Work Text:
They’re at the playground. Mummy had let Dudley come to the park all by himself, and the little freak had followed. They’re young, too young to really absorb right and wrong and simply following the examples set for them.
Harry is at the top of the slide, cornered by Dudley. The bigger boy is teasing the smaller, pushing him into the side-guardrails of the slide.
It’s rained recently; the playground equipment is slick and their shoes can’t find traction. Dudley goes to shove Harry one last time, arms reaching out and balance upset, but he slides and falls.
Down the slide’s steps.
--
Something hurts. It’s in his head, something is hurting him, and he’s crying out for Mummy but she can’t hear him. She’s too far away.
Someone else is crying too, someone nearby. It’s Harry.
“I’m sorry,” he’s saying through big gulps of air, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I promise,” and Dudley’s thinking in the back of his head, you’re not supposed to be the one apologizing here, dummy. But nothing’s coming out of his mouth. He can’t move it.
He can’t move at all.
One of Harry’s scared little hands goes ‘round the back of Dudley’s head and touches where it hurts, but it’s not hurting anymore. Something’s happening, something popping and fizzing and knitting up the back of Dudley’s head.
Harry stops crying and tries to see what’s happening. He pulls his hand out, and they both stare at the sparks on his fingertips.
“Magic,” Dudley says, poised to scream for Daddy. Daddy always said that if Harry did anything freakish, Dudley should tell him immediately. But didn’t Harry just… save him? He made the pain go away, and now Dudley can talk again and do all the stuff you have to do to move again. “How’d you do that?” He asks instead, looking up at Harry.
Harry stares at him, fearful and relieved, and jumps right into Dudley’s arms.
--
They’re starting primary school. Harry, as usual, hasn’t left Dudley’s side. It makes Petunia purse her lips, but after Dudley’s tantrum the first morning concerning Harry attending school at all, she says nothing. Dudley’s finding he likes it better that way.
Sometimes he’ll sneak down the stairs in the middle of the night to sleep next to Harry in his cupboard. They tell stories to the spiders and draw and share blankets, and Dudley’s gotten better at waking up early so he can get ready without his mum or dad knowing he was there at all.
A group of boys tried to bully Harry at school and found themselves retreating from a wild Dudley instead. They eat lunch in closets and on the roof and under desks like it’s a game, and when the bell rings for class Dudley walks Harry to class. Just in case.
--
They’re teenagers. Harry’s been visited by some great giant of a man who doesn’t notice, just like Petunia and Vernon, that their son’s baggy shirts hide toned muscle and healthy flesh. He calls Dudley “piggy” and spells a tail onto his tail bone, and Dudley spends only a moment being terrified of magic all over again before Harry is standing angrily and marching over to him.
“Now see here,” says Harry, grabbing the tail and yanking, and Dudley’s close enough to see the spark that zaps the thing off his spine so that it flies off, “leave my cousin alone. He’s done nothing to you!”
Dudley stares at the boy who might as well be his brother, and watches something kindle to life in his eyes.
He’s going to go off, alone, without Dudley to watch over him. Dudley will go to Smeltings, with a stick and a boring, boring school year, and Harry will be stoking that flame inside him and helping it roar.
Dudley wants to be there when he does.
--
He discovers that he is, in fact, a little magical. He’s never needed accidental magic ( he’s always had Harry to protect him ), but it turns out, somehow, that Hagrid has two letters in his billowing coat. He takes them both on his little boat, delighting Harry with his casual use of magic, but Dudley’s always been about the physical. Can his magic still keep his little cousin safe? Should he train harder just in case? Pink umbrellas and self-propelling boats fail to impress him; he’s a modern child, with all the comforts and preconceptions that come with television and the internet. Magic is great and all, but it hasn’t defended Harry from bullies all these years. Dudley did. And you know why he did? Because while his magic might have saved Dudley’s life accidentally, deep down, he had to have wanted Dudley to live for it to work. He had to want it badly enough for his magic decide it was worth it to heal his rotten, mean bully of a cousin, and every day Dudley tries to prove he was right to do it.
--
Malfoy’s thugs are like pets. They’re built, sure, but they were raised magically, having something intangible there to do almost everything for them. They are the potted plants, watered and bred into domestication, while Muggle-raised wixen like Dudley, Harry, and Hermione Granger are made of rocks and rain and animal piss: tough stuff. They’ll fight for what they need because that’s how they are, and it makes Dudley laugh to see Malfoy’s little trolls crack their knuckles at his command but watch the Muggleborn nervously.
He’s surprisingly good at his subjects, and Harry and Hermione understand most of the material and tutor him in anything he doesn’t. The eventual addition of Weasley doesn’t bother him, because it makes Harry happy, but when Hermione runs off crying after one of Weasley’s remarks Harry’s face goes pale with anger and Dudley steps up to Weasley, rolls up his sleeves, and grabs him by the robe.
