Many thanks to my beta, Amber0_o
I don't own Harry Potter or any of the characters, just my ideas. I also don't own Rice Krispies.
Thanks for reading!
The apartment was more unwelcoming than they could have imagined. The curtains were torn, the wallpaper was peeling, and every surface was covered with a thick layer of dust.
Petunia had an expression of pure disgust on her face as she ran her finger along the kitchen table and inspected the black mark on the tip. Vernon was staring daggers at the back of Hestia’s head, but was careful to stay far away from her.
“Well I can see no one’s cleaned this place in awhile,” Dedalus said, glancing around. Turning to Hestia, he said, “I’m really no good with housekeeping.”
“I think we can survive until morning,” Hestia replied, “except for this dust. It’s horrible.” With a wave of her wand, the layer of dust disappeared, including the spot on Petunia’s finger. Petunia started flicking her hand around wildly, as if it had been contaminated by the magic.
“Good. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted,” Dedalus said, looking up hopefully at the Dursleys. In Dudley’s opinion, Dedalus didn’t look at all tired. He looked as if he could go a few days without sleep and that goofy grin would still be plastered on his face.
“Yeah, me too,” Dudley said, after an uncomfortable silence. “Er…where’s my room?”
“Just down this hall, last door on the right,” Dedalus said, and then turned to Mr. and Mrs. Dursley. “You’re right next to him, in the master bedroom.”
Dudley followed a narrow hallway to the last door and went inside, ready for a long night’s sleep. He immediately realized that whatever Hestia had done to remove the dust from the kitchen had had no effect here whatsoever. The floorboards creaked ominously as he walked in, the corners of the room were filled with cobwebs, and the paint on the ceiling was cracked and dry. The only furniture in the small room was a bed, a desk, and a chair with a missing leg.
What a night, thought Dudley, sitting down on the bed and allowing a puff of dirt to escape from the duvet. Someone knocked on his door and Hestia walked in, looking rather annoyed. Dudley could only guess she had just been in to see his parents. She flicked her wand casually about the room several times, getting rid of the dust and cobwebs and fixing the broken chair leg.
“I don’t suppose you plan to sleep with those bed sheets, do you?” Hestia asked.
“Er…no,” Dudley said, glancing down at what he was sitting on. “Mine are in my trunk.” He got off the bed and bent down over his trunk, watching Hestia out of the corner of his eye. She made an elaborate motion with her wand, whispered something Dudley couldn’t quite hear, and the old sheets lifted off the bed and folded themselves neatly in a corner. Then, she pointed at the bundle in Dudley’s arms and they assembled themselves on the bed.
Blimey! I might make my bed every once in a while if that’s all I had to do, Dudley thought.
Hestia turned on her heel and left the room, but as she got to the door, Dudley looked up and said, “Thanks.”
She looked at him curiously, before nodding slightly and shutting the door behind her.
Dudley slept in late the next morning and could hear his father’s snores resonating from the next room. After getting dressed, he walked into the kitchen to find Dedalus Diggle reading the newspaper at the kitchen table and his mum scrubbing away furiously at the counter. Dudley wasn’t surprised to see that the spot she was cleaning already looked immaculate, as did the rest of the kitchen.
“Oh, Dudders!” Petunia gasped, running to her son.
“Morning, mum,” Dudley yawned.
“Did you sleep alright? You must get some breakfast! Oh, your room must be filthy!” Petunia said, panicking, before rushing off to Dudley’s room with her cleaning supplies.
Dudley opened a few cupboards at random, and, finding sugared cereal, made himself breakfast. He sat down across from Dedalus and started to eat, but nearly fell out of his chair when he saw the cover of the newspaper.
Dedalus looked at him curiously over the top of The Daily Prophet before Dudley stuttered, “W-why are the pictures mo-moving?”
“Oh, of course,” Dedalus said, realization dawning, “Muggle pictures don’t move, but Wizard pictures do.”
Dedalus went back to what he was reading and Dudley stared at the newspaper with wide eyes. At the top, it said The Daily Prophet in big print. Headlines flashed across the page and people waved or gave speeches into the camera. Dudley wondered who He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named could be; he was in three of the headlines. At the bottom, it advertised different sections, Weather: page 17, Quidditch: page 22, and Deaths: page 26, but Dudley didn’t notice this.
“Er…Mr. Diggle?” Dudley asked politely.
“Yes,” said Dedalus, looking up eagerly from The Prophet.
“I was reading the front page, and,” Dudley started, not sure how to continue, “well, who’s He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named?”
Dudley saw a bit of worry flicker across Dedalus’ otherwise cheerful expression, but it quickly faded, and he asked Dudley, leaning close as if sharing a secret, “You don’t know? Harry never told you who you’re hiding from?”
“Yes,” Dudley said, also leaning closer to Dedalus, “He said we were hiding from someone named Lord Voldemort.”
“I should have guessed Harry called him by his name.” When Dudley still looked puzzled, he went on. “Most people call him You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, because they are so afraid of him.”
“They’re too afraid to even say his name?” Dudley asked.
“You have to understand, You-Know-Who isn’t just any dark wizard. He’s the most powerful dark wizard there ever was. People have good reason to be afraid. He’s killed so many people.”
“What does he kill people for?” Dudley asked, before realizing what a childish question this must be.
