Chapter Text
(Dudley)
Not again. Please, not again…
It was just past midnight. The summer air was prickly hot and thick, a blanket of superfine mist clung onto everything. It was quiet on Privet Drive, as per usual this time of night, but from inside the house a faint vibration could be heard ruminating through the halls and floors.
Vernon and Petunia were fast asleep, of course. They faithfully turned in every night by 9. With all of the undue stress that’s built up over the last 5 years since being unwillingly thrust into the wizarding world, the couple tried to stick to a routine, stick to normalcy. Vernon would dutifully go to work every day, Petunia would meticulously keep house. They stuck to their roles, kept themselves busy, and kept their noses clean of any and all funny business.
The Dursley’s hated magic. More so than hated it, they deeply feared it. Vernon had tried to fix his abomination of a nephew, that is, Harry Potter. Tried to beat the poison out of him, tried to shape him up into a fine young man right alongside his own son. But it was all to no avail. Magic was a freakish evil that ran bone deep.
There was once a time, believe it or not, when Vernon and Petunia did care for the boy. At least marginally. Until Harry’s fourth or fifth birthday, they raised the boy as if he were their own. But when things started happening around young Harry that couldn’t be explained away naturally, Petunia recognized all too well the dark forces that were happening. She went through this same shite with her sister Lily growing up, and she would have none of it.
At first it was little things. His hair would regrow overnight even after shaving it down to the scalp. He would find himself stuck on the roof after trying to escape being chased by Dudley. He would burn his hands serving breakfast and the blisters would fade away into fresh new pink skin almost instantly. Everything may seem harmless at first, self preservation almost. But Petunia knew worse would be coming. The power possessed by the small boy frightened them and made them feel helpless in their own home! And Vernon would have none of that.
Locking him away in the cupboard under the stairs was for everyone’s safety. Even his own, though the bloody bastard would never recognize the great lengths they had always went to for him. Did they not keep a roof over his head? Did they not feed him, at least a bit of bread, almost every day? But it had always been a thankless job. And now all of their lives were at stake. One temper tantrum, Petunia had explained so cautiously to her husband, could level the entire house. Their home. Vernon worked hard for the things he had. He wasn’t coddled growing up, nothing came too easily, and he’d be damned if all his hard work crumpled to nothing because of the scrawny little freak.
One thing led to another, and things may have sometimes gotten carried away. There was nothing Vernon wouldn’t do to keep his wife and his son safe. If it meant whipping the boy senseless every day, he would do so happily but it hardly ever really came to that. Mostly they ignored him. If he would just stay out of their sight, stay out of their range of hearing, there would likely never be a problem at all. But the boy insisted on causing trouble. Crying into the night and waking them. Sneaking out to steal food, food that Vernon busted his backside daily to provide for his family, stolen right out of their mouths by the little rat.
For the most part, however, everything was under control until right around Harry’s eleventh birthday when the dreaded letters arrived. He had been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, much to the dismay of the Dursleys. There was no helping the boy now. Petunia remembered when her own sister Lily received her letter. Everything changed after that. Their parents would dote endlessly on their beloved little witch. Nobody seemed to see what Petunia saw, and that was a deeply, horrifically dangerous person- with access to devilish powers beyond human imagination.
And now the threat was alive once again. Not only to her, but also her child this time. Vernon became even more strict with the freak. It’s one thing to be a petulant child with sparks of magic that they couldn’t control or understand. But Vernon wasn’t naive or stupid. He knew that the wretched school was filling the boys head to the brim with all sorts of black magic he could use against them. The only solace was knowing the wretched school would expel Harry for doing magic during the summers. It of course wasn’t a fail-safe protection from the boy but a small comfort none the less. Physically speaking Vernon had no problem overpowering the boy.
Harry was very thin, on the shorter side, giving off the appearance of being a couple years younger even than 15. Vernon was a large, tall, heavy set man with oversized meaty hands. There’ve been plenty of times where Vernon had had to demonstrate just how much of a difference of power he had over the boy throughout the years.
This summer had been one of the most difficult summers dealing with the freak yet. Every night screams coming from his room. Watching his smug sullen face stare off into nothingness. Watching him laze about, most of the time not even bothering to leave his bed. Disgusting and pathetic. And what effect would his behavior have on Dudley?
Dudley had been acting rather strange as of late. It must have been all the stress building up finally into a break down. The wizardry and foolishness was a lot for him too. He’d been most victimized of all the Dursleys by the black magic when that bloody beast of a man, Hagrid, cursed him with a pig's tail that had needed to be removed surgically.
