Categories > Books > Harry Potter > Harry Potter and the Sword of Aeons
Harry Potter and the Sword of Aeons
7 reviewsSixth/Seventh Year: Harry finds out that there's more to the prophecy than Dumbledore told him in his office that night. He knows what he has to do and he's ready to do it. AU after Order of the Ph...
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Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Another Summer at Privet Drive
30 June 1996
Harry Potter was on his way to his least favorite place in the world, the home of his aunt and uncle at 4 Privet Drive. He couldn't really remember a time when it wasn't a miserable place for him to be. After ten consecutive years and then parts of four summers living with the Dursleys, he had a pretty good idea what awaited him there. Just like the summers before, Harry expected to be either mistreated or ignored altogether. He knew he would likely be fed very little and asked to work a lot. The truth was that he didn't mind these things much, since his aunt's cooking was not very good and the work kept his mind off other things, but it was a terrible way to spend summer vacation.
He had thought of almost nothing other than Sirius since that night in the Department of Mysteries and it was this same attitude of introspection that kept him from noticing what was happening around him. If he had looked up at his aunt he would have seen that she was sitting as still as possible, not saying a word in the hope that her husband's rage would subside before he exploded. Dudley, who sat in the back with Harry, hadn't noticed his father's imminent meltdown either, but that was because he was apparently too deeply immersed in a paperback book to notice anything. Harry was so distracted that it didn't even occur to him that he'd never seen Dudley reading before.
The first fifteen minutes of the ride from King's Cross station back to Little Whinging passed in silence as Harry sat thinking, for what must have been the thousandth time, how stupid he had been to believe that Sirius had actually been inside the Ministry and in need of Harry's help. Then, without warning, the silence was shattered by a typical outburst from his uncle.
"Can you believe the nerve of those freaks?" Vernon Dursley practically shouted at his wife.
Petunia Dursley was every bit as disgusted by the acquaintances of her abnormal nephew, but she knew better than to interrupt when her husband went into one of his tirades.
"I mean," Vernon continued, "they threatened me. They actually threatened me. How dare they?"
Petunia briefly considered whether to try to console her husband or to agree with him, but was saved from having to risk either one when Vernon decided to direct his anger at Harry.
"Boy!" he said to Harry, looking into the rearview mirror. Harry realized that his uncle was addressing him and looked up unconcernedly.
When Vernon saw Harry's eyes he said, "What have you been telling them about us?"
"Nothing," Harry mumbled.
"That's a lie and you know it," Vernon said. "The whole lot of them are freaks who ought to be locked up, but even they wouldn't go around threatening innocent people without reason."
Harry made no move to answer or even indicate that he had heard his uncle. He thought about suggesting that perhaps his friends weren't blind and could tell that he was being starved at the Dursleys' home, but he didn't see how that would help anything. He knew it mattered little what he said. His uncle would assume he was lying, regardless of what response he gave, which was why he offered none.
"Potter!" Vernon shouted, scaring his wife and even startling Dudley enough to draw his attention away from his book.
"You don't have to shout, Dad," Dudley complained. "We can hear you just fine."
"Sorry, Uncle Vernon," Harry said innocently. "Did you say something?"
"You know very well what I said, boy."
"Must've slipped my mind," Harry quipped.
"I demand that you tell me right now what lies you've been spreading about us at that loony bin you call a school."
"I already said that I didn't tell them anything."
"And I already said that I don't believe you," Vernon said, sounding angrier with each word that came out of his mouth.
"Actually, you said 'That's a lie and you know it,' I believe," Harry retorted. He knew that he was in danger of pushing Vernon too far, but the simple truth was that he wasn't the least bit afraid of his uncle anymore. There was nothing Vernon could do to him that would make him feel worse than he already felt.
"You'd better-" Vernon began.
"No," Harry cut him off. "You'd better leave me alone. You wouldn't want me to have to tell my..."
He couldn't bear to finish that statement. The Dursleys couldn't know that Sirius was dead, so his godfather would still be a viable threat against mistreatment, but Harry couldn't make himself say it out loud. He noticed absently that the threat must still carry significant weight with the Dursleys, because no one spoke in the silence that Harry left when he trailed off mid-threat.
"I didn't tell anyone anything," he finally continued. "But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I'm not happy here. You don't want me here and I don't want to be here so..."
"Yes?" Vernon answered, amused and intrigued at what threat his teenage nephew might offer.
"So nothing," Harry said. "We don't have a choice. Thanks to Professor Dumbledore's meddling, we're stuck in this situation and it has to be this way every summer until I finish at Hogwarts."
"Well, we'll see about that," Vernon said.
"No, Vernon," Petunia said. "He's right. He has to stay with us until he turns seventeen."
"Rubbish. We've more than done our part."
"Vernon," Petunia said in a pleading voice, "could we finish this discussion in private?"
Vernon looked at his wife, clearly perplexed at her request. She inclined her head toward their son in the back seat. Vernon understood that there was something to be discussed that she thought Dudley shouldn't hear. Though it was contrary to his nature, Vernon dropped the subject.
The rest of the trip back to Surrey was quiet and without incident, leaving Harry with plenty of time to berate himself more over what happened in the Department of Mysteries. When they arrived at the Dursley residence Harry went straight up to his room. He dropped his school things and flopped down on the bed.
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Harry awoke the next morning after a night of tossing and turning where he wasn't sure he had actually slept at all. The night passed without any visions or other supernatural interruptions, but Harry's guilt over the death of his godfather made any restful sleep impossible. As he rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses, Harry's mind immediately returned to the same self-loathing thoughts.
He missed Sirius. He'd never really had time to get to know him. There had been some time at 12 Grimmauld Place the previous year, both at the end of the previous summer and then during the Christmas break. But that had always been in a house full of people. He wanted time to just be with Sirius. He wanted to learn all about Sirius. And, as Sirius had been the best link to his parents, he wanted to talk about them. Now he'd never get that chance. The one person who really knew Lily and James Potter was now just as dead as they had been for Harry's whole life-well, as far back as he could remember, anyway.
Uncle Vernon interrupted his thoughts in the same abrasive manner to which Harry had become accustomed: "Boy! Get up! If you think you can just lie about all day while your aunt and I slave away to feed and clothe you-"
"What do you want?" Harry said wearily. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had just interrupted his uncle for the second time in less than twenty-four hours and he couldn't care less.
"W-what?" his uncle spluttered in surprise.
"I thought we settled this yesterday," Harry said. "You don't like me and I don't like you. We're both pretty clear on that fact, so instead of yelling at me about it, why don't you just tell me what you want me to do so that I can get on with it and we don't have to endure each other's presence any longer than absolutely necessary."
Vernon Dursley stood in the middle of the room with a look of confusion on his face. His brain seemed to be stuck somewhere between shock at the impudence of his nephew and a hazy sense of something that felt almost like pride at how much the boy sounded just like Vernon himself in that moment. Finally he managed to get back to the purpose of his visit to the boy's room.
"The grass needs cutting and there are weeds in the flower beds that need pulling. You'll get nothing to eat until those tasks have been tended to. After that your aunt has some work for you as well." Vernon smirked and spun on his heel in his typical less-than-graceful manner and made for the door. A thought occurred to him just then and he turned back to face his nephew again.
"Oh, and tomorrow," he added, smiling sadistically, "we're having a bit of rock delivered for a landscaping project in the garden. I suspect it will take several weeks to complete. You will, of course, be doing all the digging and heavy lifting-under my supervision."
Vernon turned away again and left him alone. Harry quickly slid back into his reverie as he laced up his trainers. He knew he had to accept the fact that Sirius was dead and all the wishing in the world wouldn't bring him back, but he just wasn't ready to do it yet. Harry thought it was at least a bit ironic that he was becoming a fairly competent wizard but all the magic he was learning would never grant him the one thing he had always wanted-his parents. He remembered lonely nights as a small child in the cupboard under the stairs where he wished he had magical powers so he could bring his parents back to life.
He just didn't want to be alone anymore. He wanted a normal life. Harry didn't think it was all that much to ask for, though he knew it was out of the question. He would never have a normal family in which he was a child. The best he could hope for was that some day he would have a family of his own as a husband and father. But he knew that couldn't happen until certain things were taken care of. Anyone close to him was in danger simply by association, and that wasn't a risk he was willing to take just then, even if he'd had his eye on someone.
Harry shook his head with a rueful chuckle as he realized that he was far too young to be seriously thinking about that sort of thing. Besides, he knew he had a job to do, even if he didn't think he was ready to face up to the responsibility of it yet. Then he remembered Professor Lupin. Harry wondered if he would ever be able to think of him as something other than a former professor. Remus Lupin had been just as close to Harry's father and to Sirius as they had been to each other. Well, almost as close, anyway. Maybe he could find comfort in Professor Lupin. After all, he had been Sirius's only close friend after James's death-and Wormtail's betrayal. Sirius and Remus seemed like they'd been as close as Harry and Ron were. Harry would have to talk to him. He hoped they could help each other get through the loss of Sirius.
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Harry didn't bother to go to the kitchen, since he had been forbidden to eat until he had completed the tasks his uncle had assigned him. He went straight out into the garden and got to work. By the time he had finished mowing the Dursleys' rather expansive lawn the summer sun was high in the sky. As he made his way over to the flower beds to begin pulling weeds, Harry's pudgy cousin came out of the house and began waddling toward him.
"Er, hi, Harry," Dudley said nervously, sitting down on the freshly cut grass.
"What do you want?" Harry snapped.
"Er, nothing," Dudley stammered. "I mean, uh..."
"Come out to gloat because I'm working again while you sit around on your fat bottom doing nothing as usual?" Even as he said this, however, Harry noticed that his cousin, while not slim by any stretch of the imagination, was certainly not as large as he had been at the end of Harry's last stay at Privet Drive.
"Er, no."
"What, then?" Harry continued impatiently. "Is the telly broken? I can't imagine you'd pull yourself away from whatever mesmerizing program is playing."
"Okay, fine," Dudley said. "Forget it."
With less effort than it usually cost him, Dudley got to his feet and headed back toward the house. As he crossed the lawn he mentally chastised himself for still being so weak. By the time he reached the back door, Dudley had convinced himself to not give up so easily. He turned back toward the flower beds and approached his cousin again.
Harry had moved to the corner of the flower bed and was facing in such a way that he couldn't see Dudley until the larger boy's shadow fell over Harry. Not caring whether the broad shadow came from his stupid cousin, from whom Harry couldn't imagine hearing anything interesting, or from his uncle who would surely only have come out to tell Harry what he was doing wrong (as it had not yet occurred to Harry that it was Monday and his uncle would be at work), he didn't even bother to look back to see who it was.
"Leave me alone," he said simply.
"No," Dudley said. "Not until I've said what I came to say."
"I don't want to hear anything you've got to say."
"I suppose that's fair," Dudley said, "but it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to say it."
"Suit yourself," Harry muttered.
"Look," Dudley began, nervousness creeping into his voice again, "I know my parents have been awful to you."
"They're not the only ones," Harry retorted.
"No," Dudley conceded, sitting down on the grass again, "they're not. I have, too."
"Glad you've figured that out."
"You're not making this very easy," Dudley said testily.
"Wasn't trying to, Dud."
Dudley took a deep breath before he spoke again. "No, I guess you wouldn't. It's not as though I've ever given you reason to cut me some slack. What I wanted to say is, I'm sorry, Harry. I know that doesn't make anything okay, but I am sorry. There's no excuse for the way I've behaved. I can't change the past. But I can do a better job in the future."
