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Dudley Dursley had only recently learned how it was to lead a private life.
When his mother was pregnant with him she started sharing her pregnancy online with weekly updates and in-depth video discussion of every prenatal picture taken. It had paid for his shoes and school and the expensive trips his mother liked to take him, so she could film more content of him eating ice cream and cake.
Millions have seen his first everything.
His first words, his first steps, the beginning of his unhealthy relationship with food that he still struggled with.
Even now, years after he’d stopped turning up on the vlog channel and blog and worked hard to keep his “baby fat” (how his mother still liked to call his morbid obesity) off and his emotional eating in check, people still recognised him on the street. Women his mother's age that told him how proud they were of having him seen grow up.
Dudley never had forced his mother to take those videos down. With him become less and less cute as puberty turned him into a pimply, fat teenager that never had been taught how to interact with people properly, his mother had stopped featuring him, moving on to gardening and home improvement content.
He never watched those videos either.
Watching his mother talking about how much she loved him by feeding him enormous portion well-informed about the fact that he was already unable to move like other children and had pain in his joints like an old man, made him feel sick.
On some days he thought, that in her own, crazy way, she loved him. She did care for him.
But on most days, he couldn’t help but feeling used.
Showcased to the masses like a freak from the day of his birth until he went to secondary school.
The only videos he watched where the ones with Harry.
He liked seeing him and Harry play together as they were small.
Harry was the son of his mother’s late sister.
He was only five week younger than Dudley and after the untimely death of James and Lily Potter, his parents, he grew up beside him.
While they were related by blood they weren’t much alike.
In fact most people that saw the videos would have thought the Dursleys’ foster son to be not related to them at all.
Both Harry and Dudley had inherited their fathers’ looks. While Dudley was blond, Harry was hair was black, Dudley was tall, broad in build and overweight, Harry was wiry and very, very small for his age.
Their eyes were similar though. Both of them had pale eyes. Different in colour, but they both shared the almond-shaped eyed of the Evans family.
As soon as Harry, a toddler who had just seen his own parents getting murdered, had joined the family Petunia Dursley had used him to generate monetary value from people watching him grow up, just the same as from her biological child and with that both Dudley and Harry had to learn to deal with the frappant change between the way she treated them in front and behind the camera.
While Petunia overplayed the way she cared and loved them for her viewers and readers in front of the camera, as soon as the camera was off, she preferred them to neither seen nor heard.
With Dudley this was easy, since he wasn’t able to move much anyway without being in pain.
He spent the majority of his afternoons propped up on a chair or couch, being fed with more fatty, sugary treats and staring blankly on the tv.
Harry was fast and full of energy and with nothing there to keep his mind occupied, Petunia went to great length to punish him for running around the house or garden.
Not only became it a regular from the age of three for Harry to take on a big part of the house chores for “unruly behaviour”, additionally she made him a makeshift “room” out of a cheep mattress and a tattered blanket in the cupboard under stairs so she could lock him up whenever she didn’t to deal with him.
Which was always unless she wanted to film.
Vernon Dursley had a very distant relationship to either of them.
He didn’t care enough to interfere in whatever his wife did to Dudley and cared even less about Harry.
For Dudley, Harry was the only genuine person in the house.
The only one he could trust to treat him like a human.
Dudley loved his brother.
As soon as he was old enough to reach the latch that kept Harry confined, Dudley patted down the stairs, careful to avoid the fifth step because its creaking would alert the parents, and open the cupboard door as quietly as possible.
He’d sneak food, acting like he ate even more and give it to his only real friend during the night.
Harry wolfed it down so fast that sometimes he started to feel sick as they sat next to each other on the dusty mattress.
It was really hard for the two four-year-olds to keep Harry quiet as he was vomiting while still keeping the hallway spotless so Petunia wouldn’t further punish Harry.
They couldn’t talk with each other freely of course, during the day because his mother was always around and she didn’t want to hear them talking, on video because there were always many people watching and scrutinising everything they did and said trying to find some wrong with them.
They didn’t take long to develop some signs though.
Little gestures. Like the finger stroking over the outer corner of the left eye to inform the other that there was a hidden camera or Harry stretching his shirt in the stomach area to inform Dudley he was hungry. It started with everyday essentials and went on to whole inside jokes they could silently convey with a series of concealed hand movements.
It felt good too.
Not only did Harry genuinely enjoy Dudley company and Dudley finally had someone he was allowed to hug just because he felt like it without any ulterior motives, it felt really good for Dudley to support Harry.
