Chapter Text
June 28th, 1993, 7:23 A.M.
One.
Dudley Evans (not Dursley, not anymore) had grown up knowing he would stand between his cousin and the rest of the world. The two of them had grown up as brothers, incredibly close in age and raised mostly by a single parent. They’d had their share of miniature rivalries and rows when they were very young, but it had worn off quickly. By the time they were ready to start primary school, ‘Arry’ and ‘Duddie’ had been fast friends and partners in adventures both real and imagined. In their play, Dudley had always naturally gravitated towards the mighty warriors of fantasy and science fiction, which had fit perfectly with Harry’s bright-eyed idealism: Dudley spent his youth playing the Chewbacca to Harry’s Luke Skywalker, the Gimli to his Frodo.
Ten.
On their first day, as his mother was dropping them off at school, she had hugged Harry and said, “Be safe, do your best, and remember that I love you!” As Harry walked away, she turned to Dudley and gave him a hug as well. Then she looked into his eyes, brushed back his hair, and said, “I love you, Dudley. Do your best, and look out for Harry.” It wasn’t an epic beginning, as far as quests went, but it was enough. Dudley would likely have felt protective of Harry anyway, but with those words Petunia gave voice to something he had always felt but never realized in quite such clear terms. The weight of duty settled onto his small shoulders.
Hours later, one of the other boys in their class had come up to Harry and taken the toy that Harry was playing with. It was simple childhood dynamics, but to Dudley it had represented the first test of his new responsibility. He had waited for a moment to see what the adults would do, but they were focused on something else that was happening in another part of the classroom. Harry looked sad but didn’t make too much of a fuss over it, so it would have flown under the radar without Dudley’s intervention. He walked over to the other boy and said “Give it back.” When the boy refused, Dudley grabbed the toy and they wrestled over it; this did cause enough of a fuss for the adults to notice and come over to break it up. At the end of it all, Dudley had been required to sit in the time-out corner for a few minutes. It wasn’t his favorite thing, but he bore it with a satisfied smile as he watched Harry playing with the toy Dudley had won back for him. Well worth it, he’d thought.
Twenty-five.
A year later, Dudley had been kicking a ball around with Harry on the playground, and had left his brother behind to go to the bathroom. When he came back, several boys from the next grade up had taken the ball and were throwing it back and forth over Harry’s head while the poor boy ran back and forth trying to get it back. As Dudley drew closer, Harry slipped, stumbled, and fell. His glasses tumbled from his face and into the mud, only to be stepped on and crushed into the ground: a target of opportunity for one of Harry’s tormentors. This time there were no adults to be seen, and Dudley didn’t hesitate: he walked up and drove his fist into the offender’s stomach before the other boy could react. By the time a teacher arrived, Dudley had lost a baby tooth and had several bruises on his face and body: one on three, he’d stood little chance, and though Harry had tried to help he didn’t really count.
Though he’d been suspended from school for a few days, and the whole thing had hurt quite a bit, the look on his mother’s face told him he’d done the right thing. She said the right words, about how fighting was not the right way to handle things and how he should have told a teacher, but he could tell she was pleased that he’d stood up for Harry, and that was all the encouragement he needed. That was not the last time such a thing occurred, and despite the pain caused by the punishment he took on Harry’s behalf and the trouble he got into, he quickly grew to relish each opportunity to advance his personal mission. Well worth it, he’d thought as he probed the hole left by his missing tooth with his tongue in the bathroom mirror.
Forty.
Dudley had quickly outgrown most of their classmates and by their last few years of primary school the threat of him was usually enough to make anyone who came looking for an easy mark in skinny, bespectacled Harry look elsewhere. Every once in a while Dudley had to prove the threat was real: once or twice a year someone made the mistake of picking on his brother and Dudley would spend a few days at home with his mother while his latest suspension for fighting ran out. Well worth it, he’d thought, sitting on the couch with a snack and watching bad daytime television.