“Power,” Dedalus stated simply, not finding the question childish. He didn’t want to explain the struggle between Muggleborns and purebloods, though, so he returned to his article about tightened security at the Ministry.
They sat in silence while Dudley pondered what Dedalus had said about Lord Voldemort. He had killed so many people that most people won’t speak his name, all for power. Dudley remembered his dad telling him that it was important to have power at work. But what lengths would he go to for power?
He returned to his cereal, but looked up when Dedalus started laughing. Dedalus saw him staring and asked, “Do you like the comics?”
“Sure,” said Dudley. Dedalus turned the paper around and pointed to a moving picture, titled ‘Fudgey,’ of a cartoon man in a lime-green bowler hat reading a newspaper, sitting at a table with a toad. A caption above the man popped up, saying, “I can’t believe all this rubbish about ‘The Chosen One!’”
The toad said, “Complete rubbish!”
“Why in Merlin’s name would they come up with such things?”
“For the same reasons you told everyone You-Know-Who wasn’t back,” said the toad.
Then, the man rolled up his newspaper and smacked the toad over the head and the cartoon started to replay itself. Dudley watched it again, trying to comprehend why the toad was talking, what ‘The Chosen One’ was, and why Dedalus seemed to find it so funny. He finally gave up and said, “I don’t get it.”
Dedalus, who had been looking expectantly at Dudley for the last couple minutes, let out a sigh, and proceeded to explain the cartoon. “The man in the bowler hat is Cornelius Fudge and the toad is Dolores Umbridge.”
“Who and who?”
“Wow! Harry really didn’t tell you anything. Well, Cornelius Fudge is ex-Minister of Magic and Dolores Umbridge was Senior Undersecretary to the Minister and Professor at Hogwarts, but that was all a big scandal, just the Ministry trying to interfere at the school. When You-Know-Who returned, Dumbledore told ““
“Who’s Dumbledore?”
“He was the Headmaster at Hogwarts, anyway, he told Fudge that You-Know-Who was back, but Fudge was in denial because he didn’t want his perfect little world in uproar, so he convinced everyone that Dumbledore was senile and Harry was a stupid teenager looking for attention so that nobody believed them about You-Know”“
“Wait, when did Harry come into the story?” asked Dudley, thoroughly confused.
“When he witnessed You-Know-Who come back from the dead. Well, he wasn’t really dead, but he didn’t have a body. I don’t quite understand it. But it wasn’t until You-Know-Who showed up in the Ministry of Magic and dozens of witnesses saw him, that they finally stopped printing stuff about Dumbledore and Harry being crazy. Now Harry is ‘The Chosen One’ and Fudge is mocked weekly in my new favorite comic,” Dedalus ended with a little laugh.
“I am so confused,” Dudley sighed.
The lock on the door clicked, and Hestia walked into the kitchen, looking discouraged.
“Well?” Dedalus prompted.
“Mad-Eye’s dead.”
Dedalus bowed his head, and Hestia sat down next to him, resting her chin on her fists. They sat in silence for a moment, and Dudley felt uncomfortable, like he was interrupting, but if he were to leave it would be more disruptive. He didn’t know who Mad-Eye was, but somewhere in the recesses of his mind was an image of a man with a crooked bowler hat threatening his dad at King’s Cross Station.
“The Death Eaters have completely reformatted security at the Ministry. They say it’s been increased, when, really, it’s just been changed so that the Death Eaters will have no problem taking over when the time is right,” Hestia said, relaying the events of the Order meeting.
“I don’t suppose Scrimgeour is doing anything about this?”
“No. Nothing else important happened at the meeting. We went over recent deaths, developments, and assignments. Only about half of the Order was there, though, because everyone is helping the Weasley’s prepare for Bill’s wedding.”
“Yes…good boy,” said Dedalus, “Don’t care too much for that fiancée of his, though.”
“Yes, speaking of the French, we’re going into the city this afternoon to shop. I’m not living off of Rice Krispies for as long as we’re stuck here.”
“What do you mean ‘speaking of the French’?” Dudley asked. Hestia looked up, noticing Dudley for the first time.
“Did we forget to tell you last night? We’re in Paris,” Dedalus said.
Vernon walked into the kitchen looking grumpy as ever that morning. “What is wrong with your lots’ mattresses? It’s like sleeping on plywood!”
He looked at the three grouped around the breakfast table and narrowed his eyes at the wizards, “Why are you talking to my son?”
“We’re just being friendly. After all, we don’t know how long we’ll be living together,” said Dedalus, trying to reason with Vernon, who seemed to have regained some confidence since last night.
“You don’t need to be getting friendly with my son. We can get along perfectly well without getting friendly with your lot.” Vernon spat the last words as if they caused him pain.
Hestia stood abruptly from her seat and marched to face Vernon, standing a head shorter than him. Speaking sharply and in a commanding tone, she said, “Like it or not, our lot are the ones protecting you. Our lot are the ones who have a connection to the man you’re running from. You’d better start getting along with our lot, or you’re going to have a pretty miserable time here.”
Vernon scoffed as his face swelled and purpled. “Dudley, we’re going into the living room,” ordered Vernon. Dudley followed, and, for the first time since he could remember, his father sat down to watch Sunday cartoons before he got breakfast.