Harry didn't know how to respond. He wanted to assume this was a trick Dudley was playing on him; perhaps it was that Dudley needed something and thought he could get it from Harry. The problem was that there was something about his cousin's behavior that seemed genuine. Harry still couldn't imagine why Dudley would be acting this way, but it didn't feel like a trick.
"Say something, will you?" Dudley said.
Harry realized that he'd been considering the situation for quite some time while Dudley sat waiting. He thought it was amazing that Dudley had lasted that long. He was always impatient, but then, so was Sirius. That thought set Harry off and he couldn't see how he could just forgive Dudley.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know," Dudley admitted.
"I've got a lot of work to do and I don't really feel like talking," Harry said curtly. "So unless you plan to get over here and help me pull these weeds, I suggest you get lost."
"My dad would lay into me if he found out I was helping you," Dudley said, actually sounding sorry.
"Whatever."
Dudley walked dejectedly back to the house. It hadn't gone as well as he had hoped, but he supposed it hadn't been as bad as he had expected. There had been a moment, Dudley was sure, when Harry had looked about to forgive him, but then it had passed. Perhaps there was still hope for the future.
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Harry finished his weeding and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. As he ate he pondered the exchange with Dudley. Maybe Dudley was exactly what he needed, Harry reasoned. If he was really sincere in his apology, maybe Harry could have a friend away from the wizarding world that wouldn't see him the way any of the people at school did. He knew that Ron, Hermione, and his other friends didn't look at him the way the other students did, but even with them there were plenty of issues.
Harry had a hard time imagining any kind of friendship with the bully that Dudley had been all his life. But then, Dudley certainly hadn't seemed like the same person he'd been all Harry's life when he tried to apologize earlier. Though Dudley had tormented him for many years, it was possible that someone who didn't know anything about Voldemort or, more importantly, Sirius, could be a useful companion.
Harry knew he still wasn't ready to forgive fifteen years of persecution, but maybe it was okay to take a step in that direction. He cleared his plate from the table and sought out his cousin. Dudley wasn't in front of telly, where Harry had expected to find him. Since he hadn't been in the kitchen either, Harry assumed he must have gone out.
He trudged up the stairs toward his room, but when he got to Dudley's bedroom door, he saw that it was open and Dudley was sitting at his desk. Deciding that casually friendly was the best approach, though it didn't feel casual, and he still wasn't feeling all that friendly toward Dudley, Harry spoke in a calm and amiable voice.
"Alright there, Dud?"
"Oh," Dudley said. "You startled me."
"Sorry," Harry said, neither feeling nor sounding very sorry. Harry was surprised to see that Dudley had a paperback book open in front of him. "Are you /reading/, Dud?"
"Yeah," Dudley answered with a slight grin.
"What is it?" Harry asked, finding that he was genuinely interested.
"It's called The Thief of Always by Clive Barker," Dudley said.
"Any good?"
"It's great. I've almost finished."
"Weird," Harry said. "No offense, Dud, but you never seemed like much of a reader to me."
"Well, I wasn't," Dudley said. Then, after a moment's consideration, "I guess things are a little different with me now."
"I'll say," Harry agreed, giving his cousin a strange look in response to this somewhat cryptic reply. "Sorry about, you know, earlier. I guess I really just didn't expect it is all. I didn't really know what to say."
"Well, I can't blame you for that."
"So what gives, Dud?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, why are you suddenly sorry for, well, you know," Harry said. In spite of the bitterness he felt toward the Dursleys, he couldn't make himself be as rude to Dudley as he thought he deserved.
"Dunno," Dudley answered. Then, after a pause, "Well, I guess that's not really true. I suppose I do know, but I don't know if I'm ready to say just yet. I won't be horrible to you anymore. Isn't that good enough for now?"
"Yeah, I guess," Harry said. "So does this mean we're going to be friends now or something?"
"No," Dudley said softly. "I mean, I know you wouldn't want to."
"What do you know about what I want?" Harry asked. It came out a bit more harshly than he had intended, but he was tired of everyone assuming they knew what Harry wanted, or what was best for him.
"I didn't mean it like that," Dudley said apologetically. "I just couldn't see how... I mean, I would understand if you still wanted to stay as far away from me as possible."
"I came in here, didn't I?"
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
"On the other hand you're partially right," Harry added.
"Oh."
"In that," Harry continued as though Dudley hadn't spoken, "I would not want to be around the old Dudley. But you're not the same Dudley I've always known. What's happened to you?"
"It's a long story," Dudley said, "and I don't really feel up to telling just yet. Can we save it for another day?"
"Sure, Dud."
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When Harry awoke the following morning it was with an odd sense of relief and something that almost resembled happiness, despite the fact that his uncle was shouting at him to get outside and get to work. He had talked with Dudley for quite a while the day before. They were not at all surprised to find that they didn't really have much in common, though they were surprised at the few things they found that that they did. Harry, for example, had not expected to find that Dudley had been learning to play chess, and while he insisted that he wasn't very good yet, Harry was sure that if Dudley could play at all, it might be something they could do together. Both boys were equally astonished to find that while each faced a very different situation when they were away at school, the end result was that some things about their school life were very much alike.
They might have gone on until late in the evening except that they had been interrupted by Aunt Petunia, who came in to send Harry to do more work. She had decided that Harry was old enough to start doing many of the things that she had always done herself because Harry had been too young.
Harry had spent the rest of the afternoon doing the laundry, scrubbing the toilets and bathtubs, and other household chores that he found he really didn't mind at all. It was dreadfully boring work, but the time passed fairly quickly. At one point Dudley had even volunteered to help, shocking Harry almost as much as Petunia, in spite of the changes Harry had already begun to witness. Dudley's parents clearly had not noticed that there was anything different about their pride and joy. Petunia scoffed at the idea of her son doing the work she had assigned to Harry. Even when he had insisted that he didn't mind, his mother wouldn't hear of it, so instead Dudley had followed his cousin around and kept him company.
So it was that Harry was somewhat cheerful while he dressed as quickly as he could, considering that he was still half asleep. He hurried down the stairs and nicked a piece of toast from the kitchen table before he hurried out into the garden. His uncle was nowhere in sight so he wandered around the side of the house. The sight that greeted him there was a dismaying surprise, since his uncle had clearly understated the situation the previous day.
What Harry saw before him was more than "a bit of rock" as his uncle had described it. It was a veritable mountain of rock, from Harry's perspective, filling nearly half of the Dursleys' front yard. However, the sheer amount of rock was not the part that troubled him the most. It was the fact that many of the rocks were far too large for Harry to move himself. He could tell just by looking that more than half the rocks were too big for him to even lift, let alone carry to wherever his uncle wanted them and build whatever he was supposed to be building with them.
"Um, Uncle Vernon?" Harry ventured.
"Well, here it is," Vernon responded, obviously quite proud of himself.
"Yes, I see that," Harry said tentatively. "It's just that, well..."
"What's the problem, boy?"
"Well, you want me to move these, right?"
"Of course. Didn't I say so yesterday?"
"Well, yes, but," Harry said, "I don't think I can even lift most of these."
"Load of old tosh," Vernon answered without hesitation. "It's true you're a bit scrawny, but all you have to do is lift them into the wheel barrow and then wheel them back to the corner. Come. I'll show you where I want them."
Vernon walked around the house and pointed to the far corner, as he said, "There. Move the entire pile back to that corner and pile them up the way they are now. When I return from the office this evening I'll show you what I want done with them."
Harry noted grimly, as he heard his uncle's car drive away, that the destination was the greatest possible distance he could be asked to move the rocks and still be on the Dursleys' property. He shook his head in a mix of disgust and disbelief as he went back around to the pile of rock, stopping at the shed on the side of the house to get the wheel barrow out. Harry selected one of the larger rocks first and bent his knees as he wrapped his arms around it, attempting to get a good grip. When he tried to lift it, however, it wouldn't move. He adjusted his grip and tried again, but it was quickly apparent that he was not going to be able to lift a large percentage of the rocks.
He stepped back to survey the situation and took a quick mental count of the number of rocks in various sizes as he walked around the heap. Because of the way the rocks were piled, there were many that were not yet visible to Harry, but of the rocks he could already see, two dozen were larger than, or at least as large as the one he had already tried to lift. Another fifty or so were smaller but still very likely too large for Harry to pick up. He decided to try one from that group and found that, as he had suspected, while he could move it a bit, he couldn't actually pick it up either.
Harry wondered briefly if there was a way that he could move the rocks with a little magic that might escape the Ministry's detection, but he knew he couldn't possibly be that lucky. The Ministry of Magic-or, more to the point, the Minister of Magic-always seemed to be out to prove Harry had done something wrong. In the past it had either been someone else doing the magic, like Dobby, the house-elf, or Harry had been using magic in self-defense, which, though it was perfectly legal, had created some difficulty with the Ministry.
Resigned to the fact that moving the bigger rocks was not possible for Harry alone, he decided to start moving the smaller rocks. He picked up one that was about the size of a Bludger and carried it to the back yard. He dropped it, with some measure of relief, where Vernon had told him to stack the rocks. Harry realized two things about his situation right away. First was the fact that while carrying one of the rocks back there was no great feat, the number of rocks and the distance over which they had to be moved would make this a very difficult task. And second, he realized how dumb he had been just then, carrying the rock himself just because he was able to do so, rather than using the wheel barrow.
He began loading up the wheel barrow with as many of the smaller rocks as he could fit. Unfortunately, when it was full, he found that it was now too heavy to push across the yard, so he had to stop and take some of the rocks out. When he got the wheel barrow back to a manageable weight, Harry wheeled it carefully, and a bit shakily, to the back.
When he returned to the original pile again he found Dudley sitting on the front steps, finishing off a banana. Harry noticed that his cousin was dressed in shorts and trainers, as though he might be prepared to do something active. This struck him as funny, though only for a moment before Dudley stood and greeted him, prompting Harry to stifle his chuckle.
"You're up early, Dud."
"Nah, this is normal for me now," Dudley said. "I usually eat a piece of fruit and then run a couple of miles every morning-except Sundays. I still like to have a lie in Sundays."
"Impressive," Harry said. Then he had an idea. He wasn't sure if it would work, since he couldn't say for sure whether Dudley had much muscle to speak of. He only knew that when Dudley and his friends used to beat Harry up, it hurt. And now he knew that Dudley apparently ran every morning as well. But neither of these things really told him whether Dudley was capable of offering much assistance.
"Say, Dudley," Harry called as Dudley began to stretch his legs. "D'you think maybe you could help me out here?"
"Sure," Dudley said. "What do you need?"
"Your dad asked me to move this pile of rocks to the back, but I can't even lift most of them."
"They look pretty big. I don't know if I can lift them either," Dudley admitted.
"That's true, Dud," Harry said. "But what if we tried to lift them together?"
"That might work."
"Let's try one of the really big ones and see if we're up to it," Harry suggested. "What do you say?"
"Yeah, sure."
The two boys positioned themselves on either side of what looked like the heaviest of the rocks and lifted it, with a great deal of effort, into the wheel barrow. It seemed to groan under the weight of the rock, but its single wheel held up admirably. They decided to take turns wheeling the heavy rocks to the back yard while the other had a short rest.
About an hour into the project, Aunt Petunia came out of the house and saw Dudley carefully managing the wheel barrow, loaded down with the last of the largest rocks as Harry sat down on a medium-sized rock for a break. The outrage she felt was evident on her face before she spoke.
Disclaimer: The scenery and the characters (and many other things) are borrowed from the mind of JK Rowling (and many other legal entities). This story is my own, stuff you don't recognize from any of her books, anyway. The rest of it (from the Hogwarts world) is not my property. It's hers (and that of her licensees). This is a non-profit writing exercise under the fair use doctrine, and is not to be used without the author's permission.