Though the incident was 4 years ago now, Dudley had never fully recovered. Once proud and confident, slowly but surely Dudley had began retreating into himself. Hardly noticed by his parents, the Dursley’s had always been about keeping up the show. As long as everything looked prim and proper, swirling storms amassing on the inside took little residence in any of their priorities.
But unbeknownst to anyone in number 4 Privet Drive, a storm was exactly what was stirring in the mind of young Dudley. You see Dudley had a secret. It was nothing really, nothing that couldn’t be ignored. Nothing that he would ever say aloud. But as the years had gone by this little secret had been growing harder to stifle down. And now things were finally about to come to a head.
Dudley couldn’t tell you the first time he realized that he could do magic too. He would obviously never say anything! Look how everyone treated Harry. He refused to be lumped in with the same lot as that freak. Dudley hated magic just as much as his parents did. He loathed the feeling of it. The vibrations of power that would emanate from his body when he tried to push it away. A deep ache in his belly and chest that seemed to swell with something uncontainable begging to escape, until he could swallow it back down.
At first it was little things. A dropped toothbrush floating back up into his open hand. A noticeable zap of lightning once when he punched a wall. The bath water starting a rolling boil when he stared himself down in the mirror. Now however, it was becoming more pronounced much to his dismay. The magic seemed to hum around him in a cloud of static. The walls and floors seemed to vibrate with the instability and power of his suppressed abilities.
The thing about magic that people sometimes don’t seem to understand, is that it runs bone deep.
It cannot be ignored. It cannot be stifled. It simply, is. And all powerful, at that.
Dudley woke with a start. The hair on the back of his neck was standing straight up. The deep familiar ache in his chest throbbed painfully, worse than it ever had before. He looked wildly around him. Along with the pain emanating from just below his sternum, his mind was absolutely flooded with anxiety. A sense of dread and sheer panic was rising inside him, seemingly without reason.
What the hell is happening? He thought to himself as he cradled his chest in both hands. It’s like he could feel his heart spasming violently inside him under his palms. He popped the buttons of his silk pajama shirt open with trembling hands and looked down in horror to see his skin actually rippling inhumanly.
This is it, he thought. It’s finally happened. All the stress, and fear and worry had obviously finally resulted in a heart attack. Although this wasn’t anything like the heart attacks he’d always seen people experience in the movies. Usually it was just a quick sharp gasp! A clutch to the chest, and falling to the floor dead.
The walls and floors started to vibrate in a deep roaring grumble. A car alarm sounded outside, and Harry’s bloody owl could be heard screeching in the next room.
Dudley tried to stand but fell instantly to his knees. He felt weaker than he ever had, as if his very structure was riddled with holes like Swiss cheese.
“Mum!” He tried to yell, but when he opened his mouth he was stunned to see a thick blackish-purple cloud of smoke leave his lips. It wasn’t quite smoke, it had more substance to it, it was thicker, and seemed to be charged with a static electricity. It zapped his lips when he clamped his mouth shut, absolutely paralyzed with fear and confusion.
But it refused to be swallowed or held back any longer. The ethereal, not-quite tangent substance began seeping from his eyes, nose and ears. His mouth hung open forcibly as it spewed out from somewhere deep inside of him. He forced himself to his feet and flung himself into the hallway stumbling blindly to his parents bedroom.
The terror was palpable all around. Harry’s door flew open as the teen scrambled to see what all the commotion was about, and when Dudley turned to look wildly in his direction, the magical substance threw Harry back with a powerful force. The screeching of his owl stopped mid-cry as the cloud washed into the open room. Hedwig fell to the bottom of her cage with a stiff thump, dead.
Dudley scrambled to his parents door, screaming even harder now. The pain and the terror were unbearable. The vibration of power rippling visibly through his skin, almost blurring his outward appearance, felt overwhelming and yet somehow… awe inspiring. Vernon burst through the door at the end of the hallway, Petunia peering from directly behind. Their faces went ghost white at the site of their precious son.
His appearance had taken on a rather terrifying form. Dudley’s skin was glowing with a dull blue light, and his whole body was vibrating violently, almost making him look doubled, and he was levitating. His eyes were all white and bleeding. His mouth hung open as the last remaining bit of the black smog dribbled from his chin.
“DIDDYKINS!” Petunia shrieked. And it was the last thing she ever uttered as a seismic blast of power erupted from Dudley and flug Vernon back into Petunia and through the wall. The force was so great that their bodies practically crumbled together into one tangled mess of smashed limbs, indiscernible which parts belonged to who.