Dudley really liked to be useful.
When they were seven Dudley was strong enough to lift up the much lighter Harry making it possible for the smaller boy to reach the small wooden shelf that held the spare key of the back door.
Harry was special.
He could to things Dudley couldn’t.
So in the next night Harry had somehow magically been able to multiply the key and they had put the original back before the mother had noticed.
With the duplicated key the probably greatest time of Dudley's childhood began.
Almost every night they would sneak outside and make their way to the playground.
With no one around to laugh at him for being too fat to play like normal children, Dudley was finally able to try the play ground equipment without being ashamed.
Harry would never laugh at him and even if he laughed it was just because the both looked funny when they were hanging upside on the monkey bars and their face turning red.
It also meant they could tell each other stories and play pirates or super heroes.
That was Harry’s dream.
He wanted to be like spiderman.
Help the ones in need and climb walls and punish bad guys and bullies.
Retrospectively, the both of them must have had a dozen guardian angels, considering they were two small children that were publicly known by all kind of people good and malevolent and extremely vulnerable.
Somehow, they never got caught, always were home far before sunrise to make sure the parents didn’t notice, but as they grew older they ventured further and further, learned how to ride the tube and how to spot the ticket collector and how to hide from them.
Dudley was convinced that Harry had magical abilities. Every time he was sure they would be caught, somehow mysteriously the police man or train guard would turn around just before they could find them.
Them walking around every night, having to run and climb and balance on railings made Dudley a lot more sure of himself. He was still overweight and he still ate too much every time he felt sad, angry or bored, but he became a lot nimbler. Easily able to climb up a tree or brick wall while carrying Harry piggy back.
He liked the fact that even after his growth spurt he was still able to easily carry his his brother.
It wasn’t that Harry couldn’t do it on his own, but they still did it sometimes for fun.
Dudley liked being strong.
He liked that he was able to threaten the other kids that bullied them for their mum’s videos, his obesity and Harry’s oversized clothes.
And Harry in return was able to be defend Dudley in situation where his selective mutism didn’t make it possible for him to speak for himself.
It was them against the world.
As they went secondary schools, it changed everything.
Dudley’s mother made a big video series about how much she would miss them with a lot of crocodile tears and wet kisses and after that everything changed.
Dudley didn’t like his new school. He didn’t know how to talk to his school mates or teachers, so they thought he was to dumb to do it and that in turn made Dudley think he was stupid too.
Like every time he was unhappy he turned to food.
Nothing was as easy to him as sneaking down into the school kitchen and search for everything anything he could find.
No one ever caught him but the school nurse started look at him with worry as his circumference grew.
Harry was going to a wizard school now and Dudley didn’t know how to write him letters.
They always came as the muggle postman wasn’t able to find the address.
More than one night Dudley spent hidden behind the shed of the school garden, the mouth full of cheap noodle salad or pudding and crying.
He felt homesick.
He wanted his brother back and wanted to wander around the new town instead of being confined inside the unfamiliar walls of Smeltings Academy.
When Harry saw each other the next time, Dudley had gained so much that their mum started a new video series over the summer. “How to get your overweight child in shape again”.
Gleefully she set up a cruel diet plan consisting of watery soup and unsalted cauliflowers for him and filmed him as the twelve-year-old forced himself through a most humiliating work-out routine.
Dudley who was already extremely self-conscious about his body was forced to wear clothes that would accentuate his extra weight.
He was pretty sure this is when he started to suspect that she didn’t love him like a mother should.
It meant Dudley was very busy too. He had to stand in front of the camera for a majority of the days and at night he often was way too exhausted to even think about sneaking out like in the past.
It seemed like him was almost never a time for the both of them to communicate.
Harry was the one that sneaked food now. Made sure both of them had enough and tried to his spirit my by telling him jokes in their own special sign language.
Dudley was happy to see him and he made sure to tell Harry, but things have changed.
Harry was different.
He had friends now that were as witty and magically talented as him.
Dudley was happy that his brother had friends, Harry sure deserved it...but he felt lonely.
He wasn’t good enough.
Just the fat, dumb, mute bloke that Harry happened to grow up with.
Things got increasingly worse.
Not only did they rare have the time to write each other, with Harry going year and year again on more heroic quest, a weird underground magical war going on and Dudley feeling more and more unhappy they didn’t really know how to speak with each other anymore.
There was so much stuff Dudley was sure Harry wasn’t allowed to tell him and after a certain time Harry just didn’t come to visit Privet Drive 4 anymore.
Neither did Dudley.