Copyright 2007 Jabe Washburn. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Another Summer at Privet Drive
30 June 1996
Harry Potter was on his way to his least favorite place in the world, the home of his aunt and uncle at 4 Privet Drive. He couldn't really remember a time when it wasn't a miserable place for him to be. After ten consecutive years and then parts of four summers living with the Dursleys, he had a pretty good idea what awaited him there. Just like the summers before, Harry expected to be either mistreated or ignored altogether. He knew he would likely be fed very little and asked to work a lot. The truth was that he didn't mind these things much, since his aunt's cooking was not very good and the work kept his mind off other things, but it was a terrible way to spend summer vacation.
He had thought of almost nothing other than Sirius since that night in the Department of Mysteries and it was this same attitude of introspection that kept him from noticing what was happening around him. If he had looked up at his aunt he would have seen that she was sitting as still as possible, not saying a word in the hope that her husband's rage would subside before he exploded. Dudley, who sat in the back with Harry, hadn't noticed his father's imminent meltdown either, but that was because he was apparently too deeply immersed in a paperback book to notice anything. Harry was so distracted that it didn't even occur to him that he'd never seen Dudley reading before.
The first fifteen minutes of the ride from King's Cross station back to Little Whinging passed in silence as Harry sat thinking, for what must have been the thousandth time, how stupid he had been to believe that Sirius had actually been inside the Ministry and in need of Harry's help. Then, without warning, the silence was shattered by a typical outburst from his uncle.
"Can you believe the nerve of those freaks?" Vernon Dursley practically shouted at his wife.
Petunia Dursley was every bit as disgusted by the acquaintances of her abnormal nephew, but she knew better than to interrupt when her husband went into one of his tirades.
"I mean," Vernon continued, "they threatened me. They actually threatened me. How dare they?"
Petunia briefly considered whether to try to console her husband or to agree with him, but was saved from having to risk either one when Vernon decided to direct his anger at Harry.
"Boy!" he said to Harry, looking into the rearview mirror. Harry realized that his uncle was addressing him and looked up unconcernedly.
When Vernon saw Harry's eyes he said, "What have you been telling them about us?"
"Nothing," Harry mumbled.
"That's a lie and you know it," Vernon said. "The whole lot of them are freaks who ought to be locked up, but even they wouldn't go around threatening innocent people without reason."
Harry made no move to answer or even indicate that he had heard his uncle. He thought about suggesting that perhaps his friends weren't blind and could tell that he was being starved at the Dursleys' home, but he didn't see how that would help anything. He knew it mattered little what he said. His uncle would assume he was lying, regardless of what response he gave, which was why he offered none.
"Potter!" Vernon shouted, scaring his wife and even startling Dudley enough to draw his attention away from his book.
"You don't have to shout, Dad," Dudley complained. "We can hear you just fine."
"Sorry, Uncle Vernon," Harry said innocently. "Did you say something?"
"You know very well what I said, boy."
"Must've slipped my mind," Harry quipped.
"I demand that you tell me right now what lies you've been spreading about us at that loony bin you call a school."
"I already said that I didn't tell them anything."
"And I already said that I don't believe you," Vernon said, sounding angrier with each word that came out of his mouth.
"Actually, you said 'That's a lie and you know it,' I believe," Harry retorted. He knew that he was in danger of pushing Vernon too far, but the simple truth was that he wasn't the least bit afraid of his uncle anymore. There was nothing Vernon could do to him that would make him feel worse than he already felt.
"You'd better-" Vernon began.
"No," Harry cut him off. "You'd better leave me alone. You wouldn't want me to have to tell my..."
He couldn't bear to finish that statement. The Dursleys couldn't know that Sirius was dead, so his godfather would still be a viable threat against mistreatment, but Harry couldn't make himself say it out loud. He noticed absently that the threat must still carry significant weight with the Dursleys, because no one spoke in the silence that Harry left when he trailed off mid-threat.
"I didn't tell anyone anything," he finally continued. "But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I'm not happy here. You don't want me here and I don't want to be here so..."
"Yes?" Vernon answered, amused and intrigued at what threat his teenage nephew might offer.
"So nothing," Harry said. "We don't have a choice. Thanks to Professor Dumbledore's meddling, we're stuck in this situation and it has to be this way every summer until I finish at Hogwarts."
"Well, we'll see about that," Vernon said.
"No, Vernon," Petunia said. "He's right. He has to stay with us until he turns seventeen."
"Rubbish. We've more than done our part."
"Vernon," Petunia said in a pleading voice, "could we finish this discussion in private?"
Vernon looked at his wife, clearly perplexed at her request. She inclined her head toward their son in the back seat. Vernon understood that there was something to be discussed that she thought Dudley shouldn't hear. Though it was contrary to his nature, Vernon dropped the subject.
The rest of the trip back to Surrey was quiet and without incident, leaving Harry with plenty of time to berate himself more over what happened in the Department of Mysteries. When they arrived at the Dursley residence Harry went straight up to his room. He dropped his school things and flopped down on the bed.
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Harry awoke the next morning after a night of tossing and turning where he wasn't sure he had actually slept at all. The night passed without any visions or other supernatural interruptions, but Harry's guilt over the death of his godfather made any restful sleep impossible. As he rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses, Harry's mind immediately returned to the same self-loathing thoughts.
He missed Sirius. He'd never really had time to get to know him. There had been some time at 12 Grimmauld Place the previous year, both at the end of the previous summer and then during the Christmas break. But that had always been in a house full of people. He wanted time to just be with Sirius. He wanted to learn all about Sirius. And, as Sirius had been the best link to his parents, he wanted to talk about them. Now he'd never get that chance. The one person who really knew Lily and James Potter was now just as dead as they had been for Harry's whole life-well, as far back as he could remember, anyway.
Uncle Vernon interrupted his thoughts in the same abrasive manner to which Harry had become accustomed: "Boy! Get up! If you think you can just lie about all day while your aunt and I slave away to feed and clothe you-"
"What do you want?" Harry said wearily. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had just interrupted his uncle for the second time in less than twenty-four hours and he couldn't care less.
"W-what?" his uncle spluttered in surprise.
"I thought we settled this yesterday," Harry said. "You don't like me and I don't like you. We're both pretty clear on that fact, so instead of yelling at me about it, why don't you just tell me what you want me to do so that I can get on with it and we don't have to endure each other's presence any longer than absolutely necessary."
Vernon Dursley stood in the middle of the room with a look of confusion on his face. His brain seemed to be stuck somewhere between shock at the impudence of his nephew and a hazy sense of something that felt almost like pride at how much the boy sounded just like Vernon himself in that moment. Finally he managed to get back to the purpose of his visit to the boy's room.
"The grass needs cutting and there are weeds in the flower beds that need pulling. You'll get nothing to eat until those tasks have been tended to. After that your aunt has some work for you as well." Vernon smirked and spun on his heel in his typical less-than-graceful manner and made for the door. A thought occurred to him just then and he turned back to face his nephew again.
"Oh, and tomorrow," he added, smiling sadistically, "we're having a bit of rock delivered for a landscaping project in the garden. I suspect it will take several weeks to complete. You will, of course, be doing all the digging and heavy lifting-under my supervision."
Vernon turned away again and left him alone. Harry quickly slid back into his reverie as he laced up his trainers. He knew he had to accept the fact that Sirius was dead and all the wishing in the world wouldn't bring him back, but he just wasn't ready to do it yet. Harry thought it was at least a bit ironic that he was becoming a fairly competent wizard but all the magic he was learning would never grant him the one thing he had always wanted-his parents. He remembered lonely nights as a small child in the cupboard under the stairs where he wished he had magical powers so he could bring his parents back to life.
He just didn't want to be alone anymore. He wanted a normal life. Harry didn't think it was all that much to ask for, though he knew it was out of the question. He would never have a normal family in which he was a child. The best he could hope for was that some day he would have a family of his own as a husband and father. But he knew that couldn't happen until certain things were taken care of. Anyone close to him was in danger simply by association, and that wasn't a risk he was willing to take just then, even if he'd had his eye on someone.
Harry shook his head with a rueful chuckle as he realized that he was far too young to be seriously thinking about that sort of thing. Besides, he knew he had a job to do, even if he didn't think he was ready to face up to the responsibility of it yet. Then he remembered Professor Lupin. Harry wondered if he would ever be able to think of him as something other than a former professor. Remus Lupin had been just as close to Harry's father and to Sirius as they had been to each other. Well, almost as close, anyway. Maybe he could find comfort in Professor Lupin. After all, he had been Sirius's only close friend after James's death-and Wormtail's betrayal. Sirius and Remus seemed like they'd been as close as Harry and Ron were. Harry would have to talk to him. He hoped they could help each other get through the loss of Sirius.
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Harry didn't bother to go to the kitchen, since he had been forbidden to eat until he had completed the tasks his uncle had assigned him. He went straight out into the garden and got to work. By the time he had finished mowing the Dursleys' rather expansive lawn the summer sun was high in the sky. As he made his way over to the flower beds to begin pulling weeds, Harry's pudgy cousin came out of the house and began waddling toward him.
"Er, hi, Harry," Dudley said nervously, sitting down on the freshly cut grass.
"What do you want?" Harry snapped.
"Er, nothing," Dudley stammered. "I mean, uh..."
"Come out to gloat because I'm working again while you sit around on your fat bottom doing nothing as usual?" Even as he said this, however, Harry noticed that his cousin, while not slim by any stretch of the imagination, was certainly not as large as he had been at the end of Harry's last stay at Privet Drive.
"Er, no."
"What, then?" Harry continued impatiently. "Is the telly broken? I can't imagine you'd pull yourself away from whatever mesmerizing program is playing."
"Okay, fine," Dudley said. "Forget it."
With less effort than it usually cost him, Dudley got to his feet and headed back toward the house. As he crossed the lawn he mentally chastised himself for still being so weak. By the time he reached the back door, Dudley had convinced himself to not give up so easily. He turned back toward the flower beds and approached his cousin again.
Harry had moved to the corner of the flower bed and was facing in such a way that he couldn't see Dudley until the larger boy's shadow fell over Harry. Not caring whether the broad shadow came from his stupid cousin, from whom Harry couldn't imagine hearing anything interesting, or from his uncle who would surely only have come out to tell Harry what he was doing wrong (as it had not yet occurred to Harry that it was Monday and his uncle would be at work), he didn't even bother to look back to see who it was.
"Leave me alone," he said simply.
"No," Dudley said. "Not until I've said what I came to say."
"I don't want to hear anything you've got to say."
"I suppose that's fair," Dudley said, "but it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to say it."
"Suit yourself," Harry muttered.
"Look," Dudley began, nervousness creeping into his voice again, "I know my parents have been awful to you."
"They're not the only ones," Harry retorted.
"No," Dudley conceded, sitting down on the grass again, "they're not. I have, too."
"Glad you've figured that out."
"You're not making this very easy," Dudley said testily.
"Wasn't trying to, Dud."
Dudley took a deep breath before he spoke again. "No, I guess you wouldn't. It's not as though I've ever given you reason to cut me some slack. What I wanted to say is, I'm sorry, Harry. I know that doesn't make anything okay, but I am sorry. There's no excuse for the way I've behaved. I can't change the past. But I can do a better job in the future."
Harry didn't know how to respond. He wanted to assume this was a trick Dudley was playing on him; perhaps it was that Dudley needed something and thought he could get it from Harry. The problem was that there was something about his cousin's behavior that seemed genuine. Harry still couldn't imagine why Dudley would be acting this way, but it didn't feel like a trick.
