articulate, trying to calm down. “Let’s just start at the obvious. Who are you?”
“Carina Johnson, born Ravenclaw.”
I stare. That explains the ‘Muggle-Born’ part.
“Um. Are you real?”
“Of course. I’ve been sent by my many times great-grandmother and her friends. I’m a distant relative, well, the last one really. Born in the nineteenth century, died in the early twentieth, now I’m stuck working with this lot.”
“And what do you do exactly?”
“Send people elsewhere.”
I blink again.
“I’m in charge of reincarnations,” she says slowly as if she was talking to a very small child.
“Okay?”
“I’m in charge of your reincarnation. We mostly send people into the same dimension, but since your mother was a Squib in her previous life –”
I sputter and she sighed again, apparently hating being interrupted. “What now?”
“My mother was what?”
“Okay, I’ll just start from the beginning,” groans Carina. “So, when people die, we’re supposed to guide them towards lives that will give them advancement. Sometimes with some hints, some remnant memories. They’re supposed to do better in their new lives than in the ones before.”
“Why consult me then?” I ask, feeling a panic attack building up. “Just send me wherever and let me figure things out? This is fucking confusing, you know?”
For the first time, Carina shows some emotion. Her eyes are full of pity, which is not ideal. “I know. That’s what I’ve told them. Why not let you have your memories and then let you figure stuff out? You’ve been kind in your previous life, and you’d do the job nicely. But grandma said no.”
I figured that ‘grandma’ was Rowena Ravenclaw.
“Why?” I asked disbelievingly.
“Cause you’ve got stuff to do and apparently, we can’t just shove a mature soul in a baby’s body without an explanation because you’d go mad.”
Huh. That made sense.
“Am I going to be reborn?” I ask, aghast. I don’t want to go through potty training with an adult soul.
“Up to you. It would be easier than popping into existence at the age of eleven, wouldn’t it? That would raise questions.”
I’m too keen on being a child again and say so.
“I understand, but that’s just mandatory - you’ve got to be eleven or younger. We can’t just shove you in a magical world as an adult without any form of education. You’d be barely more than a squib.”
Ugh. I have to go through puberty again.
“I’m taking all this wonderfully well,” I observe with a frown.
“Oh, yeah. You can’t get upset here, not really. Kind of angry, kind of sad, but not full-blown emotions. No, that would be a hassle,” she chuckles.
I stare at her. Her laughing made sense – she wouldn’t care. She’s ancient, time doesn’t have a hold on her, and she’s not forced to go back as a child.
“So what are my options?” I ask, resigned.
“Either be born as a baby. Now you’re warned, so I’m sure you’ll manage. Or, take the place of a child that’s supposed to go to Hogwarts. Or make a new person out of you.”
“What?” I cry, aghast. “Take the place of someone else?”
“Well, yes, we’d just send the soul in another dimension or something.”
That sounds absolutely revolting.
“Okay. I have another question,” I say firmly, ignoring the look of suffering on Carina’s face. “Why am I being reborn in a different way? Why can’t I be like the others?”
“Oh, because it’s a test for your soul. Also, we’re testing a new way of doing things. If you do well in this life, you’ll ascend.”
“Ascend?”
“You’ll get to be immortal and to endure other people’s questions, like me. But it’s also great! You get to keep tabs. Meet new people. It’s a bit boring sometimes, but you really feel like you’re doing an important job, you know?”
She gives what I’m sure she hopes is an encouraging smile. I’m having none of it. I don’t want to be in charge of anyone, let alone confused souls that just died and have to adjust to a whole new concept of the afterlife.
“This honestly sounds like a nightmare. Why don’t you reincarnate? Living through different lives sound funnier.”
She frowns and shoots me a cross look before focusing on her clipboard, furiously scribbling on her piece of paper with her fountain pen.
I try to say I’m sorry, but she’s having none of it. Oh, well. I feel a bit bad now.
“There,” she says viciously, jotting a final dot on her document. “It’s all set now. I’m sure you’ll do fine and I’m sure you’ll find this replacement is okay.”
“What? I’m replacing someone?” I ask, aghast. “But we haven’t even found an agreement!”
