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If Harry never had to attend another ministry gala in his life, it would be too soon. He hated the stiff, sand-papery dress robes, hated the delicate hors d’oeuvres they passed off as a meal, and hated pretending to care about the kind of networking and politicking that dominated every conversation at these things. But there wasn’t much that he wouldn’t do because Hermione Granger asked, and she had asked him to make an appearance at this one. He was happy to support her final push for reform of centaur land management, he just wished supporting her didn’t involve wearing quite so many ties and engaging in quite so much boring small talk.
So, when he emerged from the ministry telephone boxes well after midnight, he was quite looking forward to loosening his emerald green tie and enjoying a silent, solitary walk back to his flat. And, if the rules of Harry Potter’s life so far were anything to go by, it was at least in part because this was his most fervent desire that, as soon as he stepped out of the telephone box and into the crisp London air, his peace was disturbed by a voice calling out his name in a low baritone.
“Wait, is that… Harry? Are you Harry Potter?”
Harry only needed a split second’s reaction time to turn on his heel and head off in the opposite direction than the voice had come from, hoping that whoever had recognized him would believe they had been mistaken, or else take the hint that he wasn’t in the mood and leave him to his privacy. Wizarding London was a small, insular place, and the war had been over for long enough now that Harry didn’t get stopped by grateful strangers every day, but it still wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.
He only made it about half a block, however, before it became clear that the man was still on his trail. “Hey, wait!” The sound of his footsteps quickened as he seemed to speed into a jog. Harry briefly considered making a run for it himself, but before he could even fully dismiss the idea as impolitic, he felt a hand on his shoulder. Even after years of peace, a sudden touch like that drew a certain reflex from Harry. He felt his wand-hand twitch towards his pocket before he mastered himself. He did his best to arrange his features into a polite, apologetic smile as he slowly turned around.
“Sorry mate,” he began, careful to keep his voice even “it’s been a long night and I really just—” he stopped.
Standing in front of him was possibly the very last person that he expected to encounter in the early hours of the morning, just outside of the visitor’s entrance to the Ministry for Magic.
“Dudley?” His cousin’s jawline was a bit sharper, and his eyes slightly brighter than Harry remembered them from seven years ago, but even in the soft glow of the London streetlights, Dudley was unmistakable. Same hulking form, same sandy blonde hair, same intimidatingly intense grip. “Dudley Dursley?”
Dudley gripped his other shoulder, just as tightly as the first one, and stared intently into his eyes. They stood there in silence for a moment, and Harry wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands or voice or facial expression. Should he be gearing up for a fight? A hug? It had always been hard to tell the difference, with Dudley.
In the end, Dudley simply blinked several times, squinting his eyes like he was trying to take in all of the details of Harry’s face, then patted his shoulders heavily before releasing him and taking a step back.
“It really is you.” He finally said, after a few more moments of uncomfortable silence.
“Er, yeah. I s’pose it is.”
“So what, you won? You took down that old moldy fart or whatever?”
It was a good thing that Hermione was still busy down at the gala, because she surely wouldn’t have approved of the hearty laugh that drew out of Harry.
“Yeah, uh, Voldemort’s his name. But he lost, we won. Been a few years now. You didn’t…know?”
The words sat between them for a quiet moment before Dudley responded. “No. I didn’t.”
Harry hadn’t thought much about what might’ve become of the Dursleys in the last few years. He had enough people to worry about without adding in those who had never shown any signs of caring about him at all. But he did feel a passing flash of guilt at the idea that Dudley might have been left worrying on his account. He hadn’t been so bad, really, those last few summers.
They stood there on the sidewalk, staring at one another. In the distance, a car alarm rang out. Harry found that he didn’t have anything more to say.
Dudley had never been particularly verbose. He was compassionate enough to care whether Harry lived or died, but now that had been dealt with, what did they really have to say to one another?
He shifted back on his heels, and was just about finding his way to saying something to the effect of ’Nope, no dark lords have managed to take me out quite yet, not for lack of trying, though. In any case, I’ll be on my way. Be seeing you… never again, probably.’ When Dudley, uncharacteristically, picked up the conversation on his behalf.
“So, it’s late. And I’m sure you’ve got places to be, and you definitely don’t owe me your time, but if you ever… would you ever want to catch up? I could buy you a beer. It’s the least I could do. And there’s a lot we could talk about.”
It was the most words he’d ever heard Dudley string together in a row.