"Say something, will you?" Dudley said.
Harry realized that he'd been considering the situation for quite some time while Dudley sat waiting. He thought it was amazing that Dudley had lasted that long. He was always impatient, but then, so was Sirius. That thought set Harry off and he couldn't see how he could just forgive Dudley.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know," Dudley admitted.
"I've got a lot of work to do and I don't really feel like talking," Harry said curtly. "So unless you plan to get over here and help me pull these weeds, I suggest you get lost."
"My dad would lay into me if he found out I was helping you," Dudley said, actually sounding sorry.
"Whatever."
Dudley walked dejectedly back to the house. It hadn't gone as well as he had hoped, but he supposed it hadn't been as bad as he had expected. There had been a moment, Dudley was sure, when Harry had looked about to forgive him, but then it had passed. Perhaps there was still hope for the future.
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Harry finished his weeding and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. As he ate he pondered the exchange with Dudley. Maybe Dudley was exactly what he needed, Harry reasoned. If he was really sincere in his apology, maybe Harry could have a friend away from the wizarding world that wouldn't see him the way any of the people at school did. He knew that Ron, Hermione, and his other friends didn't look at him the way the other students did, but even with them there were plenty of issues.
Harry had a hard time imagining any kind of friendship with the bully that Dudley had been all his life. But then, Dudley certainly hadn't seemed like the same person he'd been all Harry's life when he tried to apologize earlier. Though Dudley had tormented him for many years, it was possible that someone who didn't know anything about Voldemort or, more importantly, Sirius, could be a useful companion.
Harry knew he still wasn't ready to forgive fifteen years of persecution, but maybe it was okay to take a step in that direction. He cleared his plate from the table and sought out his cousin. Dudley wasn't in front of telly, where Harry had expected to find him. Since he hadn't been in the kitchen either, Harry assumed he must have gone out.
He trudged up the stairs toward his room, but when he got to Dudley's bedroom door, he saw that it was open and Dudley was sitting at his desk. Deciding that casually friendly was the best approach, though it didn't feel casual, and he still wasn't feeling all that friendly toward Dudley, Harry spoke in a calm and amiable voice.
"Alright there, Dud?"
"Oh," Dudley said. "You startled me."
"Sorry," Harry said, neither feeling nor sounding very sorry. Harry was surprised to see that Dudley had a paperback book open in front of him. "Are you /reading/, Dud?"
"Yeah," Dudley answered with a slight grin.
"What is it?" Harry asked, finding that he was genuinely interested.
"It's called The Thief of Always by Clive Barker," Dudley said.
"Any good?"
"It's great. I've almost finished."
"Weird," Harry said. "No offense, Dud, but you never seemed like much of a reader to me."
"Well, I wasn't," Dudley said. Then, after a moment's consideration, "I guess things are a little different with me now."
"I'll say," Harry agreed, giving his cousin a strange look in response to this somewhat cryptic reply. "Sorry about, you know, earlier. I guess I really just didn't expect it is all. I didn't really know what to say."
"Well, I can't blame you for that."
"So what gives, Dud?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, why are you suddenly sorry for, well, you know," Harry said. In spite of the bitterness he felt toward the Dursleys, he couldn't make himself be as rude to Dudley as he thought he deserved.
"Dunno," Dudley answered. Then, after a pause, "Well, I guess that's not really true. I suppose I do know, but I don't know if I'm ready to say just yet. I won't be horrible to you anymore. Isn't that good enough for now?"
"Yeah, I guess," Harry said. "So does this mean we're going to be friends now or something?"
"No," Dudley said softly. "I mean, I know you wouldn't want to."
"What do you know about what I want?" Harry asked. It came out a bit more harshly than he had intended, but he was tired of everyone assuming they knew what Harry wanted, or what was best for him.
"I didn't mean it like that," Dudley said apologetically. "I just couldn't see how... I mean, I would understand if you still wanted to stay as far away from me as possible."
"I came in here, didn't I?"
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
"On the other hand you're partially right," Harry added.
"Oh."
"In that," Harry continued as though Dudley hadn't spoken, "I would not want to be around the old Dudley. But you're not the same Dudley I've always known. What's happened to you?"
"It's a long story," Dudley said, "and I don't really feel up to telling just yet. Can we save it for another day?"
"Sure, Dud."
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When Harry awoke the following morning it was with an odd sense of relief and something that almost resembled happiness, despite the fact that his uncle was shouting at him to get outside and get to work. He had talked with Dudley for quite a while the day before. They were not at all surprised to find that they didn't really have much in common, though they were surprised at the few things they found that that they did. Harry, for example, had not expected to find that Dudley had been learning to play chess, and while he insisted that he wasn't very good yet, Harry was sure that if Dudley could play at all, it might be something they could do together. Both boys were equally astonished to find that while each faced a very different situation when they were away at school, the end result was that some things about their school life were very much alike.
They might have gone on until late in the evening except that they had been interrupted by Aunt Petunia, who came in to send Harry to do more work. She had decided that Harry was old enough to start doing many of the things that she had always done herself because Harry had been too young.
Harry had spent the rest of the afternoon doing the laundry, scrubbing the toilets and bathtubs, and other household chores that he found he really didn't mind at all. It was dreadfully boring work, but the time passed fairly quickly. At one point Dudley had even volunteered to help, shocking Harry almost as much as Petunia, in spite of the changes Harry had already begun to witness. Dudley's parents clearly had not noticed that there was anything different about their pride and joy. Petunia scoffed at the idea of her son doing the work she had assigned to Harry. Even when he had insisted that he didn't mind, his mother wouldn't hear of it, so instead Dudley had followed his cousin around and kept him company.
So it was that Harry was somewhat cheerful while he dressed as quickly as he could, considering that he was still half asleep. He hurried down the stairs and nicked a piece of toast from the kitchen table before he hurried out into the garden. His uncle was nowhere in sight so he wandered around the side of the house. The sight that greeted him there was a dismaying surprise, since his uncle had clearly understated the situation the previous day.
What Harry saw before him was more than "a bit of rock" as his uncle had described it. It was a veritable mountain of rock, from Harry's perspective, filling nearly half of the Dursleys' front yard. However, the sheer amount of rock was not the part that troubled him the most. It was the fact that many of the rocks were far too large for Harry to move himself. He could tell just by looking that more than half the rocks were too big for him to even lift, let alone carry to wherever his uncle wanted them and build whatever he was supposed to be building with them.
"Um, Uncle Vernon?" Harry ventured.
"Well, here it is," Vernon responded, obviously quite proud of himself.
"Yes, I see that," Harry said tentatively. "It's just that, well..."
"What's the problem, boy?"
"Well, you want me to move these, right?"
"Of course. Didn't I say so yesterday?"
"Well, yes, but," Harry said, "I don't think I can even lift most of these."
"Load of old tosh," Vernon answered without hesitation. "It's true you're a bit scrawny, but all you have to do is lift them into the wheel barrow and then wheel them back to the corner. Come. I'll show you where I want them."
Vernon walked around the house and pointed to the far corner, as he said, "There. Move the entire pile back to that corner and pile them up the way they are now. When I return from the office this evening I'll show you what I want done with them."
Harry noted grimly, as he heard his uncle's car drive away, that the destination was the greatest possible distance he could be asked to move the rocks and still be on the Dursleys' property. He shook his head in a mix of disgust and disbelief as he went back around to the pile of rock, stopping at the shed on the side of the house to get the wheel barrow out. Harry selected one of the larger rocks first and bent his knees as he wrapped his arms around it, attempting to get a good grip. When he tried to lift it, however, it wouldn't move. He adjusted his grip and tried again, but it was quickly apparent that he was not going to be able to lift a large percentage of the rocks.
He stepped back to survey the situation and took a quick mental count of the number of rocks in various sizes as he walked around the heap. Because of the way the rocks were piled, there were many that were not yet visible to Harry, but of the rocks he could already see, two dozen were larger than, or at least as large as the one he had already tried to lift. Another fifty or so were smaller but still very likely too large for Harry to pick up. He decided to try one from that group and found that, as he had suspected, while he could move it a bit, he couldn't actually pick it up either.
Harry wondered briefly if there was a way that he could move the rocks with a little magic that might escape the Ministry's detection, but he knew he couldn't possibly be that lucky. The Ministry of Magic-or, more to the point, the Minister of Magic-always seemed to be out to prove Harry had done something wrong. In the past it had either been someone else doing the magic, like Dobby, the house-elf, or Harry had been using magic in self-defense, which, though it was perfectly legal, had created some difficulty with the Ministry.
Resigned to the fact that moving the bigger rocks was not possible for Harry alone, he decided to start moving the smaller rocks. He picked up one that was about the size of a Bludger and carried it to the back yard. He dropped it, with some measure of relief, where Vernon had told him to stack the rocks. Harry realized two things about his situation right away. First was the fact that while carrying one of the rocks back there was no great feat, the number of rocks and the distance over which they had to be moved would make this a very difficult task. And second, he realized how dumb he had been just then, carrying the rock himself just because he was able to do so, rather than using the wheel barrow.
He began loading up the wheel barrow with as many of the smaller rocks as he could fit. Unfortunately, when it was full, he found that it was now too heavy to push across the yard, so he had to stop and take some of the rocks out. When he got the wheel barrow back to a manageable weight, Harry wheeled it carefully, and a bit shakily, to the back.
When he returned to the original pile again he found Dudley sitting on the front steps, finishing off a banana. Harry noticed that his cousin was dressed in shorts and trainers, as though he might be prepared to do something active. This struck him as funny, though only for a moment before Dudley stood and greeted him, prompting Harry to stifle his chuckle.
"You're up early, Dud."
"Nah, this is normal for me now," Dudley said. "I usually eat a piece of fruit and then run a couple of miles every morning-except Sundays. I still like to have a lie in Sundays."
"Impressive," Harry said. Then he had an idea. He wasn't sure if it would work, since he couldn't say for sure whether Dudley had much muscle to speak of. He only knew that when Dudley and his friends used to beat Harry up, it hurt. And now he knew that Dudley apparently ran every morning as well. But neither of these things really told him whether Dudley was capable of offering much assistance.
"Say, Dudley," Harry called as Dudley began to stretch his legs. "D'you think maybe you could help me out here?"
"Sure," Dudley said. "What do you need?"
"Your dad asked me to move this pile of rocks to the back, but I can't even lift most of them."
"They look pretty big. I don't know if I can lift them either," Dudley admitted.
"That's true, Dud," Harry said. "But what if we tried to lift them together?"
"That might work."
"Let's try one of the really big ones and see if we're up to it," Harry suggested. "What do you say?"
"Yeah, sure."
The two boys positioned themselves on either side of what looked like the heaviest of the rocks and lifted it, with a great deal of effort, into the wheel barrow. It seemed to groan under the weight of the rock, but its single wheel held up admirably. They decided to take turns wheeling the heavy rocks to the back yard while the other had a short rest.
About an hour into the project, Aunt Petunia came out of the house and saw Dudley carefully managing the wheel barrow, loaded down with the last of the largest rocks as Harry sat down on a medium-sized rock for a break. The outrage she felt was evident on her face before she spoke.
Disclaimer: The scenery and the characters (and many other things) are borrowed from the mind of JK Rowling (and many other legal entities). This story is my own, stuff you don't recognize from any of her books, anyway. The rest of it (from the Hogwarts world) is not my property. It's hers (and that of her licensees). This is a non-profit writing exercise under the fair use doctrine, and is not to be used without the author's permission.
