FicWad

Chapter 6: Invitations and Requests.

I didn’t hear from Harry during the first couple of months of 2002 for which I was grateful, the pressure of final exams was coming up, and although I knew my subject I still hated exams. The photos from Mrs. Weasley arrived a couple of days after I had returned to college and Mum had been on the phone to me for hours that evening talking about how handsome harry had looked, and what a pretty girl Ginny was, I was glad when the battery on my mobile phone died.
I was getting ready to head home for the Easter break, after which it was the end of set classes, I just had a final assignment to complete and then it was revision all the way until the exams. I got a call from downstairs; there was someone at the front door for me, an officer of the law or something. Was I in trouble or something?
I ran down the stairs, why were the police calling for me? What had I done wrong? I couldn’t think of anything, I knew the tax and insurance on my car was valid, I hadn’t been speeding, so why were the police calling for me? The door was closed when I made it down to the hall, but there were voices coming from the lounge, I entered warily. What had I done wrong?
My housemates were all sat down talking to someone with his back to me. As I entered the room, he stood up and turned to face me, “hi Dudley, what’s up?”
“Harry, what are you doing here?” my housemates looked at me. “This is my cousin, but what are doing telling them you’re a police officer? They and you had me convinced I was in trouble or something.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist, but I wasn’t joking about being an officer of the law, c’mon lets go talk in private.” He followed me back to my room, and I made space amidst the junk on my bed for him to sit. “I am an officer of the law, Magical Law Enforcement, technically an Auror, but I’ve occasionally worked with Scotland Yard and Interpol. The real reason I was here is to give you these,” he handed me two pieces of stiff parchment. I looked at the top one in my hand:
Molly and Arthur Weasley
Cordially invite Dudley Dursley to celebrate the marriage of
Harry James Potter
And
Ginevra Molly Weasley
3rd August 2002
We hope you will be able to attend this joyous occasion.
We will await your owl no later than June 11th.
“You’ll need to keep the invitation, it’s a portkey to the location of the wedding, and we don’t want reporters turning up on the day uninvited.”
I looked at the invitation underneath; it was addressed to not only Mum, but Mum and Dad. “Are you sure? Both of them? I can understand Mum, but Dad?”
“I can’t invite one without the other, besides if you dad doesn’t want to come, he can stay at home like he made me do when we were kids, I won’t make him stay with Mrs. Figg though, she can’t stand him.”
“Very funny, but the first thing Dad is gonna do when he sees this is tear it into pieces and burn them. Even if Mum wants to come he’ll make sure she can’t.” Harry took Mum and Dad’s invitation from me and tore it into little pieces, tapped the pieces with his wand and they burst into flames in his hand. “Great, now neither of them can come, so mature Harry.”
He raised his eyebrows and nodded towards the hand holding my invitation, huh, there were two invitations again. “The only people who can cause the invitations to be destroyed are Molly and Arthur when you reply in the negative. Nothing else can do it, so whatever your Dad’s actions, your Mum will be able to attend if she wishes.”
“Err, what’s the dress code? I’ve seen some wizard clothing and it looks like the men are in dresses. I don’t quite fancy that!”
“Well, for your Mum and Dad it will be formal Muggle wear, although they can wear dress robes if they wish, but I’ve got something else in mind for you!”
“What do you mean? You’ve got something else in mind for me? I think I’m getting a little worried here.”
“It’s not that bad, but you will need to wear wizard dress robes, but you can wear normal clothes underneath.”
“Why? What’s the reason for this?”
“Just give me a minute and I’ll tell you! I have a special job for you at the wedding.” I gulped; I hoped it was nothing too bad. “I want you to be my best man!”
“What? You’re joking? Right? What about Ron? Your best friend in school, I thought he would be your best man, I haven’t exactly been a good friend to you for most of our lives, I’m honoured but I don’t see your reasoning.”
“Well, I have to admit Ron was going to be my first choice, but he and his girlfriend, Hermione, suggested you for perfectly good reasons, which I happen to agree with!”
“What are these good reasons? I want to know. It seems to me that Ron would be the better choice.”
“Ok! I’ll try to explain. A lot of the wizard world is aware of my past with your family, and they have reason to not like the name Dursley, this would be one step to making them see that for myself I’ve forgiven you. On top of that, you’ve proven yourself to be very adept at getting along in the wizard community. Kingsley has made it known that the ID card was your idea, and some Muggleborns parents are grateful to you for the interaction they can know have with our world.”
