When Dudley woke the following morning, Petunia gave no indication of the discussion they had had last night, greeting him as she always did. His father glared at him suspiciously over the newspaper before saying stiffly, “Good morning.”
“Morning, Dad.”
Hestia and Dedalus had left before Dudley woke up, to run an errand for the Order, though Vernon was no more lenient about letting Dudley out of his sight. In fact, he seemed tenser, as if this was a ploy to get him to let his guard down. When they returned, Vernon became especially upset by their presence”more so than usual”and was making it very obvious to everyone. Hestia wasn’t trying to get out of his way by any means, and rather seemed to be stalling in order to make him angry. Dedalus seemed to be trying to show Dudley, without words, that he was sorry about the situation.
Dudley was disappointed after Vernon had managed to get them to leave the room, because he hadn’t worked up the courage again to stand up to his dad. It had mostly been an accident before, but he wasn’t sure he could do that again. Instead, he sat awkwardly doing homework and his father stared coldly at him during every commercial. Dudley was so distracted by the current situation, he was finding it impossible to concentrate on his remedial Algebra homework.
“Dad”” Dudley started, and Vernon turned two cold, beady eyes back to him. “I know you got really upset with me yesterday, and you had good reason.” Dudley was trying to sound as sincere as possible, but he didn’t think his dad was buying it. “I was just hoping you could understand how important it is to listen to what Hestia and Dedalus have to say.” Dudley could see his father’s face reddening and felt that this was a pointless argument. “They know all about the wizards and kinds of magic we’d be facing if””
“We’re not going to face any magic!” shouted Vernon, losing his temper, “or evil wizards, or curses, or whatever other lies they’re telling you!”
“They’re not lies!”
“Yes, they are! They are, and you’ve fallen into their trap! They’ll drive you wacky, just like their lot, with those stories!” Vernon rose from his seat, and Dudley followed, towering over his father. “But I’m not going to let that happen!”
“They’re not just wacky stories! Magic is real!” Dudley pleaded, desperately hoping for his father’s change of heart.
“Stop! They’ve already gotten to you! They’ve messed with your””
Vernon stopped in mid-sentence as a blood-curdling scream tore through the apartment. Dudley ran down the hall, followed by his father, to where he heard his mum’s shrieks.
He found her in the storage closet, probably the only place left in the apartment that she hadn’t cleaned. Petunia was crouched, weeping, on the floor, her cleaning supplies strewn around her. Dudley ran over to her, but stopped short when he saw Harry. His cousin was lying on the floor beside his mum, dead.
This doesn’t make any sense, Dudley thought, both terrified and in complete denial. Harry can’t be dead; he can’t be here.
Dudley took a step closer to Harry, but all of a sudden everything changed. Harry became a dark, cloaked figure rising above him, face obscured in darkness, whose long, dead fingers groped towards his neck. Though he’d never seen one, Dudley knew from Dedalus’ description exactly what he was facing: a dementor. And he knew what would happen; the dementor was going to suck out his soul.
Images swam through Dudley’s head: a small boy with glasses and unruly hair was being bullied by larger boys in a schoolyard, Dudley leading the pack. Dudley’s parents’ were swooning over him. “I want more presents!” he shouted greedily. “Don’t kill Cedric! Mum, Dad, come and help me!” he taunted as he walked through Little Hangleton beside his cousin. Meanwhile, endless faces of small boys with black eyes or broken arms swarmed around him, weeping for their mothers, and their desperate cries joined in with Dudley’s own sing-song voice cooing about more presents and dead parents.
The images and scenes kept changing, memories from Dudley’s past which he’d only seen together like this once, memories which had changed him, made him realize what kind of person he was. Dudley cried out, unable to take it any longer. He wanted death, wanted the dementor to take his soul, for it all to be over.
Faintly, Dudley heard someone else run into the closet, rush in front of him, and shout, “Riddikulus!” The dementor instantly disappeared, and Dedalus remained, his wand held aloft, directed where the dementor had been.
“Is”is it gone?” Dudley stuttered, once he regained control of himself.
“Yeah,” said Dedalus, “just don’t open this cabinet again or it will get out.”
“The dementor is in there?” Dudley asked, warily looking at the cabinet Dedalus had indicated.
“Oh, no!” Dedalus said, amused, “that wasn’t a dementor! That was a boggart, a creature that takes the form of the thing you fear the most. It won’t harm you as long as it stays in this cabinet,” he explained, tapping it lightly.