His contact to his parents had boiled down to birthday and Christmas cards.
They just weren’t good for him.
To say that he was surprised when he glanced out of the window while waiting for his perfectly- weighed meal to be microwaved was and understatement.
“Harry! This is the seventh floor!” he rushed to open the door and leave his brother in watched the guy to flask him that toothy grin that he knew meant trouble.
“it’s fine, I’m a decent flyer.” he laughed spreading his arms and Dudley, who hadn’t hugged anyone in years pulled him against his chest.
“Ahhh. I can’t breath, big guy!” croaked Harry hugging him back just as fiercely.
“I was so worried. You were just gone...” huffed Dudley and he was sure Harry could hear that he was trying to hold back tears.
“I know...I survived though. The war is over.”
As he let Harry go he noticed that two other people had entered the apartment through the balcony door.
One was a red-headed bloke that made even Dudley look short next to him and a woman with very bushy brown hair and teeth so perfect, that he could imagine her to be a child of dentists.
All three had bulky backpacks and wore muddy woollen capes and looked like didn’t have a full nights sleep in weeks.
The Microwave stops with a soft “ping”.
Dudley gestured them to come in and close the door as he makes his way to the kitchenette to take out the tupperware container and rummaging to find three more in the fridge.
He’d to buy more food tomorrow, so he contemplated as he took out the plastic boxed labelled with “Thursday”, “Friday” and “Saturday”.
With a fast wringing hand motion he nods towards his bathroom, informing Harry where he can clean himself and put his dirty clothes.
“These are Hermione and Ron, my best friends.” said Harry setting down his backpack next to Dudley’s big writing table. With a dip of his head he informed him that they had to keep hidden for away.
Dudley flashed a quick lob-sided smiled tell him that of course he could come to him. Always.
“Stay as long as you want.” he said, more to Harry’s friends than to Harry who’s walking towards the bathroom.
“Nice to meet you, It’s Dudley.” He mumbled quietly, his old shyness returning with force. “Grab yourself some sweatpants and hoodies in the bedroom. Second right from the top.” he rushes to say before turning around and busying himself with the microwave.
The, red-haired man, Ron, comes closer watching intensely and oddly excited as Dudley is putting another prepared meal in the microwave.
“It’s a heating charm!” he wonders as he obviously had a hard time preventing his fidgety hands from reaching out and playing with the microwave.
Dudley chortles.
“Well if that charm makes things hot, then yeah, it is like a heating charm.”
“Wicked.” mumbles Ron.
The shower is running.
Ron wordlessly helps Dudley set up the table.
The young woman, Hermione, had gone to bedroom.
As she comes back, she wears one of Dudley’s hoodies. She’s not small for a lady but this particular piece of clothing is even for him too big after he got his life together lost a lot of weight.
He can’t throw it out though because it’s super soft.
On her it looks like a dress.
She throws Ron a shirt and a pair of sweat pants at Ron and all but orders him to go clean up to.
“Shouldn’t he wait ‘til Harry’s finished?” Dudley says quietly
“Nah~.” Ron disappears out of their line of side as he makes his way towards the bathroom as Hermione sits down at the table.
Dudley feels his ears grow hot.
She’s just somehow really cool.
All of them are barely of age, but she seems so much more settled into her personality that he’ll probably every be.
“You’ve got a lot of books.” she noted and snatched a piece of tomato from the salad bowl as he is mixing a dressing.
“Yeah...we didn’t have much books growing up, but my school had a library...I liked to hide out in there.” stuttered.
“Cool. What books do you like the most, Dudley.”
No one had ever asked him what he liked to read. Most people expected him to be not very interested in reading, because he looked like a bloke with more brawn than brain.
“Physics, statics...but I also like biology or reading about the stars. I aspire to become a city planner. Build good homes and safe spaces for kids to play.
“A lot of things got destroyed during the war. We need people that build up stuff again.” she scratches her nape nervously. There are barely healed cuts on the column of her neck.
“A lot of people got hurt. They want to parade Harry around like some kind of trophy, even our friends.” she whispered.
“Me and Harry can’t be seen in public together either… people will notice who we are. But you guys can hide and regroup here until we find a better solution.”
She nods and starts to read a books he recognises as his. She must have nicked it from the bedroom bookshelf...or...no if he remembered right, this specific one was in the hallway book wall.
It’s peaceful. her reading, him fixing dinner and Ron and Harry talking quietly in the bathroom.
Dudley doesn’t believe in soulmates, but if someone asked him if he would marry Hermione, he’d say yes.