“Bloody hell Harry, you make me sound like some sort of hero! I’m just someone who doesn’t want to lose touch with the one person who saved my life, who happens to be my cousin, whom I was an utter rotter to all our lives until that day.”
“True, but I’ve seen that utter rotters can change, or at least have some ulterior motive behind their actions. Professor Snape was the best example; he spent my whole school career making my life hell. I couldn’t do anything right in his lessons, no Gryffindor could. He was always deducting points from our house for no reason apparent to us. But, in some strange way, I think I understand him, if circumstances had been slightly different, he could have been my Dad.”
“Huh! You’ve lost me completely now!”
“He was the first wizard my Mum ever met and right through the school days they were almost inseparable, despite being in different houses. He was Slytherin, Mum was Gryffindor...”
“So. It was getting back at your Mum that made him take it out on you?”
“Not entirely. From what I understand he always showed himself as very prejudiced against Muggleborns and half bloods, but he was half-blood himself. A lot of it was an act, not for our benefit, but for the Death Eaters. In his sixth year he made the mistake of calling my Mum a mudblood, that’s an insulting way of referring to a muggleborns dirty blood. She broke all ties with him then, would have nothing more to do with him. She started to go out with James Potter, a fellow Gryffindor, in her seventh year, and well the rest is history. Snape also had his own issues with my Dad. He joined Voldemort because it was expected of him, but when he found out some of his plans, he deserted, but stayed on at great risk to his life to spy for our side. In the end he died for those beliefs. He kept vital information from Voldemort that could have stopped me from winning in the end.”
“What information?”
“I told you the last time I saw you about how Voldemort killed me, but I survived, if anyone else had used the curse on me I would have been completely dead. Snape was in his own way aware of some of the reasoning behind this, though not all of it. If he had told Voldemort that I was a horcrux, he never would have killed me. That episode and the one last year when that mobile phone saved my life has got be a bit of a reputation of being immune to the killing curse. It has some good effects on certain people when I go after them, they don’t bother trying to kill me, and they just surrender. Certainly helps my arrest rate.” He laughed.
“Ok, I can see your reasoning for making me your best man, and I would be honoured to accept. But what am I going to have to wear, please tell me it’s not some bloody wizard dress. I refuse to wear a dress; even if you do call it robes.”
“It won’t be that bad. You’ll need dress robes, but the style is not that different from what teachers and professors wear at graduation ceremonies. Yours will need to be a nice conservative grey, you are related to me, the groom, and that’s what I’ll be in. And as I said you can wear normal clothes underneath.”
“Ok! I can live with that, where do I get these robes? Diagon Alley I presume?”
“Yes, Madam Malkin’s, they’re the outfitters we’ve chosen. I can have Ron go with you if you want, but they have been told to expect you.”
“So sure, I’d accept your offer then?”
“Not completely, but I was sure I could convince you eventually. Oh I’d better give you this as well,” he handed me another piece of parchment, with two telephone numbers on it. “The first is the new telephone number for the Ministry of Magic with my extension on it. The second is my home number; I needn’t tell you that that number is secret. Your mum will be able to read it from that piece of parchment, but not from your mobile phone if you store it in that.”
“What will happen if you call me then, I mean if it’s that secret? Will my phone tell me who’s calling?”
“Of course, but if you or anybody tried to read the number off your phone they wouldn’t be able to read the number just the name.”
“Right, ok!” I entered both numbers onto my phone and put it back in my pocket. “Well you know for definite that I’ll be attending your wedding. But, how will Mum reply, we don’t have an owl and I don’t think there’s a wizard location in Little Whinging that we can send a reply from.”
“You can do it one of two ways, speak to Mrs. Figg, we got her an owl of her own, or telephone me, and I’ll pass it on. There are a couple of other muggleborns and their parents attending, so you won’t be the only ones responding that way.”
“I think I know how Mum will want to reply, you’d better clear a day in your schedule, and she’ll keep you on the phone for hours. I only managed to get off the phone to her when those photos arrived because the battery on my phone died. Nearly three hours she was talking about them, so I’m warning you now.”
“Thanks! I’ll remember to have some reason to cut the call short if I need it.”