Copyright 2007 Jabe Washburn. All rights reserved.
30 June 1996
Harry Potter was on his way to his least favorite place in the world, the home of his aunt and uncle at 4 Privet Drive. He couldn't really remember a time when it wasn't a miserable place for him to be. After ten consecutive years and then parts of four summers living with the Dursleys, he had a pretty good idea what awaited him there. Just like the summers before, Harry expected to be either mistreated or ignored altogether. He knew he would likely be fed very little and asked to work a lot. The truth was that he didn't mind these things much, since his aunt's cooking was not very good and the work kept his mind off other things, but it was a terrible way to spend summer vacation.
He had thought of almost nothing other than Sirius since that night in the Department of Mysteries and it was this same attitude of introspection that kept him from noticing what was happening around him. If he had looked up at his aunt he would have seen that she was sitting as still as possible, not saying a word in the hope that her husband's rage would subside before he exploded. Dudley, who sat in the back with Harry, hadn't noticed his father's imminent meltdown either, but that was because he was apparently too deeply immersed in a paperback book to notice anything. Harry was so distracted that it didn't even occur to him that he'd never seen Dudley reading before.
The first fifteen minutes of the ride from King's Cross station back to Little Whinging passed in silence as Harry sat thinking, for what must have been the thousandth time, how stupid he had been to believe that Sirius had actually been inside the Ministry and in need of Harry's help. Then, without warning, the silence was shattered by a typical outburst from his uncle.
"Can you believe the nerve of those freaks?" Vernon Dursley practically shouted at his wife.
Petunia Dursley was every bit as disgusted by the acquaintances of her abnormal nephew, but she knew better than to interrupt when her husband went into one of his tirades.
"I mean," Vernon continued, "they threatened me. They actually threatened me. How dare they?"
Petunia briefly considered whether to try to console her husband or to agree with him, but was saved from having to risk either one when Vernon decided to direct his anger at Harry.
"Boy!" he said to Harry, looking into the rearview mirror. Harry realized that his uncle was addressing him and looked up unconcernedly.
When Vernon saw Harry's eyes he said, "What have you been telling them about us?"
"Nothing," Harry mumbled.
"That's a lie and you know it," Vernon said. "The whole lot of them are freaks who ought to be locked up, but even they wouldn't go around threatening innocent people without reason."
Harry made no move to answer or even indicate that he had heard his uncle. He thought about suggesting that perhaps his friends weren't blind and could tell that he was being starved at the Dursleys' home, but he didn't see how that would help anything. He knew it mattered little what he said. His uncle would assume he was lying, regardless of what response he gave, which was why he offered none.
"Potter!" Vernon shouted, scaring his wife and even startling Dudley enough to draw his attention away from his book.
"You don't have to shout, Dad," Dudley complained. "We can hear you just fine."
"Sorry, Uncle Vernon," Harry said innocently. "Did you say something?"
"You know very well what I said, boy."
"Must've slipped my mind," Harry quipped.
"I demand that you tell me right now what lies you've been spreading about us at that loony bin you call a school."
"I already said that I didn't tell them anything."
"And I already said that I don't believe you," Vernon said, sounding angrier with each word that came out of his mouth.
"Actually, you said 'That's a lie and you know it,' I believe," Harry retorted. He knew that he was in danger of pushing Vernon too far, but the simple truth was that he wasn't the least bit afraid of his uncle anymore. There was nothing Vernon could do to him that would make him feel worse than he already felt.
"You'd better-" Vernon began.
"No," Harry cut him off. "You'd better leave me alone. You wouldn't want me to have to tell my..."
He couldn't bear to finish that statement. The Dursleys couldn't know that Sirius was dead, so his godfather would still be a viable threat against mistreatment, but Harry couldn't make himself say it out loud. He noticed absently that the threat must still carry significant weight with the Dursleys, because no one spoke in the silence that Harry left when he trailed off mid-threat.
"I didn't tell anyone anything," he finally continued. "But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I'm not happy here. You don't want me here and I don't want to be here so..."
"Yes?" Vernon answered, amused and intrigued at what threat his teenage nephew might offer.
"So nothing," Harry said. "We don't have a choice. Thanks to Professor Dumbledore's meddling, we're stuck in this situation and it has to be this way every summer until I finish at Hogwarts."
"Well, we'll see about that," Vernon said.
"No, Vernon," Petunia said. "He's right. He has to stay with us until he turns seventeen."
"Rubbish. We've more than done our part."
"Vernon," Petunia said in a pleading voice, "could we finish this discussion in private?"
Vernon looked at his wife, clearly perplexed at her request. She inclined her head toward their son in the back seat. Vernon understood that there was something to be discussed that she thought Dudley shouldn't hear. Though it was contrary to his nature, Vernon dropped the subject.
The rest of the trip back to Surrey was quiet and without incident, leaving Harry with plenty of time to berate himself more over what happened in the Department of Mysteries. When they arrived at the Dursley residence Harry went straight up to his room. He dropped his school things and flopped down on the bed.
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Harry awoke the next morning after a night of tossing and turning where he wasn't sure he had actually slept at all. The night passed without any visions or other supernatural interruptions, but Harry's guilt over the death of his godfather made any restful sleep impossible. As he rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses, Harry's mind immediately returned to the same self-loathing thoughts.
He missed Sirius. He'd never really had time to get to know him. There had been some time at 12 Grimmauld Place the previous year, both at the end of the previous summer and then during the Christmas break. But that had always been in a house full of people. He wanted time to just be with Sirius. He wanted to learn all about Sirius. And, as Sirius had been the best link to his parents, he wanted to talk about them. Now he'd never get that chance. The one person who really knew Lily and James Potter was now just as dead as they had been for Harry's whole life-well, as far back as he could remember, anyway.
Uncle Vernon interrupted his thoughts in the same abrasive manner to which Harry had become accustomed: "Boy! Get up! If you think you can just lie about all day while your aunt and I slave away to feed and clothe you-"
"What do you want?" Harry said wearily. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had just interrupted his uncle for the second time in less than twenty-four hours and he couldn't care less.
"W-what?" his uncle spluttered in surprise.
"I thought we settled this yesterday," Harry said. "You don't like me and I don't like you. We're both pretty clear on that fact, so instead of yelling at me about it, why don't you just tell me what you want me to do so that I can get on with it and we don't have to endure each other's presence any longer than absolutely necessary."
Vernon Dursley stood in the middle of the room with a look of confusion on his face. His brain seemed to be stuck somewhere between shock at the impudence of his nephew and a hazy sense of something that felt almost like pride at how much the boy sounded just like Vernon himself in that moment. Finally he managed to get back to the purpose of his visit to the boy's room.
"The grass needs cutting and there are weeds in the flower beds that need pulling. You'll get nothing to eat until those tasks have been tended to. After that your aunt has some work for you as well." Vernon smirked and spun on his heel in his typical less-than-graceful manner and made for the door. A thought occurred to him just then and he turned back to face his nephew again.
"Oh, and tomorrow," he added, smiling sadistically, "we're having a bit of rock delivered for a landscaping project in the garden. I suspect it will take several weeks to complete. You will, of course, be doing all the digging and heavy lifting-under my supervision."
Vernon turned away again and left him alone. Harry quickly slid back into his reverie as he laced up his trainers. He knew he had to accept the fact that Sirius was dead and all the wishing in the world wouldn't bring him back, but he just wasn't ready to do it yet. Harry thought it was at least a bit ironic that he was becoming a fairly competent wizard but all the magic he was learning would never grant him the one thing he had always wanted-his parents. He remembered lonely nights as a small child in the cupboard under the stairs where he wished he had magical powers so he could bring his parents back to life.
He just didn't want to be alone anymore. He wanted a normal life. Harry didn't think it was all that much to ask for, though he knew it was out of the question. He would never have a normal family in which he was a child. The best he could hope for was that some day he would have a family of his own as a husband and father. But he knew that couldn't happen until certain things were taken care of. Anyone close to him was in danger simply by association, and that wasn't a risk he was willing to take just then, even if he'd had his eye on someone.
Harry shook his head with a rueful chuckle as he realized that he was far too young to be seriously thinking about that sort of thing. Besides, he knew he had a job to do, even if he didn't think he was ready to face up to the responsibility of it yet. Then he remembered Professor Lupin. Harry wondered if he would ever be able to think of him as something other than a former professor. Remus Lupin had been just as close to Harry's father and to Sirius as they had been to each other. Well, almost as close, anyway. Maybe he could find comfort in Professor Lupin. After all, he had been Sirius's only close friend after James's death-and Wormtail's betrayal. Sirius and Remus seemed like they'd been as close as Harry and Ron were. Harry would have to talk to him. He hoped they could help each other get through the loss of Sirius.
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Harry didn't bother to go to the kitchen, since he had been forbidden to eat until he had completed the tasks his uncle had assigned him. He went straight out into the garden and got to work. By the time he had finished mowing the Dursleys' rather expansive lawn the summer sun was high in the sky. As he made his way over to the flower beds to begin pulling weeds, Harry's pudgy cousin came out of the house and began waddling toward him.
"Er, hi, Harry," Dudley said nervously, sitting down on the freshly cut grass.
"What do you want?" Harry snapped.
"Er, nothing," Dudley stammered. "I mean, uh..."
"Come out to gloat because I'm working again while you sit around on your fat bottom doing nothing as usual?" Even as he said this, however, Harry noticed that his cousin, while not slim by any stretch of the imagination, was certainly not as large as he had been at the end of Harry's last stay at Privet Drive.
"Er, no."
"What, then?" Harry continued impatiently. "Is the telly broken? I can't imagine you'd pull yourself away from whatever mesmerizing program is playing."
"Okay, fine," Dudley said. "Forget it."
With less effort than it usually cost him, Dudley got to his feet and headed back toward the house. As he crossed the lawn he mentally chastised himself for still being so weak. By the time he reached the back door, Dudley had convinced himself to not give up so easily. He turned back toward the flower beds and approached his cousin again.
Harry had moved to the corner of the flower bed and was facing in such a way that he couldn't see Dudley until the larger boy's shadow fell over Harry. Not caring whether the broad shadow came from his stupid cousin, from whom Harry couldn't imagine hearing anything interesting, or from his uncle who would surely only have come out to tell Harry what he was doing wrong (as it had not yet occurred to Harry that it was Monday and his uncle would be at work), he didn't even bother to look back to see who it was.
"Leave me alone," he said simply.
"No," Dudley said. "Not until I've said what I came to say."
"I don't want to hear anything you've got to say."
"I suppose that's fair," Dudley said, "but it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to say it."
"Suit yourself," Harry muttered.
"Look," Dudley began, nervousness creeping into his voice again, "I know my parents have been awful to you."
"They're not the only ones," Harry retorted.
"No," Dudley conceded, sitting down on the grass again, "they're not. I have, too."
"Glad you've figured that out."
"You're not making this very easy," Dudley said testily.
"Wasn't trying to, Dud."
Dudley took a deep breath before he spoke again. "No, I guess you wouldn't. It's not as though I've ever given you reason to cut me some slack. What I wanted to say is, I'm sorry, Harry. I know that doesn't make anything okay, but I am sorry. There's no excuse for the way I've behaved. I can't change the past. But I can do a better job in the future."
Harry didn't know how to respond. He wanted to assume this was a trick Dudley was playing on him; perhaps it was that Dudley needed something and thought he could get it from Harry. The problem was that there was something about his cousin's behavior that seemed genuine. Harry still couldn't imagine why Dudley would be acting this way, but it didn't feel like a trick.
"Say something, will you?" Dudley said.