Harry ruffled the back of his own hair, gazed past Dudley’s left ear, and tried to come up with a polite way to decline. Did he want to “catch up” with Dudley? Did he care what Dudley had been up to these past seven years, and did he care to share anything about his own life with Dudley? Sure, Dudley had seemed to soften a bit in the lead up to the war; but a cup of tea and a single, stilted thanks could hardly make up for a whole childhood worth of cruelty.
“You know what, forget I asked,” Dudley said, clearly sensing his hesitance. “I’ll let you get on your way. It’s only, I have to say that…” He seemed to choke on his words for a moment, before gamely pushing forward. "I am sorry, about everything. That feels a bit stupid to say, seeing as it doesn’t help anything. But all of this time, I never thought I’d get the chance, and… If you ever do want to talk, my number’s in the phone book. Call me up anytime. Have a nice evening, Harry.” He gave a little wave, and then turned back in the direction he had come from. Harry watched him retreat, and thought about the time when they were eight, and Dudley had a tantrum because Harry beat him at some board game. He’d run to Aunt Petunia, who had immediately told Uncle Vernon, who had locked Harry in his cupboard for two days straight with no meals. When he’d finally been released, pale and eyes red from crying, Dudley had laughed and laughed.
That was what they shared. A whole childhood worth of cruelty. A whole childhood. He didn’t want to care about it, anymore. There had been so many losses in his life; he had so many things to mourn. He had thought that the hardship of being raised by the Dursleys was relatively small. Hardly worth mentioning. And yet.
“Dudley, wait.” He heard himself say, entirely without his own permission. Dudley stopped in his tracks. Turned around and stared at him, expectantly. “How about that drink?” A silence stretched between them.
“What, you mean now?” Harry simply shrugged. “Well, last call was twenty minutes ago. But my flat’s just down the street. I could put the kettle on.”
“Okay,” it came out quieter than he meant it to. He stepped forward and began to cross the distance between them.
“Okay,” Dudley replied.
***
Dudley had to unlock three separate bolts in order to let them into his flat. While he was busy jimmying his key in the bottom one, Harry took the time to acquaint himself with the hallway. The walls were coated in uneven layers of thick, yellow paint, which was peeling. In the distance, a police siren echoed. The light outside of Dudley’s door flickered and then shut off, plunging them into darkness.
“It does that,” Dudley said, opening the door to let them in. “Been getting on the landlord for months to look into it, must have changed the light bulb five times now, but he only returns my calls when I’m late on rent. Bit of a shithead, really, but what can you do.”
Dudley led the way through the threshold and set his ring of keys on a table near the door.
“Make yourself at home,” Dudley declared, gesturing towards a card table near the kitchen.
“Aunt Petunia’s okay with her little Diddykins living in a rough neighborhood like this?” Harry said, unbuttoning his coat and draping it over the back of one of two folding chairs. He was trying to sound jovial, keep the edge of bitterness out of his voice, but it was proving difficult. No matter how much time had passed or how well-mannered he was being at the moment, Harry had never liked Dudley. He had never been likable, before.
Dudley huffed out a laugh anyway. “Haven’t heard that particular nickname in a while,”
He turned around to fill up the kettle from the tap and set it to boil, and by the time he faced Harry again his expression was thoughtful, like he was deciding how much he wanted to divulge. “Mum’s not the biggest fan of this place, of course, but I live where I can afford to. And it’s not a bad area, really, if you keep your wits about you.” He shrugged. “I like my neighbors.”
Finding himself at loose ends for what to say or do next, Harry glanced around a bit more. A bed sat in the corner, covered in white sheets and made with military precision. A cozy loveseat draped with a blanket faced a television set. The only real decoration was a framed Liverpool poster. Everything gave the effect of being sparse yet well-ordered. As though it was all the product of one very thoughtful trip to the Salvation Army.
“It’s a nice place, really, just… not what I would have pictured for one of London’s premiere drill salesmen.”
Dudley had set two mugs out on the counter. Steam started to billow out of the mouth of the kettle, and the switch tripped, indicating that it was ready to pour. He made eye contact with Harry over his shoulder. “You must have me confused with my father. Big guy, bushy moustache? I don’t work at Grunnings.” Harry was genuinely perplexed.
“Vernon didn’t set you up?”
Dudley snorted, “oh, believe me, he tried. Even after I dropped out of uni, pissed as he was, he still said he could find me something. I turned him down. I’ve never been the sort for a desk job. I prefer physical work.”
“So what do you do?”
“I’m security at the pub down the street. I was just leaving work when I spotted you. Do you take milk and sugar?” Harry requested a bit of both.