Once Petunia had gotten them into boxing, the fights generally only lasted as long as Dudley wanted them to. He was the biggest in his year, and a nightmare for other children who were used to throwing their own weight around. The school administrators had warned Petunia that if it kept happening they might have to expel Dudley, but he made sure to keep the damage he caused to a dull roar and the threat ended up being an empty one. He went on lurking over Harry’s shoulder everywhere they went, enjoying himself as they roamed the neighborhood and surrounding area while keeping a watchful eye out for trouble.
Fifty. Come on, laggard, acromantulas don’t care about sore muscles. Push!
Then the letter had come, as Petunia had told them it would, and Harry had been off to Hogwarts without his brother beside him. The magical world frightened Dudley, since he knew so little about it and the threats were almost certain to be the kind you couldn’t hit. He’d spent Harry's first year away angry, sullen, and anxious, and he really had almost gotten expelled when his hair-trigger temper let loose on a classmate one time too many. It had been even worse after Harry came home for Christmas and told them about everything that had been going on at Hogwarts that first term - having his fears for Harry’s safety given real justification hadn’t helped at all.
If Petunia hadn’t moved them to Hogsmeade before Harry’s second year, Dudley wasn’t sure what he would have done. Protecting Harry was his job. It was fine if other, more capable people were willing to step in and do it - Dudley was under no delusions of his own experience and ability relative to actual adults who were also wizards - but the problem was that they hadn’t. Any trust Dudley had that he didn’t have to be there every minute to make sure nothing bad happened to Harry dissolved after hearing about the confrontation with a Voldemort-toting Quirrell. Kill him, Voldemort had commanded. Quirrell, who was a full-grown wizard, had somehow been close enough to fall victim to the magical protection on Harry’s skin instead of smashing Harry’s head in with a levitated stone, transfiguring him into a snail and stepping on him, or something equally lethal, then taking the Stone off Harry’s corpse. They had gotten lucky, and Dudley wasn’t sure anyone but he and his mother actually understood how close Harry had come to death. They all thought in terms of sorcery, but what about just a plain knife? Aunt Lily’s love wouldn’t have defended Harry from a stab wound or three.
Sixty-one.
“Ugh.” Dudley suddenly reached muscle failure and dropped to the mat, sweat covering his body. His breath came in deep gulps and his shoulders and chest burned. He rolled over onto his back and threw up a hand against the first rays of dawn creeping through the curtains of the bedroom he shared with Harry at Number Four, Privet Drive. The top bunk of their bed was empty; Harry was already down helping Petunia make breakfast. Groaning, he slowly stood up and examined himself in the mirror on their door: a tick over five feet and seven inches tall, nearly twelve stone of working muscle, with close-cropped blonde hair, shaved on the sides and a little longer on top (to please his mother, who’d begged him not to get a buzz cut). He’d grown again over the summer, keeping him securely in the lead between he, Harry, and Ron for height, even catching the twins despite lacking two years of their age.
His mother said he was almost as tall as his father, though he hadn’t seen the man in years to compare the two of them. Vernon Dursley had faded out of their lives. Dudley understood why: it was all to protect Harry. His father just hadn’t been able to cope with the existence of magic, and so he’d had to be left behind lest he do something to cause trouble. His mother seemed sad about it sometimes, whenever the subject came up, but never that sad, so neither was he. Besides, he had plenty of family: Harry, Hermione, the Weasleys, Hagrid, and even Professor McGonagall, though he knew that she would have to maintain at least a bit of professional distance while they were in school.
He pushed himself to his feet, though it made his arms and shoulders complain. He’d come a long way during the last school year and even further over the summer holiday, but it wasn’t nearly enough: he was only thirteen, and though he was firmly in the physical upper echelon of his age group he knew that any serious adult would find him no challenge. He’d surprised Lockhart easily enough with Harry’s Invisibility Cloak, but that fraud didn’t fit any definition of ‘serious.’ After fighting Vincent Crabbe to a standstill the year before, he’d imagined fighting a fully-grown version of the burly Slytherin and didn’t see a way to last more than a minute or two, though at the time he’d been at a Polyjuice-induced disadvantage. Still, he could only control what he put in - he couldn’t make himself grow into his adult body any faster.