Harry realized that he'd been considering the situation for quite some time while Dudley sat waiting. He thought it was amazing that Dudley had lasted that long. He was always impatient, but then, so was Sirius. That thought set Harry off and he couldn't see how he could just forgive Dudley.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know," Dudley admitted.
"I've got a lot of work to do and I don't really feel like talking," Harry said curtly. "So unless you plan to get over here and help me pull these weeds, I suggest you get lost."
"My dad would lay into me if he found out I was helping you," Dudley said, actually sounding sorry.
"Whatever."
Dudley walked dejectedly back to the house. It hadn't gone as well as he had hoped, but he supposed it hadn't been as bad as he had expected. There had been a moment, Dudley was sure, when Harry had looked about to forgive him, but then it had passed. Perhaps there was still hope for the future.
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Harry finished his weeding and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. As he ate he pondered the exchange with Dudley. Maybe Dudley was exactly what he needed, Harry reasoned. If he was really sincere in his apology, maybe Harry could have a friend away from the wizarding world that wouldn't see him the way any of the people at school did. He knew that Ron, Hermione, and his other friends didn't look at him the way the other students did, but even with them there were plenty of issues.
Harry had a hard time imagining any kind of friendship with the bully that Dudley had been all his life. But then, Dudley certainly hadn't seemed like the same person he'd been all Harry's life when he tried to apologize earlier. Though Dudley had tormented him for many years, it was possible that someone who didn't know anything about Voldemort or, more importantly, Sirius, could be a useful companion.
Harry knew he still wasn't ready to forgive fifteen years of persecution, but maybe it was okay to take a step in that direction. He cleared his plate from the table and sought out his cousin. Dudley wasn't in front of telly, where Harry had expected to find him. Since he hadn't been in the kitchen either, Harry assumed he must have gone out.
He trudged up the stairs toward his room, but when he got to Dudley's bedroom door, he saw that it was open and Dudley was sitting at his desk. Deciding that casually friendly was the best approach, though it didn't feel casual, and he still wasn't feeling all that friendly toward Dudley, Harry spoke in a calm and amiable voice.
"Alright there, Dud?"
"Oh," Dudley said. "You startled me."
"Sorry," Harry said, neither feeling nor sounding very sorry. Harry was surprised to see that Dudley had a paperback book open in front of him. "Are you /reading/, Dud?"
"Yeah," Dudley answered with a slight grin.
"What is it?" Harry asked, finding that he was genuinely interested.
"It's called The Thief of Always by Clive Barker," Dudley said.
"Any good?"
"It's great. I've almost finished."
"Weird," Harry said. "No offense, Dud, but you never seemed like much of a reader to me."
"Well, I wasn't," Dudley said. Then, after a moment's consideration, "I guess things are a little different with me now."
"I'll say," Harry agreed, giving his cousin a strange look in response to this somewhat cryptic reply. "Sorry about, you know, earlier. I guess I really just didn't expect it is all. I didn't really know what to say."
"Well, I can't blame you for that."
"So what gives, Dud?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, why are you suddenly sorry for, well, you know," Harry said. In spite of the bitterness he felt toward the Dursleys, he couldn't make himself be as rude to Dudley as he thought he deserved.
"Dunno," Dudley answered. Then, after a pause, "Well, I guess that's not really true. I suppose I do know, but I don't know if I'm ready to say just yet. I won't be horrible to you anymore. Isn't that good enough for now?"
"Yeah, I guess," Harry said. "So does this mean we're going to be friends now or something?"
"No," Dudley said softly. "I mean, I know you wouldn't want to."
"What do you know about what I want?" Harry asked. It came out a bit more harshly than he had intended, but he was tired of everyone assuming they knew what Harry wanted, or what was best for him.
"I didn't mean it like that," Dudley said apologetically. "I just couldn't see how... I mean, I would understand if you still wanted to stay as far away from me as possible."
"I came in here, didn't I?"
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
"On the other hand you're partially right," Harry added.
"Oh."
"In that," Harry continued as though Dudley hadn't spoken, "I would not want to be around the old Dudley. But you're not the same Dudley I've always known. What's happened to you?"
"It's a long story," Dudley said, "and I don't really feel up to telling just yet. Can we save it for another day?"
"Sure, Dud."
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When Harry awoke the following morning it was with an odd sense of relief and something that almost resembled happiness, despite the fact that his uncle was shouting at him to get outside and get to work. He had talked with Dudley for quite a while the day before. They were not at all surprised to find that they didn't really have much in common, though they were surprised at the few things they found that that they did. Harry, for example, had not expected to find that Dudley had been learning to play chess, and while he insisted that he wasn't very good yet, Harry was sure that if Dudley could play at all, it might be something they could do together. Both boys were equally astonished to find that while each faced a very different situation when they were away at school, the end result was that some things about their school life were very much alike.
They might have gone on until late in the evening except that they had been interrupted by Aunt Petunia, who came in to send Harry to do more work. She had decided that Harry was old enough to start doing many of the things that she had always done herself because Harry had been too young.
Harry had spent the rest of the afternoon doing the laundry, scrubbing the toilets and bathtubs, and other household chores that he found he really didn't mind at all. It was dreadfully boring work, but the time passed fairly quickly. At one point Dudley had even volunteered to help, shocking Harry almost as much as Petunia, in spite of the changes Harry had already begun to witness. Dudley's parents clearly had not noticed that there was anything different about their pride and joy. Petunia scoffed at the idea of her son doing the work she had assigned to Harry. Even when he had insisted that he didn't mind, his mother wouldn't hear of it, so instead Dudley had followed his cousin around and kept him company.
So it was that Harry was somewhat cheerful while he dressed as quickly as he could, considering that he was still half asleep. He hurried down the stairs and nicked a piece of toast from the kitchen table before he hurried out into the garden. His uncle was nowhere in sight so he wandered around the side of the house. The sight that greeted him there was a dismaying surprise, since his uncle had clearly understated the situation the previous day.
What Harry saw before him was more than "a bit of rock" as his uncle had described it. It was a veritable mountain of rock, from Harry's perspective, filling nearly half of the Dursleys' front yard. However, the sheer amount of rock was not the part that troubled him the most. It was the fact that many of the rocks were far too large for Harry to move himself. He could tell just by looking that more than half the rocks were too big for him to even lift, let alone carry to wherever his uncle wanted them and build whatever he was supposed to be building with them.
"Um, Uncle Vernon?" Harry ventured.
"Well, here it is," Vernon responded, obviously quite proud of himself.
"Yes, I see that," Harry said tentatively. "It's just that, well..."
"What's the problem, boy?"
"Well, you want me to move these, right?"
"Of course. Didn't I say so yesterday?"
"Well, yes, but," Harry said, "I don't think I can even lift most of these."
"Load of old tosh," Vernon answered without hesitation. "It's true you're a bit scrawny, but all you have to do is lift them into the wheel barrow and then wheel them back to the corner. Come. I'll show you where I want them."
Vernon walked around the house and pointed to the far corner, as he said, "There. Move the entire pile back to that corner and pile them up the way they are now. When I return from the office this evening I'll show you what I want done with them."
Harry noted grimly, as he heard his uncle's car drive away, that the destination was the greatest possible distance he could be asked to move the rocks and still be on the Dursleys' property. He shook his head in a mix of disgust and disbelief as he went back around to the pile of rock, stopping at the shed on the side of the house to get the wheel barrow out. Harry selected one of the larger rocks first and bent his knees as he wrapped his arms around it, attempting to get a good grip. When he tried to lift it, however, it wouldn't move. He adjusted his grip and tried again, but it was quickly apparent that he was not going to be able to lift a large percentage of the rocks.
He stepped back to survey the situation and took a quick mental count of the number of rocks in various sizes as he walked around the heap. Because of the way the rocks were piled, there were many that were not yet visible to Harry, but of the rocks he could already see, two dozen were larger than, or at least as large as the one he had already tried to lift. Another fifty or so were smaller but still very likely too large for Harry to pick up. He decided to try one from that group and found that, as he had suspected, while he could move it a bit, he couldn't actually pick it up either.
Harry wondered briefly if there was a way that he could move the rocks with a little magic that might escape the Ministry's detection, but he knew he couldn't possibly be that lucky. The Ministry of Magic-or, more to the point, the Minister of Magic-always seemed to be out to prove Harry had done something wrong. In the past it had either been someone else doing the magic, like Dobby, the house-elf, or Harry had been using magic in self-defense, which, though it was perfectly legal, had created some difficulty with the Ministry.
Resigned to the fact that moving the bigger rocks was not possible for Harry alone, he decided to start moving the smaller rocks. He picked up one that was about the size of a Bludger and carried it to the back yard. He dropped it, with some measure of relief, where Vernon had told him to stack the rocks. Harry realized two things about his situation right away. First was the fact that while carrying one of the rocks back there was no great feat, the number of rocks and the distance over which they had to be moved would make this a very difficult task. And second, he realized how dumb he had been just then, carrying the rock himself just because he was able to do so, rather than using the wheel barrow.
He began loading up the wheel barrow with as many of the smaller rocks as he could fit. Unfortunately, when it was full, he found that it was now too heavy to push across the yard, so he had to stop and take some of the rocks out. When he got the wheel barrow back to a manageable weight, Harry wheeled it carefully, and a bit shakily, to the back.
When he returned to the original pile again he found Dudley sitting on the front steps, finishing off a banana. Harry noticed that his cousin was dressed in shorts and trainers, as though he might be prepared to do something active. This struck him as funny, though only for a moment before Dudley stood and greeted him, prompting Harry to stifle his chuckle.
"You're up early, Dud."
"Nah, this is normal for me now," Dudley said. "I usually eat a piece of fruit and then run a couple of miles every morning-except Sundays. I still like to have a lie in Sundays."
"Impressive," Harry said. Then he had an idea. He wasn't sure if it would work, since he couldn't say for sure whether Dudley had much muscle to speak of. He only knew that when Dudley and his friends used to beat Harry up, it hurt. And now he knew that Dudley apparently ran every morning as well. But neither of these things really told him whether Dudley was capable of offering much assistance.
"Say, Dudley," Harry called as Dudley began to stretch his legs. "D'you think maybe you could help me out here?"
"Sure," Dudley said. "What do you need?"
"Your dad asked me to move this pile of rocks to the back, but I can't even lift most of them."
"They look pretty big. I don't know if I can lift them either," Dudley admitted.
"That's true, Dud," Harry said. "But what if we tried to lift them together?"
"That might work."
"Let's try one of the really big ones and see if we're up to it," Harry suggested. "What do you say?"
"Yeah, sure."
The two boys positioned themselves on either side of what looked like the heaviest of the rocks and lifted it, with a great deal of effort, into the wheel barrow. It seemed to groan under the weight of the rock, but its single wheel held up admirably. They decided to take turns wheeling the heavy rocks to the back yard while the other had a short rest.
About an hour into the project, Aunt Petunia came out of the house and saw Dudley carefully managing the wheel barrow, loaded down with the last of the largest rocks as Harry sat down on a medium-sized rock for a break. The outrage she felt was evident on her face before she spoke.
Disclaimer: The scenery and the characters (and many other things) are borrowed from the mind of JK Rowling (and many other legal entities). This story is my own, stuff you don't recognize from any of her books, anyway. The rest of it (from the Hogwarts world) is not my property. It's hers (and that of her licensees). This is a non-profit writing exercise under the fair use doctrine, and is not to be used without the author's permission.