“How about you? You’re looking pretty sharp ” Dudley remarked as he rummaged through the fridge, presumably in search of a carton of milk. He found one, gave it a sniff, then, seeming satisfied, turned to add it to their tea.
“Oh you know, this and that.” Dudley gave him a disbelieving look, “I’m not being evasive, really.” Harry assured him. “It’s just all complicated to explain. I used to be an auror, bit like a wizard cop? But turns out it wasn’t for me. Nerves were a bit frayed after the whole moldy fart thing. Now I coach kid’s quidditch, which is like football, but in the air on brooms, and I make magic wands, but not very well. I’m sort of a part time lobbyist for… elves, mostly? But that doesn’t pay. None of it does, really, but I have enough for what I need.” Dudley stared at him. “So it’s like I said, a bit of this, a bit of that.”
“If my father could see you now,” Dudley said, handing him his prepared cup of tea.
“He’d say I turned out exactly as expected. Too soft for the police force, good-for-nothing bum, just like my father.” Harry made a little ‘cheers’ gesture with his mug.
They both took forceful sips of their too-hot tea, and Harry was careful not to wince. He tried to feel bad for breaking down whatever fragile cordiality had formed between them, but found that he couldn’t quite manage it.
“We didn’t exactly have a typical childhood, did we?” Dudley finally said, taking a seat across from him in the other folding chair.
“You could say that.” A note of resentment smuggled its way into his tone.
Dudley opened his mouth and then shut it again. “Did you always know that?” Harry didn’t immediately respond, and Dudley sputtered a bit before seemingly gathering the courage to clarify. “I mean, maybe it was obvious because it was so much worse for you. But was there ever a time when you thought it was… normal?”
“Yeah, I… I guess there was.” Dudley didn’t say anything further, and Harry realized that he was expected to continue. “I think I always knew it was… a bit odd. When I was really small, I didn’t have anything to compare it to. And then when I got to school, I could tell that nobody else’s family was quite like ours.” Harry was briefly transported to that first day of year one, everyone else’s parents doting on them in the drop-off line. Dudley with his matching Scooby Doo backpack and lunch pail, Harry with his brown paper sack. Petunia swatting him on the bum and telling him he would live to regret it if he did anything freaky while she was gone. “I couldn’t figure out… why it was like that. What I was doing wrong.” Harry took another sip of his tea and stared at the knob on Dudley’s front door to avoid looking him in the eye.
“You didn’t do anything wrong. I’m… sorry that you had to feel that way.” Harry could feel the weight of Dudley’s sympathetic gaze.
“It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine, really.”
“Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
Harry briefly connected his eyes with Dudley’s, and saw that he looked a bit cowed. He looked back at his tea. The milk seemed to be curdling slightly, but he took a sip anyway.
“When did you realize?”
“Realize what?”
“That our childhood wasn’t… normal?”
Dudley hesitated. “It’s embarrassing.” Harry raised an eyebrow. “It took longer than it should have, really. I think I started to realize that they were being a bit… unfair to you before you moved out. But it didn’t really connect until I got to uni. For the first time, things were… difficult for me. I didn’t really know how to do anything. I couldn’t do my laundry, or prepare a meal, or even read very well, actually. It was rough. I was used to just muscling my way through everything, but my professors weren’t going to have any of that. I got really lost. And then when I dropped out, it just got worse.”
“You said Vernon was pissed? I can’t really imagine either of them getting angry at you. They always acted like you were so perfect.”
Dudley winced. “Yeah. It was… he wasn’t happy with me. I didn’t think I could ever disappoint dad, really. Like you said, mum and dad always acted like I couldn’t do anything wrong. Like they were proud of me. But the thing I realized was… dad was never really proud of me. He was proud of the son that he had convinced himself I was. The person he could keep imagining me as, as long as I didn’t do anything too drastic. But then as soon as I really stepped out of line, it was like I was no one to him.”
Harry found that he couldn’t square the version of Dudley that was sitting in front of him, speaking in complete, thoughtful, carefully considered sentences, with the one who had tormented him for so long. It simply wasn’t possible that the Dudley Dursley he knew was capable of self awareness, to say nothing of earning the ire of Vernon and Petunia. Harry was tempted to pinch himself to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.
“I know that they were so much worse to you, so I hope it doesn’t seem like I’m complaining, or feeling sorry for myself. But I grew up in that house too, and they weren’t exactly ideal parents to me either. They didn’t really raise me properly. Sure, they gave me everything I ever wanted or asked for, but they didn’t ever teach me anything. It’s a bit awful to realize all at once that not only are you not special the way your parents said you were, you’re actually not even any good at much of anything at all. Makes you feel like a bit of a waste of space.”