“Oh, sweetheart,” Carina says with a mean smile. “I’m sure you’ll find ascending in this life difficult, too, so that you won’t have to live the nightmare just yet. We are adding magic though, so be grateful for that. Please do enjoy yourself.”
“Who am I –”
I can’t even finish my sentence before I’m whisked away into nothingness.
__
When I woke up, the light hurt. Everything hurt.
Someone sobbed and hugged me tightly, bony fingers digging into my back and holding on for dear life.
“Wha–” I muttered, in a surprisingly high voice.
The woman let go but just enclosed my face with her hands, her large blue eyes teary and fearful. “Oh, Duddy, I was so, so scared. Please, never do that again to Mummy, okay?”
My hand, surprisingly small and pudgy – fuck, I really was a child, weren’t I? – rests on hers and I sagely nodded. “Okay,” I said, a bit stupidly.
The woman in front of me was very thin, all bones and angles. She was tall, with a long neck, thin lips, and a long, almost sharp nose. She had her own beauty, I supposed, but not a conventional one. She was loving to me, that I could tell, but had a stern thing about her, unforgiving, and hard. The man next to her was a full contrast; he was very big, had a very hairy moustache, almost no neck, and enormous hands that made me sag a bit on the mattress when he patted me on the back. He, too, seemed frightened and moved by my sight. “Alright, son?” He asks gruffly.
“Vernon, I think you ought to fetch a doctor, maybe he’s still in pain?” The woman – my mother – said.
Something switched in my brain.
Oh, fuck no. She didn’t.
“I’m fine, mummy,” I managed to say, moved by a weird impulse. “Just a bit tired.”
“Okay, baby, just go to sleep and we’ll wake you if we get to go home, okay? Does your head hurt?”
My hand lifted towards a bandaged part of my forehead, that was indeed a bit sore. “Yeah,” I mumbled. “A bit.”
“My poor sweetheart. Just try and get some sleep and we’ll get you medicine, okay?”
I nodded and laid back on my pillow, closing my eyes.
I was Dudley Dursley. Probably seven or eight years old.
They really screwed with me here.
Every bad feeling I’ve had about voicing my dislike of Carina Johnson, born Ravenclaw’s career choices disappeared.
___
Nothing eventful happened on the ride home. The doctors had decided during my nap that I was fit to go home if I stayed put for at least a week, and I was banned from riding a bike in the foreseeable future. Fine by me – I had a cousin I needed to befriend.
I heard Vernon mention to Petunia that Harry had been at Mrs Figg’s home, and that they would pick him up on the way. The ride lasted about twenty minutes, and I stayed silently put in the back seat, watching the odd cars passing us. They were old and new at the same time, something I’d only seen in the movies, being a late-nineties kid myself.
The details of my old life were becoming blurry. I knew my name was Jane Pierce, that I had been loved enough, smart enough, and American, but I couldn't remember my mother’s name, or what I'd liked back then. The only thing really there in my mind was the conversation I had with Carina after I died and the knowledge I retained about the Harry Potter lore. Which would definitely come in handy. Now, I knew I had to be careful with those, too; I’ve read a lot of fanfiction and it’s easy to get headcanon mixed up with actual canon.
I couldn't take anything for granted.
Still, though. Dudley at Hogwarts. Just for curiosity, I was keen to see what would happen.
We picked up Harry from Mrs Figg and he sat next to me in silence, shooting me wary glances. My bandage was impressive, from what I’ve gathered looking at myself in the rearview. So was my frame, I guess. I’m a big kid. Could come in handy, but I’d sure as hell wouldn’t use my size or my strength to bully other kids.
I didn't try anything on the short ride from Mrs Figg's to our home, wary of my parents. They let us in instantly, while Petunia assured some nosy neighbour that I was fine and that it was only a very big fright, thank heavens.
Vernon barked at Harry to go in his cupboard and the miserable-looking kid complied silently. He was scrawny, too thin and too little, and my old clothes fit him awfully. I felt a pang of pity as I saw him disappear, but I couldn't rush things too much. Best to go to sleep and figure things out during the night. My first move would be the next day.
I let my parents fuss over me some more, while the sun was setting in the distance. Our home was prim and proper, comfortable but a bit soulless. Everything was so clean that the surfaces of the kitchen reflected my face when I inspected them. Petunia cooked quickly, heating up some leftover shepherd’s pie in the microwave. They made small talk, watched the television, and I ate silently, absently listening to the news. Sometimes, they shared a worried look.