Fortunately, Muggle hand-fighting was no longer the only arrow in his quiver. He looked over to his dresser, where the top drawer yawned open and was fairly stuffed with a thick blanket and several small pillows, as well as Dudley’s old teddy bear. In the mass of comforting fluff lay the sleeping form of Dobby the house-elf, once a servant of the detestable Malfoy family and now Dudley’s access key into the hallowed halls of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. The little fellow was wrapped around the stuffed animal, which was bigger than he was, with its worn, floppy head lolling on top of Dobby’s and covering his face from the intruding sunlight.
Not only was he the source of the spells Dudley would be ‘casting,’ but Dobby had been his dedicated training partner during late nights and the early mornings when Dudley was too restless to sleep. Dobby would set the Standard Book of Spells, Grade One open on the bench in their garage where Dudley kept his weights, hopping from foot to foot as he recited the indicated wand movements interspersed with constant encouragement in his chirping, earnest voice. “Clockwise curve…pause…upward flick…now the words…very good, sir!”
Dudley would mimic them in front of a small mirror, hour after hour, until the motion no longer looked forced. He learned how to angle his elbow, how to keep his fingers relaxed, how to make the movements smooth instead of jerky - all the things Harry and the others had spent the last two years slowly grasping, he had to learn in a matter of weeks, hence the extreme practice schedule.
He’d have to pretend to slowly gain proficiency over time at Hogwarts, of course, but he meant to be useful from the get-go if needed and they wouldn’t have this much free time with assignments and other people always around. He put particular emphasis on learning the mechanics of staple combat and utility spells: Protego and Stupefy, of course, but also Lumos, Expelliarmus (which Dobby was particularly good at, especially from hiding), and Finite. For his part, Dobby had to memorize the spells too, and he also practiced producing effects in such a way as to make them appear to originate from Dudley. Fortunately this was easier than it would have been if one of the others was trying to do the same thing with traditional wizard spells.
Dudley and Hermione had come up with the bones of the whole operation as the previous school year was ending, just before Dudley had presented it to Petunia. Hermione had been completely against Dudley’s idea at first, but once he’d overcome her reticence she’d swept aside his vague notions and laid out everything they would need to do, point by point (and subpoint, and corollary…), exactly the way he’d hoped. She’d tried very hard to be angry at him as she worked, a flurry of papers and muttered comments while he munched on a scone with a smile on his face. She might even have believed it herself, but Dudley could tell by the small smile she couldn’t quite suppress that she was flattered by his utter confidence in her ability to pull off the seemingly impossible. It hadn’t taken long for her to go completely nonverbal as she worked, her concentration absolute: after all, at the end of it they were both there for Harry.
Harry himself had actually been even harder to convince than Hermione or Petunia, either one. For someone who’d gone charging into danger as many times as he had, like a Dungeons and Dragons character whose player was getting bored with them, he was remarkably reluctant to accept Dudley doing something that was complex and risky but ultimately much less dangerous in general, at least by itself. “Wanted me along in the Forest, didn’ you?” Dudley had said when Harry had flatly refused the suggestion at first. “What’s the difference?”
“The difference is we had no choice! Ginny was going to die!” Harry had said hotly. “Now you’re talking about putting yourself in danger all the time - ”
“Talkin’ about putting myself next to you all the time. You in danger that much?” Dudley had replied, arching an eyebrow, and Harry had glared at him but said nothing. Any answer was an argument in Dudley’s favor: either it wasn’t so dangerous after all and so that wasn’t actually a problem, or Harry was in constant danger, which meant Dudley should be nearby to help at a moment’s notice. Dudley knew the real issue, though there was no way Harry was going to come out and say it even if he knew what it was. “Harry, I know it’s different ‘cause it’s for you and not someone else. Know it makes you feel guilty, but think ‘ow I feel, sitting ‘ere in Hogsmeade with Mum, nothing to do but wonder if the next time we ‘ear from you’ll be when you visit or when you come sneaking in at night telling us something else bad’s ‘appened? Or when someone comes to tell us somethin’ ‘appened to you? Dead honest, brother, it’s the worst thing.”
Harry had hesitated, and Dudley knew he was wracking his brain trying to come up with a counter-argument. Finally, Harry dropped his hands to his sides. “What about Mum? She’ll be by herself if you leave.”