Harry couldn’t tell if Dudley’s phrasing was a coincidence, or if he was conscious of the symmetry. That fateful peace offering between them. Wasn’t sure if he was expected to offer the same sympathetic words that Dudley had on that warm July morning several lifetimes ago.
It would have been the generous thing to do. Maybe it would have held some meaning for both of them. But Harry found he had a dark pit of bitterness in his gut that wouldn’t let him do it. A part of him that was still angry, after all of this time. At one point, he might have wondered if it was related to the shard of Voldemort’s soul that he had lived with for so long. But Voldemort was well and truly gone now, and yet this pit remained. Maybe a little bit of the darkness was all Harry’s, after all. The silence sat between them, and Harry didn’t fill it.
“But really, I don’t mean to make it about me. My point is that all of that stuff with Vernon made me realize just a little bit about how you must have felt growing up. And how maybe it would have been different, if I had been a little better. If they thought that the way they were treating you was upsetting me, maybe they would have stopped.”
“Maybe.” Harry said, and bit his lip. “I don’t know Dudley, what do you want me to tell you? Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine now? You were an arse, I get it. I can’t tell you that you weren’t. It doesn’t… maybe it will help you to know that it all fades into gray most of the time. It’s not something that I focus on. Losing my parents, and all of the other people who died in the war. People I couldn’t save. That’s what sticks with me. Everything at Privet Drive, it doesn’t feel important.”
“I guess the thing that bothers me the most, is that through all of it, you never had a family, really. And we could have been that for you, if we had been better. And I wonder if it would have made all of the other things a bit easier to cope with, if you had at least had that.”
Harry tried to imagine having any kind of stable upbringing. Imagined what it would have been like to not go searching for a father in every middle aged man who showed him any kind of affection. To have already had a stable foundation by the time he got to Hogwarts and everything got started in earnest. Dudley wasn’t wrong. It would have been… different. But it couldn’t be helped. And it wasn’t worth dwelling on. Occasionally, in a quiet moment in his workshop, his mind would wander to Vernon and Petunia. He’d wonder what their lives were like now. He’d think about how he felt about Rose and Teddy, everything he’d do to protect them from harm, and try to figure out what has to be broken in a person to allow them to raise a child for ten years and not love them. But he never had an answer, and eventually he’d have to let the question go.
Sometimes he thought that his barometer for bad things happening in his life was irreparably broken. He didn’t even know what it felt like to not fight for his life everyday until he got out of the DMLE, and that was only a couple of years ago. Surely he hadn’t had enough time to properly untangle the mess that was his childhood. And sitting here, rehashing it all with Dudley, it wasn’t going to help. They may have grown up in the same house, but they were different people. They’d lived different lives. Dudley didn’t understand at all.
“There’s no use wondering. We are who we are.”
“Of course.” Dudley said, but he looked a bit like he wanted to argue, which made Harry feel like he needed to escape from this conversation as soon as he possibly could. What had Dudley hoped that it would accomplish, stopping him on the street and inviting him in for a spot of tea? Did he think that if he just talked to Harry for long enough, he’d be able to release whatever lingering guilt he’d held onto all these years? Harry didn’t want to be responsible for that. Couldn’t be. So he gulped down the last few sips of his tea. He wondered, as he often did, what doom professor Trelawney might say was awaiting them based on the shape of the lingering leaves. But Dudley had used tea bags. The bottom of the cup was white and pristine. No meaning to be found at all.
“It’s getting late,” he said, and stood from the table. Made to reach for his cloak. Before he could, Dudley was reaching for him, clutching his wrist.
“I just hope you know that, whether you want anything to do with me or not, you’ll always be family, Harry.”
For a moment, Harry almost wished he could say it back. Out of politeness, or maybe some suppressed desire to rewrite the story of his childhood. But when he thought of family, he thought of a toppling house in Ottery St. Catchpole. He thought of too many redheads to count, and little Rose cuddled up in his lap. Maybe he thought of Sirius, and so many scenes from the life they should have had together. He didn’t think of Dudley, or the Dursleys, or number four Privet Drive. He hadn’t in a very long time.
“You’ll always be blood, Dudley,” he settled on, because it had the benefit of being true and also important. Dudley squeezed his hand one last time and pulled him in for a hug.
His eyes were a little intense and his voice thick when he pulled away. “Anyway, don’t be a stranger.” Harry nodded slowly, lingering for a moment, just breathing in the history between them before turning to leave. No matter how badly he might want them to be, he and Dudley couldn’t be strangers if they tried.