Just when I put my fork down, Petunia asked, “How are you feeling, Duddykins?”
“I’m fine, mummy,” I said tiredly. “‘m just tired. May I go to bed now?''
You didn't have dessert,” Vernon replied, surprised.
“Not hungry, daddy.”
“Okay then, pumpkin,” Petunia said, getting up as well to help me get to bed. She shot another worried glance at Vernon before getting up the stairs with me.
I let her take my hand so that she could show me my room without knowing so. She even dressed me in pyjamas, which she did with a real motherly tenderness; I guess it’s really only Harry she was awful too, eh? My pyjamas were cute, with little rabbits on them, and she fussed over me while I brushed my teeth before tucking me in.
“Now you call mummy and daddy if you’re in pain, all right baby? Daddy will have to wake you up tonight, because of the concussion, but then after tomorrow you can sleep all alone. Okay?”
“Yes mum,” I said, nodding seriously.
She smiled fondly and kissed my forehead before turning off the light and leaving the room.
I had a lot of thinking to do and managed to do some, but sleep was really tugging at my consciousness and I eventually gave up.
____
The next morning, I was a boy on a mission.
Vernon, true to Petunia’s word, had woken me up in the middle of the night to check whether or not I was still normal, before letting me go back to sleep. When I made my way to the kitchen the next morning, clad in my pyjamas, my parents were still asleep. Harry was there, on a stool to reach the stove, and was cooking some bacon.
“Hi Harry,” I said in a neutral voice. “Do you need help?”
Harry jumped and shot me a panicked glance, almost dropping the bacon. “What are you doing up this early?” he asked suspiciously.
“Couldn’t go back to sleep,” I managed to say with a half smile even though my heart felt like it was ripped open. Damn. The Dursleys really hurt this kid.
“What do you want?” Harry asked with a frown.
“Uh… I wanted to say I’m sorry for beating you up at school,” I said, praying that I wouldn't say something stupid while I apologised. “I won’t do it again.”
“Why?” Harry asked, astonished. The bacon was beginning to burn and I got up, approaching the stove. He jumped down from his stool and took a few steps back, but I just grabbed the spatula to flip the thin meat and fumbled with the buttons to turn off the fire.
“Hungry?” I asked, looking around to find the plates. God, it would take some getting used to, to navigate around this house. But as I searched, I realised some memories were returning to me – not real memories, but imprints about the habits of my parents and the layout of the house. I found the plates quite quickly thanks to that kind of instinct.
“Are you mad now, from when you bashed your head?” Harry asked in total bewilderment. “Why are you nice to me?”
“Because you’re my cousin and I think we could get along. I think mum and dad are not going to wake up anytime soon because they were very scared yesterday. Do you want to eat and then go play on my NES?”
I’d seen the console in the living room on my way down.
“Really?”
There was a flicker of hope in his supernatural green eyes, and my heart bled some more. “Yeah. Really. Promise I’m not having you on.” I tried to shoot him a small smile, and he smiled tentatively back.
___
Turns out kids, even traumatised ones, are fairly trusty.
All it took for Harry to trust the truce I’ve offered him is a warm breakfast and one hour of video games. “You suck at this,” he said brightly as he won the fifth race in a row in Excitebike.
I grumbled good-heartedly, looking down at the tiny, stiff controller that did nothing to help. “Yeah. I guess you’re a natural.”
We played some more rounds before some heavy steps made themselves heard upstairs. I glanced at the clock – half past eight. Huh. I guess I rose very early this morning.
“Hi, dad!” I said when he passed us on the way to the kitchen.
He popped his head in and frowns. “What are you doing here, boy?” he growled at Harry. The boy cowered next to me and dropped his controller, making a motion to get up.
“He’s playing with me. Also, I think we should be nicer to Harry,” I said authoritatively. “He’s nice and I like him now. And I want to give him my second bedroom.”
Harry sat down in shock.
I didn’t care if Harry thought it was too good to be true. I’d be damned if I let the poor kid sleep in the fucking cupboard again.
___
The transition was both extremely easy and also very unnerving.