“Oh,” said Dudley, trying to make sense of everything he’d seen. “Then Harry wasn’t”” He stopped, seeing the warning look his mum shot him. Harry’s death was his mum’s greatest fear?
“Harry wasn’t what?” asked Hestia, who was standing by the door.
“Never mind,” he muttered.
“Never mind, nothing!” Vernon shouted, and Dudley was worried he had also realized what his mum’s greatest fear was. “Something just attacked my wife and son and you two say never mind!”
“I was the one who said”” Dudley started, realizing his dad was only trying to pick a fight.
“You two have been causing more trouble for us than you’ve prevented!”
“Boggarts aren’t harmful creatures. They just like to hide in dark places””
“I don’t bloody care where they like to hide!” Vernon shouted. “I want them gone! They’re not right”not right at all!”
“Just because you don’t understand them doesn’t mean they don’t belong,” Dudley said.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yes I do, Dad!”
“Would you listen to your son for once?” Hestia asked.
“This is all your fault! You two brainwashed him to think””
“Us? We brainwashed him?” Hestia scoffed. “What about you and your wife, always teaching him how awful magic is, making him hate Harry just because””
“It’s not us! We’ve taught him everything he needs to know, none of the mumbo jumbo you’re putting into his head!”
“Dad””
“This is stuff he needs to know! We are in a war, and your family”and your nephew”are right in the center of it!”
“I don’t care! I don’t want to know!” Vernon shouted stubbornly, his large purple face contorted with rage.
“You need to stop denying that magic exists when it’s right in front of you!” Hestia said desperately. “You can’t just wish it away!”
“Vernon, we should listen,” said Petunia tentatively, rising from the floor.
He looked at her as if he couldn’t believe that this was his wife. “What did you do to her?” he shouted, turning to face Hestia, only to find that she looked equally shocked.
“Nothing, Vernon,” said Petunia. “I just think Dudley is right; we need to know what is happening. If there was a war in our world, we’d want to know””
“We’re not in our world!”
“Would you just listen?” Hestia shouted. “Everyone knows it; your son, your wife, all realize how important this is!”
“No! I won’t””
“Dad, just listen!
“You could be facing things you don’t understand! Things much worse than boggarts and doxies: there could be Death Eaters, vampires, dark magic, even Voldemort””
Hestia stopped, her eyes bulging in horror, as she realized what she’d just said. Simultaneously, several loud cracks sounded from the front door.
“What was that?” Petunia asked, her face white with fear.
The front door was blasted violently off its hinges with a loud boom, as Hestia shoved Vernon roughly into the closet and she and Dedalus raised their wands.
Spells flew from both ends of the hall, in violent flashes of red and green, as a half dozen Snatchers and Death Eaters forced their way through the door.
“Stay in there!” Hestia shouted, as Dudley tried to peer around the corner at their attackers.
“What is going on?” Petunia shrieked, pulling Dudley back into the closet.
“I thought we were protected here,” Vernon complained. “I knew they were lying about””
“It’s the taboo,” Dudley explained. “It breaks all magical enchantments.”
“What does what?”
“I bet you wished you’d listened to Hestia and Dedalus now,” Dudley snapped. “Then you might have a clue what was going on!”
“We’re going to get out of here, guys!” Hestia shouted from the hall. “Be ready to Apparate!”
“Three…two…one!”
On Dedalus’ mark, Hestia and Dedalus aimed their wands at the ceiling directly above the oncoming Death Eaters’ heads and shouted, “Confringo!” The whole building shook as the ceiling came down overhead, giving them just enough time to escape into the storage closet. They took the Dursleys by the arms and instantly spun away into a crushing darkness.
They arrived in an alley, where Dudley barely had time to catch his breath before Hestia yanked him into a side door.
The pitch blackness of this building threw him off. There were no lights and the only windows were boarded up. Hestia and Dedalus both whispered, ”Lumos!” and their wands cast a dim light over the room.
It was larger than Dudley had expected, a storeroom of some kind. Shelves lined the walls and created several aisles in the center of the room, stacked with various boxes and gadgets.
Dedalus whispered, “Homenum Revelio!” Nothing seemed to have happened, but he said, “It’s safe,” and led them to a door on the opposite side of the room. The shelves were labeled with names such as ‘Decoy Detonators,’ ‘Nosebleed Nougat,’ and ‘Shield Hats’, but Dudley hadn’t a clue what these were.