Copyright 2007 Jabe Washburn. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1 Chapter 1 Another Summer at Privet Drive
30 June 1996
Harry Potter was on his way to his least favorite place in the world, the home of his aunt and uncle at 4 Privet Drive. He couldn't really remember a time when it wasn't a miserable place for him to be. After ten consecutive years and then parts of four summers living with the Dursleys, he had a pretty good idea what awaited him there. Just like the summers before, Harry expected to be either mistreated or ignored altogether. He knew he would likely be fed very little and asked to work a lot. The truth was that he didn't mind these things much, since his aunt's cooking was not very good and the work kept his mind off other things, but it was a terrible way to spend summer vacation.
He had thought of almost nothing other than Sirius since that night in the Department of Mysteries and it was this same attitude of introspection that kept him from noticing what was happening around him. If he had looked up at his aunt he would have seen that she was sitting as still as possible, not saying a word in the hope that her husband's rage would subside before he exploded. Dudley, who sat in the back with Harry, hadn't noticed his father's imminent meltdown either, but that was because he was apparently too deeply immersed in a paperback book to notice anything. Harry was so distracted that it didn't even occur to him that he'd never seen Dudley reading before.
The first fifteen minutes of the ride from King's Cross station back to Little Whinging passed in silence as Harry sat thinking, for what must have been the thousandth time, how stupid he had been to believe that Sirius had actually been inside the Ministry and in need of Harry's help. Then, without warning, the silence was shattered by a typical outburst from his uncle.
"Can you believe the nerve of those freaks?" Vernon Dursley practically shouted at his wife.
Petunia Dursley was every bit as disgusted by the acquaintances of her abnormal nephew, but she knew better than to interrupt when her husband went into one of his tirades.
"I mean," Vernon continued, "they threatened me. They actually threatened me. How dare they?"
Petunia briefly considered whether to try to console her husband or to agree with him, but was saved from having to risk either one when Vernon decided to direct his anger at Harry.
"Boy!" he said to Harry, looking into the rearview mirror. Harry realized that his uncle was addressing him and looked up unconcernedly.
When Vernon saw Harry's eyes he said, "What have you been telling them about us?"
"Nothing," Harry mumbled.
"That's a lie and you know it," Vernon said. "The whole lot of them are freaks who ought to be locked up, but even they wouldn't go around threatening innocent people without reason."
Harry made no move to answer or even indicate that he had heard his uncle. He thought about suggesting that perhaps his friends weren't blind and could tell that he was being starved at the Dursleys' home, but he didn't see how that would help anything. He knew it mattered little what he said. His uncle would assume he was lying, regardless of what response he gave, which was why he offered none.
"Potter!" Vernon shouted, scaring his wife and even startling Dudley enough to draw his attention away from his book.
"You don't have to shout, Dad," Dudley complained. "We can hear you just fine."
"Sorry, Uncle Vernon," Harry said innocently. "Did you say something?"
"You know very well what I said, boy."
"Must've slipped my mind," Harry quipped.
"I demand that you tell me right now what lies you've been spreading about us at that loony bin you call a school."
"I already said that I didn't tell them anything."
"And I already said that I don't believe you," Vernon said, sounding angrier with each word that came out of his mouth.
"Actually, you said 'That's a lie and you know it,' I believe," Harry retorted. He knew that he was in danger of pushing Vernon too far, but the simple truth was that he wasn't the least bit afraid of his uncle anymore. There was nothing Vernon could do to him that would make him feel worse than he already felt.
"You'd better-" Vernon began.
"No," Harry cut him off. "You'd better leave me alone. You wouldn't want me to have to tell my..."
He couldn't bear to finish that statement. The Dursleys couldn't know that Sirius was dead, so his godfather would still be a viable threat against mistreatment, but Harry couldn't make himself say it out loud. He noticed absently that the threat must still carry significant weight with the Dursleys, because no one spoke in the silence that Harry left when he trailed off mid-threat.
"I didn't tell anyone anything," he finally continued. "But it doesn't take a genius to figure out that I'm not happy here. You don't want me here and I don't want to be here so..."
"Yes?" Vernon answered, amused and intrigued at what threat his teenage nephew might offer.
"So nothing," Harry said. "We don't have a choice. Thanks to Professor Dumbledore's meddling, we're stuck in this situation and it has to be this way every summer until I finish at Hogwarts."
"Well, we'll see about that," Vernon said.
"No, Vernon," Petunia said. "He's right. He has to stay with us until he turns seventeen."
"Rubbish. We've more than done our part."
"Vernon," Petunia said in a pleading voice, "could we finish this discussion in private?"
Vernon looked at his wife, clearly perplexed at her request. She inclined her head toward their son in the back seat. Vernon understood that there was something to be discussed that she thought Dudley shouldn't hear. Though it was contrary to his nature, Vernon dropped the subject.
The rest of the trip back to Surrey was quiet and without incident, leaving Harry with plenty of time to berate himself more over what happened in the Department of Mysteries. When they arrived at the Dursley residence Harry went straight up to his room. He dropped his school things and flopped down on the bed.
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Harry awoke the next morning after a night of tossing and turning where he wasn't sure he had actually slept at all. The night passed without any visions or other supernatural interruptions, but Harry's guilt over the death of his godfather made any restful sleep impossible. As he rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses, Harry's mind immediately returned to the same self-loathing thoughts.
He missed Sirius. He'd never really had time to get to know him. There had been some time at 12 Grimmauld Place the previous year, both at the end of the previous summer and then during the Christmas break. But that had always been in a house full of people. He wanted time to just be with Sirius. He wanted to learn all about Sirius. And, as Sirius had been the best link to his parents, he wanted to talk about them. Now he'd never get that chance. The one person who really knew Lily and James Potter was now just as dead as they had been for Harry's whole life-well, as far back as he could remember, anyway.
Uncle Vernon interrupted his thoughts in the same abrasive manner to which Harry had become accustomed: "Boy! Get up! If you think you can just lie about all day while your aunt and I slave away to feed and clothe you-"
"What do you want?" Harry said wearily. He was vaguely aware of the fact that he had just interrupted his uncle for the second time in less than twenty-four hours and he couldn't care less.
"W-what?" his uncle spluttered in surprise.
"I thought we settled this yesterday," Harry said. "You don't like me and I don't like you. We're both pretty clear on that fact, so instead of yelling at me about it, why don't you just tell me what you want me to do so that I can get on with it and we don't have to endure each other's presence any longer than absolutely necessary."
Vernon Dursley stood in the middle of the room with a look of confusion on his face. His brain seemed to be stuck somewhere between shock at the impudence of his nephew and a hazy sense of something that felt almost like pride at how much the boy sounded just like Vernon himself in that moment. Finally he managed to get back to the purpose of his visit to the boy's room.
"The grass needs cutting and there are weeds in the flower beds that need pulling. You'll get nothing to eat until those tasks have been tended to. After that your aunt has some work for you as well." Vernon smirked and spun on his heel in his typical less-than-graceful manner and made for the door. A thought occurred to him just then and he turned back to face his nephew again.
"Oh, and tomorrow," he added, smiling sadistically, "we're having a bit of rock delivered for a landscaping project in the garden. I suspect it will take several weeks to complete. You will, of course, be doing all the digging and heavy lifting-under my supervision."
Vernon turned away again and left him alone. Harry quickly slid back into his reverie as he laced up his trainers. He knew he had to accept the fact that Sirius was dead and all the wishing in the world wouldn't bring him back, but he just wasn't ready to do it yet. Harry thought it was at least a bit ironic that he was becoming a fairly competent wizard but all the magic he was learning would never grant him the one thing he had always wanted-his parents. He remembered lonely nights as a small child in the cupboard under the stairs where he wished he had magical powers so he could bring his parents back to life.
He just didn't want to be alone anymore. He wanted a normal life. Harry didn't think it was all that much to ask for, though he knew it was out of the question. He would never have a normal family in which he was a child. The best he could hope for was that some day he would have a family of his own as a husband and father. But he knew that couldn't happen until certain things were taken care of. Anyone close to him was in danger simply by association, and that wasn't a risk he was willing to take just then, even if he'd had his eye on someone.
Harry shook his head with a rueful chuckle as he realized that he was far too young to be seriously thinking about that sort of thing. Besides, he knew he had a job to do, even if he didn't think he was ready to face up to the responsibility of it yet. Then he remembered Professor Lupin. Harry wondered if he would ever be able to think of him as something other than a former professor. Remus Lupin had been just as close to Harry's father and to Sirius as they had been to each other. Well, almost as close, anyway. Maybe he could find comfort in Professor Lupin. After all, he had been Sirius's only close friend after James's death-and Wormtail's betrayal. Sirius and Remus seemed like they'd been as close as Harry and Ron were. Harry would have to talk to him. He hoped they could help each other get through the loss of Sirius.
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Harry didn't bother to go to the kitchen, since he had been forbidden to eat until he had completed the tasks his uncle had assigned him. He went straight out into the garden and got to work. By the time he had finished mowing the Dursleys' rather expansive lawn the summer sun was high in the sky. As he made his way over to the flower beds to begin pulling weeds, Harry's pudgy cousin came out of the house and began waddling toward him.
"Er, hi, Harry," Dudley said nervously, sitting down on the freshly cut grass.
"What do you want?" Harry snapped.
"Er, nothing," Dudley stammered. "I mean, uh..."
"Come out to gloat because I'm working again while you sit around on your fat bottom doing nothing as usual?" Even as he said this, however, Harry noticed that his cousin, while not slim by any stretch of the imagination, was certainly not as large as he had been at the end of Harry's last stay at Privet Drive.
"Er, no."
"What, then?" Harry continued impatiently. "Is the telly broken? I can't imagine you'd pull yourself away from whatever mesmerizing program is playing."
"Okay, fine," Dudley said. "Forget it."
With less effort than it usually cost him, Dudley got to his feet and headed back toward the house. As he crossed the lawn he mentally chastised himself for still being so weak. By the time he reached the back door, Dudley had convinced himself to not give up so easily. He turned back toward the flower beds and approached his cousin again.
Harry had moved to the corner of the flower bed and was facing in such a way that he couldn't see Dudley until the larger boy's shadow fell over Harry. Not caring whether the broad shadow came from his stupid cousin, from whom Harry couldn't imagine hearing anything interesting, or from his uncle who would surely only have come out to tell Harry what he was doing wrong (as it had not yet occurred to Harry that it was Monday and his uncle would be at work), he didn't even bother to look back to see who it was.
"Leave me alone," he said simply.
"No," Dudley said. "Not until I've said what I came to say."
"I don't want to hear anything you've got to say."
"I suppose that's fair," Dudley said, "but it doesn't change the fact that I'm going to say it."
"Suit yourself," Harry muttered.
"Look," Dudley began, nervousness creeping into his voice again, "I know my parents have been awful to you."
"They're not the only ones," Harry retorted.
"No," Dudley conceded, sitting down on the grass again, "they're not. I have, too."
"Glad you've figured that out."
"You're not making this very easy," Dudley said testily.
"Wasn't trying to, Dud."
Dudley took a deep breath before he spoke again. "No, I guess you wouldn't. It's not as though I've ever given you reason to cut me some slack. What I wanted to say is, I'm sorry, Harry. I know that doesn't make anything okay, but I am sorry. There's no excuse for the way I've behaved. I can't change the past. But I can do a better job in the future."
Harry didn't know how to respond. He wanted to assume this was a trick Dudley was playing on him; perhaps it was that Dudley needed something and thought he could get it from Harry. The problem was that there was something about his cousin's behavior that seemed genuine. Harry still couldn't imagine why Dudley would be acting this way, but it didn't feel like a trick.
"Say something, will you?" Dudley said.