Dudley and Petunia had talked about that part already. “Promised we’d send Hedwig to her every night. You’re awful at remembering to write.”
Harry had looked away, embarrassed, color rising in his cheeks. “I get…busy.”
Dudley clapped him on the shoulder “Yeah, we know. We’ll all keep an eye on it so Mum doesn’t get worried. Ron an’ Mi will ‘elp too. Plus, a few more visits this year durin’ Hogsmeade weekends, right?”
All of his reasons to the contrary thus defeated, Harry reluctantly agreed and had spent a lot of time helping Dudley train and prepare over the summer, when he wasn’t occupied completing the summer holiday homework that his teachers had assigned. This was quite disturbing for Dudley, who liked his homework infrequent and uncompleted as often as he could get it. It wasn’t that it was difficult, necessarily (Dudley considered himself of at least reasonably average intellect, scholastically speaking), it was just that his time could be spent so much more practically on learning usable skills, like how to punch someone in the face or the best recipe for French crêpes. Harry would read to his family after dinner from A History of Magic, which was interesting - he was currently studying wizarding interactions with fourteenth-century Muggle witch-hunts, which were fairly comical despite the otherwise serious and tragic nature of the topic. Dudley enjoyed this, but had no interest in regurgitating the information onto a piece of parchment via quill. He’d wondered if Hermione could be convinced to take care of all that for him - after all, he wasn’t going to Hogwarts for an education but to be Harry’s bodyguard. Sadly, asking her that question had earned him such a scathing look that he’d resolved not to bring the subject up ever again.
Today, the final stage of planning for Dudley’s introduction as a newly-manifested wizard was set to take place. Hermione was coming to visit Number Four; Ron was away with his family unexpectedly, so he couldn’t join them. Her parents dropped Hermione off - they only lived an hour or so away from Little Whinging, so it wasn’t much trouble. Though it hadn’t been that long since they’d seen each other, the three friends hurled themselves at one another as if it had been much longer, which made some sense given all they’d been through together the previous year. Dudley had quickly grown to love the Muggle-born girl, and had adopted her in his own head as a second sister - after Ginny, of course, who remained his favorite. Hermione was everything he valued in a friend: she was a relentlessly good person, along with being brilliant and loyal. Most importantly, she cared about Harry as much as he did.
After a celebratory welcome dinner, Hermione took over the kitchen table. She began walking them through the reams of pages full of detailed (one might have said exhaustive) notes written in her neat, looping script. Sitting out on a nearby chair were the birthday presents she’d brought for the two boys: a broomstick servicing kit for Harry, and a huge box of Chocolate Frogs for Dudley (he loved both chocolate and collecting the little cards that came in each one, though it still felt odd to eat something that could move).
The trickiest part of the fake-wizard plan was staging Dudley’s ‘coming-out’ event, because that was the part that would involve not just their friends and the familiar faces of the Hogwarts faculty but the entire apparatus of the Ministry of Magic itself. Everything hinged on the fact that the Trace couldn’t tell who had done magic, just that it had been done near an underage wizard, so any magic would bring the Ministry running. They’d be setting up a situation that could plausibly create an extreme emotion in Dudley - in this case, something about to fall on Harry - and lead to an unintended magical outburst similar to what one saw in wizarding children before they were given a wand and formally taught to cast spells.
The linchpin was Petunia’s presence - even though she was a Muggle, as an adult her corroboration of the story they would spin should make the Ministry accept it. There would be two spells involved: Harry would cast something unrelated to trigger the Trace and Dobby would produce the effect that sent the heavy glass cake plate they’d chosen smashing into the wall and away from where it might have fallen on Harry's head. They weren’t sure if Dobby’s spells would register with the Trace, so they were having Harry cast at the same time to cover all their bases. Hermione was nothing if not thorough.
After she’d presented the last detail, Dudley couldn’t believe it was quite so simple. “And they’ll just…believe it?”