He unhooked the latch on a basket containing the decoy detonators and, at once, the lifeless things jumped into action. He leaped back as they started scurrying around the basket, some climbing out or rolling off the shelves. They looked almost like wind-up cat toys, the way they ran around, but there was no place to wind them up.
“Dudley,” Hestia whispered, “what are you doing?”
“It was an accident!” he lied.
Petunia screamed and clung to Vernon as one of the more adventurous detonators ran in her direction, though Vernon looked just as frightened as she. Then, a thundering crash and a cloud of smoke came from the opposite side of the room, and everyone but Dedalus covered their ears and dropped to the floor.
“What are you all so jumpy for!” he joked. “It’s just a decoy!”
“WHAT?” Vernon bellowed, not amused by Dedalus’ joking tone.
“A decoy detonator, very handy,” he said, picking up another which was still trying to run away. “When you need a distraction, you just set one of these aside, and let it do its thing. Something over there blows up, while you’re still over here, doing whatever it is you need to be doing!”
“Brilliant!” Dudley said. Vernon was not amused.
“Anyway, we should get going,” said Dedalus, tossing the Detonator into the bin and placing the latch back on, causing them to stop moving instantly.
They had just reached the door and started up a flight of stairs, when they heard an explosion from downstairs. “I suppose one never made it back into the basket,” Dedalus joked.
The stairs wound to a small flat, which felt a lot like the storeroom, piled high with boxes. Hestia and Dedalus quickly set to work placing protective charms around the flat.
Vernon stumbled through many piles of boxes before finding an armchair squeezed between several stacks. He fell heavily back into it and Petunia perched herself on the armrest beside him.
“What happened?” he asked when Hestia and Dedalus had rejoined them, craning his neck around to try to find them among the clutter.
“The Death Eaters found us,” said Dedalus, tiptoeing around whose fault it was. “When we said the taboo, the enchantments protecting us were broken and they were able to find us.”
“What taboo?”
“You-Know-Who’s name,” said Hestia. “I said it, I forgot,” she sighed, obviously frustrated with herself.
“It’s alright”” said Dudley.
“What about our stuff?” asked Vernon.
“We can’t go back there again.”
“But all of our””
“Dad, they were going to kill us.”
Vernon looked cross for a moment, then seemed to forget the matter for the moment. “Where are we now?” he grunted.
“Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes. It’s a safe house offered by some members of the Order to anyone who needs it.”
“Weasley?” Dudley racked his brain. “Is that Harry’s friend?”
“The Weasleys?” Vernon recognized the name too. “That man is a nut.”
“That man is a very important member of the Order,” Hestia said coldly. “And, yes,” she said, directing her attention to Dudley, “you’re thinking of the right Weasleys. The shop is run by two of Ron’s older brothers.”
“What kind of shop?”
“It’s a joke shop,” Hestia explained. “Fred and George are known for being pranksters, and now they’ve put that to good use.”
“This is all very nice,” Vernon said sarcastically, “but I’d like to know what we are doing here!”
“Now you’re interested in what is going on, is that it?” asked Hestia sardonically.
“Why don’t we all just settle down,” said Dedalus, always the peacemaker. “We can work this out in the morning. Let’s just go to bed now.” Everyone agreed, and Dedalus offered the two bedrooms to Vernon, Petunia, and Hestia. At first, Vernon had insisted that Dudley sleep in the bedroom with he and Petunia, away from Dedalus, only to find that the bedroom was even more crowded than the living area.
Dedalus conjured two cots for he and Dudley, though it proved a challenge to find a place for them in the crowded space. Dedalus moved several boxes from the living room to make room for his, while Dudley squeezed himself between the countertops in the kitchen.
As he lay awake, Dudley relived the events of this evening. Dudley had faced the real terror of the war for the first time, not through a story, but in real life. The cozy lifestyle they’d taken for granted while in Paris was now over. Just as he was drifting off to sleep, a loud explosion from downstairs startled him. He laughed though when he realized what it was.
Dursleys, Meet The Wizarding World by Ghoul In Pajamas
Chapter Notes: Thanks Emily for betaing and to those who helped me out in the Excerpts thread! I am still not JK Rowling, just a humble fan. Enjoy!
Chapter Endnotes: The action shifted A LOT in this chapter! Let me know what you think!