“Apologize,” says Harry, not even deigning to look at Weasley, and the boy seems to understand how much trouble he’s in. He runs after Hermione and they return before the feast.
--
They’re thirteen and on the same playground. A wispy black wraith is stalking them across the blacktop, boney hands reaching for them through their fluttering black shrouds. They escape into the stone tunnel and Dudley can feel Harry shaking at his side. He himself is reliving the moment he almost died: cold extremities, motor problems, Harry’s crying face above his with eyes so green they bled with it.
“Dementors,” he grinds out, and Harry stiffens.
“They shouldn’t be here, then,” he says quietly, “they should be guarding Azkaban.”
Dudley doesn’t say what they’re both thinking. Duh. That’s textbook thinking: don’t solve a problem, think of solutions while waiting for a teacher to come check your work. Well, here there is no teacher. No one is going to help them now.
Dudley turns and crowds his cousin against the stone back of the tunnel and pushes the smaller boy’s face into his shoulder. “They’re not coming in,” he whispers. “Maybe they can’t. We’ll have to wait it out, because we haven’t learned the spell yet to send them away.”
Harry doesn’t reply, but Dudley can feel him relaxing through their jackets.
--
Harry plays Quidditch. Dudley doesn’t. In their first year this made him frantic, because watching his frailer cousin jerk around on a broomstick several tens of feet in the air did dangerous things to his nerves. In the end, though, he figured out a course of action: stand or sit near his Head of House, Professor Snape. If his knuckles tensed or he stood, Harry was in serious danger or being exceedingly reckless. If not, Dudley could watch without fear.
This game, watching the dementors slip onto the field and head straight for his cousin, Dudley’s fears were realized.
I won’t be able to reach him , he thought, already reaching for his wand.
“Expecto Patronum!” He shouted, pointing his wand at Harry and startling several of the people around him, Professor Snape included. His memory was the first time he’d spent the night in Harry’s cupboard: making their faces messy with crayon, playing with Dudley’s stuffed puppy, Mervil, and sleeping next to each other with their bodies warming the other’s. A hulking lion burst from the end of his wand, exploding into being, before leaping forward, reaching Harry’s side and defending him ruthlessly. Dudley didn’t pause, checking his pocket for his stash of chocolate ( just in case ) and elbowing people out of the way to get down to the field. He knew that across the stands, Hermione and Weasley were doing the same after seeing his Patronus.
--
He barely caught Harry before his little cousin hit the ground. He went to his knees with the force of it, but he checked his cousin’s injuries first, popping a bit of chocolate into the boy’s mouth first. Nothing seemed to be broken, but there were bruises on his thighs and wrists, from first gripping the broomstick and then from the shaft smacking him on the way down.
Professor Snape kneeled beside him and checked Harry’s pupils. Dudley spares him a glance, but most of his attention is focused on the dementors circling above their heads. Dudley’s lion is forcing them away for now, but if gives out at any moment he can tell they’ll come straight for his cousin.
Professor Snape levitates Harry and starts off for the castle; Dudley sticks close behind.
--
The dog is Harry’s godfather, a surprisingly wild-looking man with scattered eyes. He doesn’t seem to know what to make of Dudley; something tells him the man hadn’t paid attention to Dudley’s ever-present bulk behind Harry’s thin frame.
Professor Snape doesn’t make things better, but Dudley doesn’t think they were going very well to begin with.
--
Dudley doesn’t remember the Dementors at the lake, or Harry’s powerful charm, but he’s not surprised, really. Harry’s always been the strongest person he knows, and hearing proof of it, even from a dodgy old man, is everything he expected.
--
There’s a girl a grade below them, Luna Lovegood , whose blisteringly blonde hair and pale grey eyes remind him of Harry’s, despite there being nothing similar between them. They search for her shoes together one afternoon, and soon she’s slipped into their little group for good. Harry doesn’t seem to mind, which is all that matters to Dudley about the situation.
( He catches Weasley talking about Luna behind her back to some other fifth-years and for the first time he looks at a choice Harry’s made and thinks, ‘I don’t like this. I want it to stop.’ )
( He doesn’t tell his cousin, but he seems to know anyway. )
( Weasley isn’t invited back to their group after that, and Dudley knows it doesn’t matter to Luna. But it matters to him. )
--
Voldemort isn’t as terrifying as Dudley always thought he’d be, but that’s probably due to Harry standing by his side, Hermione’s determined face and books flanking him to the left, and Luna unashamedly gripping his hand to his right.
He stares Voldemort in the eyes and thinks as loudly as he can, “I’m not afraid of you. I have everyone I love right here; what could you possibly do to me?”
( In the shadows, Weasley is staring at them with something like awe and terror and hope on his face, but Dudley knows he could never have stood with them the way Hermione does, the way Luna does. Not this Ronald Weasley, not today. )
( Draco is watching them with glittering eyes and waiting for his team to win so he can cheer without ridicule. )
( He’s never felt so supportive of the Boy-Who-Lived and his Muggleborn cousin in his life. )