Harry realized that he'd been considering the situation for quite some time while Dudley sat waiting. He thought it was amazing that Dudley had lasted that long. He was always impatient, but then, so was Sirius. That thought set Harry off and he couldn't see how he could just forgive Dudley.
"What do you want me to say?"
"I don't know," Dudley admitted.
"I've got a lot of work to do and I don't really feel like talking," Harry said curtly. "So unless you plan to get over here and help me pull these weeds, I suggest you get lost."
"My dad would lay into me if he found out I was helping you," Dudley said, actually sounding sorry.
"Whatever."
Dudley walked dejectedly back to the house. It hadn't gone as well as he had hoped, but he supposed it hadn't been as bad as he had expected. There had been a moment, Dudley was sure, when Harry had looked about to forgive him, but then it had passed. Perhaps there was still hope for the future.
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Harry finished his weeding and went into the kitchen to get something to eat. As he ate he pondered the exchange with Dudley. Maybe Dudley was exactly what he needed, Harry reasoned. If he was really sincere in his apology, maybe Harry could have a friend away from the wizarding world that wouldn't see him the way any of the people at school did. He knew that Ron, Hermione, and his other friends didn't look at him the way the other students did, but even with them there were plenty of issues.
Harry had a hard time imagining any kind of friendship with the bully that Dudley had been all his life. But then, Dudley certainly hadn't seemed like the same person he'd been all Harry's life when he tried to apologize earlier. Though Dudley had tormented him for many years, it was possible that someone who didn't know anything about Voldemort or, more importantly, Sirius, could be a useful companion.
Harry knew he still wasn't ready to forgive fifteen years of persecution, but maybe it was okay to take a step in that direction. He cleared his plate from the table and sought out his cousin. Dudley wasn't in front of telly, where Harry had expected to find him. Since he hadn't been in the kitchen either, Harry assumed he must have gone out.
He trudged up the stairs toward his room, but when he got to Dudley's bedroom door, he saw that it was open and Dudley was sitting at his desk. Deciding that casually friendly was the best approach, though it didn't feel casual, and he still wasn't feeling all that friendly toward Dudley, Harry spoke in a calm and amiable voice.
"Alright there, Dud?"
"Oh," Dudley said. "You startled me."
"Sorry," Harry said, neither feeling nor sounding very sorry. Harry was surprised to see that Dudley had a paperback book open in front of him. "Are you /reading/, Dud?"
"Yeah," Dudley answered with a slight grin.
"What is it?" Harry asked, finding that he was genuinely interested.
"It's called The Thief of Always by Clive Barker," Dudley said.
"Any good?"
"It's great. I've almost finished."
"Weird," Harry said. "No offense, Dud, but you never seemed like much of a reader to me."
"Well, I wasn't," Dudley said. Then, after a moment's consideration, "I guess things are a little different with me now."
"I'll say," Harry agreed, giving his cousin a strange look in response to this somewhat cryptic reply. "Sorry about, you know, earlier. I guess I really just didn't expect it is all. I didn't really know what to say."
"Well, I can't blame you for that."
"So what gives, Dud?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, why are you suddenly sorry for, well, you know," Harry said. In spite of the bitterness he felt toward the Dursleys, he couldn't make himself be as rude to Dudley as he thought he deserved.
"Dunno," Dudley answered. Then, after a pause, "Well, I guess that's not really true. I suppose I do know, but I don't know if I'm ready to say just yet. I won't be horrible to you anymore. Isn't that good enough for now?"
"Yeah, I guess," Harry said. "So does this mean we're going to be friends now or something?"
"No," Dudley said softly. "I mean, I know you wouldn't want to."
"What do you know about what I want?" Harry asked. It came out a bit more harshly than he had intended, but he was tired of everyone assuming they knew what Harry wanted, or what was best for him.
"I didn't mean it like that," Dudley said apologetically. "I just couldn't see how... I mean, I would understand if you still wanted to stay as far away from me as possible."
"I came in here, didn't I?"
"Yeah, I guess that's true."
"On the other hand you're partially right," Harry added.
"Oh."
"In that," Harry continued as though Dudley hadn't spoken, "I would not want to be around the old Dudley. But you're not the same Dudley I've always known. What's happened to you?"
"It's a long story," Dudley said, "and I don't really feel up to telling just yet. Can we save it for another day?"
"Sure, Dud."
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When Harry awoke the following morning it was with an odd sense of relief and something that almost resembled happiness, despite the fact that his uncle was shouting at him to get outside and get to work. He had talked with Dudley for quite a while the day before. They were not at all surprised to find that they didn't really have much in common, though they were surprised at the few things they found that that they did. Harry, for example, had not expected to find that Dudley had been learning to play chess, and while he insisted that he wasn't very good yet, Harry was sure that if Dudley could play at all, it might be something they could do together. Both boys were equally astonished to find that while each faced a very different situation when they were away at school, the end result was that some things about their school life were very much alike.
They might have gone on until late in the evening except that they had been interrupted by Aunt Petunia, who came in to send Harry to do more work. She had decided that Harry was old enough to start doing many of the things that she had always done herself because Harry had been too young.
Harry had spent the rest of the afternoon doing the laundry, scrubbing the toilets and bathtubs, and other household chores that he found he really didn't mind at all. It was dreadfully boring work, but the time passed fairly quickly. At one point Dudley had even volunteered to help, shocking Harry almost as much as Petunia, in spite of the changes Harry had already begun to witness. Dudley's parents clearly had not noticed that there was anything different about their pride and joy. Petunia scoffed at the idea of her son doing the work she had assigned to Harry. Even when he had insisted that he didn't mind, his mother wouldn't hear of it, so instead Dudley had followed his cousin around and kept him company.
So it was that Harry was somewhat cheerful while he dressed as quickly as he could, considering that he was still half asleep. He hurried down the stairs and nicked a piece of toast from the kitchen table before he hurried out into the garden. His uncle was nowhere in sight so he wandered around the side of the house. The sight that greeted him there was a dismaying surprise, since his uncle had clearly understated the situation the previous day.
What Harry saw before him was more than "a bit of rock" as his uncle had described it. It was a veritable mountain of rock, from Harry's perspective, filling nearly half of the Dursleys' front yard. However, the sheer amount of rock was not the part that troubled him the most. It was the fact that many of the rocks were far too large for Harry to move himself. He could tell just by looking that more than half the rocks were too big for him to even lift, let alone carry to wherever his uncle wanted them and build whatever he was supposed to be building with them.
"Um, Uncle Vernon?" Harry ventured.
"Well, here it is," Vernon responded, obviously quite proud of himself.
"Yes, I see that," Harry said tentatively. "It's just that, well..."
"What's the problem, boy?"
"Well, you want me to move these, right?"
"Of course. Didn't I say so yesterday?"
"Well, yes, but," Harry said, "I don't think I can even lift most of these."
"Load of old tosh," Vernon answered without hesitation. "It's true you're a bit scrawny, but all you have to do is lift them into the wheel barrow and then wheel them back to the corner. Come. I'll show you where I want them."
Vernon walked around the house and pointed to the far corner, as he said, "There. Move the entire pile back to that corner and pile them up the way they are now. When I return from the office this evening I'll show you what I want done with them."
Harry noted grimly, as he heard his uncle's car drive away, that the destination was the greatest possible distance he could be asked to move the rocks and still be on the Dursleys' property. He shook his head in a mix of disgust and disbelief as he went back around to the pile of rock, stopping at the shed on the side of the house to get the wheel barrow out. Harry selected one of the larger rocks first and bent his knees as he wrapped his arms around it, attempting to get a good grip. When he tried to lift it, however, it wouldn't move. He adjusted his grip and tried again, but it was quickly apparent that he was not going to be able to lift a large percentage of the rocks.
He stepped back to survey the situation and took a quick mental count of the number of rocks in various sizes as he walked around the heap. Because of the way the rocks were piled, there were many that were not yet visible to Harry, but of the rocks he could already see, two dozen were larger than, or at least as large as the one he had already tried to lift. Another fifty or so were smaller but still very likely too large for Harry to pick up. He decided to try one from that group and found that, as he had suspected, while he could move it a bit, he couldn't actually pick it up either.
Harry wondered briefly if there was a way that he could move the rocks with a little magic that might escape the Ministry's detection, but he knew he couldn't possibly be that lucky. The Ministry of Magic-or, more to the point, the Minister of Magic-always seemed to be out to prove Harry had done something wrong. In the past it had either been someone else doing the magic, like Dobby, the house-elf, or Harry had been using magic in self-defense, which, though it was perfectly legal, had created some difficulty with the Ministry.
Resigned to the fact that moving the bigger rocks was not possible for Harry alone, he decided to start moving the smaller rocks. He picked up one that was about the size of a Bludger and carried it to the back yard. He dropped it, with some measure of relief, where Vernon had told him to stack the rocks. Harry realized two things about his situation right away. First was the fact that while carrying one of the rocks back there was no great feat, the number of rocks and the distance over which they had to be moved would make this a very difficult task. And second, he realized how dumb he had been just then, carrying the rock himself just because he was able to do so, rather than using the wheel barrow.
He began loading up the wheel barrow with as many of the smaller rocks as he could fit. Unfortunately, when it was full, he found that it was now too heavy to push across the yard, so he had to stop and take some of the rocks out. When he got the wheel barrow back to a manageable weight, Harry wheeled it carefully, and a bit shakily, to the back.
When he returned to the original pile again he found Dudley sitting on the front steps, finishing off a banana. Harry noticed that his cousin was dressed in shorts and trainers, as though he might be prepared to do something active. This struck him as funny, though only for a moment before Dudley stood and greeted him, prompting Harry to stifle his chuckle.
"You're up early, Dud."
"Nah, this is normal for me now," Dudley said. "I usually eat a piece of fruit and then run a couple of miles every morning-except Sundays. I still like to have a lie in Sundays."
"Impressive," Harry said. Then he had an idea. He wasn't sure if it would work, since he couldn't say for sure whether Dudley had much muscle to speak of. He only knew that when Dudley and his friends used to beat Harry up, it hurt. And now he knew that Dudley apparently ran every morning as well. But neither of these things really told him whether Dudley was capable of offering much assistance.
"Say, Dudley," Harry called as Dudley began to stretch his legs. "D'you think maybe you could help me out here?"
"Sure," Dudley said. "What do you need?"
"Your dad asked me to move this pile of rocks to the back, but I can't even lift most of them."
"They look pretty big. I don't know if I can lift them either," Dudley admitted.
"That's true, Dud," Harry said. "But what if we tried to lift them together?"
"That might work."
"Let's try one of the really big ones and see if we're up to it," Harry suggested. "What do you say?"
"Yeah, sure."
The two boys positioned themselves on either side of what looked like the heaviest of the rocks and lifted it, with a great deal of effort, into the wheel barrow. It seemed to groan under the weight of the rock, but its single wheel held up admirably. They decided to take turns wheeling the heavy rocks to the back yard while the other had a short rest.
About an hour into the project, Aunt Petunia came out of the house and saw Dudley carefully managing the wheel barrow, loaded down with the last of the largest rocks as Harry sat down on a medium-sized rock for a break. The outrage she felt was evident on her face before she spoke.
Disclaimer: The scenery and the characters (and many other things) are borrowed from the mind of JK Rowling (and many other legal entities). This story is my own, stuff you don't recognize from any of her books, anyway. The rest of it (from the Hogwarts world) is not my property. It's hers (and that of her licensees). This is a non-profit writing exercise under the fair use doctrine, and is not to be used without the author's permission.
Copyright 2007 Jabe Washburn. All rights reserved.
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