Harry was a good kid, and after a few days, when he saw that I wasn’t about to go back to my favourite game of hurting him, we began hanging out more together. We played video games, played in the garden, and read together.
My parents were delighted that I’d started to take my studies seriously, but also a bit peeved. They phoned the doctor I had seen in the emergency room, who confirmed that while there wasn’t any damage to my brain, sometimes children that experienced a big fright (and bashing my skull on the concrete on my bike was a big fright) rethought the way they behaved around others and that if the change wasn’t alarming and remained consistent, there was no room for worry.
In other words, sometimes, children that had a brush with death stopped being mean little shits.
They still showed great distrust of Harry, but slowly started treating him as a human being. They were loving parents to me, but they really had been awful to the kid.
He was very glad to be in “my” second bedroom and was seemingly always worried to take up too much space. Also, he kept doing more than his fair share of chores, especially cooking and gardening.
“Mum,” I said as we were eating lunch – Vernon was at work and the autumn holidays were drawing to an end. We were due back to school on Monday, exactly ten days after my accident. “How come it’s almost always Harry who cooks and he couldn’t eat with us before?”
The question was seemingly innocent, but my eyes were riveted on hers. She fidgeted a bit, uncomfortable. “Well, ah, you see, Harry didn’t really want to eat with us. Did you, Harry?”
“No, not really,” Harry replied instantly, focusing on the food.
“But now you eat with us, right, Harry? And you don’t have to cook all the time. Right?”
“Right?” he muttered back, glancing up to Petunia.
She pinched her lips but forced a smile his way. “Not if you don’t want to, Harry,” she managed to say.
I nodded, repressing a snort. Apparently, she was displeased she had lost her in-house slave. Too bad then.
Harry still cooked breakfast after that but claimed he liked it, and I let him. When he worked in the garden, I often kept him company and helped him a bit, even though he knew loads more than me about tending to plants.
Going to school was the next step.
When we arrived at the elementary school, which was only a five minutes walk away from the house, he turned unhappy and started to walk away.
“What’re you doing, Harry?” I called after him.
He jumped and turned towards me, apparently afraid. “I – I thought you wouldn’t want to be friends now that we’re back at school.”
Just as I was about to answer, I heard a kids’ voice boom behind me: “Dudley! You’re back from the hospital then! How’s your head?”
I turned and saw a lithe boy, around our age, with a narrow face and a mean glint in his eyes. “Hi, I’m better thanks,” I said, a bit guardedly. He tossed his backpack on the floor, and it landed near my foot. I used the excuse to flip it around and get a glance at the tag – Ah. Piers.
“Sod off, Potter,” he said rudely to Harry, who nodded a bit fearfully and started his retreat.
“No, Piers, he’ll stay with me from now on,” I said, trying to muster all the authority an eight-year-old bully could have. “He’s cool.”
“Cool?” Piers asked, disbelievingly. “He’s not cool.”
“He is,” I insisted, taking a step towards him and trying to tower over him. “Don’t hit him again, Piers, I’m serious. He’s my cousin and he’s off limits. And I think pretty much everyone else is off limits, too. No more bullying, okay?”
“What’s gotten into you?” Piers frowned. “You used to think it was fun.”
“It’s not. I’ve hit my head and it was the worst pain so let’s not hit others, okay?”
Piers shook his head and walked away, finding other friends of ours – probably – and muttering to them in hushed tones. They all stared at me for a while.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Harry said, head bent. “I would’ve understood. It’s already loads of fun to be able to play together at home.”
“I won’t hit you here to pretend I’m still like them. I’m not a coward,” I said, determined. “Come on. You’re sitting next to me today. You’re loads better in class than this idiot, anyway.”
Class was not great, but not awful. Apparently, the fact that I had been the biggest bully – and was the biggest boy – gave us some form of protection. There were nasty glares and muttering, but nobody tried anything. Harry and I kept each other company though, and he shot a few very funny jokes at the expense of my former friends, so that was nice. If the teachers noticed anything out of the extraordinary, they didn’t say anything, but Ms Clark did congratulate me for paying attention for once.
When we got out of school, Petunia was waiting for us. I made a show to put my arm around Harry’s shoulders and glare at Piers, who glared back. She sighed but ushered us inside the car and didn’t try to talk about it.