As well as violently throwing his parents, the blast also threw Dudley. But it did not throw him back into a wall in 4 Privet Drive. It threw Dudley somewhere out into the universe. His lungs compressed painfully as he was squeezed through one dimensional plane to another. He had suddenly, unconsciously, apparated into a small forest clearing he didn’t immediately recognize. Obviously completely unaware of even the concept of apparation, let alone the subtle intricacies of perfecting the art, Dudley had splinched himself.
His skin no longer glowed with that sickening pale blue glow he didn’t understand and couldn’t explain, but he gasped in horror to see several large chunks of his left arm missing and bleeding. It didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. He was in so much shock he couldn’t feel anything, but the amount of blood pouring from the gaping wounds terrified him.
Where the fuck am I? What the fuck is happening? Was all he kept thinking as he placed his shaking hand over the worst of his wounds trying to staunch the blood flow.
Did I just kill my fucking parents? The words creeped into his mind quietly at first and then began screaming. Oh my fucking God I just killed my parents. Dudley began to cry out until his chest roared back in protest. All of the air was pushed from his lungs as his sides stitched in agony.
Is this what dying feels like? Am I really fucking dying right now? Dudley’s breath hitched as he slumped to the side. He was shaking horrendously, teetering right on the edge of consciousness when suddenly he sensed he was not alone.
He stared out into the dark forest in front of him as a pale hooded figure strolled out from behind the trees. It was a man… but not like any man Dudley had ever seen before. He was tall and slender with skin so white it was almost translucent in the moonlight. His eyes were bright glowing red and his features were more snake-like than man.
He sauntered over to Dudley almost sensually, grinning madly.
“P-p-please help me s-sir. I… I think I’ve h-had a h-heart attack!” Dudley called out desperately. By now he was well aware that whatever the hell had happened was certainly more than a bloody heart attack. But those were the stupid words his mouth chose to say in the moment.
Lord Voldemort knelt down beside Dudley and placed a long skeletal finger to the boys trembling lips.
“Shhh, shhh, quiet now my sweet child. I have come to take the pain away…” he hissed with sick sweetness. He gently placed his wand tip to Dudley’s wounded arm and stopped the bleeding instantly.
Dudley stared in absolute wonderment as the chunks of missing flesh seemed to meld back together seamlessly, painlessly, right before his eyes. His fear began to dissipate as he caught his breath.
“Who… who are you?” Dudley asked quietly, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Why, I go by many names my boy… You may call me Lord Voldemort. What is your name, child?”
The name sounded vaguely familiar to Dudley, though he could not place where he would have ever heard it before. A shiver ripped through Dudley as an image of his parents smashed bodies suddenly flashed in his mind.
“D-Dudley sir, my n-name is Dudley Dursley. I think s-something is terribly wrong. I’m scared I don’t know what’s happening.” Dudley began to sob as the weight of the situation began to sink in. Yet his brain could not compute or keep up with everything going on. It was a maddening feeling. Lord Voldemort placed his thin hand on Dudley’s shoulder.
“Calm down my child. You are safe now. That was a powerful bit of magic you just displayed. I had thought you were the great Harry Potter when I traced you here, but I see now you’re much more powerful than he.” Voldemort practically whispered in Dudley’s ear.
“Harry Potter… how do you know my cousin?” Dudley asked. His brow furrowed at the mention of his name. As if plucking the thoughts right from Dudley’s mind, Voldemort cooed beside him.
“Harry Potter is the source of all of this, is he not? The source of the hatred that caused you to suppress your magic. Thus the source of this destruction. Thus the source of all the pain of your little life… your poor helpless parents. What in the world will you do now, Dudley? Now that you’re all alone? Now that you’re orphaned?” Peering into the child’s mind was like slicing through butter with a hot knife. It was deliciously easy to pull the darkest of Dudley’s thoughts to the surface of his mind. Dudley place his head in his hands and bellowed in despair.
“Weep not, my child. For I have decided to help you.”
Dudley looked up through tear blurred eyes into the face of the dark Lord, trying desperately to regulate his breathing and take it all in.
Of course lord Voldemort was right. This was all because of Harry. All of this magic nonsense began with him. Dudley was certain that if his parents had discovered it first in Dudley they wouldn’t have feared it nearly as much. But Harry ruined everything. They hated Harry so they hated his magic but maybe they could have learned to accept Dudley’s. If not for Harry scaring them all the time and threatening their family.
“Help me how?” Dudley murmured, wiping at his tired sore eyes.
“Why Dudley I do believe that your magic combined with my own, is more than enough to end Potter permanently.” Voldemort purred, helping Dudley to stand on his feet.
Dudley looked up into the man’s strange eyes and felt a warm safety. Naive to the network of charms being cast onto him wandlessly and non verbally by Voldemort and the surrounding camp of Death Eaters.
“Come child; we’ve much to discuss…”