“It’ll be exactly what they expect to see,” Hermione assured him. “All the Ministry will know is that something magical happened here. They won’t have any reason to disbelieve our story, once it’s backed up by an adult. There’s actually plenty of precedent for this sort of thing, believe it or not. Muggle-borns often show their abilities later than the median age of seven, and even pure-blood children can sometimes show late too - Neville was eight, for instance. You would be in the upper range of historical cases - it’s basically unheard-of after fourteen - but still within the bounds of belief. What’s more, you’re not even the first in your family tree to have magic like I am, since your aunt Lily was a witch.” She looked over at Harry just after she said it, afraid she’d gone a bit too far in her zeal and handed him a painful reminder, but he was staring down at a page of notes and apparently unbothered.
“Too right, Hermione,” said he, looking up, “Practically half-blood, aren’t you Dud?” They both grinned.
Hermione wore a look of exaggerated patience while they had their moment of amusement, and then she quickly went around the table for any other objections or concerns; no one had any. “Good. We’ll go over the timing tomorrow, then walk through it a few times to make sure we have it down. It has to look and feel natural - we can’t know who they’ll send, so there can’t be any question of realism.”
“What then?” Dudley asked. “Do they…test me?”
Hermione looked uncomfortable. “The problem is, we don’t know. They might just accept it and register you like you were a normal first-year, but there might be more to it. Without knowing how that goes, there’s no way to prepare. We’ll have to…” she made a face like she’d just bit into one of the worst options in a box of Bertie Bott’s Every-Flavor Beans. “Improvise.”
“And you’re sure we can’t involve any of the adult wizards?” asked Petunia, for what felt like the fifteenth time. She would have felt far more comfortable with the whole thing if Minerva had been involved in their little conspiracy, or at least Molly and Arthur. At her question, the other children automatically looked at Harry, who had very quickly become their de facto adult liaison. ‘Colonel Harry,’ Dudley’s private name for the alter-ego that Harry fell into in times of crisis, lived ever more shallowly beneath Harry’s usual personality.
“Mum, this is completely outside the bounds of what most adults would accept - they’d dismiss it out of hand, just because it sounds so completely different from anything anyone’s done before. Two years ago, you would have said no too, right?”
Petunia reluctantly nodded, and Harry smiled. “Exactly. Even if someone might say yes, it’s too much of a risk - they have to be able to say, maybe even under Veritaserum, that they didn’t know. They need…what’s it called, Hermione?”
“Plausible deniability.”
He smiled at her. “Thanks. They need that, in case we get caught. This isn’t against any law or rule, because, well…I don’t think anyone’s ever tried something like this before…”
Petunia looked at Hermione, but Dudley answered. “First thing Mi did when I brought it up was to see if there was anything forbiddin’ it. Smack in the gray zone, looks like.” Because it’s so mental no one’s thought of it before, he did not say.
“It’s not something most wizards would think of,” said Harry, “and it’s something no Muggle could pull off. Look at what goes into it: first off, a free house-elf - who knows how many of them are there, maybe none. Then you’d need a Muggle who knows enough about the magical world to come up with the idea, and then they’d need an invisibility cloak that’s apparently some sort of ancient super version that’s perfect and lasts for ages, and most importantly, Hermione to put it all together and make it actually work. No one else has that - she’s one of a kind.”
Dudley watched Hermione look at Harry when he said that and for a moment he felt a little awkward, as if he was intruding on a private moment. It was different from the usual quick, bright spark of pride she always had when she was praised for getting something right or being clever in general. For just a moment, she looked at Harry as if no one else in the world existed: not some over-the-top romance-novel adoration, but as if she felt that she was being seen for the first time. It wasn't the first compliment she'd been paid, even by Harry (especially by Harry, truth be told), but somehow this was different. She glanced away quickly, tucking hair behind her ear and diving back into her notes, but she wore a small smile.
Great, I get to watch them dance ‘round each other for the next however long before she gets tired of waiting and finally says something or he wakes up and notices, thought Dudley, who had seen this coming since he first met the girl two years before. He looked at his mother, who was looking at Hermione, and he knew she’d seen it too. Poor Ginny, though. Have to make sure she finds someone who isn’t a complete numpty.
Petunia sighed. “I hate that what you’re saying makes sense. This all feels wrong.”
Harry shrugged. “Having to do something anyone else would think was ridiculous because the alternative is probably no one doing anything and something bad happening because of it is pretty much our bog standard.”