School systems and peer pressure suck, but fortunately, we were no longer part of it, not really.
___
The following years were quite uneventful. We graduated primary school, and had some cake for my and Harry’s birthday, I managed to stop Ripper, Aunt Marge’s dog, from going after Harry and I defended him when the awful old bitch started berating him about everything. Vernon talked to her quietly and she mostly kept her mouth shut afterwards.
During the summer of 91, when mail was pushed inside the mailbox and Vernon asked me to go, I did. My stomach did flip-flops, just as it had done the previous weeks when the mail came, as I always wondered whether or not today was the day. When I picked it up, there were bills, a postcard from Marge, and two thick parchment envelopes addressed to a Harry Potter and a Dudley Dursley.
I whooped silently and kept the goofy grin out of my face when I got back to the living room.
“Dad?” I said in a hesitant voice. “I’ve received a letter, and Harry too.”
Vernon frowned. We didn’t usually get mail – mostly library stuff, but we were usually careful about giving our books back on time. Sometimes, we received some stuff from the Doctor Who fan club we had begged Vernon and Petunia to register us into, but that was quite rare.
Vernon took the mail from my hands and paled considerably.
“Petunia – it’s them.”
There was a squeak from the kitchen and Petunia came in, drying her hands on her apron, her face pale as well. “For Harry?” she asked.
Harry was very interested in the whole discussion but didn’t say a word from his place on the sofa. I sat down next to him, and we exchanged a wary glance, but I imitated him. With a bit of luck, they wouldn’t even notice we were there.
Tough luck.
“Ah, boys – why don’t you go play in the garden? It’s a beautiful day. We’ve got stuff to talk about among adults, eh?”
I sighed but tugged Harry’s hand and let him into the garden. We sat down on the gravelly path, dejected.
“What’s the letter like?” Harry asked in a tiny voice.
“Oh, uh, it was very strange. Like, parchment maybe? And it was written in bright red ink! It said, in the same handwriting, Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley, 4, privet Drive, Surrey.”
“Intriguing,” Harry nodded wisely. “I bet it’s something great.”
“Maybe it’s about the Doctor Who fan club?” I asked, but he shot me a weird glance.
“Don’t be daft, they’ve written before, and never on parchment.”
We waited in silence for a while. A very, very long while. After a pick-up game of tag and some gardening, we were beginning to get hungry.
“Muuuum?” I called from the garden. “Can we come home now?”
My father called back, saying we could go to the kitchen. They were seated together. Petunia had been crying, and Vernon seemed close to tears as well.
“Sit down, boys,” Petunia said in a wavering voice. “The letters were – the letters were about magic. Harry, your mother was – your mother was a witch.”
The conversation that followed was mature, although a bit forced on my parents’ part. I’m sure having a wizard for a son had not been something they had planned on. Harry was not buying it, though, saying it must be some kind of joke and that he couldn’t be something as awesome as a wizard.
“But mate,” I said, trying to nudge him in the right direction, “didn’t all kind of stuff happen to you before, when you were scared?”
He considered it for a moment before nodding. “Yeah. You’re right, it was weird, the way I teleported on that roof.”
Petunia and Vernon had also explained the circumstances of Harry’s parents’ deaths. Fortunately, they hadn’t brought up the topic at all during the previous years, except once when Petunia had shown Harry a photo of his mum.
All in all, it went well.
Petunia and Vernon asked them if they wanted to go. They immediately said yes.
We were warned that we weren’t to tell anyone in the neighbourhood, or else, and that was met with agreement.
A tired Petunia said that she would make arrangements for someone to pick us up and buy our things, and we were told to go and play.
I knew that my parents were scared and afraid, but I couldn’t bring myself to care much. I was already in much better health now that I was a kind of adult in a child’s body. I ate better, exercised better, and we had a lot of fun together with Harry. It had been rewarding to see the look on his face when he actually had fun and trusted me.
I liked to think I was an okay big brother.
Later that afternoon, we huddled under the fort we’d made out of our covers, and whispered to each other about Hogwarts, its wonders, Harry’s parents, and everything that was left for us to discover.
I couldn’t wait to go to Hogwarts.