“What are your plans now though, surely you didn’t come all the way from London, just to give me the invitations. I’m flattered, but, it seems an awful long way.”
“It wasn’t that far, I’ve only walked 200 yards from the end of your road.”
“Bloody wizards, idle buggers the lot of you!” he gave me a funny look, his eyebrows raised so high they were almost lost in his hair. “oh, come off it Harry, I’ve tasted Mrs. Weasley’s cooking, so you don’t go hungry, and if you’re going to pop from one doorstep to the other, you’ll be the size of the old me before long. One pig in a wig in the family is bad enough!”
He had the decency to wince, “where did you hear that? I’ve never called you that in your presence and it’s not true anymore?”
“I don’t think I should tell you, it might get someone in trouble. Not my style anymore.”
“C’mon Dudley, I’m not gonna arrest them or anything, I mean, it wasn’t a nice thing for me to say, but, unfortunately, at the time it was sort of true.”
“Dunno, maybe whale in a wig would have been more appropriate, I was bloody fat! I heard it from Hannah Abbott at Justin’s birthday party; apparently she’d heard it from Luna Lovegood is it?”
“Yeah,” he sighed, “that’s just the sort of thing Luna would remember, she’s a little odd, I suppose you should say; if you wanted to be kind.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Her Dad runs a paper called the Quibbler, a bit of a joke in some wizard circles; bit like those newspapers that run stories about aliens and stuff. She used to be called Loony at school.”
“I read a couple of those, but they seemed like more sense than the Prophet at the time, there was even an old one that had an interview with you.”
“That was their best selling issue, which was in my fifth year. Where did you find a copy?”
“Tinworth library, but we’re going round the subject here. What are we going to do about you becoming a pig in a wig yourself?”
“It’s not that bad is it? Molly’s cooking is a lot healthier than the stuff I had to cook at your house and there’s no sugary pop to add more calories.”
“Not yet! But take it from one who knows, stopping the weight from going on in the first place is a lot easier than getting it off. I spent bloody hours in the gym on treadmills and weight machines, getting rid of the pounds of lard I was carrying, then building up some proper muscle. I still go to the gym at least twice a week and run a couple of miles most nights. I’ve even did a half marathon for charity in my second year at University.”
“Ok! Ok! I get it. Now what do you think I should do?”
“Joining a gym is your best bet. That way you can have friends there to motivate you as well, but be careful you don’t get in with the muscle is everything type. They’re the ones who use drugs to pile on more and more muscle. You don’t want that, just to keep fit.”
“Fine I’ll look for a gym near my house, there’s got to be one in the area.”
Then I had an idea, I wondered if he would go for it. “Listen Harry, you can get anywhere you want by apparating right? Could you apparate to Little Whinging, it’s not as far as here from London? The old baths where the local primary school used to take us for swimming lessons, it’s now a gym. Do you think you could get there?”
“I think so. You seem to forget, your parent’s never signed the permission slip for me to go there, and I was always left at school when you went swimming. Best two hours of the week for me.”
“Err! Sorry! Forgot that bit. But do you think you could make it about ten on Sunday? You could come as a guest on my membership for the day and we could join you up.”
“Seems a funny time to be going, Sunday morning; what’s your reasoning behind that?”
“Well lately when I’ve been home on a weekend I’ve noticed that Mum has been getting the bus to town on a Sunday and taking part in some sort of swimming / exercise class at the gym. Well maybe, this week I could drive her there and go to the gym myself and possibly...” I left the statement hanging and looked at him.
“You’re positive we won’t see your Dad, your Mum was not that nice to me, but he gave me a few ‘thick ears’ to many to forget.”
“He never gets up before ten on Sunday and then sits downstairs reading the papers till Mum serves him dinner, then doesn’t move again till tea time. Heart attack waiting to happen, him.”
“Ok, it’s a plan, what will I need?” I told him what clothes he would need for our exercise session and what else he would need and our plans were made for the following Sunday. By this time, it was getting quite late and Harry wanted to get home, Kreacher was cooking something for him, and was almost as unforgiving as my Dad when Harry used to burn the bacon, when we were younger. I walked with Harry to the end of the road where he apparated back to London, packed the car and set off back to Little Whinging with the news...


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Look out for the next chapter: Cafes and Pubs